Lessons From Saturn: Humility, Rejection, & Social Approval

Lessons From Saturn: Humility, Rejection, & Social Approval

Today is Saturday, the day honoring the great planet, Saturn. To anyone who studies astrology may know of or understand the term, “Saturn Return.” If not, Saturn Return describes the time in your life that the planet, Saturn, returns back to its original position in the sky where it was at the time of your birth. Saturn Return cycles usually happens around every 28-30 years. Saturn returns to the spot in the sky and stays there for a few years, as Saturn is slower moving planet due to being on the outskirts of our planetary solar system.

I brewed my routine morning coffee this morning and ate breakfast. I decided to sit out back this morning with my journal and cup of joe. As I stared off at the blue sky that sits upon the horizon, I closed my eyes and began to soak up the radiant rays of sunshine. I meditated for a few moments on how I was feeling this morning and about where I am at in life.

After the meditation I felt compelled to write in my journal since I have not done so in a while. My recent journal writing habits have been consisting of brainstorming ideas rather than conveying emotions or streams of consciousness. I wrote on the top of the page, “Saturday” to highlight which day it is. Next I just jotted down, “Dear Saturn.”

I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to write, but I felt inspired to have a dialogue with this fatherly planet. I began to write a letter to him, expressing my current feelings and complaints of my current life situation. The words kept flowing and it made me realize that I have not had a dialogue like this in a while. By engaging in this dialogue it made me realize that it has been a long time since I expressed my emotions through the sacred act of journaling.

Dear Saturn,

Saturn, Chronos, Father of Time. I have been recently feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. I recently moved home so that I could focus my time and energy on school, to slow down, and to get grounded. I thought moving home would help my process of slowing down, but I have found myself busier than ever. The days fly by and I feel like I am not being productive at times. I keep hitting the same walls and obstacles, and I keep getting caught up in the same habitual patterns. I want to shed these patterns. I want to grow. I want to flower and blossom into life.

I continued by stating some issues in my life that I wished to work on and also let go of such as letting go of unhealthy eating habits, to develop a better diet, and to become more physically active. This is the normal run-of-the-mill stuff that I have been saying for years, but never really succeeded. I am realizing, as time moves forward, that I never really succeed in these realms because I am so mentally stimulated and on-the-go all the time that I actually have a hard time slowing down. This constant on-the-go mentality has served me well for a long time because it opened many new doors in my world, but it has not served my body well. It also is also the independent personality that I have. I feel like I always have to do everything by myself.

After writing this entry, I tore the page of the journal and folded it in half. I proceeded by placing it on the ground and lighting the piece of paper on fire. This is a ritual that I have learned over the years that helps with letting go issues. The fire breaks down the message and the smoke sends the message into the universe to receive. I offered this entry to Saturn, and I think he received the message.

I got up to take a sip from my coffee after the paper turned to ash and noticed that the wind opened up a page in my journal. I looked at the page and noticed:

            Saturn: Social approval, power, authority, reputation.

“What a weird sychronicity” I thought to myself. Then I proceeded to read further. I had a journal entry right below it titled, “San Fran Bound.”

This journal entry was written while I was flying out to San Francisco back in November 2015 to attend the Re-Visioning Madness conference and to present my talk about integrating spiritual emergencies and other extraordinary experiences. I wrote in the journal specifically about Saturn. I think this might have been because I was reading an astrology book on the flight. I expressed in this entry how Saturn is in my 4th house and how I am always looking for “home.” I talked about Vermont being my home and also New Jersey being my home. I wrote about wanting to be closer to family and old friends. I expressed that even though I can identify home in multiple places, I feel as if I am always seeking for it, even though I know it is within me. I also talked about an important topic of rejection.

I find that this topic of rejection to be interesting and sparked the motivation to write this blog article. Despite being a pretty positive, outgoing person, and know that people care about me, I still struggle with this fear of rejection. I think all humans probably struggle with this fear of rejection and thinking that they are not worthy or good enough.

I am not too sure why I struggle with this fear, but I wrote about times that I felt rejected in life. It was interesting to look back at this journal entry and realize that I still struggle with that. For example, I do not blog very much because of the fear of rejection or maybe because no one will read it. I trick myself in believing that the internet is so vast and filled with so much information that we are reaching a point that we do not even take the time to read things in their entirety, or maybe that is just me. So I think to myself, why bother?

After looking at the page that was flipped opened by the wind and seeing the words “Saturn: Social approval, power, authority, reputation” I realized that this is what I am stuck on. In a society that is so worried about reputation and social approval, we all strive to seek it. We thrive to attain an outstanding reputation with people in our personal and professional worlds. We seek the social approval because without it, we become alone, an individual without a tribe to support them.

Reflecting upon this now, it makes me wonder why we try so hard. We are all human. We need to understand and accept that. And part of accepting that is also accepting humility. We cannot take life so seriously all the time. Of course, there are times when it is crucial that we take life seriously, but for the most part, we need to learn how to laugh a little bit at our failures and flaws. Some of the tiniest failures are the ones that we dwell on the most.

This blog is not so much about the content, but more about humility and vulnerability. We all have a story to share with the world. We are all just trying to do the best to be human. We make mistakes. We fail. We fuck up. We make bad decisions from time to time based off of emotions and feelings. This post is more about the rawness of human life, and how we need to embrace our authentic self, even if it doesn’t meet the standards of social approval or our reputation.

It feels like Saturn spoke to me this morning. We only have so much time during our life, why waste it worrying about the nonsense? Why not try something new? Why not take a risk every now and then? This is also a key lesson that I learned from almost dying at a young age. Death showed me that life is fragile and short. It is filled with mystery and magic, if you let yourself be open to the process. I struggled with trying to be my authentic self because I feel as if Death showed me something that most of society is not ready to handle, humility.

Unfortunately, humility is a hard lesson to learn in our current culture. Humility is sacred. I am not just talking about normal humility of “messing up” or doing something dumb and getting shit for it, but rather the raw humility of just being a human being. Allowing ourselves to feel how important we are, but also how not important we are in the world. The humility of recognizing that we may never really figure anything out, or be as smart as we think we are. The humility of our aging body as it soaks up a life time wisdom and knowledge over the years. The humility that you have lived a solid life, but also have to face part of reality that you have been neglecting.

Saturn reminds us that we need to grow up. We cannot simply be children forever. He reminds us that we need to step into authentic roles at some point in our life and live with integrity, dignity, and authenticity. He reminds us that we need to get out of bed in the morning and that we cannot just lay around all day. He reminds us that sometimes life is not always about fun and play, but about executing real work in the world. These lessons are not meant to keep us grounded in reality, but rather enjoy the life we were given. Real work can be fun and playful, even though Saturn is a serious figure, deep down inside he just really wants you to grow into the authentic being who you are meant to become.

I think this concludes my Saturday morning rant.

Thank you Saturn, for your lessons this morning.