{"id":599,"date":"2015-06-29T03:13:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T03:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/?p=599"},"modified":"2015-06-29T03:13:49","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T03:13:49","slug":"psychological-self-understanding-astrology-and-holistic-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/psychological-self-understanding-astrology-and-holistic-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychological  Self-Understanding, Astrology, and Holistic Health"},"content":{"rendered":"[Note: This is an excerpt from my book \"Electrical Christianity: A Revolutionary Guide to Jesus' Teachings and Spiritual Enlightenment.\"]<br \/>\r\n<br \/>\r\nKen Wilber acknowledges the enneagram (a ninefold typology of personality types), but not astrology, as a means to psychological self-understanding. Unbeknownst to Wilber, the enneagram is derived from astrology, which subsumes and transcends it as a system of human classification and understanding. The nine enneagram types mirror the \u201cqualities,\u201d \u201ctraits,\u201d or \u201cenergies\u201d of the first nine astrological planets\u2014Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto is missing because the enneagram originated prior to the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Consequently, even on a superficial level, the enneagram is an incomplete tool for self- and other-understanding. But because Wilber is partially buried in the very zeitgeist \u201cflatland\u201d he heavily criticizes, he buys into the conventionally acceptable enneagram while rejecting the far more complete occult oversystem of astrology, from which it derives. Wilber rejects astrology because various studies have found it an ineffective predictive tool. But the findings of these studies are not surprising, because the \u201cstars\u201d only impel, they do not compel. Person-centered astrology, which holistically oriented astrologers practice, is not about fortune telling; it is about deciphering psychical tendencies. And because these tendencies are contextual\u2014existing within a particular human being who is a product of unique heredity and social conditioning\u2014an astrologer can only be effective when he considers a chart integrally: that is, relative to a whole person. Such an \u201cintegral\u201d consideration elevates astrology from a \u201chorizontal\u201d (conventional or flat) typology to a \u201cvertical,\u201d or multi-level, tool of self- and other- understanding. Moreover, it enables a psychologist to apply it to almost any field of psychology, such as humanistic, cognitive, sociocultural, psychodynamic, and learning.<br \/>\r\n<br \/>\r\nAstrology is a nonpareil tool for deciphering the soul-matrix, the blueprint or map of an individual\u2019s karma, or inborn seed-tendencies, which manifest as his personality and life-energies. A competent professional astrologer can teach a client far more about himself\u2014his personal strengths and weaknesses and areas of harmony and disharmony\u2014than any conventional psychologist. Even the Myers-Briggs personality types, which Ken Wilber acknowledges in his Integral Psychology, can be subsumed under astrology. The four fundamental personality types in Myers-Briggs\u2014feeling, sensation, intuition, thinking\u2014correlate almost exactly with the four astrological elemental types\u2014water, earth, fire, and air. For example, if an individual has the majority of his astrological planets in Cancer, a water sign, his primary mode of interfacing with the world will be via the function of feeling. As a long-time professional astrologer, I could write volumes about astrology and its relation with psychology, but, again, I don\u2019t want to go off on a long tangent. So, all I will say here is that mainstream psychology has badly missed the boat by not utilizing astrology as a tool for soul-understanding, or psyche-ology; and to my mind, any practice of psychology that doesn\u2019t include astrology cannot be considered \u201cintegral.\u201d<br \/>\r\n<br \/>\r\nAstrology doesn\u2019t just provide insight into one\u2019s mind and personality; it\u2019s also a source of information about one\u2019s body and physical constitution. But an even better tool for \u201creading\u201d the human body is iridology (or iridiagnosis), analysis of the physical vehicle via examination of the iris, which reflects the inborn strengths and weaknesses and current condition of one\u2019s body\u2014organs, glands, nervous system, et al. Because a human being is a body-mind complex, a person\u2019s body and mind are inextricably linked. Consequently, when an iridologist examines an individual\u2019s iris, he sees not only his body, but to an extent his mind, reflected particularly in his inborn constitution and the current condition of his brain and nervous system. For example, if the iridologist notes heavy \u201cpressure\u201d on a particular region of the brain, indicated by markings in the iris, he\u2019ll know that the person has an ego problem and functions under extreme stress. Iridology is by no means the only modality for \u201creading\u201d the constitution and current condition of the body (and its relation to the mind), but to my knowledge, it is the best. An integral holistic healer, which is what a general psychologist (or \u201csoul doctor\u201d) should be, could also incorporate other tried-and-true tools of diagnosis, such as Indian Ayurveda, into his repertoire, and thus be able to obtain an even more complete picture of a client\u2019s psycho-physical state. And if a consideration of astrological transits (the current position of the planets relative to one\u2019s natal chart) were added to the mix, then the healer would have an integral picture of the client\u2019s body-mind condition and could recommend an appropriate holistic regimen to rejuvenate and balance his organism. Such a regimen would likely incorporate diet, herbs, and bodywork (including \u201cgross-body\u201d practices such as massage and chiropractic, and \u201csubtle-body\u201d ones such as acupuncture and jin shin jyutsu).","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Note: This is an excerpt from my book \"Electrical Christianity: A Revolutionary Guide to Jesus' Teachings and Spiritual Enlightenment.\"] Ken Wilber acknowledges the enneagram (a ninefold typology of personality types), but not astrology, as a means to psychological self-understanding. Unbeknownst to Wilber, the enneagram is derived from astrology, which subsumes and transcends it as a [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.electricalspirituality.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}