Son Colin wanted me to listen to this 90 minute podcast. So I saved it for last night’s 2 a.m. wake-up time.
Trying to remember now what Cliff was talking about. Funny how even his wilder theories can hold me riveted all the way through and yet I cannot recall anything beyond flashes! Most likely because so many of his views are utterly beyond any frame of comprehension I’m familiar with.
One thing that did strike me, as both simple and profound: his clear-eyed view of depression and anxiety. Something like this: “Depression is being stuck in the past. Anxiety is being stuck in the future. So few people are present!” In other words, either regretting or longing for something that used to be or never was (depression) or hoping, wishing, fearing an imagined future (anxiety) are both aspects of the monkey mind, chattering away about what is not NOW. I imagine that all so-called psychiatric mental disorders can be boiled down some combination of these two ways we keep ourselves from surrendering to the underlying and omniprescient awareness.
On the other hand, since I am an astrologer and somewhat familiar with both vedic and western astrology, I find that his view of astrology is so strange that it makes me at least initially question anything else he says!
Clif claims that the “sidereal zodiac” (and vedic Indian astrology) is “valid,” but not the “tropical zodiac” (and western astrology).
Why? Because . . .
“Sideral zodiac more accurately reflects a non-Earth view of what’s going on in our solar system.”
Huh? Actually, both tropical and sidereal zodiacs are earth-centered. The difference between them, in terms of their cosmology, is that tropical confines itself to earth’s relationship to its own local solar system, whereas the sidereal, which, in 2018 locates planets 24° behind their tropical positions, situates Earth and the planets with the constellations behind, so that the sidereal zodiac, but not the tropic zodiac, is transparent to the stars beyond.
For a deeper look at the complexity of differences between tropical and sidereal, see this podcast.
An astrology chart that “more accurately reflects a non-Earth view of what’s going on in our solar system” is the heliocentric chart, which presents the solar system, on the day of one’s birth, viewed from the point of view of the Sun.
All three charts are “valid,” and useful; each has its own rules for interpretation and refers to a different context for comprehending one’s place in life. I use all three of them, on occasion, though my main work is in the tropical system.
But in any case, if you have the time, do listen to Clif. He will literally blowyour mind wide open, which, as far as I’m concerned is always recommended.
