Love relationships fail because at no time in our training by society are we given a factual model of what a love relationship is, or how to make one succeed. There are fundamentally three levels on which intimate relationships operate, and our social training only prepares us to deal with one of them – the most superficial one – and even that one ineptly. This superficial level is called the expectations level. It is usually the only level we address consciously.

The expectations level consists of all our self-images and self-importance. When we primp ourselves in front of a mirror, what we are primping is our expectations of other people. It’s the level of our daydreams and fantasies, whereon everyone is as impressed with us as we are with ourselves.

On the expectations level what interests us the most about a prospective partner is his or her physical attractiveness, manner of dress and bearing, social and educational background, future prospects, how “cool” he or she is, how he or she reflects back on us, what others will think of us for having chosen this partner.

On the expectations level a “love relationship” is actually an approval agreement, a contract, To Wit: “The party of the first part hereby agrees to pretend to honor, love, cherish and obey the party of the second part; in return for which considerations the party of the second part agrees not to hurt, betray, nor expose to public embarrassment the party of the first part (see appended schedule of specific acts which shall be deemed to constitute ‘hurt’, ‘betrayal’, and ‘public embarrassment’). Any violation of this agreement by either party shall be considered valid grounds for spitefulness, vengeance, and all manner of carrying on like a big baby.”

On the expectations level we submit ourselves to another person not for love, but for approval. Love and approval have nothing to do with one another. Love is a light, joyous, happy feeling; receiving approval is a tight, clinging, possessive feeling, which does, however, have an ego rush behind it. That ego rush is not joy – it’s glory, self-importance, which we have been trained to seek instead of love.

The expectations level must eventually wear out because its basic premise is getting something for nothing. On this level everything we’re putting out (“giving”) is phony – it’s just to impress other people, or to get something more in return. We’re putting out phoniness in the hope of getting something real (happiness) back. And that’s not how the universe is set up. There are no free lunches or free rides out there.

What fools us is that most of the messages we receive – from our parents and peers, our teachers and preachers, our leaders and the media – are that the expectations level works; and if it doesn’t, that’s our fault and we should be ashamed of ourselves.

For whom is it working? Look around. How many truly happy marriages are you aware of (of more than ten years’ duration, since it can take that long or longer for the expectations level to wear thin). Sure, there are some, but not many; and usually the people involved in truly happy marriages are very, very special people in their own right.

Isn’t this true? But there are also lots of relationships which appear to be happy on the surface, but are actually miserable underneath: both partners have learned to repress their true feelings and resign themselves to unhappiness without showing it. These people never get beyond the expectations level.

The reason why the expectations level inevitably crashes – although it can and often does mellow into true love after the crash – is because it is wholly narcissistic: it doesn’t include the other person. It does not permit the other person to be a person, but only a reflection of our own fondest self-images. It doesn’t allow the other person space to be real – to have feelings of his or her own.

For example, is our partner permitted to have sex with whomever he / she wishes? Is our partner even permitted to be sexually turned on by anyone but us? Is our partner permitted to tell us that we are not a satisfying lover? The list could go on and on. Only sexual expectations are mentioned here because those are practically universal, but we have all sorts of other fences we try to erect around our partners to keep them pristine and unsullied for us – expectations that they will agree with us about money, child raising, career, religion, etc.; expectations that they will forego making their own decisions in order to support us.

Love is not something we get; love is something we give – or better said, something that flows through us. We can’t sit back and expect other people to hand us love just because they’re our parents, spouse, or children. True, this can happen on occasion, just as it has happened on occasion that we’ve found money lying on the street and picked it up and it was ours. But to expect money to come to us in that way is absurd; and to expect other people to give us love just because we’ve stuck them in a supporting role is also absurd.

The expectations level must eventually crash under its own weight by sheer exhaustion. When people are involved with one another in an approval agreement, or any agenda that is not love, then everyone has to work overtime in order to convince the other or to convince oneself; and this is painful to bear.

The expectations level would be problematical and contradictory enough if it were the only level on which we relate with other people. Unfortunately, there are two deeper levels which actually govern the course of our relationships, and these deeper levels contradict the expectations level.

The level which underlies and controls the expectations level, which assures that the expectations level will eventually crash, or be maintained in great suffering, is the conditioning level. It’s the level of our basic conditioning by society, which is to hate ourselves. Beneath the glitter and glory of our expectations, our self-images, is the grim truth that we actually hate ourselves. We are taught to hate ourselves by our parents and society: women are taught to hate their looks and their bodies; Men are taught to hate their gentle, tender feelings (as opening the door to homosexuality).

Whereas the expectations level is set up so that people will be “nice” to each other (make the agreement: “I won’t expose you as a liar and phony if you won’t expose me as a liar and phony”), the conditioning level is set up to divide people, to make them fear and distrust each other. We are not trained to relate intimately with one another, but rather to wage war upon one another – to feel hurt, jealous, competitive, critical; to pick at each other and bend each other out of shape – rather than to be happy and accepting. The parent / child relationship is the basic war setup; the man / woman war is grafted on top.

While on an expectations level we tell ourselves that what we want is to live happily ever after, we are conditioned by our society to feel unworthy and ashamed of ourselves, and to deny ourselves the very love which we consciously tell ourselves that we are seeking. We are trained by our parents to hate ourselves in precisely the same fashion in which our parents hated themselves.

The conditioning level is the level which psychotherapy addresses (unfortunately, after the damage is already done). We are so overwhelmed by our parents when we are little – so awed by their divinity – that we are afraid to express, or allow ourselves to feel openly, anger at them, or any other feeling of which they would not approve – which contradicts their expectations. Thus our parents’ expectations level becomes our conditioning level.

Society calls infatuation with our own self-images “love”; and so on an expectations level we tell ourselves that we are going into relationships to get “love;” whereas on a conditioning level we are going into relationships to deny ourselves love – to pinpoint, through the mirroring of another person, precisely how we ourselves are incapable of giving and receiving love.

One might well wonder why people would want to reenact in their love relationships the situations out of their childhood which brought them the most pain and trauma. The reason is that those wounds never healed properly. They are still raw and suppurating, and extremely tender to the touch. Only by tearing those wounds back open again and cleaning out all the dreck, the self-hatred, can a true healing occur. And only by staging a situation similar to the one which produced those wounds originally can the wounds be reopened (actually this isn’t the only way of doing it; there are far more skillful ways of doing it, such as Active Imagination, which is described in my book Thought Forms. However, the locking horns with another person and inflicting pain and suffering on each other is the more popular way of doing it).

Just as on the expectations level our goal is the validation of our images, on the conditioning level our goal is to recreate all the emotional turmoil our parents inflicted on us, but this time around to grab the brass ring of love which our parents denied us.

Up until recently society has had the fifth Commandment and a raft of social sanctions in place against examining the conditioning level too closely. Freud was one of the first to take a good, hard look at this level of human interaction. And at the present time there are lots of good popular books available on the subject of toxic parents, how we all marry our father or mother, and seek in marriage the precise same hurt and nonfulfillment which our principle caregivers made us feel in infancy. The problem is that we don’t bother reading these books until our relationships are already in deep trouble. These books should be required reading for all high school students.

“Don’t blame your parents! Just wait until you’re a parent yourself!” they (our parents) tell us. Well, that’s wrong; we should blame our parents, because only by consciously blaming them are we in a position to consciously forgive them. Only when we can see that it was their own self-hatred which their parents laid on them that impelled them to do what they did to us; only when we can see them as people in as much or more pain as we, who really did try to do the best for us they knew how; only then can we forgive our parents. And only then can we forgive ourselves, and let go of our own self-hatred, no longer needing to reenact it or to blame ourselves over and over because we loved our parents, and all they cared about was being right.

The third (and deepest) level of relationship is the karma level – the level of the lessons we are trying to learn from certain people, based upon our experiences with them in other lifetimes and realities. Anything which is wrong or out-of-kilter in a relationship originates on the karma level. Our gut-level, first impressions of people are often good indicators of the kind of karma we have going with them; but our conscious minds often bury such information directly as it is perceived.

For example, it could happen that the reason we are sexually turned on by a certain person is that in a previous life we raped and tortured that person; for some aeons, perhaps, that individual has been itching for a lifetime in which to right matters. That might be the karma we have set up with someone; but all our conscious mind knows, on its level of expectation, is that we are sexually turned on by that person and want the person to validate it by having sex with us. And so we put our head in that person’s noose, and wonder later on why things aren’t working out as we’d fantasized.

The karma and conditioning levels work in tandem to control the actual circumstances and course of a relationship. For example, if on the conditioning level we decide to reenact a parent’s abandonment of us and we choose a partner who will abandon us, we might select for that role someone whom in a previous lifetime we abandoned. This can be considered a penance; but we can also look at it as a kind of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” – like saying, “I made you suffer in that lifetime, and now I want to know how you felt – to feel the feelings I made you feel.” On the karma level, as on the conditioning level, we try to restage events which will produce a resonance with some unresolved emotional issue in the totality of our being.

The agendas we have set up with other people on the karma level are often revealed in the very first impressions we have of them and which we immediately repress. It’s hard to describe this, and it’s different for everyone, but often upon meeting someone with whom we have a heavy karmic agenda going, we get a FLASH, a conscious feeling or thought, of something we desire or feel threatened by about that person. And then we immediately “forget” what we just felt, because if we have bad karma going with the person, then that flash was of a side of ourselves which we don’t want to consciously face or acknowledge – a side we are calling upon that person to enact openly for us, to ram down our throat for us, until we’re forced to acknowledge it. Thus we “forget” this first impression, and later on pretend we don’t understand why the person we loved and trusted so much could have changed so.

Of course, we can run past-life regressions to check what sort of karma we have going with someone before getting seriously involved with them – sort of like running a credit or AIDS check on a prospective spouse. In India astrology has been historically relied upon for this sort of information. But it’s also possible to avoid difficulties just by being alert to our own gut feelings and intuitive impressions of other people, rather than ignoring this most essential information in a relationship.

Thus the basic intensity or emotional theme of a relationship is set up on the karma level; the particular script, the sequence of events which will unfold in a relationship, is set up on the conditioning level; and the costuming, the superficial appearances or show put on for the benefit of the neighbors, is set up on the expectations level.

The glare of the expectations level blinds us to what is happening on the two deeper levels; and the expectations level is a lie. What is actually going on in a relationship on the conditioning and karma levels is always quite visible; but we pretend we don’t see it, we pretend we don’t understand it, in order to uphold our expectations as long as possible.

By “lie” is meant something that we feel, but which we suppress or conceal. For example, if our sex partner is doing something that doesn’t feel good and turns us off, and we lay there and take it because we’re too embarrassed to speak up and possibly hurt our partner’s feelings, then that’s a lie. Any time we do not communicate something we are feeling because we are embarrassed to do so, or because we don’t want to hurt or provoke the other person or become a target for his or her disapproval, we are lying. Lying leads to sneaking around behind the other person’s back. Lies lead to more lies.

We can tell if lying is taking place in a relationship this way: if there is an area in which we don’t trust the other person; where we withhold from the other person; where we are afraid of the other person (his / her disapproval or rejection); where we feel something other than GOOD about the person; then that is a place where we are lying. We are trained to lie to other people, and then to feel betrayed when our lies are exposed.

All a lie is, is a contradiction. Lies must always exist in pairs, whereas the truth – love – just is. For example, on the level of our expectations we might set up the pair: “I want you to be honest with me” and “I don’t want to hear how turned on you are by someone else.” On the level of our conditioning we might set up the pair: “I truly love you, mommy!” and “I’ll never question your love for me!” On the level of karma lies don’t exist per se (it’s repressing this level that makes a lie out of it); but one could say that the basic lie or duality of the karma level is: “You and I are two” and “You and I are one.”

All the lies in a relationship are laid down right at the beginning. By “laid down” is meant: conscious. Conscious for a moment, and then – just as consciously – repressed, ignored, “forgotten.” The basic lies of the karma level may be laid down in the first few seconds of a relationship. The lies of the conditioning level (the game plan of who’s going to hurt whom, and how) are usually laid down at the time the relationship is formalized – when the mutual decision is made to commit, to get serious as it were. And the expectations level is a complete lie from the first pop.

Anyone with their eyes open could see what’s going on. Sometimes our parents, friends, or other people who care about us try to pass us warnings. But we’re “so much in love” and “love is blind” and we’re so “happy” that we don’t want to see it. We don’t want anything to call us down from this lovely cloud we’re on; this lovely lie we’re telling ourselves.

And for each and every lie, the piper must be paid. There’s a karmic law at work in all this, and every single lie, no matter how teensy-weensy, will someday have to be brought into the open and admitted, else the relationship is doomed – doomed to be something other than a love relationship, because in a love relationship there is no room whatsoever for lies of any kind, at any time, for any reason.

All the alarm about the soaring divorce rate in our society, the call for a return to “traditional values,” is a bunch of baloney. Those traditional values were a total lie, and it’s amazing that the human race put up with that lie as long as it did. Traditional values means you get married on the expectations level and you never question it. You learn somehow to live with a lie, with unhappiness, and you bite your tongue because the social sanctions (what the neighbors might think) against divorce were so stringent. Instead of returning to living out lies, our society ought to stop glorifying the expectations level. As is the case also with war, when society stops glorifying infatuation people will stop seeking it.

Love relationships fail because we go into them with a lot of la-de-da thought forms about who we are and what we expect to get, and we run smack into heavy karma and conditioning agendas we had no conscious idea even existed. We are not consciously aware of what expectations we have until those expectations aren’t fulfilled; and we don’t understand what our parents did to us until we find our partner doing the same thing – make us feel that old, familiar feeling in the pit of our stomach.

As long as we’re relating to the other person on one of these three levels, we’re not relating to an actual person at all, but only to our own self-reflection, our childhood wounds, or our deep-seated fears and insecurities. On the expectations level our attention is focused on the future; on the conditioning level it’s focused on the past; and on the karma level it’s focused on the remote past. A true love relationship, however, involves relating to a real, live person in the now moment.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living)

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at: http://www.dearbrutus.com. To subscribe to Bob Makransky’s free monthly Astro-Magical e-zine, send an e-mail to: MagicalAlmanac-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

This is a fair statement because planetary hours astrology is basically an astrology of luck, whereas conventional astrology of the zodiac and houses is an astrology of karma. Conventional astrology depicts people as socially conditioned beings: it shows how they relate to others, what lessons they are seeking to learn in this lifetime, and how they adjust (or fail to adjust) to the expectations of their parents, spouses, children, co-workers, boss, neighbors, etc.

By contrast, planetary hours astrology depicts people as spiritual beings, and shows their relationship to the abstract: their personal (as opposed to social) power and effectiveness, and their ability to make their own decisions and choose their own destinies.

Planetary hours astrology shows you at your best, at your “you-est.” It shows how you tune out static, stress, and external pressure and make contact with your own sense of self at center. It shows how you unhook yourself from society’s wheel of rewards and punishments and operate on your own, at your own pace. It shows your most natural and joyous state of being, wherein you need nothing outside yourself to feel whole fulfilled, and at peace.

This is why planetary hours astrology is an astrology of luck: it points out the moods and mindsets you are in when you are operating at your peak of performance. The following interpretations are not necessarily descriptions of how you act every day, but rather of how you act when your luck is flowing. They describe that side of your personality which you should seek to enlarge until you are able to act with complete effectiveness in your everyday life.

When we look at the day of the week you were born, as opposed to your rising sign in conventional astrology, we are looking at a wholly positive side of your personality and relationship with your environment. Your weekday symbolizes the expression of your highest self, rather than some sort of mask you wear or set of mannerisms designed to elicit some stock response from other people. Your weekday symbolizes a more genuine interaction with other people than does your rising sign. Your weekday shows you in your most relaxed and natural state of being – the side of you which others find most inviting.

Observe that the astrological day begins at dawn (not midnight). Therefore, if you were born between midnight and dawn (i.e. if your natal Sun falls in the first three houses of a conventional horoscope), then you should read the interpretation for the day of the week before your birthday. For example, if you were born on a Tuesday between midnight and dawn, then you should read the interpretation for Monday. If you don’t know what day of the week you were born, the free downloadable Planetary Hours tables calculates the weekday your were born as well as your planetary hour (see further along).

SUNDAY: You are outgoing, self-possessed, poised, and dignified. You have unlimited self-assurance and elàn, and unhesitatingly take your rightful place (preferably in the center) of any social group of which you are a part. Because you basically respect yourself as a person, you are able to respect other people as well, and this naturally wins you their respect in turn. You are a natural-born leader, not because you flaunt yourself, but precisely because you are willing to honor other people’s viewpoints as being valid from their own side. Although you can have a prissy, prima-donna streak, your lofty noblesse oblige is executed with sufficient good humor so as not to ruffle other people’s sensibilities. Indeed, they respect your calm reason and objective judgment. You are practical and down-to-earth, and your unvarnished forthrightness induces other people to look up to you and cede you the lead.

MONDAY: You are soft, childlike, spontaneous, and possess the eager cheerfulness of a puppy. You are playful and mischievous, and take a positive, constructive view towards life and its problems. You try to avoid conflict, not because you’re a shrinking violet, but because you have a genuine love of peace and harmony. You have a strong sense of your own personal space, and a respect for that of others; you are both gentle and firm (on the negative side, unyielding). Because you basically feel good about yourself and truly like yourself, you make it easy for other people to like you as well. You are able to keep cool and collected no matter what is going on around you, because you are very attuned to your own inner voice, and you follow your own intuition with little regard for what other people might think of you. Thus you have a somewhat Bohemian or off-beat streak, a determination to just do your own thing in your own time.

TUESDAY: You are irrepressible, adventurous, and peppery. You have a shrewd, analytical mind which sees clearly through the ulterior motives of other people, and which instantly grasps the possibilities of profit in any situation. Although not combative per se (you don’t go looking for trouble), you don’t shrink from conflict either. You are fearless in confronting other people directly – eyeball to eyeball, cheek to jowl, and in fact you seem to come alive at any hint of confusion or doubt in an opponent. You are opportunistic without being especially ambitious. You love challenge for its own sake, but have little patience for thinking in terms of long-term goals or empire building. Indeed, you are scornful of what most people consider “security”, and prefer living by your own wits to planning for your future. You regard the trappings of comfort – dependence on possessions, other people, and worldly responsibilities – as encumbering baggage to be avoided whenever possible. You prefer keeping loose, agile, and free of commitments so you are always able to land on your feet no matter how hard life buffets you about.

WEDNESDAY: You are unabashed and plain-spoken, and do not hesitate to speak your mind and speak to the point. Your tart, no-nonsense approach to people and your ironic sense of humor cut through pretense and empty gesticulating and go right to the heart of matters. You do nothing for show or effect. Because you feel no need to prove anything to yourself, you feel no need to put on airs, but are able to relax and just be yourself in any company; and your simplicity enables other people to be out-front with you in turn. You tend to rely upon bull-headedness rather than subtlety or guile to get your way; and while your frankness can at times be bruising, your earnestness and sincerity win the admiration of others.

THURSDAY: You are soft-spoken, polite, and considerate. You possess a detached intellectual curiosity and an open, nonjudgmental attitude towards others. You are forward-looking and hopeful, and are willing to tackle even arduous jobs with a spirit of dedication and enterprise. You are able to carry out any task smoothly and cheerfully because you don’t let your personal feelings get in your way. You prefer not to make waves, not because you are shy or feel threatened by people, but rather because you don’t need any ego-bolstering from them. You are able to find satisfaction in the punctilious discharge of your responsibilities, and hence you can afford to be generous with others – to live and let live. You are optimistic and always prefer to look at the bright side of things rather than become bogged down in disagreements or bickering.

FRIDAY: You possess a starry-eyed idealism, freshness, and naivete. Your innocuousness and artlessness disarm other people and put them at ease. You’re not afraid to let it all hang out, to express your true feelings openly and make yourself vulnerable to other people, because you feel you have nothing to be ashamed of or to hide. You are thoroughly candid without being brusque; on the contrary, you are soft, open, and approachable. Albeit gregarious, you don’t let yourself become too dependent on the approval and validation of other people to buttress your own sense of self-worth. At root you know that your own motives are good, so that you are capable of reaching out to others in a spirit of good will and good faith. Because you basically trust your own motives, you are able to trust in the ultimate good nature of other people as well.

SATURDAY: You are serious-minded and reserved, and possess a dignified mien and bearing. Your patience and forbearance are the product of a true faith in yourself and the power of the universe to sustain you. You are high-minded and courageous, and are always willing to stand alone on your own two feet. You are hard-working and thorough, without demanding any special recognition for your efforts. You are basically self-starting and self-motivating, and therefore you have little need for or interest in the carrot or stick for encouragement. Although you can be independent to the point of contrariness, and maddeningly aloof and blasè, your self-reliance is a model for and stabilizing influence upon other people.

From both the mathematical and symbolical points of view, the weekday you were born is analogous to your rising sign in conventional astrology, and your planetary hour ruler is analogous to your sun sign. Although it is possible to place all the planets – not just the sun – in the scheme of 24 planetary hours, the calculations for doing this are complex. What standard tables of planetary hours show is the sun’s position in the 24 hours.

What your conventional sun sign shows is a somewhat ostentatious and manipulative side of your personality – the way in which you bid for power and control. By contrast, your planetary hour ruler shows your most decisive and confident mode of action – how you behave when you are free of all doubt, hesitation, or ulterior motive. It shows how you are able to inspire yourself, and by extension, how you are most able to inspire others.

Tables of Planetary Hours can be downloaded for free from www.dearbrutus.com => Makransky Miscellany => Astrology Articles => Planetary Hours. This is an Excel worksheet and is self-explanatory, except that when you open it, it asks if you want to enable the macros. You must click on “enable macros” for it to function properly. If it doesn’t work then it might be in design mode: click on View => Toolbars => Control Toolbox; then click on the upper left-hand icon (“Exit Design Mode”).

SUN HOUR: You are bright, exuberant, positive, and have a winning personality. You take great pride in your personal fitness, and you cultivate at least one interest or area in life in which you are thoroughly expert and competent. You are lordly and gracious without being snobbish or stuffy. Indeed, your personal flair and idiosyncracies are your most delightful assets; you charge off like Don Quixote with complete assurance and faith. You have a conspiratorial twinkle in your eye and a sense about you like a little kid up to no good. Your dashing self-confidence and good-natured panache captivate other people and assuage any difficult situation.

MOON HOUR: You are moody, changeable, wistful, and other-worldly. Your gentleness and sense of pathos tend to arouse the protective instincts in others. You like things simple and straightforward, and always need to find a basis of harmony and accord. You are by no means a patsy or pushover, but rather don’t feel any overriding need to defend your point of view. You don’t so much shun harshness as you willingly bear trials and tribulations without complaint. You maintain a cheerful, philosophical, and consoling attitude which eschews blame or remorse.

MERCURY HOUR: You are objective, inquisitive, and have a light touch with others. Albeit sociable, you are emotionally remote. You play the role of detached spectator or impartial arbiter, not because you’re afraid to stand up for your beliefs, but because your reach is for understanding rather than proving that you’re right. In fact, you have a highly original point of view and a wry sense of humor, together with a fine appreciation of the ironies of existence. Without especially trying to, you make a favorable impression on people because you are fair, high-minded, and more interested in communicating clearly than in imposing your own ideas.

VENUS HOUR: You are sociable, playful, and devil-may-care. You have an easy manner and a soft, non-assertive approach to other people. You are not so much pliant or indolent as you are blithe and indifferent. You are always able to find some level on which you can enjoy yourself, come what may. You take a creative approach to life, and are able to lavish your complete attention on any relationship or hobby which excites your interest. Although you can have a complacent, self-satisfied streak, your buoyant good humor enlivens any group you are in.

MARS HOUR: You are gutsy, spunky, and never say die. You have a critical, analytical mind and a willingness to roll up your sleeves and get down to work at whatever business is at hand. You are proud of your ability to reason things out, and to take complete responsibility for yourself and the situation in which you find yourself. You are willing (and indeed prefer) to go it alone rather than compromise your own personal vision and designs. Although you can be impatient, argumentative, and authoritarian, your pioneering spirit and utter faith in your own powers makes you a steadying influence on others.

JUPITER HOUR: You are expansive, outgoing, and optimistic. You throw yourself into your work and relationships with unstinting vigor and joie de vivre. You feel the most alive when you are sharing common goals, interests, and experiences. Although you drive yourself with a high-wire energy, you are patient and accepting in your dealings with others. You are a good teacher and organizer because you are willing to give others the benefit of the doubt. You are conscientious and fair, and are a model to others of unselfishness, keen insight, and whole-hearted enthusiasm.

SATURN HOUR: You are grave, determined, and indomitable. You have a heavy, brooding, grumpy air and a low, daunting growl, which effectively prevents others from trying to cross you. You are hard, tough, and cannot be deflected from the path beneath your feet. You depend upon no one but yourself, and are ready to go to any extreme or take on any burden single-handedly rather than surrender an inch of your independence. You are not so much uncooperative as disinterested; not so much unsympathetic as pitiless. Although you can be cool to the point of rudeness, you nonetheless inspire others with your activity and staunch singlemindedness.

More of Bob Makransky’s articles as well as a free downloadable Planetary Hours calculator are posted at: http://www.dearbrutus.com. To subscribe to Bob’s free monthly Astro-Magical e-zine, send an e-mail to: MagicalAlmanac-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

“I then asked (Dr. Steiner), ‘How can it happen that the spiritual impulse, and especially the inner schooling, for which you are constantly providing stimulus and guidance bear so little fruit? Why do the people concerned give so little evidence of spiritual experience, in spite of all their efforts? Why, worst of all, is the will for action, for the carrying out of these spiritual impulses, so weak?’

“Then came the thought-provoking and surprising answer: ‘This is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is today does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action.’”

– Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, from the introduction to

Agriculture – Eight Lectures by Rudolf Steiner

We all know that “you are what you eat”; and many of us are becoming aware that this maxim has a spiritual as well as a physical dimension. We know we simply feel better when we eat well – when our bodies, rather than our minds, dictate what we should eat or not eat. Many of us have experienced a complete change in attitude and outlook on life by simply changing our diets. Whole bodies of thought, such as the Jewish kosher laws and macrobiotics, have evolved to stress the spirituality of food, to emphasize its sacredness.

The “spiritual quality of food” is not a metaphor: food contains a light fiber energy which is as important to our sustenance as vitamins and proteins, but which is not susceptible to chemical analysis. And just as the vitamin and protein content of food can be diminished by processing or overcooking, so too can the light fiber content of food be diminished by disrespect.

Light fibers are actually the same things as good feelings. When we feel good, we literally glow. When a food plant or animal feels good, it glows. Even when it is killed for food, the glow remains as long as the killing was done with respect; that is, with a sense of connectedness and gratitude rather than mechanically.

A farmer puts the glow into his plants and animals by treating them with respect – by respecting their feelings. Practically all farmers farm for the love it; they sure don’t do it for the money. They feel joyous as they ride their tractors up and down their fields, and that good feeling is communicated to the soil and plants. Similarly, most dairy farmers not only address their cows as individuals, but they also develop quirky personal relationships with them. Therefore, from a light fiber point of view, our vegetable and milk supplies are still relatively safe. Most egg farms, on the other hand, are run like Auschwitz, and that’s what makes eggs poisonous to eat (not their cholesterol).

Not all cultures have been so cut off from their true feelings about food as ours is today. Many Native American tribes had a deep awareness that they were a part of what they ate – e.g., the buffalo. They lived with the buffalo, followed the buffalo, prayed to the buffalo. They were one with the buffalo, and thus to them eating was a sacrament. Modern Native Americans maintain that same attitude of reverence towards maize.

But in America today we mine food, extract the nutrients out of it, strip it, rape it, and throw it away. What little nourishment for the spirit is left in food by modern agricultural and processing methods is completely destroyed by the way we eat it. We use food in a most disrespectful manner – stuffing it in gluttonously whether we are hungry or not, whether it tastes good or not, whether we really want it or not; and then we waste food as if to piss on it. Like sex, we have turned eating from a joyous, spiritual act into a source of great shame.

An infant doesn’t conceive of his food or his mother as something separate from himself; he doesn’t feel more important than his food, and therefore doesn’t feel disconnected from it. When an infant eats, he mingles with his food: he touches it, gets to know how it feels. It’s pretty, it satisfies his hunger, it makes him happy. But when an infant first sees adults eat, it makes him feel shame. This is because we adults don’t identify with our food – it’s as if our food is not a part of us, as if what we are putting into our mouths is something foreign to ourselves. We attack our food as if it is separate from us, and it is the act of eating which allows us to use it. We bite it off in huge mouthfuls like ravenous hyenas, chew it and swallow it with gulps of contempt. We come together in great rituals like Thanksgiving and Christmas in which we engage in orgies of gluttony and wastefulness to jointly validate our shame, all the while calling it glory. And that lie makes us even more ashamed; so we lie about that one too, and call it glory. And so on. And nobody will look at what they are really feeling, because if being pigs has brought us glory, why look at what pigs we are?

The reason why saints can survive on so little food is because they’re not attacking it, squeezing the life out of it, so it takes very little to sustain them. The Native Americans are able to survive on a diet of pretty much nothing but corn because they love the corn, and the corn loves them back, and they’re able to live from that love even though from the point of view of nutrition they should slowly starve to death.

While it is true that the original light fiber energy in food can be vitiated by disrespect anywhere along the line – in handling, processing, cooking, or eating – it is also true that light fiber energy, being more flexible than vitamins or proteins, can be restored to food by respecting it and treating it as sacred – by ritualizing the activities connected with it.

First of all, it’s important that you should raise at least some of your own food, even if all this means is a couple of pots of herbs or jars of sprouts grown on a window shelf. Try to throw in at least a pinch of home-grown herbs or sprouts into every meal you cook (not necessarily every dish, but every meal). Visualize yourself casting fibers of light into the food as you add your home-grown herbs or produce.

Next, bless your key, staple ingredients – salt, flour, sugar, honey, etc. You can ask any spirit helpers you are presently using to do this for you: Jesus or Mary, Krishna, nature spirits, etc. can all do the job for you. Just take them a pound of sugar, salt, or flour; address them in whatever form you are accustomed to; and ask them to please bless your ingredients. If you don’t have a spirit helper, just take the ingredients to the summit of the largest or most imposing mountain or hill in your immediate area; take the mountain spirit a token portion of something special you have cooked yourself as an offering; and ask him or her to please bless your ingredients. Don’t worry about whether you are doing it right: if you are doing it in good faith, you’re doing it right.

Keep your sacred, blessed ingredients apart from the regular ones, but whenever you refill the sugar bowl, salt shaker, flour bin, etc. add a pinch of the blessed ingredient, and imagine that you are putting light fibers in with the pinch.

Observe that you must never be in a bad mood when you cook, nor must you eat food cooked by someone who is in a bad mood, or even an indifferent one. A burger from a McDonald’s where the employees are a light, happy bunch has more light fiber energy than a plate of organic brown rice from a vegetarian restaurant where the cook is bored or is angry at the manager.

You can easily tell when food has bad vibes. It’s not that it tastes bad per se; rather, it feels wrong or out of place in your mouth – there’s no incentive to chew it and swallow it. Whenever you get a feeling like this about something you are eating, spit it out. Don’t swallow it, even to be polite. Much processed, convenience food “tastes” like this – bland, insipid, effete, enervated – but people get so used to this kind of food that they can’t tell the difference any more. They just assume that feeling lousy all the time is how you’re supposed to feel, and they cease to notice that it is their food which is bringing them down.

Finally, talk to your food. Thank it as if it were alive and could understand you. Not long conversation, just a simple acknowledgment that you are aware of being in the presence of a sentient being who is worthy of your respect, who died for you, and from whom you wish a favor. You wouldn’t ask a human being for a favor in a surly, disrespectful manner; on the contrary, you would ask humbly and respectfully, and feel gratitude for the favor when granted. And that is how you must address your food: take small bites, chew it slowly and mindfully, eat in silence paying attention to the act of eating, and never eat until full.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living)

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at: http://www.dearbrutus.com. To subscribe to Bob’s free monthly Astro-Magical e-zine, send an e-mail to: MagicalAlmanac-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

]]> http://www.oocuz.com/food-and-drink/cooking-tips/spiritual-cookery.html/feed/ http://www.oocuz.com/home-and-family/landscape-garden/spiritual-gardening.html http://www.oocuz.com/home-and-family/landscape-garden/spiritual-gardening.html#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:12:57 +0000 BobMak Landscape-Garden http://www.oocuz.com/home-and-family/landscape-garden/spiritual-gardening.html The time when humankind decided to move from silent knowledge to reason was the same time it moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Agriculture was not undertaken because big game had died off, or any such reason, but rather because humanity wanted to experiment with thinking, social organization, etc. The human and grain gods made a deal at that point to help each other out. A similar deal was struck with e.g. the bovine god. Cows, in return for the loss of a certain measure of freedom (reduction to the status of property, having their children taken away from them, etc.), received in return freedom from random predators and the condition of something to be protected and defended by some pretty intense little monkey-like creatures.

Similarly, the way back to silent knowledge is through hunting. However it is possible to apply much silent knowledge to the practice of agriculture – hence these lessons.

Q: How should I control insects and diseases in my garden?

A: Put three pieces of copal (or any acrid incense, such as patchouli) in your censer, and waft the smoke towards each infected plant as you walk down the row. At the same time, ask the afflicting agent to please leave your plants alone because you need them. You should feel as though the incense smoke is carrying your thought towards the plants. It’s a good idea to leave a plant or two (maybe the one or ones at the end of each row, so you remember) for the insects or disease. Don’t waft incense at these plants. Tell the insects or disease that these plants are for them. Be nice about it. Be sincere. Mean what you say. Say it out loud.

Frankincense (or any light, happy incense such as sandalwood) is used to prevent disease and insect infestations (where copal is used to cure infected plants). Waft the incense towards each plant in turn, sending that plant the wish that it will grow well and be fruitful. It is best to be naked when you do this (or any gardening), simply because that is the most joyous way of doing it. This means gardening at night, in the moonlight, so the neighbors won’t see you.

Q: Will this method work for anyone?

A: It will work for anyone who believes in it and means what they are telling the animals or plants. Actually, the incense is completely unnecessary. That’s just for you, to help you pay attention to what you’re doing and give you the sense that you’re doing something “magical”. It’s the thoughts and desires that you have and express that are the gist of the matter.

Q: What do I do about gophers?

A: Dig out the gophers’ burrow and put a trap in it, to trap one gopher. It must be a trap which catches the gopher alive and unhurt. Take the captured gopher to a cage in a dark, protected place, and give it food and water every day. Talk to it gently when you bring its food and water. Tell it you won’t hurt it – in fact, you’ll let it go – but it must take a message back to its brothers.

Keep this up (talking gently to the gopher when you feed it) until you have gained its trust. This doesn’t mean friendship or petting it, but rather until it knows it has nothing to fear from you. How long this takes will depend upon you and the gopher. When you sense that it is calm (unthreatened) in your presence, tell it that it and all its brother gophers must leave your garden and orchard. Appoint some other place on your land where you don’t care if there are gophers, and tell the captured gopher that it and its fellows must move to this other place. If you want to sweeten the deal, promise that you’ll plant sweet potatoes or beets at this other place just for them. If you do make a promise like this, you must keep it.

Then, after repeating this message to the captured gopher for some days (until you feel it has “understood”), release the gopher back into its tunnel, bidding it to take this message to its fellows.

This same method will work for cutter ants. Stand over their trail while they are working (it won’t work if they can’t hear you), and ask them to please find food in some other direction, as you need these trees yourself. Be polite. One such treatment should be enough. If it isn’t, repeat the next day, but ask them why they didn’t obey you the first time. Write down their answer as you are writing this (by automatic writing). You may have to work out some sort of compromise or make a deal with them.

Q: What about planting our own bananas?

A: Bananas are your angels. Anything coming from them is love – love – love, from the tenderness of young leaves to happy, humorous browning splotched leaves, to the spongey, thick, soggy stems. And the tall, older leaves. They all fully participate in love. Of all plants, these will give and receive love more than any other. Their blessings come down with a gentle, steady flow of love droplets.

This is why you must always have bananas growing close to wherever you live (preferably fruiting, not ornamental, varieties). If you ever go North at least grow one as a pot plant. There is no greater gift you can give to those in the North than these plants.

Q: What about Biodynamic techniques?

A: Yes. Steiner’s techniques as enunciated in his lectures on agriculture are excellent. He was a genius, and in touch with the spirit keepers of agricultural knowledge (as were also the founders of Findhorn). However, Steiner’s techniques are no more valid than the ones we are channeling to you; they are merely more detailed, more specific, and more complex. A professional farmer would do well following Steiner. And anyone who elects to use Steiner’s methods would do better making the formulations themselves rather than buying them ready-made. The important thing is to put one’s own, personal vibration into the soil and plants. Stirring plain water – joyously – for hours and then spraying it on the soil or plants is better than using store-bought formulations and not stirring long enough, or stirring without a joyous heart. Everything you do in agriculture should be done with joy, or else you are better off not doing it at all. Fortunately agriculture is innately a joyous occupation, so this isn’t hard to do.

Q: Steiner had a lot of wacky techniques for dealing with weeds, insects, and disease; but even Pfeiffer and his other followers admit they don’t work. Why not?

A: Because they doubt they’d work. It is your (and Pfeiffer’s) doubt that keeps these techniques from working. If you had no doubt whatsoever that they’d work, they’d work.

That’s the only reason your rationalist / materialistic world “works” – that when you turn on a TV, it turns on – is because you believe it. If you believed in these techniques with the same certainty that you believe turning a key in an ignition will start a car, then they would work.

Q: How should I graft?

A: As usual. However, fill the censer with frankincense (or sandalwood). Cense the tree from which the scions are to be taken. Tell it that you are sorry to hurt it, but that the twigs you are taking will become new little trees. Ask if this is okay.

Cense the scions with the wish that they take and prosper. Cense the rootstocks and apologize for hurting them, and tell them they will be getting new “heads” which are more productive, and that they will soon be living in the actual earth. If you feel that a particular scion or rootstock objects, then don’t graft that one. It wouldn’t take anyway. Then graft as usual, but as you do each graft talk to the stock and scion and wish them well, that they may join and prosper and be fruitful.

After grafting, run your hand gently up the rootstock and scion, and as you do so visualize in your mind’s eye the graft taking and healing, the tree growing from a sapling to a young tree to a mature tree; and as your hand passes above the top of the scion, look up and see the mature tree full of fruit.

Then bend down and kiss the graft, with the wish that it will take and the tree prosper. Do this with true love and good feeling. And then commend the tree to the earth.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living)

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at: http://www.dearbrutus.com. To subscribe to Bob Makransky’s free monthly Astro-Magical e-zine, send an e-mail to: MagicalAlmanac-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

]]> http://www.oocuz.com/home-and-family/landscape-garden/spiritual-gardening.html/feed/ http://www.oocuz.com/home-and-family/landscape-garden/communicating-with-plants.html http://www.oocuz.com/home-and-family/landscape-garden/communicating-with-plants.html#comments Tue, 03 Oct 2006 20:46:28 +0000 BobMak Landscape-Garden Happiness http://www.oocuz.com/home-and-family/landscape-garden/communicating-with-plants.html Plants’ experience of being in the world is very different from the experience of us animals. Because plants cannot move about, they exist in a state of profound acceptance and peace within themselves. Emotions such as fear, hate, jealousy, possessiveness, etc. are wholly unknown to plants and would serve no useful purpose. On the other hand, plants are capable of experiencing a wide range of higher emotions the like of which we animals could scarcely conceive.

At the same time, there are feelings which plants share with us animals, such as love, pain, joy, thirst, etc. It is the feelings we share with plants which provide the basis of our ability to communicate with them.

Feeling with plants is not so different from feeling with people. For example, when we are about to have sex with someone who really turns us on, we feel a palpable surge of sexual energy connecting us to that person. Similarly, when we walk into a room to face someone who is madder than hell at us, we feel connected to that person by a palpable wave of anger and fear. When a baby smiles at us, we feel a rush of joy that has us automatically smile back. However, most of our interactions with other people do not have this feeling of connectedness and emotional immediacy. Most of the time we don’t even look the people we are addressing in the eye, let alone feel with them. Because of our social training, we tend to regard sharing feelings with other people as threatening. We are taught to close up and defend ourselves, and to keep our interactions as sterile and devoid of feeling as possible.

In order to communicate with plants (or people), you have to be able to regard them as your equals. If you are afraid (ashamed) to talk with homeless people, beggars, crazy people, etc. then you’ll also find it difficult to talk with plants. However, it’s actually easier to communicate with plants than it is to communicate with people because plants don’t have defenses and self-importance agendas in place which engage our own defenses and self-importance agendas. To feel with plants (or people) doesn’t mean to gush all over them; all it means is to recognize them as beings whose feelings are as important to them as your feelings are to you.

When first learning to communicate with plants, it helps to be in contact with the same individual plants on a daily basis. Ideally you should go out, preferably alone, to the same tree or meadow for at least a few minutes every day. If you can’t do this, cultivating garden or house plants will work just as well, although it’s easiest to communicate with large trees. This is because from a feeling (light fiber) point of view, humans and trees are very much alike – the light fiber (auric glow) configurations of both humans and trees are quite similar, whereas that of insects, for example, is very different from either. It is easier for humans and trees to communicate with each other than it is for either to communicate with insects.

Now even the least psychic person, going up to a large tree, should be able to pick up something of the personality (mood) of that tree. How does the tree make you feel – happy, sad, loving, jolly, heavy? Can you pick up its sex: sense a male or female presence – or its age: young and vigorous or old and mellow?

This isn’t all that hard to do – you can call upon your senses to buttress your feelings, as in the exercise of seeing pictures in the clouds, except that you do it by feeling rather than thinking – by relaxing into the process rather than controlling it. It’s exactly what a rationalist would term “anthropomorphism.”

For example, spiky trees (like palmettos and Joshua trees) have a sassy, masculine energy. Cedar trees tend to be clowns or wise guys. Banana trees are joyous and loving. Weeping trees really do have a doleful air about them. Tall, erect trees have proud and regal personalities. Trees that seem to be reaching longingly for the heavens are reaching longingly for the heavens.

A good time to learn to connect emotionally with trees is when they’re dying. The next time you see a tree being felled, pause and quiet down your thoughts and watch it attentively. You should easily be able to feel the tree’s agony just before it falls, since trees (and all beings) are filled with power at the moment of their deaths and profoundly affect the beings around them. Loggers triumphantly yell “Timber!” when a tree falls to cover their sense of shame and disconnectedness – to block communication with the tree at the moment of its death.

Another good time to pick up on plants’ feelings is when they are in motion. Plants are happiest when they are moving – blown by the wind and the rain. Wave back to them when they wave at you (it’s only polite). Watch how they dance in the breeze. See how the trees which overhang roads and walkways cast down blessings on all who pass beneath them. See how the young growing tips are more alert, vigorous, and naively impetuous than the older and mellower lower leaves. Be aware of the awareness of plants: when you walk through a wood or meadow, feel as though you were walking through a crowd of people, all of whom are watching you.

Some people pick up on the feelings of plants by seeing faces in the bark or foliage. They impose that thought form (of a face with a giggly, dour, saucy, etc. expression) over the feeling of the tree, since that’s how most people are conditioned to interpret feelings – by associating them with facial expressions.

What we’re tying to get at are feelings, which can be apprehended directly, without any need for sensory cues. However, the senses can provide a useful point of reference and serve as a bridge between imagination and pure feeling, which is how they function in dreams. When you see with your feelings rather than your mind, your visual attention isn’t focused on any one thing, but rather everything within your field of vision strikes your attention with equal impact (vividness), as it does in dreams. To see this way you have to have your mind quiet, and you have to be in a joyous and abandoned mood. If you’re bummed out or grumpy, you won’t be able to see what plants are feeling any more than you’d be able to see a baby smile at you.

Much of our social training entails learning to stifle our senses – to not see what is right before our eyes, to not listen to what our ears are hearing, to be offended by smells, discomfited by touch. Cutting off our senses leaves us feeling apathetic and disconnected from our world. Therefore, if we want to renew our feeling of connectedness which we had as infants, we have to start plugging our senses into our feelings again. And because they are so nonthreatening, feeling with plants is a good place to start.

Not only do different species of plants have different feelings associated with them, but also there is considerable individual variation in personalities between different plants of the same species, between different branches on the same plant, and even between different leaves on the same branch. By lightly holding a leaf for a moment between your thumb and forefinger, you can feel which leaves want to be picked for medicine or food purposes and which ones want to be left alone. The leaves that want to be picked have a high, vibrant feel to them, whereas leaves that don’t want to be picked feel dead in your hand.

Even if you can’t seem to tune in to the feelings of plants, you can still telepathically “talk” with them. Plants can talk to you in thoughts, and these (at first) seem indistinguishable from your own thoughts. That is, it will seem to you that you are the one who is thinking these thoughts, when in fact it is the plants which are sending you messages. That’s why it’s important to have your own mind as quiet as possible – to be in a relaxed mood – if you expect plants to talk to you; if your own mind is buzzing, there’s no way the plants can get a word in edgewise. Any thoughts or feelings you have while sitting under a tree or working with plants are probably messages from the plants.

So how do you know if you are actually communicating with a plant, and not just imagining it? The answer is: you don’t. You just go with your intuition rather than going with your concepts, what you’ve been taught. Instead of hypnotizing yourself into believing that the world of concepts is reality, you hypnotize yourself into believing that the world of feelings – of magic – is reality. The only difference between these two equally valid points of view is that from one of them plants talk to you, and from the other they don’t.

If you feel self-conscious talking to plants, just remember that what you have been programmed to call the “real” world is merely a figment of your imagination also. And if you start calling something else the real world, then that something else becomes the real world; it becomes as real as this one.

If you’re dubious, just ask the plant over and over, “Is this you, Mr. or Ms. Plant talking to me, or am I just imagining it?” And if you keep getting the same answer over and over, “It’s me, the plant! It’s me, the plant!” – then just assume that it is indeed the plant talking to you, and listen to what it has to say. You can ask questions and get answers, both questions and answers coming as though you were holding a conversation in your own mind.

It’s easy to learn to talk with house and garden plants, since these are particularly eager to discuss matters such as fertilization, watering, shade, grafting and transplanting techniques, etc. But in addition to such mundane affairs, plants (particularly large trees) can give you helpful advice on all sorts of matters. Take them your problems; ask them what they think you should do. Some of my best friends and most trusted advisors are trees.

Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, you are already communicating with plants all the time. The soothing, healing, tranquilizing feeling that comes when you are gardening or are out in nature is in fact your psychic attunement to the joyous vibrations of the plants around you. To follow this feeling one step further – to its source – is to put yourself into direct communication with the plants. It’s as easy as smiling at a baby.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living)

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Bob Makransky is a systems analyst, programmer, and professional astrologer. For the past 30 years he has lived on a farm in highland Guatemala where he is a Mayan priest and is head of the local blueberry growers association. Check out his books, articles, FREE MONTHLY ASTRO-MAGICAL E-ZINE, free downloadable Mayan Horoscope software, free instructions on how to channel and run past life regressions, short stories, cartoons, etc. etc. at: http://www.dearbrutus.com