Pluto's Shift and Five Powerful Questions for Transformation
Pluto is the planet of ultimate control, power, and transformation.
Pluto moving into a new sign is one of the more significant markers of major change in our human world, and it doesn’t happen very often. Pluto has an asymmetrical orbit around the sun, so it spends more time in some signs than others. Pluto has been in Capricorn since 2008, about 15 years, and it will enter Aquarius fully, with no more retrogrades, in November 2024. It will be there until 2043, which is about 19 years, so this will open a new chapter in what Pluto is working on radically transforming.
Looking back, Pluto in Capricorn has been process of deconstructing authority figures, social order, and conformity - and it ain’t over yet - the grand finale is coming up as we look ahead into 2024. As for the Capricorn story, there has been a desire to hold on to some consensus about what is real, important, and acceptable - letting go of the ties that bind our strong practical ideals has been part of the story. Lots of fighting, and people want to hold on to their ideas and ideals of what makes them feel grounded.
Let’s look back in time a bit and consider the timing of Pluto entering Capricorn in 2008…that was the year of the great recession, the subprime mortgage bubble burst, and the bailout of the banks, and when all of that happened, it was considered too big to fail, so a bandaid was put on many problems and institutions that were overbloated and outdated. They weren’t allowed to die, so they were fed the essence of something innocent, like the Skesis eating souls in the Dark Crystal movie. Anyways, as Pluto is at end degrees of Capricorn, we are at the very precipice of another major economic event, bank closures, and the effects of that last major real estate bubble that has priced most Americans out of buying a property of their own, and of course a lot of instability in global politics. There is a divide so deep between so many people, and it’s almost impossible to comprehend anything other than adversity when someone disagrees with another person’s idea of reality and right.
This is what Pluto does - it is a complete breakdown of our set-in-stone reality. There have been things happening in our world that most of us would have never imagined happening, but they did, and there’s more to come.
Pluto ending its run in Capricorn, and opening up Aquarius has been marked by several major breaches of the old system - of course, we had the 1776 revolution in the USA, where the colonists broke away from England. In the cycle before that, the British Monarchy parted ways with the Pope and the Catholic church which was very significant, In 1279, the time before that, Kubli Kahn, the son of Mongolian leader Ghengis Kahn, defeated the last resistance of the Southern Song dynasty, making Kublai the first foreign conqueror to rule all of China.
It’s a time of big moves, big reversals, and doorways into new realities. So our strongholds are getting transformed and because we can see the writing on the wall, looking at major patterns of historical significance, we can start to prepare ourselves for the transition.
How, you ask? Well, it is going to be a conscious effort, and for some of us, it will be more difficult than others. That’s the essence of plutonic experiences - they are custom-made to disintegrate and degrade things each of us individually needs to let go of in some way or another. When we are particularly distressed, the conceptual part of our brains tends to turn off, this is called cognitive shock. It makes it very hard to think clearly, so the ‘older’ part of our brain based on survival and defense becomes the captain of our ships. Now this is a captain that has something to protect, something to fight for, so when it is in charge we are more likely to lash out, attack and argue, or protect the ship by withdrawing, going numb, and checking out. Either reaction is not helpful to get your ship righted again.
That being said, I have a set of five powerful questions I am going to share with you that I learned from Zen Teacher Ezra Bayda. These are like the ax behind the glass - do they even have those anymore? The break in case of emergency, the kind of thing that you can deploy when things get particularly intense, when you feel ungrounded and helpless, when you come to a point of thin ice, that feels like it is cracking, and you need a hand up, a way out of the danger of falling.
Before you even ask yourself question one, I want you to take several deep breaths, 4x4 breathing technique - breathe in through the nose for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, exhale through the mouth for four seconds, then wait four seconds before you take your next in breath. Repeat that four times. This alone can put you back into contact with your cognitive mind.
When you are ready, start with question one.
What is going on right now?
This one requires you to be honest about dissecting your emotional response with the objective situation - the facts that you can pull out. Bayda says, “For example, when we experience the panic of losing our job or seeing our investment disappear overnight, it is easy to get caught up in our fears that we lose all sense of perspective. But what is happening in the present moment? Are you projecting and adding thoughts such as homelessness or hunger rather than experiencing homelessness or hunger? Seeing our believed thoughts - often based in negative imaging about the future - allows us to come back to an objective reality of what is happening”
If we get caught up in emotional distress, feeling like something is wrong in general, or wrong with someone else, or wrong about ourselves, we will try to think about how to escape the distress or fix it by analyzing or blaming. So basically, to see clearly, we need to ask ourselves what is going on right now, objectively, and be aware of what we are adding to the situation through our emotional reactions possibly escapism. This question, What is going on right now, will help you break a toxic loop of projection and story.
Can I see this as my path?
This question opens up a space to see our distress as an opportunity to grow or awaken further because oftentimes distressing plutonic situations are exactly what we need to experience to become freer. They can suck, yes, but they can also help us get UNSTUCK.
Bayda says, “It is fundamental that we learn when difficult situations and feelings arise, they are not obstacles to be avoided; instead these very difficulties are, in fact, the path itself. They are our opportunity to wake up out of our little protected world and awaken into a more authentic way of living.”
So that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? When we are in the middle of something awful, to just go all zen, and say, this is a part of my path to awakening. Why is that? Because we want a problem-free life, we want safety and comfort, and we can seek it as shelter, pushing away the reality of the situation, to protect ourselves, when in fact this has come to you for a purpose. Strategies like exerting control or fighting, blaming or escaping, do not make the situations or problems disappear. At some point, there is no logical reaction but to stop resisting facing the difficult experiences we all inevitably have in our lives, because the alternative is to stay stuck in the slow sinking sand.
What is my most believed thought?
This is a question that is tempting to skip over - the middle child of these five questions, lol…
If we take our opinions as truth, which can be influenced moment to moment by a myriad of things - how you feel physically, an experience with something similar from years ago, whatever, the weather even can alter an opinion - then we are living a super subjective experience. That can isolate us to a surface level of living, not able to see the vast truth beyond our little backyard - that leads to a lot of unconscious behaviors dictating your life.
Bayda shares these examples: “deeply believe thoughts about our insecurity may not be evident on the surface in a given situation; truthfully we’re often unaware of their presence. But their toxic footprint often manifests itself in our anger, blame, depression, and shame. These deeply believed, yet well-hidden thoughts of insecurity thus act like a radar, and we often seek out experiences that confirm our beliefs are true.”
This is confirmation bias - the tendency of people to favor information that confirms or strengthens their beliefs or values and is difficult to dislodge once affirmed. When that radar is constantly going, we are living in the past, not in the present moment.
Let’s go a bit further here -
If you have a surface thought of ‘nobody should have to deal with this,’ this is a thought of protective anger and frustration, but deeper down, there may be the deep-seated belief that “ I can’t do this”. Another big one is ‘I’m not worthy’ ‘I’m not smart enough’ or you know, the list is long of these kinds of traps. Whatever it is, is likely something that goes way back, a pattern you can track, and when you shine the light on your most believed thought, it becomes way less powerful. It becomes something predictable - oh there’s that again, I think I can’t do this, but I’ve done a lot of things. I make it through, and then the investment in the deep-seated beliefs starts to have diminishing returns.
What is this?
This question requires you to turn off the thinking mind, and go straight into the immediate physical experience of the moment - what is this? What sensations are you feeling in your body? Where are you feeling tension - in your face, shoulders, stomach? What is your environment like around you - what is the temperature, what sounds do you hear, what do you see? This is a practice of focusing on the ‘whatness’ rather than the ‘whyness’ of any given situation that is distressing you. It is beyond thought. What is this?
Bayda says, “Admittedly, it is difficult to maintain awareness of the present moment when distress is present because truly experiencing the present means we have to refrain from our most habitual defenses such as justifying, trying to get control, going numb, seeking diversions, and so on. Until we can refrain from these defenses and feel the physical experience directly, we will stay stuck in the storyline of ‘me’ and remain unaware of what life is in this moment.”
It’s natural to want to avoid our distressing feelings, so we busy ourselves, distract ourselves with things, and maybe try to analyze why we feel this way, but when we ask the question what is this, we can be in the moment - this is not asking what this anxiety is about, we are asking what it is.
It doesn't mean we like the experience or even accept the feeling of it. It means we are willing to pay attention to it, to explore with curiosity what the heck this feeling even is, without resistance to it. Only then can we open a door for a different experience with this distressing experience - to help us understand what is going on?
Is it hard? Yes. Both roads are hard though, and only one leads to some potential relief when you have a heart that is focused on the road to a more awakened and evolved state, a heart for peace and love, not one controlled by fear of the future, or of pain of the past.
We may have to face a lot of moments where it will be difficult to come back into a heart-centered experience. When everything seems dark and challenging, take a moment aside to breathe deeply into the center of your chest breathing in, and in the out-breath focus on compassion and warmth. Staying with the fear, with the uncomfortable feelings, asking what is this, even for a few deliberate breaths into your heart, takes a lot of courage and strength. That is what we need to lean into and cultivate. This is where the truth lies, beyond the experience of our me-ness, the separated self - that is who we are.
Can I let this experience just be?
This is a really hard question to grapple with, and that’s why it’s last. It is human nature to want to fix or remove the experience that is troubling us, but ‘just letting it go’ or trying to FIX ourselves, or even worse, someone else, just doesn’t work - oftentimes that is just plain unrealistic, impossible, or unneeded.
At some point, after enough critical understanding, we come to a point where we need to try something else - something drastic. This may be the point where allowing the experience to just be whatever it is or was, that you see pushing the pain away is more painful than feeling it. Having deep feelings flow through you and around you, being hyper-aware of what they are doing in your body, being the observer in a spacious container having a human experience.
Bayda says, “The final question - can I let this experience just be? - allows the quality of mercy or loving kindness to come forth because we are no longer judging ourselves or our experiences as defective. We’re finally willing to experience our life within the spaciousness of the heart, rather than through the self-limiting judgments of the mind.”
Five questions
What’s going on right now?
Can I welcome this as my path?
What is my most believed thought?
What is this?
Can I let this experience just be?
Working your way through them when you are feeling emotional distress can help open up a door to reality, putting your mind in a more objective observational rational state, feeling the body, feeling the emotions, and seeing the truth behind all of it - behind the self-imposed prison walls of anger, fear, confusion - that keeps us from authentic connectedness.
Truthfully, there may be things coming into our world that are going to eclipse a lot of the things that have been the progenitors of anxiety for us in the recent past - it is going to get very real, and I don’t like dwelling on that, and I certainly do not want to scare you, that is not my intention. The opposite is what I want for you. I want you to feel strong loved and accepted. I want you to be yourself. I want you to shine your love and light on other people and bring your goodness and beauty to build our collective. The truth is, that the higher on the path to awakening in our love and unconditional acceptance we go, there will be the equal but opposite power to match it. That is the nature of duality and the rules of this material plane. It is built into the game fundamentally as a foundation.
When you start looking deeply at predictable patterns marked by the planets in our solar system as the great clock, you start to see that even the most horrific events in history are part of the human condition, part of the deal you seal when you incarnate. These challenges are the markers, the points where you either take on the end-level boss, or you keep playing that level forever. There is just so much more to this human experience than meets the eye, and we have a really hard time understanding the underlying purpose or meaning of the things that cause us distress and pain.
They must fundamentally exist for there to be a choice, within the confines of our fate, we have free will to choose good, to choose love, to choose compassion, to choose judgment, and to refuse the lie of separation.
Not saying it’s easy…but what are the alternatives?
~L
