Friday, September 07, 2007

A Look at Money Issues, When Saturn Transits my Second House


Since June this year, Saturn has entered my second house. When Saturn swiped past my ascendant, that was exactly when I started my inner work journey to release many programmed mental patterns and unexpressed emotions from the past. (As first house denotes our outer appearance, I also lost a few pounds with the shedding of those programming!) In spiritual astrology, Saturn is the spiritual teacher. It is symbolic of the process of initiation among the mystics where the initiate must undergo a “transformation”, often a form of death in order to be rebirthed into becoming the embodiment of one’s higher nature. The transformation is often painful, as one sheds himself of the conditioning of the superego, experiences a shattering of the illusions and delusions of the superego, and then rises out of the chaos with a renewed sense of self and power. In astrology, the house in which Saturn transits will show you through which arena of your life you are going to be become initiated into higher truths about your self and reality; and if you manage to “pass” Saturn’s tests, which are often quite challenging (especially if your conscious self resist the chaos or crisis Saturn often puts you through in order to transcend what does not serve you, often due to a lack of self-awareness), Saturn will also reward you. So it is a tough teacher, but a friendly one! And of course, from a spiritual perspective, Saturn really is a friend, without Saturn, we may not be afforded the chance to grow and evolve to become expressions of our Essential qualities of love, joy, beauty, strength and much more…

So, let’s look at what happened when Saturn started to transit my second house. In my natal chart, I have a Jupiter in my second house. In my experience of this disposition, I basically have a tendency to over-spend on things with little to no regard of the practical value of them. I have little sense of the value of things in general, so basically when I want something, I buy it with little to no consideration of the sensibleness of its pricing nor its practicality and value. Basically I have a tendency for extravagance. Now extravagance really is the flipside of feeling lack, because they are actually the same thing expressed in opposite ways. For example, one might overspend or become attached to the indulgence in unnecessary luxury, really to cover up his or her fear of not having enough deep underneath. The same may apply to people who are excessively generous – one might over-extend oneself to others, motivated really by a sense of feeling worthless inside. The outer expression of true fulfillment or security (whether in terms of survival or emotional needs), is neither one extreme nor the other, but rather is at the fulcrum of either extremes, the place of equanimity or balance.

Back to Saturn. Saturn entered my second house in June this year. I’ve always been superficially aware of my Jupiter influence in my second house. I’ve also always constantly worried about not having enough money, regardless of how much money I actually have. It doesn’t stress me out too much but it can be a source of annoyance when there’s always a lil’ voice in your head wanting to have more and pouting when you’re not getting more. The second house is about about self-value and what we value in our life, it is not the house of money; however, from my understanding, money is always associated with this house because of the following reason. First of all, money is the most basic commodity required to acquire anything in this world, including all items of survival and items that nourish us and/or enrich our lives, often including things that make us happy! (This isn’t say that we have to have money to be happy, but without any money, the average human being is likely to be quite miserable.) Without money, there really isn’t many things we can do in the modern physical world. So, if we have poor self-value, we are likely to be, at an unconscious or conscious level, quite neglectful of how to take care of ourselves, nourish ourselves in the physical world in which we are a part, or feel undeserving of the above and of enjoying the good things in life, and oftentimes, this would manifest as having issues with money! A low self-value may sometimes be sourced from a lack of groundedness to the physical reality - one may feel confused about who we are in relation to the physical reality, (which can again manifest as issues with money), because true security can only come from remembering that we, as human beings, are an integral part of this world and that there really is no separation between our spiritual and physical nature. My encounter with Saturn in my second house did exactly in teaching me the above, but of course, first putting me through a few very minor “ouches”. For example, functioning from my Jupiter impulse to need to eat well every meal (or else I’ll get irritated and may even throw a fit!) while I was traveling in the US, my partner and I got into a little ugly fight with me steamed in anger towards his decision to eat Burger King. While he was momentarily away, I brought myself to the present and reflected on my feeling of frustration of not being able to eat a “good” meal and immediately I felt a deep feeling of hurt underneath my boiled up anger of feeling that my needs are never met! (Classic base chakra childhood issue) As soon as the anger and the hidden hurt feeling was honoured and felt, I returned to a state of calm and consciously chose to feel gratitude for whatever I was experiencing in the moment. After that incident, I discovered that I no longer felt the same feelings of neediness towards extravagance as I did in the past. This was among one of the few little Saturn tests I had in the past months. My concept about money has also changed as a result of these tests. I started to see money more as a commodity for getting our survival needs met rather than something that I always need to have more of. With that revised view towards money, I’m much less worried about not having enough because my sense of security about being in the physical dimension doesn’t have to come from constantly acquiring more money. At a deeper level, I am starting to really know that I’ll always be taken care of. Now this is not to say though, that you will lose your desire for money and hence stop doing anything to get money. Quite the contrary will happen - the person with a greater sense of security about herself and about functioning in the physical reality will naturally have better instincts about how to get herself well-fed, well-sheltered and probably not run into money problems because those unconscious feelings of insecurity from false perceptions of reality are no longer there.

Now this article is not meant to diagnose what will happen to you when your Saturn enters your second house. Lessons, tests always play out differently for different people because a chart needs to be evaluated as a whole and people’s psyche are complicated period. What I intend here is to share with you what Saturn has taught me; for I believe, that at some level, all lessons are universal and that whether Saturn is entering your second house or not, the lesson inherent in the second house, (in my case it was kick started by the presence of Saturn) can apply to the deepening of your self-knowledge in some way or another.