Ethics in Astrology, Book Two

Present.

Recently, I was going through old astrology notes when I (re)discovered something scribbled in the very back cover of my astrology notebook.

Get this, taken directly from my audio recording with Astrologer Number One:

“Yods denote a relationship you’re not supposed to be in. If you have a yod, you asked the universe before you were born not to let you get stuck in that relationship. ‘Stop me if I go here, don’t let it happen.’” When the whole situation was WAY more important, and what we’re ALL supposed to learn from it, was WAY more complicated, than that.

If I hadn’t been so distressed by what I heard, if I hadn’t been so sure this couldn’t have been correct, I would never have learned what I needed to from this, and might very well have sought out another codependent and made the same mistakes, blindly not knowing why this was all happening to me and why I was so unlucky.

O

M

F

G.

I ask the reader to kindly google “Yods in Astrology” and see, no matter what astrologer they’re reading, if you can find A-N-Y notes that read even remotely like that. Thank God, when I heard all that, I knew it couldn’t be true and I kept on looking for the truth. (You can see my own research on yods and on my situation in particular in prior blogs.)

I cannot believe this person told me that. Good grief. Either she’s poorly trained by an absolute idiot, or she feels morally entitled to put any spin she wants on what she’s reading, based on her personal feelings toward the situation involved.

Finding this, it’s more clear to me than ever that this person had her own personal bias—due to her own personal history—and that’s clear from her comments on her own Facebook page. Add that to the gobbledygook she spewed at me about the sixties and such that had NO bearing on my own situation at all and wasn’t the least bit helpful, and I truly have a bone to pick with this person.

I hate to use the word “quack,” but she sure did honk like a duck. And there’s some duck down drifting down on my head.

Clearly this person has her devotees who love her. I truly wonder why at this point.

All I can tell you is, if you are hiring an astrologer, explain your situation up front, and then make like a jury selection lawyer and ask them point blank if they have any negative experience that might bias them in the reading of your chart. Before they start the reading, so that if the answer is yes, you might be able to cancel and get at least some of your money back. (In my case, that was two hundred smackeroos.) You don’t want this to happen to you.

Be careful out there, and Don’t Step In The Duck Doo.

Willingness.

Present.

Since the time for the predictions is rolling around, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of Chi, this is the time I'm starting to get worried. To the point of upset, to the point of obsessed.

And that isn't okay. Obsession is painful. Obsession obscures everything else that might have been good in my life. Obsession increases the chance of doing something DUMB. Obsession means I won't be happy with anything other than the outcome I wanted. And that outcome, as far as my eyes can see, isn't happening.

Astrology. What a double-edged sword. What I've discovered helped me feel better, in that I saw that stepping into this in the first place did something beneficial in this person's life--at least in terms of showing him that what he was dealing with wasn't normal and that he could actually have a relationship in which he was treated differently. I once had an hour-long panic attack because of my ethical qualms in doing this. AND I have seen, thanks to last October, that I don't have to hate myself for what is normally a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to do. He needed it. It was beneficial for him...although it did usher in a period of, um, change in their relationship. In that sense, being able to read charts has been helpful.

BUT...unfortunately for me, I could also see the best possible outcome of our relationship. And it was one that I would have been very happy with. This has been unfortunate for me, because now I want that and I'm anxious about it.

I keep going around and around about this. Right about now, Rory has some pretty big transits showing she's being borderline abusive to Chi again. (Nothing she hasn't done before, sad to say.) And this was to be the occasion of her entire next year, which I took a look at this week and found...shocking.

She has exactly one out of twenty-four transits that talks about happiness in her intimate relationship. ONE. A couple more talk about being of retirement age, and about happiness in things she's doing in the outside world. The rest, and I mean ALL the rest, are talking about great unhappiness in her intimate relationship, the fault mainly of Rory herself, and fully twelve out of twenty-four transits and progressions talk about somebody in the relationship having an affair. (Three guesses who that is.)

Correspondingly, only three of twenty-two transits and progressions he has speak of any kind of peace in his intimate relationship. ALL of the rest describe great unhappiness, and five specifically point to an affair starting.

Of mine, half are talking about being the third party in an affair, cautioning me to watch my behavior and stay out of power and control. In the other half, I'm all alone, and half of those, I'm sinking into ennui and despair about it. The other half of the alone ones show me finding a creative purpose for my life and being content with just that.

That last is, well, a happy enough ending, I guess. Things, as you can see, could be a hell of a lot worse.

But, thanks to astrology, I have our Davison, which shows me that the happiest of endings here was indeed possible (once possible?) and of course when you meet someone you are that compatible with and love this much, you want that ending. (At least, I do.)

This is the bad side of being able to read for yourself. Now I sit here and point at that happiest of endings, and go, "But how do I get there?"

Here is where I start to second-guess myself. What if I had said yes last October?? Well, if I had, I would have virtually guaranteed the affair starting right around now, because we would have been speaking regularly and in contact.

But I said no. I had the chance to say yes, and I said no. 

Does that mean I can never be with this person now, because I heard from him again and I said no?? Was that my only window, and now it's over and that's the end, because I could have said yes then and I didn't??

In that case, am I sorry I said no?

Yes, because I love and want this person and that may have been it, my last chance!

But...wait a minute...

WHY did I say no?

I said no because I saw in the astrology, and I knew from the past, that if he had me to complain to and fantasize about, he wouldn't W-O-R-K ON HIS CODEPENDENCY. He wouldn't engage with his problems. He'd simply use me as an escape and as a complaining outlet, and he wouldn't get better. Clearly, that would not be the best outcome for him, so I bit the bullet and did what I knew was right. I did what I knew would be best for him.

Besides, I knew that there would only be one reason I would have said yes to that. Because I saw that he was sniffing around again, and I was trying to tempt him away from Rory once again. In other words, an unhealthy exercise of power and control, which I am expressly advised NOT to do, and which I completely see the wisdom of. 

These two VERY good reasons were why I said no last October. AND ALSO...

Looking ahead to this year, I could see that I stood an excellent chance of getting him back again no matter what I did, so I bet big. I placed a BIG bet that if I did the right thing, I would get him back anyway...which made doing the right thing a whole lot easier. If I really believed then that if I did the right thing, I'd lose him forever...I'm not so sure I could have done the right thing.

So now I've done the right thing...and I'm doomed to lose him forever no matter HOW shitty Rory acts from here on in??

Wow. Life IS unfair.

(Again.)

So now I find myself in a tailspin. When was I supposed to see this person again, anyhow?? The last time was pretty easy to extrapolate. The markers I used last time were clearly obvious to me. I'm trying to pin down how my teachers did it, and I'm afraid I'm just not good enough to be able to pin anything down to any specific month. Some of the same kinds of things are active again, but that's over a period of time and I don't know how to pin anything down any better. All I know is, if it's March 1st and he's still gone, he's probably gone forever at that point.

And I keep doing this to myself and it's miserable. Why do I want someone who puts me through this???

I had to think long and hard about that. 

One answer, and this one I know. (Besides that, it's also clearly spelled out in the astrology.) And that is, I DO NOT HAVE CONTROL.

I've been over this before. I. HAVE. NO. CONTROL. OVER. THE. OUTCOME. OF. THIS. SITUATION.

Just like I have no control over what my mother did and whether she got well and ever treated me better or not, I have no control over Chi and whether he will ever get well and treat me better or not. As with all problematic love relationships, this one mimics, absolutely perfectly, the old childhood struggle to get my mother to act better and treat me, a tender, vulnerable young child, the way I needed and deserved for her to treat me.

(So does Chi's with Rory and Rory's with Chi, come to think of it. That's why we're in the triangle to begin with.)

I have one and only one legitimate area of control: If the relationship shows up again, look to see if it appears healthy or not. If not, say no. (That's what I did last October.)

Last year I accepted that. This year, I have to bring myself back to the fence and accept it all over again. Because I lived a childhood that taught not only that it was GOOD for me to try to control other people's decisions to heal or not heal, but that I COULD control other people's decisions to heal or not heal.

And I can't.

The only person who can decide to heal is Chi. And if Rory does, too, I lose.

(At least two of us would be happy that way. An almost acceptable outcome.)

The other problem I see is one of willingness.

In order to accept the outcome that Chi and Rory grow together and become happy again, and I never see him again, or they don't, but he just doesn't respect himself enough to leave because he still feels as if everyone else's feelings are more important than his own (this is unhealed codependency, folks), I have to be willing for that outcome to happen.

And I'm not.

I want my fairytale, goddamnit!!!

No, I don't want everyone else's lives ruined. But, I don't want to be the instrument of ruin, either. Then, I simply have to accept that the only way I get my outcome is if, A.) Rory continues to be the same old Rory--she sure was last October--and, B.) Chi gets healthy enough that leaving looks like the only option.

And I have ZERO control over either of those. Zero, zero, zero.

So I might as well stop scanning those horoscopes and overthinking last October. This has already been decided for me.

All I have to do is accept it, and be willing to live another outcome than the outcome I wanted.

Because it very well may be that next spring rolls around, and I'm still living here in the outcome I didn't want. This outcome I'm not happy in.

And there won't be any recourse then, just like there isn't any now.

How can I make myself stop hurting, and make myself willing to live the rest of my life just the way things are now?

Do I even get a consolation prize for doing the right thing? Like, do I get someone else?? Not that I can see. Not 'til I'm sixty-five, if then.

Clearly, I'm supposed to become happy without Chi, without any romantic male partnership ever, ever again. I'm supposed to be willing for that to happen, I'm supposed to learn to be happy with that.

Man.

That is a very tall order.

But it kind of looks like that's the way it's going to be.

And I'm very sad. That's just the way it is for me. I am very sad.

Because of our Davison--correct in the case of me and my husband, correct in the case of Chi and Rory--I see that we really could have been very happy together. If we BOTH were willing to do the work.

And I hope one day I won't feel this way about it anymore. I am too sad.

I have learned a lot, and I have become wise from this experience. I'm just so, so sorry I had to lose this man in order to do it. The price of wisdom is just too high, sometimes.

I would have been SO much happier the other way. Provided the guy actually got healthy enough to be in a relationship with me, and I felt solid enough in that knowledge.

But I don't control that. Chi does.

What I control is, do I get well from this or not? Can I become happy again, no matter what happens?

And HOW THE FUCK DO I DO THAT????

We Other Women Have A Grave Responsibility

Past, Present (and Future?)

Once upon a time, mostly as a therapeutic exercise, (before he showed back up again last October), I wrote Chi a goodbye letter. It had a lot of wonderful points in it. Maybe I will post that up here sometime as well. One thing I remember from it, and from that time in general, is the sense I had of making sure I was treated right and not screwed over, and this idea of how much better I was for him than Rory. Boy, what  a difference a little insight makes. 

What I know now is that an affair is the result of not one, not two, but three people not recovering from some pretty significant childhood wounds, and that in looking at it the way that I had (which, let's face it, is the way ALL us "mistresses" view The Battle Over The Married Man), I wasn't seeing all the stories in the situation or all the aspects of it there were to see.

In being so sure we're the Right One and She Isn't, or in being so wrapped up in making sure we're treated right and not used or hurt (and those are good things to be looking out for, to be sure!), many times we aren't seeing how what we do is actually harmful, not to the wife--that much looks obvious but is debatable in some situations--but harmful to this suffering person we're calling the love of our lives. 

Make no mistake, if the guy we're with is stepping out on an established relationship, he's not doing it because he's healthy. He's doing it because he's got some pretty serious problems, and if we can step back enough to see what those are, it makes our own path, in terms of what's highest and best for all three parties, a lot clearer. If you read the second post in this blog and look at the attitude I had then, then contrast that with my new, revised goodbye letter, you might see what I mean.

Dear, sweet Chi,

I just want to reiterate one more time how glad I was to hear from you, how much I value you in my life, and how glad I am we met. Maybe that sounds a little weird considering, but I've learned so very much in the years since our relationship took a turn towards the more serious. 

I love you and adore you as much as I always did. However, I have learned a lot, and if you'll bear with me, I'm going to take you on a couple of side trips through things that happened to me while we were apart, in order to illustrate a point or two. By the time I get to the end, I promise this will make sense. 

Side Trip One: Jane. Of course you remember Jane. If you read my blog, you'll know what happened with her, but if you don't, I'll try to be brief as I summarize this. You know I "inherited" another writer's group when the previous owner stepped down. In trying to attract members, I, unfortunately, invited Jane. (I thought better after I did this, but too bad, she remembered and came anyway.)

Of course you remember how she acted. Well ... I started out thinking she had improved. I'm sorry to say that, after giving off that impression for a few months, she got worse than she ever had been. Others in the group got treated to every sentence beginning with, "I'M published," and, "MY editor said," and "I've done blahblahblah so *I* know." She would talk on and on and on for twenty minutes without ever stopping for breath.

I kept hoping she would get it and alter her behavior, so when people complained, I made excuses for her. Secretly I was afraid of confronting her, because she was so much like my mother, I knew how she was going to react, the same way no one else wanted to confront her because they knew how she would react: stunned, tearful, and hurt, of course, because she was so nice and after all, she IS published and therefore knows more than anyone else. They counted on me to rein her in, and I didn't have the skills to know how, so I sat there and watched one member after another drift away, while I hoped if I worked with the difficulty, she'd change. 

Eventually, only three people were left: me, Jane, and a self-published author named Judy who put up with Jane because she knew so much about self-promotion and she got a lot of ideas from her. But, strangely, the nicer we were and the more we put up with Jane, the worse she got. She snubbed Judy at book fairs several times and was just plain rude and horrible to her a couple of other times.

Finally, we sat her down and spoke with her. I told her that everyone else was gone, citing her behavior as the reason, and if she drove one more person out, I was going to have to ask her to leave. I outlined several areas on which I would like her to work. One was talking over other people for twenty minutes at a time, one was the boastful bragging, and the last was starting and maintaining arguments. (Jane now does not believe in ever using the word "was," will introduce grammatical errors into her work rather than use that word, and started not one, but two, thirty minute arguments about the use of this word.) So, we spoke and it looked like this discussion went well.

Sometimes Jane was okay, but mostly we saw the same behavior. Judy and I were thinking about just disinviting her permanently, when the following happened:

One day Jane came into group with a story she was submitting to a contest at a magazine. By this time, we had a new member, Nick. We all read the story and had the same comments: Good story, but it's a knockoff of Jurassic Park. Nobody will ever publish this.

Jane was furious. (Well, rather, she was humiliated, which then made her furious.) She brought in a copy of the rules of the contest, which made it clear that, believe it or not, she had actually done what the magazine had asked for. We were all flabbergasted. (Wouldn't you be?)

Then she started an email war with me because I had not somehow divined what the rules of the contest were and I thought she was stupid enough to submit a Jurassic Park knockoff to a magazine. Of course I defended myself--who would ever imagine a real magazine would actually run a contest for Jurassic Park knockoffs?? (Clearly, someone is desperate for readership.) I got the response that she was so hurt by my assumption about her that SHE was going to leave. Since all was lost anyway, I let her know some of the complaints others in the group had had with her behavior. Jane went, Don't worry about me, I'm just fine, but you're harsh delivering critique and you're not a kind person anymore, the way you used to be.

Wow.

Here I was, starting out with no friends at all after Simon died, losing all the new friends I'd made in order to baby her, and in return, she showed complete and utter oblivion to the facts and kicked me in the teeth. Gee, thanks, Jane. We don't have any new members and I still haven't met anyone new to have as a friend, so I essentially lost all my chances at building a new life with new friends, in order to coddle a person completely unable to step back and reflect on her own behavior, who kicked me harder and harder the nicer I was to her.

The coda: After this, Jane contacted Judy to return her last set of pages to her. Judy met Jane at a restaurant to pick up the pages. Completely forgetting all the times she had been rude to Judy (probably because she had no idea she was being rude), Jane asked Judy to keep trading pages over email. Judy said no, but she was still half an hour getting out of the restaurant, even though she only stood at the table and didn't even sit down. Why? Because Jane monopolized the conversation and gabbled and gabbled and gabbled at her for half an hour. RIGHT after I'd just told her six people left our group telling me they were sick of her not knowing when to stop talking. (And she'd responded by saying, "But people always interrupt me and that's rude!" To which I'd said, "But you talked at them for twenty minutes and no one else at the table could say anything.")

*sigh*

Side Trip Two: My mother. Of course you know about my mother; you read most of the novel I wrote about that situation. 

Right about this time, I started speaking to my brother again (sort of), and noticed my mother posting on his Facebook page. It was mentioned that she was back in counseling again and had been for a while, and I started to wonder if I had actually done the right thing in cutting her off over ten years ago. People can change, I thought. Once upon a time she said nothing was wrong with her and she'd never go back to therapy, I thought. It's been ten years, I thought. Maybe time had made a difference. 

And then my cousin in Florida private messaged me. Did you see this? she said.

It was a family picture my brother had posted of the Christmas after we had each gotten married. That was the Christmas both of us were on the outs with our mother because of some very outrageous behavior on her part. We had both gone to visit our uncle and grandparents without her. My brother had posted the photo up with a comment about how it was of happier times.

My mother had been molested by my grandfather. This came out while I was in high school, and we had many conversations about it while I was in high school and college. I had been very supportive of my mother then, and I was up until I had to part company from her due to her outrageous behavior just prior to the Christmas in question. Seems like she'd remember the many many many conversations about it we'd had. I even went to one of her therapy sessions with her!

My mother had posted on that photo that everyone in it was her enemy, because they had disowned her because she disclosed that my grandfather had molested her, and that she thought my brother should take all such family photos off of Facebook. She did not make this comment private.

I did some surfing around and saw that she had done this to a number of photos I was in.

I posted on one of them and said that no, that was NOT the reason, and on another I posted that she really ought to think before she posted on Facebook, because a post like that said a lot more about her than it did about anyone else.

I next heard from my cousin in Florida, who told me my mother had replied with so much blistering invective and graphic details about the molestation that my cousin couldn't even read it all. She warned me about it and advised me not to read it. I went and looked because I was curious (I had read similar from Mom before in emails), but even my brother had written, "I know," below my comment and taken Mom's down.

Wow.

So now we're at the end of these little side trips, and I'm going to use them now to make my point.

My point is how oblivious these women both were to their own behavior. How they kept doing the same thing over and over and over again, even when it was not doing anything helpful for them or anyone else. Neither one of them is able to step back very well and consider any other points of view, or that there might be some other way of looking at the situation. Even when people got more and more direct in pointing out what was wrong, they couldn't see anything but what their own feelings were telling them was reality.

And a lot of times those feelings actually came from something parents and family had done a long, long time ago, and not from the reality of now. 

My other point is that I've observed that, when a person was like this, it didn't matter how nice I was to them, or how hard I tried, this way and that way and this way, to help. They always turned on me, and I got kicked in the teeth no matter what.

I've observed that I tend to attract this kind of person over and over, and I never seem to learn my lesson.

Well ... this time I've learned. 

I'm not saying I don't love you. I do, very much. I'm not saying I don't want to be with you. I do, very much.

What I am saying, is I've learned that I need to pull way, wayyy back, and watch for signs of this happening.

Are you going to be yet another of these people who can't achieve any kind of self awareness or perspective on your situation other that what old childhood feelings and old childhood shame and old childhood guilt are telling you is just like the way things have always been? Because all those feelings come from sick parents, and sick parents never leave a child anything good. Yet they model to the child that it's the child who is wrong.

I'm aware that this is a very tall order, but it doesn't look like you've made a whole lot of progress with this as of yet.

I can't tell you what to do.

In order for me to feel at all comfortable with the idea of us as an eventual couple, however, I would need to see you doing some work with your early childhood, about the atmosphere in your home growing up, and about what you decided as a young child about how lovable you were, what relationships are like, what your responsibilities in a relationship should be, and how you're supposed to feel in a relationship and how that's supposed to come about.

It would seem that you've spent an awful lot of time in the past three years worrying about fixing other people's feelings and not enough time on fixing your own, an awful lot of time worrying about how your life looks to other people and not enough time worrying about how it feels to you to live your life, an awful lot of time trying to solve other people's problems and not enough time trying to solve your own.

I love you very much, but I have to say that I don't care if you're married, divorced, or widowed, this kind of approach to life's problems and people's feelings is a recipe for disaster.

We've got some very tough problems, here. I'm going to be looking very hard to see what your approach to these problems looks like. Have you learned anything from the past three years? Are you going to be my mom or another Jane, unconsciously recycling symptoms over and over and over, accepting them as The Truth and never stopping to think about why you're doing things and whether your reasons hold water or not? Or are you going to be like me these past three years, reading and journaling and researching and working and learning and flying high, high up into a bird's eye view of problems and how they came about, and how else you can look at those problems in order to make wise decisions?

Because I'm here to tell you, I'm done with my mother and I'm done with Jane. I'm fifty years old and I will not tolerate another person in my life who lives the way they do. I can't. I've suffered enough damage from unconscious people who run like robots on old childhood feelings and just can't see themselves at all. Who just can't see that they need to take a step back from what they've always thought and felt, and research what happens in healthier families and how healthy people look at the same situation. 

Mom/Jane kind of behavior is a trust-killer, a relationship-ruiner, and a life-destroyer. I've worked extremely hard while we were apart to identify old childhood programming I always thought was the truth, and to stop and think so I can figure out what's destructive before it hurts me or you any more.

I don't work this hard for someone who cannot or will not. So it's up to you to decide what kind of work you are willing to do, and whether the therapeutic community you are now in is helping you overcome your problems ... or just helping you recycle them.

I have some great resources if you are interested. I will not tell you what to do.

It's entirely possible that even if you do make some changes in your therapy and acquire greater insight, you may still decide you want to stay in your marriage and keep your family the way that it is. People do, every day, even when their marriage is not satisfactory and they have no reason to hope that it ever will be. 

The important thing, and the thing I will be looking to see, is that the decisions you make are made from a heart that's truly at peace with everything those decisions mean, and not a heart that's letting itself be abused or taken advantage of, resentfully saying, "I've made my bed and now I have to lie in it." To my way of thinking, health might sound something like, "I know Rory is the way that she is, and I'm just going to stay with her and love her anyway the way she is." If you can truly do that, do that, and more power to you. A lot of people could not, but only you can decide what's right for you, and what YOU will TRULY be happy with.

If YOU are TRULY HAPPY with any decision you make, then so am I. Don't worry about me. I have lots to do, and I will be fine.

I will not be happy with any decision that sounds like, "I have to because so-and-so will blahblahblah." That's not a healthy decision made by a healthy heart based in healthy reasoning. Keep working until you can make a decision the RIGHT way ... the healthy way.

I love you and I needed to let you know this. Any relationship I agree to will need to be a healthy one, or one grounded in solid work in therapy with a decent chance of becoming healthy. I still love you, but I need to see a good, solid working attitude that's willing to dive into some codependency resources and information about healthy families, and think more objectively about the past three years and your situation. If I see unconscious Mom or Janelike behavior, I'm outta here for my own good. 

And that doesn't mean I don't love you. I'll be very sad about it, but what it means is I won't repeat ill health anymore. If you mean to keep repeating ill health, you don't need me in your life. You can stay home with Rory or pick any idiot off the street and keep being codependent and stuck in low self esteem.

My world is a place to work hard and get well. A person with that attitude has the attitude I stick with. If I don't see that ... well ...

I love you and I hope you choose health.

But I can't make you. (That would be codependent.)

Love,

Ridley

Big difference, huh?

Affairs and Religion

Eternal.

My tarot card readings have been interesting this week. I'm supposed to be doing something important, but I'm not. Something creative, something career-related.

Instead, I've become more and more obsessed with this idea that all our life possibilities really ARE spelled out in our transits over time, and we just don't recognize it because we're only looking at two or three years of transits at once and assuming that all describe the path we're on with equal force. I have a theory that if I look more carefully at mine, I'll see that the transits I look at and go, "Huh? What's that doing there? That doesn't describe my life at all!" actually can be traced to something that had an opportunity to occur in the past but didn't, and it's part of an inactive timeline for my life ... a road not taken. Sort of like when I had an opportunity to spend time with Chi every two weeks again, but turned it down.


I took the unprecedented (so far as I know) step of printing out all my Liz Greene transit reports for the next three years and cutting them apart so I can group them according to what they seem to be describing. It turns out that I actually have three timelines in my transits--one where I'm embroiled in a destructive affair with Chi, one where I discover a meaning and a purpose in my writing and go on to discover a blazing passion in life and am happily occupied even though I'm all alone (at least for a few more years), and then there's that last one ... where neither of the above happens. Chi never comes back, I'm STILL all alone, but I sink into apathy and ennui because I feel I have no purpose in life. 


On Astro.com, Liz Greene has a wonderful article about  how astrology reflects a person's will to live. She writes that human beings need to feel that they're here on this planet for a reason, and if they have that sense, they are happily engaged in life. When we don't, we start to stagnate and die, engaging in all kinds of harmful behaviors and degenerating into sour, old, unhappy, unhealthy people. And looking at all this, I can see that's true. If Chi is in my life and I respond unhealthily, giving up on writing because now I can make trying to fix his problems my priority (convenient--now I don't have to brave this difficult marketplace, because I'm a very unhealthy family caregiver instead, and I made that my purpose--"He needs me!") Whether he's in my life or not, I can find my purpose or I can give up on it and be purposeless ... and there's all that negative behavior Liz Greene says we do in that case when we don't know why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing. And I know it's true. (Look at my BPD mom and how she acts.)

OK, I got that, but what's my purpose in life? I had thought maybe it was showing people how to marry astrology and psychology to make more sense of their lives. Chi not ever coming back had cast that into doubt. Yeah, I'd studied hard, I knew what was happening and why, and because I did that, I knew unerringly what to do and why when he showed up again.

But if the guy never shows up again, even though we have these and those transits that said he would...I've obsessed over all that work, to no good purpose. Fatal flaw in that work, huh?

Not necessarily. You're probably wondering what any of the preceding has to do with religion. Well, hold on tight, because it does.

I had to take a break in all this because the 94-year-old great aunt I've taken care of for the past nine years passed away. I had just spent Mother's Day with her a month ago. During the visit, I was upset because I had discovered my own (BPD) mom going around Facebook posting some very untrue lies about me everywhere my brother had posted a family picture of me.

My great aunt responded by saying, "Don't worry, I'll be your mom. You've never ever disappointed me, I'm your mom." And then I started to cry, and she said, "It's okay, we'll sit here and bawl together!"

And a month later she was gone.

I can see through the events of the funeral that she really was my mom, in more ways than one, because she helped me give birth to myself. I don't just mean that it's been a heavy burden taking care of her and her handicapped daughter and I have really had to grow and become more competent in doing all of that these last nine years, or that she treated me better than my own mother all my life. (Although, both are definitely true.)

I mean: She was almost 95, she could have passed away at any time. Why now, right when I'm struggling with why I'm alive, with no one close in my life at all, struggling to pay bills so I can struggle to pay bills? While my horoscope and the cards are saying I have a purpose and I'd better find it or I'm going to sink into apathy and depression and the rest of my life is going to suck, like that of the lonely, empty alcoholic who lives upstairs?

Because of my two cousins who came up for the funeral. When their last aunt died, no doubt they were going to bring a certain family picture to the funeral and say the same things about it, but my aunt died now instead of any other time, right when I'm struggling.

The picture is a group photo of my great aunt and all seven of her siblings, together with their parents--my great-grandparents. Right before my great-grandfather left the family for a younger woman. (Sort of like Chi almost did for me, only all his kids are grown up and gone.)

This never-forgotten family story still gets trotted out from time to time. The children in the photo--my great aunt, my grandmother, and their brothers and sisters--all are gone now, and this happened in 1941. Seventy-seven years ago! Yet, after the funeral, this photo and this family tragedy and the picture made another reappearance.

My cousins, both of whom are religious, God-fearing kind of people, talked a lot about how terrible it was for the children, how it wrecked the children's mental health, and how they just couldn't understand why or how a person could do such an ungodly thing and leave eight children and a wife.

At no other time would I have reacted to that photo and that discussion the way I did yesterday.

Because before Chi, I was just a little girl. "How could that person do that to all those other people? No wonder the Bible calls that a sin." Just like everyone else, I reacted that way to that family story when I actually was a little girl.

Now I've been the other woman, and I know why my particular man had to leave, and my entire last three and a half years has been one long ongoing consideration of what the right thing is to do and what's fairest and best for everyone. Not just me, everyone.

(Being the other woman, I've come to understand, confers a very grave responsibility. Not all of us recognize this, but it's true.)

I've read before that we don't see things the way they are, we see them the way we are. And it's true that most of the pain in this mixed-up world comes from everyone seeing that person or group of people they're angry at or disappointed in, from their own perspective and not the other people's.

This is what I heard at dinner last night, and because of the last three years, I see that this is what's wrong with using religion as the sole guiding principle of your life. And now that I've had these experiences, I can tell you why this is.

Religion is great at providing prescriptions for life, but in most cases religious dogma does not take into account what's going on in the marriage. As a general rule, it's best to stay married and work out the problems with the one you married, BUT...

Maybe somebody is mentally ill. Maybe somebody is being abused. Maybe the combined dysfunction of the two people dovetails on itself such that a mutually unhealthy situation keeps perpetuating between these two--behind closed doors, while things look so good in front of everyone else.

What I do know is, in the case of my grandmother, all six girls in the family were diagnosed bipolar--and that is highly heritable. So, just like my mother's grandmother showed signs of mental illness back in the day, and that side of the family talked about that for decades--it's possible that some problems we will never know about affected my other great-grandparents' marriage.

Religion just says, "Stay married. Period." And, knowing what Chi was living with and how, "Stay married. Period." turned out for him, it would upset me greatly--and did--that other people reacted this way to him. They did not understand anything about the marriage or what the marriage was doing to the people in it. I knew what to ask, and Chi would tell me a bit about what the two therapists were saying. Other people didn't know to ask these things. They just saw a man leaving an apparently good wife after an apparently happy 38-year marriage, and they rushed to judge.

"In life," says Religion, "generally it doesn't work too well to do things in that way or that way. To get your best results, we strongly recommend that you do things this way." Only humans came along and attached these other harmful ideas to that: The idea of a Big Boss in the sky who watches and judges what we do, who's angry and displeased, who metes out pronouncements and sends people to hell fire eternal if they, for instance, leave their wives. Look what you did to your children! Sinner! Hell and Damnation!!!

All I'm saying is, who knows why my great-grandfather left? Who knows how the marriage really was? We'll never know, because all the people who were living at the time have died. Maybe it really was the awful childish mistake the extended and descended family believes it was. Or maybe, like Chi, my grandfather was running for his life. I'll never forget what Chi wrote me once. I know I just can't move back into that house. It feels like death to move back into that house.

And, last October, that's exactly what he was describing to me. It happened. (And the cards and the astrology are in agreement that it probably hasn't gotten much better.)

I hope something happens so it doesn't end that way for him, whatever that may be.

That stuff after what's in orange up there is what Religion does wrong, and how it's undoing with the left hand, the good stuff it just did with the right. Let's not even talk about all the religious wars, and how humans here on earth hate and kill one another because of the idea of the judgmental god. Even my hyperreligious relatives, including the very aunt just deceased, used to sit around and argue that this one was going to heaven and that one was going to hell because one of them believed the right way and the other one believed the wrong way.

All this is stuff and nonsense, and obscures all the other ways humans have to make sense of life, which some ignore and pooh-pooh because they are not Religion. Religion says, "My dogmatic teaching is the only thing you are to use and listen to, and it's a sin if you use any other source of knowledge," and that's too bad, because Religion as practiced by what I grew up with, is a good start, but woefully inadequate alone.

So here we have Religion, who offers great prescriptions about how to do things in the way that generally offers the best results. But unfortunately Religion offers no deeper explanations for human behavior, as I've pointed out here before. Religion simply slaps people's hands and says, "It's bad. Don't do it."

Dogma does not help people see or learn the deeper reasons behind the doing of it, nor help them heal so they no longer NEED to do it.

Because really, people. Folks wouldn't drink, folks wouldn't eat themselves to six hundred pounds and up, folks wouldn't have affairs, folks wouldn't do anything "bad," anything that heaps condemnation down on their heads from all of family and society, unless they really NEED to for some reason. And religion does nothing to help people understand that.

And when we're short on understanding and long on judgment, it does not help to heal these people, ourselves, and the world.

So along comes Psychology, which says, "Here is why that person is doing what he is doing." Now we can make some progress toward fulfilling those great prescriptions created by our Religion, because we can see and understand what's standing in the way. We can see how things got that way. That means we now know how to prevent, so things don't get this bad ever again, and we have an easier time forgiving, because we see the why behind that person doing that painful thing that we hate him for. Religion isn't good at this, except for the riddles such as, "The sins of the father are visited upon the child unto the seventh generation."

WTF does THAT mean? Religion tries to get it in there, but Psychology explains it in a way that we can understand it.

Now we come to Astrology. Ah, that terrible discipline with the bad name. It mostly has a bad name because it purports to be able to predict the future, and sometimes it "looks" like it's "wrong."

(Oh, and because Religion says it's bad, of course.)

But what I see, because I've studied psychology as well as astrology, and because this awful situation in my life drove me to look at more than three years of transits at a time (the way most professional astrologers do), is that astrology not only accurately describes your character, but it also describes your life. In my transits right now I see three different outcomes, and when I ask--and this is important!--Does this sound likely? Does this make sense? the answer is yes.

And who decides which outcome I will get? Well, one of them is partially decided by someone else, but the main answer is, I do. Not only that, but your natal chart has something to say about why you decided to come into this life, what you meant to do here, and why things turned out the way they have.

Not ONLY that, but when you can look at three charts and see everything in one reflected in the other three--and this is all in the position of the planets and stars--obviously you have some evidence of intelligent design.

This does not mean that you have a punitive god you have to answer to, and who's supposed to direct your life  (as in, the way some Christians apparently do, you think you should stand in front of your closet every morning and let Someone Else think for you ("Lord, should I wear the red dress or the green?"), or the idea, with the concept of Godly this and Godly that, that you are better than everyone else, because you're allowing certain other people, speaking and writing as this cosmic Superbeing, to think for you.

But Something is obviously cocreating with you, for every planet in the heavens to reflect something real about you, something psychology can confirm, tell you how it came about and what you have to do to get it to go better, and religion can give you some guidance about the most desirable earthly outcome.

And I can tell you all this now, so that must be my purpose.

I'm supposed to have some faith that if I build it, they will come.

(Whoever they is.)