Re-shaping our understanding of Saturn
We easily get stuck in our struggles with time, failing to recognize that time’s purpose is for our awakening. Astrologically, I often hear Saturn associated with “reality”. I would actually define Saturn as the way reality crystalizes within form. Jeff Green describes the Saturn archetype as “the form consciousness takes on”.
Saturn is only that which can be measured, defined, felt, seen, tasted, has dimensionality to it. Reality itself is not limited to form, it is not conditioned or limited by time and space by its very nature. If we’ve ever had an experience of illumination and spiritual realization, we can understand this. When I return within, I often come back to the stark noticing that the inner world is the essence, and that this seemingly solid outer reality is more like the tip of the tip of an iceberg that is unimaginably huge underneath the surface.
In my own insight this is what is referred to as “maya”. Illusion – I think an appropriate way to think of this is not that it’s “not real” because well, I know I need to eat food. But rater, that it’s not descriptive of ultimate reality. We’re looking more at a symptom. We cannot describe the cause by looking only at a symptom. The symptom points to an underlying reality that is prior to the symptom.
In my view, the manifestation of our total circumstantial reality, without exception, serves as nothing other than the template of our ongoing realization. This is a radical stance and one that ultimately is most helpful. It directs our attention away from the seeming literal importance of the template and points to the why of the template. What is it that we are here to learn?
To further illustrate this, let’s use the actual analogy of school to explain this. Attending school means you put on clothing, you pack a lunch, you take a bus and all kinds of worldly things etc. etc. There are infinite details, parameters and limitations that will be implied in each school experience. The curriculum studied in the school however is not the school. It’s something that we are taking within, that we are integrating within our own being.
The curriculum is not the school. I.E., our self-realization and the template from which this realization is occurring are not the same. The latter is nothing other than the vehicle for the former.
The little girl and the crayons
There’s the story of little girl who decided to go and paint on all of the walls! Her parents told her not to, but she went and did it anyway! Her parents are deeply loving and compassionate beings. They would never get angry at their child. And in this instance this girl needs boundaries and parameters set on her usage of crayons. She needs to learn how to use the crayons. So, what did the parents do. They took the crayons from her and firmly said, “you may not write on the wall.” They cleaned up the wall with her and stopped allowing her to take the crayons on her own. Moving forward, she now needs to ask permission and get the crayons from the parents directly, with their supervision.
Will it always be like this? No. When the child has learned the lesson, the parameters will change.
Simply, we can recognize that the parents set up a temporary parameter and guideline for her to learn. There’s no punishment there at all. It’s really just compassionate care. The parents set up a template for her to learn. That’s all. This learning will require self-reflection and maturation in order to take place. And once it happens the rules will no longer be needed.
This is what Saturn is, all the way down to the manifestations of our body. Everything. Everything is the template and thus the limitations and parameters that house our soul learning journey.
The curriculum
So what is the curriculum? We can all speak to it in different ways since we are referring to something inherently not of this world. The language I will use here is to evolve. To wake up, to remember our true nature. As we continue to awaken, the template shifts to accommodate our learning.
This means that the limitations of our life are not something we can transcend. We can all try right now to get out of our bodies and switch into another one, but that won’t work. For every limitation, we have no choice but to yield ourselves entirely to the specific approach to the curriculum that it offers us. As evolution occurs, the template changes.
Soul evolution, and thus earthly templates to house the evolutionary process, continues until the only remaining desire within in the soul is to return home to its true self. This is what Jeff Green describes as the evolutionary journey of the soul “the gradual exhaustion of all desires until the only remaining desire is the desire to re-unite with the Source.”
It says in a Course in Miracles “Free will does not mean you can choose the curriculum; it means you can establish what to take when.” The curriculum is set, and we need look no further than what is here now. Our Saturn crystalized reality of form and time and space reflects exactly, to a tee, the structures of the waking up school we are in.
We can repeat lessons over and over again. This only means that life is designed, that our earth experience is designed, for our benefit. The more we can meet our struggles and our limitations with a quality of serenity and trust, even if it feels heavy and heard, to cultivate some ground of trust and sincere willingness to learn, then we create more space within ourselves to find some wisdom and insight within them.
One of my favorite quotes from A Course in Miracles is “the purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively” – from the 50 principals of miracles.
To me, choice comes in relative to how we choose to be in relationship to the curriculum. We are all learning how to use time constructively, for the highest purposes we can give to it. What an opportunity. And to me, it’s also incredibly beautiful to recognize that we are all enrolled in the same school. Even though our curriculums seem to be structured in very diverse ways, and the pace and form of our learning may differ, the curriculum is in fact the same for all of us.