Is the Shit Coming Up?

1.31.05

Are you pushing it through, and pushing through it?

It is not distasteful. It is not gross. See it for what it is: the residual waste byproduct of chewing up, swallowing and gradually digesting the meat-and-potatoes of your life's experience.

Yes, there were some mighty big bites to gnaw and chaw away at, scattered among the nibbles and scraps… sometimes too much to hold in your mouth at one time, requiring you to spit it out into your hand, to sample littler bits at a time, in order to get it all down.

But once this fuel is entirely in us, the process continues. Invisible to our eyes, but churning through our abdomens. Situations and events we live through—this vital sustenance we introduce into our systems—do not disappear without a trace, simply because we decide we're done. There's always an 'after' to every last 'during'. Digestion is karma; cause, then effect.

At just the right time, it pushes from inside. Wanting out.

Those traces of yesterday, craving their expulsion, though we may not be ready to bid them adieu. Emotions—and our fear of feeling them ('will they overwhelm me?')—could drive us to clench and hold back. We're angry and resentful about the meal-deal we got served. Beneath that, we hurt like rejected babies.

Where our lived moments were ugly or painful, we may not welcome the chance to revisit their stanky remnants. Yet, if we don't escort their residue back out, it stays crammed within our innards. Taking up space; obstructing.

Let it out. No need to hold this hardening past, in intestinal blockage or energy suckhole. What will surface, if permitted, is something other than what originally went down the hatch. It comes out as something else. Transformed. Even in its stench, a gift we give the world.

It is not bad. It is not wrong. Unashamed, we bring it forth, to let it go. Of you or of me, as of any one of us, we animals.

Following its release, we look at it. Inanimate and other. Then, leave it on the dung-heap. Wash hands. Move on.

The shit is being stirred courtesy of Mars and Pluto, exactly conjoined in Sagittarius last Friday and continuing to impact our lives with its ruthless force throughout the week. 'Let us through! Let it out!' this most domineering of dynamic aspects cries out. In last week's writings, I characterized Mars/Pluto as the duo who shoves their way into the party and commands the attention with blatant abandon. They decide how things should be, and then strong-arm the scene into submission.

Perhaps you noticed events forcibly leading in a certain direction over the past week…?

Was that course of your own determination? Are you steering the circumstances, or are the circumstances steering you? If being steered, are you fighting for or against? (The 'what' depends on what you determine to be worth it.)

One interpretation of Mars conjunct Pluto in Sag, which I referenced last week, is the opportunity to consciously push through all obstacles to grab at whatever we want. From another likely perspective, the obstacles push against us in order to make themselves known. (If 'obstacles' isn't quite the right word, try 'complications', 'unexplored passions' or 'deep-seated issues'…) We might not have known they were there. We possibly didn't want to know, or knew but defaulted to not-dealing.

Then, on our way to wherever we were headed, the shit stopped us dead in our tracks, challenging us to a duel on the spot…

…on the way to completing the stacks of paperwork filling your cubicle, you clash with your boss because he hasn't any idea of the significance those papers hold… you hate his incompetence like you recoil from your abusive father's self-serving dominance, and you react with an unconscious fist, banging against cabinets… on your path to making more money, you're forced to redefine what to do with your life, or the free-flowing pursuit of the funds might just slaughter your spirit… but if you think the answer will come before you address those addictions, tendencies to stuff full of food in front of the big glowing box until you expire, you're in denial, again… in prison, again, of your own making, and if you didn't hate your parents so much, you wouldn't hate your boss and all authorities, the red target on your back spelling arrest… you owe the world your vote for freedom, even if massacred waiting in line to cast another voice against the old regime, at least you stand firm in being qualified for the next big job and ready to wrap the current mess and fly away to other cities, ready to do something else… lining the stairs to ascent are heaping mounds of steaming shit, polluting airwaves, sticking out of which are papers you must dig out and sort and finish and file away… and at the corner of the bar, what's that odor… a dog laying a turd… it's not your shit this one last time, though still you smell it…

Plow through to clear out the path.

Don't try to go around, only to find even larger heaps lining the side of the road. Go through it, quick and real and decidedly less painless, though by no means pleasant. Go all the way with it. Extreme's in the air. You might be wrong, but you'll never know until you stand behind the belief, lived to its utmost expression.

Do it to find out. If you can't stand there, aware and unashamed, your supposed beliefs don't match up with your life.