Speaking of hearing your calling, my husband told me he was called to soldiering similarly to how priests are called to the priesthood. He described how he tried to avoid it to appease other people but every time he tried to get away he was thrown back to it. Eventually he quit resisting. His relationship with me followed the same arc.
I have a similar experience. Where as my husband found himself a on a plane headed to go rescue the hostages in Iran while he was still a teenager, I was given my first astrology books when I was 8 years old. If you have been reading awhile you probably know how many times I quit this blogging thing. I’ve closed up shop, at least twenty times!
Yeah, some years ago I used to do all this writing and then recoil from it and react by taking everything I’d written (thousands of posts) down, I’d then disappear for weeks at a time. Each time that was going to be it! Enough of this shit!. People attack you, they target you, they hate you; I didn’t make a so much as a dime for a very long time. I’d throw in the towel!
I’ve also run off to the circus a few times (remember when I wrote on Salon?). I’ve made various threats for various reasons only to be reeled back in. Eventually I came to terms with what I now feel is my destiny. This writing and the other things I do with astrology both seen and unseen.
My relationship with my husband? Well that’s obvious. We threw each other back fifty times. We both swore each other off. I tried to kill him with a motorcycle helmet, we both married other people. I also cut off his email, put his most cherished uniform in the trash, took his pictures off my computer and told him he was a lousy bastard and for what? All to try to avoid what is absolutely inevitable.
I am not sure if everyone has a destiny so specific. If you have a stellium in your chart or a major configuration (like a T-square or a Grand Cross) it’s possible this would indicate a life more hard core, but I don’t know that. What do you think?
Can fate be avoided?
whoa – I just made reference to your occasional disappearances in a comment. Refreshed the page and see you’ve just written about it. Freaky.
I don’t know if fate can be avoided. I think it goes back to one’s purpose. If you can avoid it, I think it comes at a high price. You can close your eyes and ignore it but it will be a constant battle. It will keep coming back to you. You’ll have spent all your time working at not doing what you were supposed to do. And then you haven’t really lived your life at all.
I remember your Gone Fishin’ sign. I’m pretty sure I’ll be teaching in some form or fashion the rest of my days no matter how much I don’t want to. I don’t think you can avoid what you are supposed to do or be, but we have free will and you can make it harder, like I always seem to do, by trying to get out of it.
I’m not sure that everyone has a fate so specific, either. I wonder if there is a way to tell?
It seems like the only way to know, is to look back.
My Dad went to India in 1962, and when he left a palm reader told him “You will come back, many many years from now, but you will be married with children.” As if, he thought.
Well in 2005, when he was 78, he did go back, with ME. And he only remembered the message because he HAD gone back.
He never, ever, ever thought he would’ve been back, least of all with his 28 year old kid.
And then…I thought that was a potent story until by chance an acquaintance told me that when she left Mumbai, a palm reader came up to her…guess what he said, hmmm?
I consider myself %100 open to any possibility. I think fate can be avoided, and in the process your personal fulfillment can be avoided, too.
Oh goodness, going completely off tangent, but the one phrase that stood out for me here was the reference to astrology “seen and unseen”— I don’t even know why… I wonder about destiny alot. I look for signs, roadmaps, and astrology helps, but the more I learn the more faith I seem to require, in what I’m not sure (God, the unseen?).
kashmiri, that’s interesting…’cause i was thinking that fate sometimes comes in chunks. i’ve felt driven to make different choices at different points. in perspective, one was necessary or helpful before the other, but it hasn’t been a clear path. it’s just each leg of the journey has provided me different tools that i’ve used at other points. fate? i dunno, but it feels like it sometimes.
Elsa- could you elaborate on the phrase “a life more hard core”
My brain is fuzzy today. Do you mean that there will be a higher likelihood of a focus to someone’s calling if they have a stellium or such? Or ….?
sorry, fuzzy brain.
mudlike – yeah, that’s what I mean but I don’t KNOW that. It’s maybe a 50-50 thing.
Er.. I have an extreme chart and to tend to saw others with extreme charts. Most the people I know DO you have a strong sense of destiny but I have a skewed sample.
In other words, the people I don’t know who I do not draw to me may also feel this way and I wouldn’t know it.
I think Rainie really summed up a lot of what I feel around this question.
I do know that I must listen to my inner guide. Maybe that is simply my destiny? I also know that I’ve left my inner guide sitting on the couch eating cookies for long periods of time while I set out to prove I knew better;)
Very good question.
Pisces
I believe that fate, like the lessons we need to learn, can be avoided, but not indefinitely. We cannot choose our lessons, only the time when we are finally willing to learn them. I think fate is like that. We can put it off, but eventually we will have to embrace it. This is, of course, just a belief. How can we really know?
No idea the answer to this question, except that when I set about avoiding the voice/universe/signs get noisier, louder, start to clatter . . . sometimes I’m not ready to pay attention to them, but when I do, they’re all right there, and they have been all along.
comment got eaten. 🙁
I don’t think so. What is meant to be will BE. I can’t think of a single instance in which I’ve avoided my fate and gotten away with it. It always comes around, just a matter of time. And the time I spent avoiding is riddled with obstacles/problems that all point to the path I was supposed to take but avoided. It’s akin to the voice inside me going from a whisper, to a two by four, to a club over the head. I’ve gotten much better at recognizing the signs and going with the program, thanks to Pluto!
I think fate might be avoided by complete transcendence of the personality as in the buddhist concept of enlightenment. that seems like a pretty rare occurence, tho, and not a particularly attainable goal.
No shit, you wrote on Salon? About astrology, or something else?
llama – no, not like that. I had a blog there… I don’t know what is going on there now but I was one of their first 50 blogs and in the top few for awhile there.
Yes, astrology but also (true) storytelling like you see on this blog now and then.
Elsa, you were (are) a pioneer!
maureen, it’s true. I was on the cutting edge of sexual harassment, women working a man’s job, one of the first sellers on ebay, been blogging since 2001… I am pretty sure I was the first astrology blog and various other things I can’t even recall.
It’s very strange, I’ll tell you that.
Fate isn’t what you are going through as much as it is the the ending result. It doesn’t alwaays have to had been the same result, but you see what you need to see in due time.
My personal opinion is that some have a very specific fate, and to attempt to use free will to buck that fate can cause some fairly severe problems in life. (Personal experience, anyway.)
I have a Scorpio stellium in the 4th with Mercury in Scorpio forming a fixed T-Square with Chiron and Jupiter. I have a North Node in Virgo in the Gemini house – so ruled by that Mercury in the T-Square formation.
Honestly, I feel as if I have almost no free will…and when I try to force the issue…well, let’s just say highly karmic events put me back on track – ex. I’ve been hit by two cars. 🙂 Most of what I do feels compelled…not what I would choose if I could completely choose my own path at the conscious level. And yeah…that includes astrology and all other “service” work related to the Virgo N. Node…”Indigo” work and such. Even where I live is not of my conscious choosing, bizarrely enough.
That’s why all this “we create our own reality” stuff promoting 100% free will doesn’t do it for me. 🙂
Thanks for posting this topic…
Elsa, side question but is your Mars/Mercury in aspect to Uranus or Aquarius at all? I can’t remember.
kashmiri – no. It stands alone unless you use a very wide orb in which case it picks up an aspect from Saturn.
Oh god. Now I’m going to have “The Cheese Stands Alone” in my head!
Ha ha!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA_4RKEauv0
sorry, I couldn’t resist it’s just so silly!
“My personal opinion is that some have a very specific fate, and to attempt to use free will to buck that fate can cause some fairly severe problems in life.”
You said it, Willow. My take is that no, fate can’t be avoided. I’ve long learned that “it” (God/the Universe/fate/what have you) has a plan for me, and the harder I fight it, the harder things get, and the less I fight it, the easier things are. I don’t exactly love the plan a lot of the time–part of it seems to involve my being perpetually single–but again, when I whine about it and act out, “it” gets tough with me.
It’s probably Elsa’s moon in the 11th house in late sagittarius. Her Aquarius mother taught her it’s a sin to bore people. And her Aquarius/Capricorn/Sag signature family.
I definitely believe there is a measure of fate which can’t be avoided, but I think I (personally, though it might be -and I think is- different for others) have a large degree of wiggle room and freedom to do as I please. The universe will tell me what I need to do, kick my ass if I don’t, and in the meantime I can do as I please. I think. Heheh.
liz – I almost forgot about this – that is not my chart you have there but I was taught not to bore people for sure! 🙂
MR, no kidding! Mine also seems to involve a lot of perpetual singledom! Argh. haha (And I’m a Libra Sun to boot!)