Thursday, January 28, 2010

Astrology and MCS: more about boundaries




Personality

personal beliefs, expectations, desires, values, and behaviors that derive from the interaction between culture and the individual. Personality is the behaviors and techniques for solving problems that are used by an individual. Personality is to the individual as culture is to the group.


The building crew next door -- three guys, have dug out a deep hole for a new basement, created a french-drain of sorts that channels the persistent appearance of the old stream beds that retain the character of Everett's wetland history; and now as I peak through the slated window blinds, I see those guys walking on stout beams at a height way above my head.  There is progress going on and the noise to boot.  Tucked as we are on the other side of D and L's home, most of the noise and an option to avoid the potential toxicity of treated material are mine.  In a similar way my progress has risen like the framing next door.  Two years ago, any construction would have catapulted me into flight, mattering not the reality that I had no other place to be.  Things in my life are progressing at turtle like speed ... plodding would be accurate.  Three months now, we are parked here in the Mill Town of Everett, Washington a place I had placed on my "I'll never live there again list."  Here I be, in a basement living space within a weak stone's throw from a major building project and we're living here.

Two years of progress shows itself in subtle ways, invisible to the others bloggers like me and scores of others now, mark the progress of life with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Environmental Illness and associated maladies that either came before or after diagnosis.  Having access to the internet opens up the community of Sensitives or Canaries to the diverse ways we live with the illnesses.  Earlier this week Pete and I joined more than a dozen friends who live with MCS at our annual Holiday party.  This is an event of great significance to people who have MCS in its varied states of severity or ease.  It is not easy to find one place that is comfortable for a dozen humans with multiple chemical sensitivities.  Fortunately, our friend G has a home that fits that description, and so the party was wonderful.  More at ease and relaxed with folks who not only 'get' the issue ... we all have 'it'... the practice of social interaction becomes one more source of evidence that life is progressing in the right direction.  Each of our friends comes with his or her unique personality and circumstances.  A hand-ful of these folks are still part of the working class.  Funny, I find that phrase strange.  It means there are people with MCS, that I know, who function, either as a result of improved and recovered health, or have a different level of sensitivities and can go to a job/maintain an in-home business.  Nearly all the friends in this group live and own their homes or apartments. One friend rents a very long time rental.  Pete and I are the only wandering wheelie home folks.  We gather to share food, enjoy each others company and share in a circle of telling, one of the highlights (a positive) from the year just finished.  This time, the sharing included examples of many different sorts of plodding positive work:  a longer walk this year than last, excellent results with monthly EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) treatments, time spent during the final days of a loved ones life, a first time plane ride in 12 years, a poet grows stronger in voice and on the page, another witnesses things just working out, a storyteller reads her fairy tale aloud.  The night was special and though tiring, the effort was rewarded in spades.

In another life, groups were a regular part of my experience.  I facilitated groups for a living, organized them for all sorts of reasons and joined a couple when it was necessary to have the support of others who could understand what it was like to believe you could stop someone from drinking themselves to death.  I reflect on those decades and see how my social network worked for me then.  Now, that network needs to be rebuilt.  In the most positive of ways I am learning to recreate my network of support with healthier boundaries.  The demanding limits of a life which will stop you short with a whiff of someone else's heavily scented laundry soap or perfume switches up the way you care for yourself.  When you can no longer live/rent/own the cute house down the block because it makes you sick, something very primal kicks in and that's where the personality after diagnosis becomes important.  I am learning to stick up for me in all the right ways; and in big and small ways.
Astrology has become one of the tools I value most at this stage of my healing journey.  Several astrologers on the internet contribute insight and understanding that appeals to the Uranus (spontaneous change-agent) in me.  That planet resides in my 6th house, the house of health and creativity.  Intuitively I sensed a clue to my well-being might be found by exploring Uranus in my house of health.  Thanks to Kachina, who authors the blog "Into the Mystic" who has just done a short reading for me, that intuitive hunch is being affirmed.  Among the gems of insight Kachina offered me a connection between my personality and my journey with chemical sensitivities.  To paraphase her thought, "if my personality is adapted too severely, it will show up as a toxic over-load on the physical level."  I am a Scorpio with a heavily packed 8th House (legacies, other people's money/resources, birth, re-birth) and I am always on the look-out for signs and indicators.  It's important for me to know who I am:  fancy that!  At 62, I must still do the self-caring work that sets the boundaries of who I am by knowing what I need, knowing how to communicate those needs, and do it as if my life depended upon it.

Donna Cunningham has an exquisitely timed guest blogger's post by Irene Matiatos PhD on Skywriter today.  It's just the kind of reminder I need to keep my relationships, my social networks and my intimate relationships clean and clear.  The article/post is entitled "6 Common Misconceptions about Boundaries in a Relationship."  Astrologically, Saturn is in Libra (the planet of boundaries is in the sign of relationships).  It's a perfect time for me, and any body on the planet Earth, to sniff the area for signs of healthy or sick boundaries.  I know this is big stuff for me, and I will plod along with it.

Do you have healthy boundaries in your relationships?






6 comments:

Donna Cunningham said...

HI, Mokihana,Thanks for your thoughts here, as I'm seeing that there are probably metaphysical as well as physical connections between boundary problems and MCS. It might be that some cases of MCS are in part related to living in a situation where one's boundaries are seriously infringed.

My small experience of people who are developing sensitivity to foods, environmental toxins, or workplace chemicals is that of Neptune aspects by transit, especially in the first or sixth house of the chart.

In the sixth, a long Neptune transit can go along with a deep dissatisfaction with the job or career coupled with an inability to mobilize themselves to make the change--perhaps along with a situation where they don't have a choice about working.

IN light of this exchange (plus my article the other day on Skywriter about bullying) it may be that Neptune in the 6th--either by transit or natally--shows a problem establishing boundaries in the workplace and thus perhaps being exploited.

Then MCS could possibly be a response--AND possibly a strategy the body employs so that the person can legitimately say, "I can't possibly go on working here. My health is at risk."

(Although food sensitivities or an allergic temperament are more often are seen with Virgo placements like the Ascendant or Moon, and may occur with transits to those placements, or under a transit tgo the Moon--especially Neptune transits.)

A useful exchange, M.

Donna Cunningham, http://skywriter.wordpress.com

Mokihana Calizar said...

Donna,

Thanks for your response and your expansion on the connection between Neptune transits to the 6th house (of health and creativity). Personally, Neptune was long in transit opposing Mars for two years just now past. Those were the harshest of times and the beginning of our life on the road with MCS.

Metaphysical and organic physical reactivity in the form of multiple chemical sensitivities and allergies form a complex reality. I have found it thus. Using the pathways of astrology along with all the other clues and cues from spiritual work, energy attending and the physical toxics which are assaulting (is that Neptune's kuleana "area of responsibility)...living with and healing through is an individual path.

I love the unfolding of methods and madness. Scorpio infused charts like mine need that. Thanks again, there's a good mystery afoot and happy to have you in the mix, Donna.

Mahalo,
Mokihana

Mokihana Calizar said...

Linda,
Okay.
M

Mokihana Calizar said...

Donna,
Re: the bully in the workplace and a reaction such as "I can't possibly work there ..." This has been my history just prior to the intense on-set of severe MCS. As I reflect on my part on it, I see that the bully can be an insider as well as the one working from the outside; boundary setting has long been an issue for me.

Mokihana

Donna Cunningham said...

Wow, that is interesting, the bullying and the onset of the MCS. There's an intricate relationship between Pluto and Neptune (Scorpio and Pisces).

It's partly because for over 30 years, Pluto and Neptune were sextile one another in the sky. Every person born on earth in those years had the sextile in their charts, and so the degree numbers were roughly the same.

Thus every planet that Pluto aspected, Neptune also aspected, though at a different type of angle. If Pluto was strongly featured in a chart, then so was Neptune. It's hard to sort out which part of a picture like MCS belongs to Pluto and which to Neptune. Interesting stuff!
Donna Cunningham, Skywriter

Mokihana Calizar said...

Donna,

The sextile, the interconnection between Neptune and Pluto: is that sextile history now? I have been told by two other astrologers that Neptune "could likely" affect my path and specifically health and the way in which my physical presence appears on Earth. In other words, my Capricorn Moon in the 12th house aspecting or being affected by Uranus-Neptune in the 6th. Now that last sentence is something I write with intuitive connectedness and a recent reading; I use it to navigate my present knowing MCS is a complex condition that requires all the tools available to build re-build and shore up self-esteem.

Interested, yes. Your insight adds such value.