Eating Disorders Research

I’m looking for participants for a research project about the karmic sources of eating disorders.

The link between emotions and health, and the emotions we carry over from past lives as they affect our health now, has interested me for a while. I’ve decided to start my writing about health with this area, a personal interest of mine for as long as I can remember. The way I look at health in a chart is cutting edge, and I’m excited to share whatever I can to help people see health and wholeness in new ways.

If you have or have had any eating disorder (whether clinically diagnosed or living with a difficult or unhealthy relationship with food) and might consider participating, here’s the info:

What I’m Asking For: Your story and your birth data.
Your story would be a couple of (2, 3, 4?) paragraphs on your history with the eating disorder.
-how long you’ve had it.
-what was happening in your life when it began.
-what you understand the core feelings about it to be. (what do you feel/think it’s about? etc.)
-what if anything you’ve done to address it/heal, and what you felt during that process, whether you perceive that you were successful or not.
-whether you still have it or not. or are now living with it as an active part of your life, i mean.
Your birth data are day/month/year, time of day, and location of birth.

After reading that info from you, I may want to ask some questions before working on it, so perhaps also an e-mail dialogue sometime in the next few months.

What You’d Get
In a few months, a written chart analysis from me centered on the sources of the eating disorder as I see them through the lens of my understanding about karma.

My aim will be to give you some ideas about how to look at the situation differently, to support you in healing and moving beyond it. Or, if you no longer have it, to help you understand something new about why you had it.
You’d also be supporting me in developing tools to help other people with health concerns and issues. And isn’t that pretty rad??

What I’d Get
To use your (anonymous) story, (anonymous) birth data/chart and the analysis I send you in a writing project to help teach my approach to finding the karmic sources to health issues in a birth chart. It may be for my website or a journal or some other website, but will be published somewhere. I do work with clients on health issues frequently, but this is the first time I’ve organized a research project into a specific health issue.

Please write to me via my site to ask any questions you might have, and also please pass the word if you think of someone you know who might be interested.

E-mail me via my site (http://tdjacobs.com) if you’re interested in participating.

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website to order and to book a session.

Unraveling Karma Episode 6

Erin in Texas asks about her North Node ruler conjunct her South Node, and Melissa in Illinois asks about the source of her apathy.

Relationship Questions

Ask any astrologer what drives people to have readings and relationships are in the top 3, often number 1. The last few years I’ve been watching my take on relationships shift. And hey people, I’m headed into the Age of Aquarius, so things have to change. But so are you! In general, the Piscean Age of the last 2100 years is about dependency, and we’re at present being called to learn the Aquarian ideal of independence.

But don’t think that independence means that relationships don’t, can’t or shouldn’t exist. It’s just that they need to work a little differently. You need to be clearer about why you have them, what you’re willing to give (and what in there is healthy!), and how you exist in a state of learning to find balance, harmony and the right kinds of give and take.

Here are a few tips for that transition. These are just places to start, to get your mental juices flowing.

1. If you want to know when your dream relationship/soul mate will arrive on your doorstep, ask yourself who you’d get to be if you had it. What’s not in play that you’re waiting for someone else to come along? What wonderful thing about yourself are you waiting for someone else to bring out? Or maybe waiting for someone else to validate so you feel comfortable bringing it out?

2. If you want a relationship with someone already in your life, ask yourself who you’d get to be if you had it. What do you think that person has that can bring out? What do you think you need to bring that part of you out?

3. If you’re feeling you might need to make a change to a current relationship but are not sure, or are not sure how or why, ask yourself who you have to be to make the relationship work. Is that version of you complete? Are huge chunks left out? Or minor chunks that have turned out to be really important?

4. If you can’t let go of a former relationship, ask yourself who you got to be in that relationship. This is the key to why you

Notice a theme? It’s all about you. It turns out that other people show up to teach us stuff about us. In other words, all of our relationships are teachers for us, as are those with whom we have them.

Whatever’s happening, your invitation is to see about your own assumptions, expectations and blind spots. When things are rad we don’t tend to have an eye on what we might be learning, and when things are anything but rad we don’t tend to realize that we’re getting chances to learn about ourselves.

This is a different way of looking at relationships, I know. But you’re on your way to the Aquarian Age, too, aren’t you?

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website to order and to book a session.

Unraveling Karma Episode 5

Lori in Minnesota asks about the karmic source of a health issue. Kit in LA asks about what he’d be in for if he were to move to Paris.

Get Your Flashlights.

A handful of years ago a friend gave me some recordings of Barbara Marciniak channeling Pleiadians. I did some spotty listening at the time but couldn’t track the vibration. The last few days I’ve been listening to them in order. And this just came out of my computer speakers:

“If you can’t discuss something, then obviously that’s a tyranny. Whether it’s an internal tyranny or George Bush’s tyranny.”

They’re saying that if you aren’t willing to look into every corner of something to see what’s really happening, you’re not going to make progress.

Okay, you got me: I’m posting this for myself as a reminder of why it’s so important to say whatever needs to be said. My recent post on Lilith and pornography was posted, then unposted, and then I changed about four words and reposted it. As if changing four little words could alleviate the little lump in my throat. But by the time I republished it, I’d decided it had to stand, those things need to be said.

Looking into dark corners seems central to evolutionary astrology, as a main part of its focus is on Pluto, simultaneously representing the soul’s deepest intentions & desires and its deepest fears.

And I love it. I do. I have a craving for the truth to come out. If you come to see me as a client, I make it my job to help you see the source behind whatever it is you feel is out of balance. Whether that source is rooted in past or present life attitudes, beliefs, hopes, assumptions, relationships, dreams, blind spots, delusions…or anywhere else.

The tyranny the Pleiadians mention is the editing of reality. That we should fear seeing what’s really happening. And yet we’re waking up all over the place. So many more people are seeing that choosing to change is the way forward, regardless of what choice they make. Inner tyranny develops from our absorbtion of outer tyranny, and you and everyone else has the choice about whether to live as you know you truly are, or an edited version from someone else’s tyranny that you certainly can adopt.

More important than any details about your life is that you’re aware that you have the choice on how to live it. That what’s in place in your psyche that’s manifested in your outer living is the result of choices you’ve made. Now, some of them are indeed rooted in assumptions, fears, blind spots and delusions, yet it’s still true that you’ve made the choices about how your life plays out.

It doesn’t in reality matter which choice you make for yourself on any given matter (though I’m voting for the one that promotes self-love! Hey, I like to see you happy, what can I say?). But you need to know that transitioning out of the Piscean Age, defined by control mechanisms designed to get you dumber and keep you there, rests on recognizing what responsibility you have for how your life is going, however that is.

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website for more info, to order and to book a session.

Lucifer in Pisces

Lucifer’s present transit through Pisces, the sign of surrender, asks us to shift our sense of ego to serve the greater whole by surrendering. Letting go.

Asteroid 1930 has been in Pisces since April 11, 2008 and will remain here until early January 2009. That’s a long time for an asteroid with a 4-year orbit to spend in one sign. Its retro cycle in Pisces was from July 28 - October 29.

The Lucifer archetype in general has to do with the choice to serve or not serve what we know is good. Each of us has what I call an “internal goodness barometer.” There’s no single definition of goodness, so we’re talking about what you define as good (forget the stuff about the devil for now!). I can offer that if you’re up to something and you’re fearful and your heart is closing, you’re doing something other than what you know is good. But it’s for you to decide; there’s no valid external standard from the spiritual standpoint (socially speaking we have laws, however!).

Transits of Lucifer for the collective have to do with lingering questions of aligning ourselves with the greater whole surrounding us. Lucifer wants to serve, yet can be conflicted by the knowledge that he also has free will; he can choose not to serve and, even, to be destructive. Part of the Earth ride as a human includes the exploration of free will, and each of us can choose whatever we like.

Transiting Pisces, the collective invitation is to surrender to the flow of what’s happening around us. One way to look at this is that we’re being asked to surrender to our desire to serve a greater whole, as Lucifer’s story is one of devoted service followed by rebellion in the spirit of service. (This is explained in detail in a Lucifer workshop recording I offer via my site, link below.)

What surrender have you been putting off? What thing bigger than you are you trying not to open to?

Whatever it is, know that the archetypal journey of Lucifer has him “returning to the fold.” We each desire to be aligned and supportive of something greater than us, it’s just part of the human story. How that unfolds does tend to involve the exploration of the right use, size and place of ego in our lives.

We may perceive that we’re separate from Source, and Lucifer’s journey is to balance the reality of the perception of being an individual while remembering that he’s connected to the greater whole.

And it’s a long time in Pisces, isn’t it? Many more chances than usual, including the entire retro cycle in the sign of the fishes, to finally open to merge with that greater thing. Look at any resistance you might have as indication of your perception of an impending loss of individuality.

It’s not real. You’re not separate from Source.

You just get to choose when and how you admit you’re still part of it.

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website for more info and to book a session.

Men, Women, Lilith & Porn

My Libra rising with Venus conjunct it would love for me to edit this post into something other than the original inspiration. Something maybe…a little more palatable. Or less, um, triggering. Or less potentially offensive. But my 2nd house Scorpio Sun is overriding that impulse to get it out as intended.

Recently I worked with a new client with some Lilith history ready to be processed. Her ex-boyfriend’s porn addiction came up in her reading, and her Spirit Guides got loud, “Dude! Run with that.” It seemed like we were talking about the ex, so my brain didn’t get the point, but I went with it.

A door into an interesting conversation flung itself open rather unceremoniously. It ended up being about a family lineage issue of a culturally-learned mistreatment of women. My client’s deceased grandmother came to the reading to offer her support in helping see how to unravel this heritage within herself. Her experience with the ex-boyfriend had everything to do with repeating this energetic inheritance of the expectation of not being treated with as an equal and with absolute presence, something she set out for herself to learn in this life.

It got me thinking: A man (her ex), holds an image of “woman” in his consciousness. When he meets women, this Platonic image can be the reference point to gauge interest level, or perhaps the sense of potential connectedness. There can then be a disconnect between the addict and whomever he meets, dates or lives with.

And in this culture, with the level of consumption of images and other media, the definition of addict seems to me more fuzzy than ever. I mean that the advertising machine we expose ourselves to when we consume any ad revenue-driven media creates fuzziness. I’m not saying that every American who watches television is a porn addict, but this is the energy being piped into your house when the boob tube’s on - pun intended.

Enter Lilith: She represents the wild woman archetype, free in her sexuality, who’s been all but relegated to the darkest corners of our collective shadow. The major place into which she’s shooed is the sex industry, where it’s considered acceptable for a woman to express her wildness. She’s paid money to do it, and that seems a fair exchange to most involved, as long as the item line on the credit card statement is sufficiently generic.

But look at what’s happening here: wildness is being consumed as a commodity.

The experience of our wildness can be relegated to sports, the sex trade and war (with professional wrestling being somehow trying to be a theatrical hybrid of all three…). This natural part of us we think needs to have some concrete corner of the culture in which to be explored and consumed. These three arenas provide places in which our animal natures are encouraged and fed, and look at the audience size of each! We need access to our wildness, but since we can’t just express it naturally as it is because of our cultural programming, we pay certain people a lot of money to act it out in front of us.

I don’t write about porn to be sensational; I’m not trying to titillate you. I’m a 2nd-house Scorpio with Venus-Pluto in Libra in the 12th house, and have been aware of the way that some men look at some women for as long as I can remember, and my sense from childhood is that something weird was happening, something not good at all. I also had a father whose off-color jokes about women made me cringe and scowl at him (he tried forever to figure out how I could have emanated from him!). I had to learn to relate to women as Lilith, my natural other half, even as I wasn’t taught to do it. And the more of us who can do this, men and women, the better off we all are. The thing is that anyone who wants to can do it. It’s about getting back in the body and becoming willing to meet each other with total presence.

If we learn anything from Lilith’s story (see an article on my site about my approach to Lilith), it needs to begin with the fact that we all carry the wild, and that letting it out doesn’t have to be destructive. And that men and women experiencing each other in their wildness can rob the Platonic imagery constantly thrown at us of all power, enabling us to be with each other as we truly are.

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website for more info and to book a session.

The Sky & 2012

The end of the Mayan Calendar seems to be begging us to ask about what will happen. It can seem the first thing to do for those into astrology is to look at the transits in the sky at the time of the Winter Solstice (Dec. 21, 2012).

But we’re talking about a major, unprecedented shift in consciousness. Using a present-day tool with our present-day understanding of its use won’t reveal much that’s useful.

How we experience and use our awareness and consciousness is what we’re talking about. The invitation will be to overcome what’s called “functional fixedness” regarding consciousness: you haven’t yet imagined how you’ll experience consciousness and…therefore…you can’t guess what will happen.

Predictions about what will happen because of planetary placements can occupy our minds and feed our hopes and/or fears. (Ooh - Neptune’s in Pisces, right? What does that mean??) Which is why when people ask me what will happen I offer them a list of tools they can put in place to prepare for it, whatever the 3D realities.

In short, geocentric charts for the time of the Solstice can’t reflect the energetic changes that will take place in all life on Earth.

It’s so important to release the attitudes, beliefs, and emotions that either no longer serve us or don’t belong to us. I’ve seen repeatedly in meditations that this is preparation each of us willing to adapt to the changing times on planet Earth can undertake. Everyone can do it. Each of us can learn to let go of what doesn’t serve us and what doesn’t belong to us.

It comes down to how willing we are to change. Which is how willing we are to find out more about who we are in the present tense, and leave behind who we think we are in terms of our prior experiences.

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website for more info and to book a session.

(Radio) Fear & (Radio) Love

On Fear: In a now-rare opening of my home to the frequency of fear of mainstream radio (NPR - I guess it’s not even that mainstream!), I heard a story about a teenager committing suicide in front of a live internet audience, after announcing his intention a few hours prior. My first instinct was to shut down, check out of my body. I did not want to feel what I was beginning to feel. My mind said, “Get out! Don’t be here! This is too much!” I had to remember to stay in my body and let the terrible feeling I had go. Just let it go. Accept the reality of it, the sadness and the heartbreak, and then let it go.

Part of the task at hand for each of us is to be highly selective about the frequencies we let in to our lives. Your day-to-day, moment-to-moment consciousness is shaped by what’s allowed in your space (whether relationships, ideas, media and anything else). But you’re not supposed to be a hermit, a recluse. Just learn to be more selective of what you let in your space. And from time to time you certainly will encounter people and information that inspires you to contract and shut down.

So when you hear things that inspire you to leave your body so you don’t have to feel how terrible they are, notice it. Notice it and stay…no matter what. Look it in the eye and accept the feeling as a real feeling that’s possible and available to you. And then choose to let it go. Ground and let it go.

Whatever energy doesn’t belong to you needs to go (including the terrible things you might hear through the media), and your willingness to feel the full range of human emotions and learn how to let all of them come and go is so important. E-mail me to request a free 13-minute meditation MP3 that I offer to clients and teach people at meditation evenings in LA. It will lead you to ground through your root chakra, open your crown, and then open and clean out your heart and aura.

On Love: Earlier this week I was a guest on “Consider This,” a Contact Talk Radio program. I shared how I use a handful of astrological archetypes to support people in preparing for 2012, and discussed the new natal report on preparing for 2012 I’m offering. Hear it here. While you’re there, check out Contact Talk Radio’s other offerings, too: they’re an example of the antidote to mainstream media.

Next Tuesday I’ll be on “Consider This” again to discuss the archetypes of astrology. Tuesday, 11/25, 1 PM Pacific you can listen live here.

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website for more info and to book a session.

Why Talk About 2012 Now?

Tonight I realized that it might not be clear why I’m talking about this so much (and writing a natal report and hosting meditation evenings related to it). Maybe you’ve asked yourself, Isn’t it, like, 2008? Can’t he count?

So, here’s the scoop.

My understanding of the shifts in consciousness taking place on Earth now and culminating in the end of the Mayan Calendar inform all of this. I’m watching individuals all around me start to ask some big questions about their lives and what’s going on here on Earth, and this tells me that there are already many people who are choosing to respond to the shifts taking place now.

Given the way we’ve lived, how we as individuals have learned about life from the groups we’re part of, many on Earth simply don’t have the tools to adjust appropriately. It’s the consciousness equivalent of finding one’s self challenged to learn how to use a new stone tool that was just invented, before most of us monkeys knew such things existed. You’re holding the chipped rock thingie in your hand, looking at it, unsure how to use it. And yet as soon as you do, your entire existence will change for the better going forward. And we’re about to see that we’re on the verge of new ways of perceiving, thinking and living, all because of new tools at our disposal we’re mostly not sure what to do with.

Specifically, the changes these days can influence individuals in psychic or intuitive openings, or in no longer being able to deny the psychic or intuitive skills they’ve always had. And in some, a wake-up call to release certain relationships and alter lifestyle, diet or choice of work and hobbies for reasons that may be less than clear.

We’re also getting to see in what ways we might learn to take more responsibility for our lives, no longer expecting others to rush in and take care of this or that. Many of us have unprocessed childhood residues that - and this is the key - we can only now begin to address. This is the central idea to the work I’m developing on the archetype of Chiron, given that its 31 years in our consciousness (the body was discovered 1977) represents a collective infancy of conceiving of and relating to this energy. Of course, some individuals have grasped the bigger picture about Chiron (and some of them are astrologers and have written wonderful work on it), but the majority of us are on the cusp of being able to mature our conception of the nature and point of suffering and pain.

Healing our Chiron issues, which originate in any given life as a wounding event in infancy (some kind of rejection or threat of the withdrawal of love from parents or other primary caregivers), calls for taking responsibility for ourselves in new ways.

Again, these tools exist and it’s time to spread the word, to provide the information to as many people are interested and are ready to take responsibility for living in the present tense on Earth over the next few years.

So, um, yeah dude, but why now?

Many people will find themselves wanting to develop into some form of leader for this global transition. These are people who are sensitive to the changes in some way and desire to serve the whole, the rest of us and the planet, in some way. I’m offering this work so that anyone who wants to get themselves caught up to the present moment personally, to be able to support others in doing the same in whatever way happens to suit them, can do so.

Many of us also have a deep well of emotional and other debris to process and release. Those who adjust well to these global changes will learn to release their junk, and this includes past-life junk. We’re talking about layers from this life and others, and the more intention and attention we give the process, the smoother it can go.

Also, and this one’s extremely important: The more solid you get now about grounding and clearing yourself of old stuff and what doesn’t belong to you, the less you will be tempted to respond to and join in the fear that’s ramping up on Earth now about all sorts of things. Pluto’s recent ingress into Capricorn has begun turning existing governmental and financial realities on their heads, it can seem as if there are more reasons than ever to be afraid, to give in to fear. And we on some level can sense some big change is coming, and it’s much easier to give in to fear of what might happen, instead of focusing on what it is that can be done now to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves.

No matter what you want out of life, fear will not get you where you want to go. Yet we each must train ourselves to tune into and generate the opposite of fear, love, and learn to resist the panic and near-panic that fills our surroundings when anything out of the ordinary transpires. Learning to say “no thank you” to the gifts of fear that most media outlets and those who consume them offer takes attention, intention, and time. Each person can be trained to do so. All it takes is the interest and willingness to choose some different behaviors and ways of being in the interest of deeper self-knowledge, honesty and self-care.

This is far from the last word on this stuff from me. Check back here for much more as things on Earth get more and more interesting!

If you’re in the LA area, come to the meditation evening I’m hosting about every other Sunday evening. Full details in my website calendar.

Tom is available for private consultations that include karmic astrology and mediumship/Spirit Guide work. He offers two original natal reports, one on the true Black Moon Lilith and one on how to prepare yourself for the shifts in consciousness happening now on Earth culminating at the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, “Living in the Present Tense,” using Pluto, Chiron, Lilith and Lucifer. See his website for more info and to book a session.