Really interesting distinction you're making Julianne. I'm curious what Ari has to say about this.

I'm finding myself thinking about Pavlovian stimulus and response. In my mind, Mars would be the immediate response to certain stimulus. Perhaps the "mindfulness" is really a growing spaciousness between the stimulus and the response. If we can elongate the reaction time, we can make "wiser" choices potentially. To your point though, it might be that Mars starts it's engine when perceiving the stimulus and then Mercury interjects with some cognitive processing to actually decide what action to take.

Expanding on this topic, I'm wondering what the interplay is between all of the planets, microscopically and macroscopically. Ari's touched on the blended nature of the planetary functions, but I personally want to see the whole system and the interrelation between all of the pieces. Probably because I have Mercury in Aquarius. Is there a theory of planet interplay?

Hi Brenton! I like your icon pic!! I appreciate your response I feel it helps me clarify what I was trying to say even further haha. 

Your thoughts make me wonder even more simply, is mars ever not mars-ing? is there ever a moment between contemplation and action, all within the realm of action, or is action always just the action and not the contemplation about the action? 

If I'm reading your question on planetary theory right, have a very vague theory that it goes, as we perceive it, energies filters from sun to pluto- so sun first, then mercury, then venus, then mars, etc. In this regard, it might make sense that thought (or perhaps consciousness) (merc) comes "Before" action (mars) - but I wonder where venus plays in our decision making, if our preferences (venus) then influence our action, as venus sits between mercury and mars.. Totally pulled this out of the air, don't quote me. 

I think I hear what you're bringing forward now Julianne.

If I have an impulse to interrupt someone because I'm angry at them, my choice to not do that will not implicitly come because of a thoughtful process; in other words, choice itself is not empirical. It will come because of an internal inner orientation to evolve. I will act differently and this acting differently comes as the result of DESIRE (Mars simply playing out the desire paradigm of the soul). I might choose to breath, remind myself of some absolute truth about the safety of the present moment and meditate/concentrate on this while listening to the other person etc.. all as a reflect of my desire to evolve.

I can then apply Mercurial thought to it and identify what is going on - but the actual process itself, including the choice to do something new, does not implicitly involve intellect.

You are correct in that indicating any use of cognition in making new choices would be appropriate if the Mercury Gemini and Virgo archetypes were literally involved. Otherwise, the reorientation of instinctual responses comes from the FACT of our self-agency and our freedom of will to choose, which does not come from thinking alone.

Thus a more appropriate way for me to teach the "pause" that comes with Mars is that we are training our instinctual body to act in new ways by giving "it" directions. We (as soul) are the one's giving the direction. It's a mystery and hard to identify - I think it's at the heart of every choice to do something differently that points to the depth of our deep agency.

Ari, regardless of personal ideology on free will, do you use the concept of free will to hold a container/cosmology of what mars is correlated to? 

I do. Mars, and all the responses we offer to life experience, points back to the reason for those responses. The soul, i.e. the desire nature of the soul and it's agency to evolve or resist is the reason. This being said, we are slave to our actions and reactions to the extent that we are bound by desire. The former follows the latter like a ship trails in the sea - so free will is limited by way of what is still unconscious.

if a conscious mars action is predicated by thought (mercury, or the definition of consciousness, everything considered?), is it really a pure mars action, or is mars acting as as auxiliary to mercury/uranus (mind, consciousness?) . Or perhaps my definition consciousness as it relates to mars is limited. Action itself has consciousness which is different from thought, so think that's where my nit-picking around words come from. Conscious action is different from mindful action, though they may allude to similar things. 

To me, Mars is always related to conscious action because action is always incredibly evident. I am doing this. We may not be conscious of 'why" we are doing what we are doing, but the doing is always conscious. Mindful to me elicits the sense of meditative, self-aware action which is possible with Mars (I can drink my tea mindfully or walking meditation) but to me points to Uranus - the sense of witness consciousness, not so much classifying what one is doing in descriptive terms (which would be Mercury). Uranus witness consciousness is possible simultaneous to all activity happening within the Saturn dimension of time/space/human experience.

So I suppose my question isn't a question and rather a statement that we can't really use the idea of "mindful consideration" or thinking before our actions as a way to articulate or convince ourselves we are "evolving" our mars- the instinctive behaviors themselves must change to actually prove evolution. If we're not doing mars, we are just not doing mars, not doing a different mars thing. Mars will always just do, in whatever sign it's in, never think about what it's doing. Mercury will think about what mars is doing. Even mars in gemini doesn't think, it uses words to act, not the other way around. The directionality there feels significant to me for some reason. I feel very strongly about this, but appreciate if its alot to sift through. Just wanted to share my thoughts. 

Yes, and the point being is that action is not predicated by thought. 

I just wrote a bunch more but I think I'll save it for when we learn about Mercury! Thanks for these really engaging reflections Julianne.

I'm finding myself thinking about Pavlovian stimulus and response. In my mind, Mars would be the immediate response to certain stimulus. Perhaps the "mindfulness" is really a growing spaciousness between the stimulus and the response. If we can elongate the reaction time, we can make "wiser" choices potentially. To your point though, it might be that Mars starts it's engine when perceiving the stimulus and then Mercury interjects with some cognitive processing to actually decide what action to take.

I would describe the spaciousness between stimulus and the response as Uranus: witness consciousness which is an essential dis-identification with the activities of time space. Thus the ability to become aware of the instinctual responses arising and liberate from conditioned activity. Mercury can then come in to consider new options, perspectives etc. But even then, the cognitive functioning will be limited to the soul's evolutionary condition: we can't perceive options that do not resonate with the soul's desire. Again we should definitely return to this when we get to Mercury.

Expanding on this topic, I'm wondering what the interplay is between all of the planets, microscopically and macroscopically. Ari's touched on the blended nature of the planetary functions, but I personally want to see the whole system and the interrelation between all of the pieces. Probably because I have Mercury in Aquarius. Is there a theory of planet interplay?

Absolutely - the more we learn the more we'll all train our minds (Mercury) to organize and systematize everything relative to the soul: desire. I think I address this in the last segment of this course and beyond that I am always happy to further expand upon this as I really feel this is the true heart and gem of the EA understanding. There's always more to see here about this as our own realization unfolds. So lets keep this exploration open.