Ashley and Lauren talk about why it is essential to have a powerful context for understanding our lives, and how a contextual framework like astrology can help us to maintain a big picture perspective and distill meaning from our experiences. Tune in to learn about why having a powerful context is so critical to finding meaning and happiness, how we benefit from letting go of our attachment to understanding everything, and why context is absolutely essential at this moment in human history.
In this episode
Links
Kyle Cease
https://kylecease.com/
We'd love to hear from you! Send your comments and questions to: ashley@liveatyouredge.com
Ashley and Lauren talk about why it is essential to have a powerful context for understanding our lives, and how a contextual framework like astrology can help us to maintain a big picture perspective and distill meaning from our experiences. Tune in to learn about why having a powerful context is so critical to finding meaning and happiness, how we benefit from letting go of our attachment to understanding everything, and why context is absolutely essential at this moment in human history.
In this episode
Links
Kyle Cease
https://kylecease.com/
We'd love to hear from you! Send your comments and questions to: ashley@liveatyouredge.com
[00:00:00] Ashley: Welcome back to the show. I'm Ashley and I'm so excited to bring you today's conversation. This is a conversation that Lauren and I had about the things that we're feeling and experiencing so far this year. And specifically, we talk a lot about finding a context for your life that can offer you some perspective and give meaning to the experiences that you're having.
[00:00:37] Lauren and I have both found that having a powerful context in our lives has been an incredibly important element for us in uncovering a life that feels more fulfilling and meaningful because we are as human beings meaning makers. We are creatures that need meaning in order to feel fulfilled.
[00:01:02] For Lauren and I, one of the tools that we have found to be the most impactful in terms of distilling meaning from our own experiences and finding direction in our own lives has been astrology. And if astrology is something that you immediately feel wary of, I just want to say to you that I so resonate with that experience, Lauren and I both do.
[00:01:32] We both came from a place of a lot of skepticism. And so, we totally understand and relate to that. This episode is actually less about astrology per se. It's more about the ways that something like astrology can provide context and a different point of view that helps you keep perspective on your life and on the energies that we're sitting in as we walk through this really challenging period in human history.
[00:02:06] If you're not that familiar with astrology, you may find that there's some things in here that may surprise you. Only because the way that astrology's spoken about in our popular culture really is not representative of what the discipline of astrology is really about when you get deeper into it. So I just invite you to have an open mind about it.
[00:02:31] There's so many other amazing themes that came through in our conversation related to, the subconscious choices we make about the beliefs that we have, as well as about the importance of endings, specifically in creating transformation and new beginnings in our lives, which is a topic that a lot of times we don't love to think about, but knowing that process and what that process looks like can be so helpful in keeping perspective when times are hard.
[00:03:03] So, I'm thrilled to share this conversation with you. We really hope you enjoy it.
[00:03:10] What kinds of things are you feeling about this year so far for you?
[00:03:14] Lauren: It feels a lot more energetically intense than 2022, in, I, I shouldn't say, I don't know about intense. I like that word, but it's more like, I was telling you about the word labile that our mom taught me when my child was young. When you have babies and toddlers, their emotions are very labile, which means they just like fluctuate from high to low within like an instant.
[00:03:41] And you're like, what, what just happened? Or low to high? They're crying and all of a sudden they're
[00:03:46] Ashley: They're laughing. Yeah.
[00:03:47] Lauren: Adults don't do that quite so much, but like intensely labile is how I would describe this year for me so far.
[00:03:53] The beginning of the year, the first couple weeks was dragging that very intense internal introspective "stop moving" energy from the Mars retrograde and the Mercury retrograde. And I have felt a huge shift since then and it's just like has skyrocketed. For a few days I was on this high of adrenaline and now I'm having an adrenaline hangover and it's just feeling like this huge energy fluctuation. If that's what this year is gonna be about, that's gonna be really interesting. um, learning how to balance my energy.
[00:04:33] Ashley: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Lauren: So describe this year for you.
[00:04:37] Ashley: Well, I've also noticed a shift since the Mars and Mercury retrogrades have ended. To me, that feels like all of a sudden it's kind of like a fog clearing, and it's very literal for me in the sense that, all of 2022, pretty much, I, I've lived in a state of brain fog and cognitive impairment and not really being able to function close to full capacity, like functioning at this percentage of capacity and having it be really hard to think. Just really feeling like you're in a literal fog. And then, since those retrogrades have passed and I've started getting some treatment for the cognitive stuff, literally my brain is clearing. And so with that, there's also been all these insights dropping in. Like I'm having all these realizations all of a sudden like, oh my God, this is what that was really about.
[00:05:29] Or oh my God, suddenly I can see that I've been actually keeping myself in physical pain by like specifically trying to keep knowledge about what's causing me pain away from my brain, like not wanting to think about it. And so, not feeling like I can heal myself and just wanting to rely on other people to do it and then actually having that cause me to stay in pain for longer.
[00:05:55] Just stuff like that. That's, that's like one example, it just feels like all of a sudden there's these. Big reveals, like dropping in one after another after another. And that does really feel related to a retrograde, they can just feel really like it can be cloudy and hard to communicate hard to see things, hard to do things, just everything feels kind of hard. So, um, it does feel like a big relief. And yet, there's still just, there's so much turmoil in both my personal life, the lives of the people I love, and in the exterior world, there's so much big, sometimes scary, daunting, emotional stuff that feels like it's cropping up. I keep seeing things happen in the lives of people I know just all of a sudden out of nowhere.
[00:06:43] Lauren: Yeah. It does feel like what you're saying is so true for me too. It's like the sudden realizations about, oh my gosh, that's what that was.
[00:06:53] That's what I'm doing. And just gaining all this clarity on all this stuff that we've been working through for the last three plus months with the retrograde.
[00:07:05] Mars was the really hard one for me, and that one was three months. Mercury is usually three weeks if people don't know.
[00:07:11] And that one, just I amplified the end of the Mars retrograde because Mercury was the ruler of this particular retrograde, and so it was like a super retrograde at the end, and after three months just seeped in this very difficult energy and then at the end, to have that amplified is like, I can can't. I can't take it anymore. I cannot take it anymore. And then once it shifts, it's like the aha moments.
[00:07:38] Ashley: Yeah. It's just feeling so intense. After last year, which was a really intense year as well. A really hard year in a lot of ways. I think a lot of us are like, it was different. I completely
[00:07:52] Lauren: it's it's hard to describe the difference in intensity. But, um, last year I kept listening to people talk about how 2023 is gonna be intense. And this one guy I listened to is a tarot reader and an astrologer, and I can't even count the number of times he said in 2022, this is the time to get your spiritual practice and self-care practices in place just because that's gonna make 2023 easier, cuz the energy is intense and the fluctuations are big.
[00:08:25] And so if you've got a consistent spiritual practice of. Whether it's meditation or any time in nature, grounding practices, Tai chi, things like listening to spiritual people who, who give you the broader perspective, whatever that might be for you. Things like that. It's gonna be really supportive, I think, to all of us. And, developing that this year, if you don't have one already.
[00:08:52] Ashley: What is something that is so nice about following astrologers, even if astrology isn't necessarily your thing, one thing that they do so well is put words to the things that we're all kind of feeling. They're often so good at
[00:09:09] Lauren: Yeah.
[00:09:10] Ashley: at really honing in on what is this we're all going through collectively and all the way down into the personal level. Cuz usually they reflect one another, like the collective and the personal. It's so nice sometimes to be able to have resources you can go read and feel like which parts feel relevant to you. Cuz sometimes they don't all feel relevant.
[00:09:34] But I love how they're often really good at giving context and perspective and helping me to make sense of some of the things I'm feeling, but that I haven't yet been able to put a mental framework around, you know?
[00:09:50] Lauren: Yeah, exactly. I feel the same. I find it so supportive. I don't know. And I used to feel sort of lost and alone before finding astrology. And as you do emotional healing, I think people often find that they become more and more sensitive to the energies around them.
[00:10:12] Ashley: Yeah.
[00:10:12] Lauren: Because they're not sort of numbed anymore. And so as you've become more sensitive to the universal energy. I find that I always doubt my own experience and it's so validating and comforting to listen to somebody really articulate and speak to the feeling that I would not be able to articulate myself.
[00:10:38] Ashley: Yeah.
[00:10:38] Lauren: and you have to find the people that speak to you.
[00:10:44] Ashley: Yeah, I, I definitely have the sense that a lot of folks listening may not necessarily follow astrology because I feel like at least a lot of the people I know who listen to this show come from similar like backgrounds to us and maybe have like scientific kind of backgrounds and like that's the place that we came from.
[00:11:05] And you know, I, the way that I always felt about astrology when people mentioned it to me up until the last just few years is if someone started talking about it, it like changed the way I perceived that person. It was like, well, if you think that that is quote unquote real, then. There's like, you're not on the same like plane of existence as me. And it's just funny to think about it now cuz the way I ended up getting introduced to it was through a teacher who always said, and I still very much agree and think about it this way, which is that she always would say, you don't. believe in astrology. In order to get the benefits out of it. It's not about believing if the planets create or cause our experiences. The way that it was taught to me was as this framework that includes teachings around archetypes and how the self fits into the context of the universal energies that are out there. And there are so many teachings in astrology and it's not necessary in my opinion to literally believe in it in order to still benefit from it.
[00:12:19] To me, the beauty of it is that it gives you all this cool stuff to feel into and whatever lands for you in that minute is just whatever's true for you. It's just like, It helps make meaning of things. And we're, we're meaning makers. Like, that's just the way we're wired. We're just tapping into our own natural propensity to need there to be meaning in things.
[00:12:44] But it. I think the stuff that you see out there on the internet oftentimes is so superficial and shallow that it, if that's all you've ever been exposed to, then I understand why anybody would, would be skeptical of that because that stuff doesn't really like even begin to touch the, there's just a lot of very pop culture
[00:13:03] Lauren: Very superficial. Yeah.
[00:13:05] Ashley: around astrology that really has no actual meaning. Like, oh, you're gonna experience a new love match this week or something that's like you, you can't tell stuff like that from looking at astrology.
[00:13:19] There's different energies that it might be higher or lower, but that kind of stuff, because that's out there, I think it's turned so many people off to the idea of it because it just sounds so ridiculous and it is. That's my feeling about it. That's just my personal opinion. But I feel like a lot of that stuff, that pop culture stuff is just, it really trivializes what is actually a really beautiful contextual tool.
[00:13:43] Lauren: I feel the same way and I love that your teacher said, you don't have to believe in it. But you can think about it as just an interesting way of supporting you. It's just another perspective, another way of looking at the world.
[00:14:00] For me, it's a way of finding divinity in the world, like seeing the divine nature of the planet that we live in. And I never used to be into that stuff un until I started doing emotional healing work to heal illnesses.
[00:14:19] I found through that experience that it was not serving me at all. It was really detrimenting me to choose to view the world as just the solid matter and random events that happen. And I realized at some point I can believe whatever I want. Like, that doesn't seem revolutionary, but it was, for some reason it clicked in my mind.
[00:14:48] It's like, I don't have to believe these things that I've, I've chosen. I'm gonna believe the things that empower me the most, and I don't care what those things are in that moment. That was early on in my healing but, and through the journey of healing, I found astrology to be a pivotal piece that did empower me and you, Ashley, were the one who turned me onto it. In my healing, I was going through what they call in spiritual circles a dark night of the soul.
[00:15:24] Ashley: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:25] Lauren: And it was a really, really dark, as the name suggests, dark, dark period. I was going through this process after realizing that emotional healing was gonna be the answer for me to heal. I started going through this process of dismantling old beliefs and figuring out where they came from and dismantling a lot of parts of me that I was able to see in that moment were false that I had created falsely. And that's not to blame myself. I had just created these parts of myself to, to fit in and get the most love and affirmation in the world that I could. And they weren't true to me. And so I was dismantling all these things and when I got to a certain point after about a, a year of this or maybe nine months that I felt like there was nothing left. If these things are not true for me, I have no idea who I am.
[00:16:21] And that's what they call a dark night of the soul. It's like when you feel that deep, deep emptiness. It's different than depression, which is, which also feels like emptiness, but it's like, I'm like an empty vessel. I have nothing. I don't know who I am, what I am, what I'm doing, what I'm supposed to be doing. It felt so, so dark and during that period when I just kept feeling like I don't know what I am, where to turn. How am I gonna figure out who I really am and what my personality is really like. And you sent me a really nice website that went into a lot of detail about the parts of your astrology chart and aspects and things.
[00:17:04] And I, when you sent that to me, I read a couple things sort of trying to be an open with an open mind, cuz I had been really dismissive beforehand and all of a sudden after being like emptied, it felt like I had been emptied of my personality. I mean, that wasn't really true, but it felt like that. All of a sudden I was reading these things that used to never connect for me cuz I was clouded by this personality that actually in hindsight was false, not true to me. And all of a sudden these things were clicking and I started to see, oh my God, what if, what if that is true? And it's, but it started feeling true, but I, my mind like couldn't get on board. It was like, could this, could this actually be true? Could I actually be like this? But in my gut, I could feel that it was, I was, and it started to paint this picture
[00:18:00] Ashley: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:01] Lauren: of who I really am and what is actually true for me,
[00:18:06] Ashley: Yeah. Like your deeper, truer nature.
[00:18:09] Lauren: Yeah. It was a great way of putting it. And it, it just, that was my intro into it. It was pivotal. That was the beginning of coming out of that dark period.
[00:18:21] Ashley: I really love that you shared that story. I don't think I'd heard it like the full thing from start to finish like that. It's, I think I, it's a really beautiful story.
[00:18:31] Lauren: Yeah, and like I was saying earlier, as I found that it just, something snapped that it just, I, I had spent so much of my life feeling disempowered. That's been a very big theme, self disempowerment because of very pervasive powerlessness energy embedded in my body. I had, I was just, I was just snapped. I was just like, I am tired of feeling disempowered and so I'm gonna believe in whatever empowers me. I don't care what it is.
[00:19:03] Ashley: I really love the thing you're bringing in about choice, like that you get to choose which things that you let into your system because you know, I really didn't feel when I was younger, before I got exposed to astrology through the right teacher,
[00:19:20] Lauren: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:20] Ashley: I really didn't feel like I had a choice. I felt like I'd been taught that there's a right way of seeing things and there's like a correct way of knowing the world and that way is primarily through what we can document through our current scientific abilities, right? What we currently have the technology to test and demonstrate scientifically.
[00:19:42] And that that is the one way that is okay to view the world and that anything else that doesn't fit within that narrow paradigm is like, you are not. You're not smart, you're not, clear thinking, you're not rational, you're not all these things, like all the things that our culture holds up as desirable qualities.
[00:20:02] And so I always felt like there's no choice. I always was one of those people who used to say things like, you know, it must be nice to believe in God. I feel like I'd be a lot happier if I did, but I
[00:20:13] Lauren: I used to too. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:16] Ashley: any sense to me and it. When I think back on that feeling of what it felt like to think that, there's this very like narrow, tight, constricted feeling to it. You have the ability to penetrate with your consciousness, any set of ideas and experiences that you choose. It's not even always about belief or non-belief, but it is about like what do you let in, what are you open-minded to experiencing, and are there certain things that we're just closed to experiencing because for whatever reason we've decided that that's not a legitimate or okay thing for us to experience. And so I really love. That choice thing you're saying, which is that at some point we get to choose.
[00:21:00] And it, I, it really does come back to me to what you were saying about empowerment, because there's this way that when we refuse to let certain experiences in, because we just believe that it's not okay to do that, and it says something bad about us, we actually keep ourselves stuck in a place of less power because we won't even allow ourselves to experience something like, does any of this resonate for me?
[00:21:27] Or do does this context feel useful to me for my life. Do I feel that this, you know, this thing about my birth chart, you know, if I learn about my birth chart d does any of that feel insightful to me in this moment? Does it feel like it shines light on a part of me that I couldn't see before? I mean, that's, I think it's amazing for stuff like that, but if we can't even let ourselves experience it.
[00:21:49] Lauren: Yeah, that's said beautifully, and I think as you're speaking, I'm thinking like the link there, the belief that we might wanna start questioning, that's so common. I think so many of us have this belief that I can only believe something that I understand. And if I don't understand it, I can't possibly believe it. And it reminds me of Kyle Cease. He used to be a comedian. He was a well-known comedian, and he turned into like a, a spiritual, it's personal growth through, a spiritual mindset.
[00:22:18] But he, he talks about this, that we all have this like "understander" in us and that this understander can sometimes control our lives in ways that are so profound. It's like we hold on to well I have to understand this. It's feels safe for us to be able to hold something in our cognition, to like be able to put it in a box. If we can understand it, we can put it in a box.
[00:22:47] Ashley: Yeah.
[00:22:49] Lauren: There are so many things in the world that are really beyond our understanding and those things, if we have this belief that if we don't understand it, then I'm not safe, an unconscious belief maybe, then all these things that happen in the world that we can't make sense out of threaten us and we feel very uneasy around them and it's, it just feels very unsafe and it's like, well, that has to be cast off because I don't get it. Because there's this way astrology is like, I mean, I'm, I'm taking an intensive course right now in it, and I, I was telling my partner the other day out of all the things that I've studied, organic chemistry, calculus, trigono, like all, like a lot of the things that we perceive as really difficult, astrology is by far the most difficult to me because it's not concrete. It's this way of, it's, it's, it's not just that you're learning and memorizing things, you're not really memorizing. It's like you're learning a system of thinking and a perspective and it's so difficult for a, like a scientifically trained mind to, to shift that.
[00:24:00] It's so difficult because there is still in me somewhat this belief that I have to understand it and I have to like, I have to have it concrete and grounded. I have to understand it to do it and get it, and there is some truth to that because it's like, well, in order to be an astrologer you have to, you have to have a good conceptualization. But it's not exactly understanding because it's like nobody really understands in a concrete way why astrology works.
[00:24:36] Ashley: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:36] Lauren: It's basically shifting the way you look at life and the universe as things happen in these metaphorical ways, or at least that's the construct that our brains have to use to, to make sense of it. And so everything is archetypal and metaphorical. It's, it's not causal and we're just so, our culture, so values cause and effect and , that's because we can wrap it around our minds and understand it. Our little understander is satisfied.
[00:25:12] Ashley: I'm so glad you brought in the metaphorical thing. cuz I do really love thinking about astrology as a tool that way as as metaphorical. Metaphor just makes sense to us. Like, and so it helps me wrap my brain around the role that it plays as a tool in my life. Because
[00:25:32] Lauren: Yeah.
[00:25:33] Ashley: again, for me it comes back to making meaning of things. It's the way for humans to feel connected and happy is through having a sense of meaning. And so having something that helps you make meaning out of what's happening to you in your life, I just feel like it's pivotal. It doesn't have to be astrology, but man, is it a powerful thing?
[00:25:56] Lauren: Yeah. Oh, I think you're so right. And ancient people knew this. Ancient astrologers used to say that the life without meaning and a connection to something greater than the self is a life doomed to suffering.
[00:26:14] Ashley: Mm
[00:26:14] Lauren: And um, I love what you're saying about meaning, it's true. And I think that's what we're ultimately seeking from understanding. We're trying to understand things because that's a way of making meaning out of it. And so there's nothing wrong with trying to understand something. I'm not trying to demonize that.
[00:26:37] Ashley: But you're right. You're on something profound, I think, which is that we keep ourselves limited by insisting that everything we even let into our experience has to be something we fully understand.
[00:26:49] Lauren: Yeah. Because we think that's the only way to make meaning. And it's so liberating when you start to realize there's actually more ways of making meaning in your life than just that understanding of it.
[00:27:05] I wanted to go back to when you were talking about metaphors again, because understanding that the universe works in metaphors has been a pivotal shift in my understanding of healing chronic illnesses because it's a very similar thing when you're looking at the energetics of an illness, the way you do that and how you do somatic work is by using metaphors and figuring out what is the metaphor, what is the message that this particular symptom is telling me?
[00:27:42] And that can sometimes come to you immediately and sometimes take some work to, to get, but it's always a metaphor.
[00:27:49] Ashley: Yeah. That's been such a cool thing to watch you piece together because you're so good at this. Having you describe the way certain ailments manifest as these like metaphors of ways you're embodying.
[00:28:03] Lauren: Mm-hmm. A belief. That comes from a wound.
[00:28:06] Ashley: Yeah. The way you're living your life that's, that's not working for you and manifesting in this illness or ailment of some kind.
[00:28:16] Lauren: Yeah, they are your unconscious beliefs. So that's what's so interesting and cool, is that your unconscious is like more aligned with the universe than your consciousness. It's like
[00:28:26] you, your, your unconscious works in metaphors. You don't consciously create that metaphorical link through your life that creates the symptom. You have no idea that this is happening. This is all in your unconscious.
[00:28:42] Ashley: It's really neat that your conscious mind can actually kind of unwind some of that by understanding it through metaphor. It's the means through which the mind can piece together the energetics and the physical.
[00:28:58] Lauren: Yeah.
[00:28:58] Ashley: Such a beautiful thing. It's just so cool to me.
[00:29:01] Lauren: I just had this thought like, isn't it, uh, isn't it so hilarious that something that we learned in junior high? Like what is a metaphor could have such a profound, could, could be the answer to so many things in life
[00:29:16] Ashley: my
[00:29:17] Lauren: life, like the
[00:29:18] making
[00:29:18] Ashley: care about then. It's like a grammar
[00:29:22] Lauren: Yeah. Like the difference between a metaphor and a synonym, like, oh
[00:29:25] Ashley: Yara simile. Do you remember
[00:29:27] Lauren: Oh, a simile I'm sorry
[00:29:28] Ashley: gosh. So funny. You're right. That is hilarious. Because it seems so trite. Then, you know, it's like, ah,
[00:29:36] Lauren: It does when you're learning about it in, in junior high. Yeah.
[00:29:40] Ashley: Oh. Um, I'm having this thought about since we're talking so much about astrology, just wrapping it back to kind of the thing that we were starting to talk about in the beginning about this year. I've been finding since following what astrologers are saying about the energy we're in now and what we're walking into and it has been so helpful to me to know that the years we're in right now are this extremely intense, tumultuous, time of humongous shifts, big systems crumbling and being replaced by new things, like all this new energy coming in. It's just because the world is such, it looks like a mess right now. It looks like a big mess, and I think a lot of people are in a place of despair around it, which is, which makes sense.
[00:30:35] But to have a context around it that gives you this higher bird's eye perspective on what's happening and how it fits into human history and how it fits into the direction we're moving in as a species and as a society.
[00:30:51] It is one of the most transformative tools I have because it, it really lets me see things in a way that feels like a really powerful context for me. Right? It it's like you don't even have to argue about like, well, is this a perfect representation of what's happening? And you don't know what's gonna happen in the future?
[00:31:10] Like, no, of course not. None of us know what's gonna happen. The point isn't to predict what happens, in my personal view. It's about like understanding the context and for me to have the context has made it a lot easier to get through these, what I feel have been really personally difficult years and collectively they are incredibly hard. We're we world's going through so much. So I don't know. I'm just so, I'm so thankful to have it as like a perspective.
[00:31:38] Lauren: Oh, me too. And that's so true what you're saying. And it's so easy I think if you don't have anything to, to do that for you, it's so easy to have thoughts. And I've heard people say this a lot and I used to feel this way too, people feeling the world is going to shit. It's going, we're going to hell in a hand basket. The world will not survive this. Humans will not survive this. It's all doom and gloom. Chaos is ensuing and God knows what's happening in the future.
[00:32:06] But to have this context of we're in this period of a few years of major shift and that's gonna mean chaos and turmoil. Cuz that always happens with any kind of major shift. If you look back in history, the, the transition times between major periods was giant conflict.
[00:32:26] Whether that was direct conflict of war or some other just upheaval, turmoil, like big things that would've been really difficult to live through. We're going through one of those times. And yeah, to have that perspective because of the astrology and and other people who aren't even astrologers, but like energy people who are really in touch with energy or, or people who talk to, spirit guides that can give that perspective too.
[00:32:55] Ashley: Yeah. Anyone that's got their fingers on the pulse of the energy we're moving through. And it's funny too because I have the perception that many of us really feel like the way the world has been, a lot of us aren't really that happy with it.
[00:33:09] A lot of us feel disappointed by the way the world has been. And the way, , politics works and the way business works and the way you know our culture and society works. There's so many things that we grow up and become disappointed to learn, oh, this is how it really is. So we're not happy with the status quo, but we're terrified by what's happening now.
[00:33:30] Lauren: Of the unknown.
[00:33:31] Ashley: Exactly. That is perfectly put. The unknown. But, the perspective that I think following what's going on energetically offers is it's offering this question almost like, is it really true that everything's completely falling apart? Or is it just that some of these old structures that we've had in place for so long are starting to not work enough that we're dismantling them and we're gonna rebuild something new that actually works better for us. And where our species is at this point in history. You have to have this period of breaking everything apart to build something new. But we don't wanna go through the transformation part because it's painful and it's unknown and it's scary as a result. And it's it's, it's freaking all of us out. It's exciting to think that some of this stuff is gonna result in really positive change.
[00:34:26] Lauren: Yeah. And yeah, that's another thing that astrology really helps me with, to being, it's like always reminding me that in order to create something new, you have to have something die. They talk about that in the tarot too. When people talk about the tower card. The tower card's the scariest because some major institution in your life, not external institution, but some big something in your life is crumbling and that's very scary to people because it can mean a big upheaval. But the tarot readers I listened to, talk about and remind me of this, this has to happen to create something new. You have to tear something down to make space for the new. You have to have things die for something to be reborn.
[00:35:14] Ashley: I so love that you brought that in, the death and rebirth cycle. We're so, we all struggle with it so much. We hate death, we hate endings.
[00:35:22] Lauren: I need constant reminder.
[00:35:25] Ashley: Yes.
[00:35:27] Lauren: that this is like a good thing. That's a good part of life. Yeah. Because yeah, we all fear it
[00:35:33] Ashley: I feel like it takes a whole lifetime to master the death and rebirth thing.
[00:35:37] Lauren: Yeah. It goes back to what we were saying about it's fear of the unknown.
[00:35:43] That as human beings, there's a greater fear of the unknown than the miserable known, like even if the known is miserable, it's safer because we know it and like we know how to deal with it. Okay, I'm not happy, but I know it. I can just deal, I can function through it.
[00:36:02] But how freeing would it be if we could learn to be able to let go of these knowns, that keep us safe, but also keep us confined to go and venture into the unknown? It's, it's just natural. We all fear the unknown the most, more than anything.
[00:36:17] Ashley: I love that you brought this all back to death and rebirth and, and like these are things that are really hard to talk about sometimes cuz they just make most of us so uncomfortable. But like you were saying being reminded that this is just how the process is, it's so helpful. It like to just constantly be reminding ourselves of that and helping us to feel like we can place ourselves in the context of that cycle so we don't just feel like everything is just going to hell.
[00:36:47] Lauren: Yeah, exactly. And you are bringing it back to the energies of this year. And so when we feel this intensification of energy and more chaos, whether it's internal or external. And we were talking about the external, but I've heard a lot of people also saying about their personal lives or their internal experience.
[00:37:05] I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what's happening to me. I'm just like, don't want this anymore. I don't want that anymore. I used to love these things and I just, and what's happening is these old things are falling. They're not serving you anymore, and those things are dying and it feels like this loss and unknown and really scary because often, I find I need somebody to remind me when these things die, it's making space for something to come in and to focus on that can be exciting. Maybe that's what's happening this year, this chaos and things happening all of a sudden to people is making space or reshuffling things because there's something new and exciting coming in the future.
[00:37:53] Ashley: Yeah. I love having this conversation kind of towards the beginning of this new year, cuz we're all still kind of walking into this new year with tentative hope and trying to figure out what this year's gonna mean for each of us. And it just feels like a really neat conversation to have as our first co recorded episode of the year.
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