Reflecting tonight…one of the greatest tragedies of my business closing in January 2011 was that I was so afraid i’d get into trouble with the city that I didn’t even try to approach them to ask for help or leniency, even when one person suggested it. I think this could be a great, harrowing example of controlling parental authority energy affecting a grown woman. I had a thriving business that the clients, neighborhood, vendors, and landlord loved. And yet I was too afraid to approach a district supervisor to ask for leniency or help in expediting our permit process, having had the city drag its feet for over 8 months, making zero progress. Looking back on the situation, I can now see how conceivably the city could have understood my situation and, with my bright record of having perfectly permitted my previous two spaces could have sensed my good intentions. Yet I feared punishment, and in a rare act of erring on the conservative side, I closed doors. Of course there were other factors, but that one stands out tonight as something I’ve never noticed about that situation.

I think there’s also something to be said about having grown up lower middle class, or higher poor class, haha, that fed me with a steady stream of messages like: The rich are greedy and want to keep the poor poor, politicians are only here to screw us over for their own benefit, etc. I think subconsciously I still have some purging to do from those mantras that brainwashed me as a child. They keep you from reaching out to your community for help when you need it, telling you that you are forever on your own and that others don’t want you to do well, which I’ve really found not actually to be the case. Yes, success at first can alienate some people around you who may feel jealous (witness my last two college roommates who seethed in self pity at my “I got a job!” celebration dinner). But on a whole, if you succeed, that means you’ve probably created something that benefits the community, and it is in the community’s best interest to then help you succeed further, in a positive feedback loop.

I suppose this revelation comes on the downside of tonight’s last astrology class in a four-week session. It’s kind of like going to therapy in a way. You do a lot of talking in a group about how your life makes sense to you through the symbolism on the charts.

Another revelation that came out of tonight was a new way for me to think about reincarnation. I’ve always had trouble with the concept of a soul, and worse, a soul which shows back up in another human body. But the idea that humans are born of light, that is, radiation from the sun and the way it became scattered or absorbed actually caused life to happen in all its myriad forms. So what is dying and being reborn on our planet is not souls so much as it is light running its course from mutation to entropy. THAT I am comfortable with. :)