I was talking to my husband last night, about being “transcendent”. We are both transcendent people, in my eyes.
“I don’t know what transcend means,” he said.
“It means we can easily transcend our circumstances or what happens to us. We can rise above things, accept a loss…”
I elaborated to explain that this isn’t some kind of holy thing. Oh, I had a bad childhood, but I transcended it. “Transcend” in my mind, means a lot more than that. Here’s my weird example:
My husband has a story he tells. Some kid at school stole his coffee-milk, made by his mother, and put into his Bonanza thermos.
He wound up hopping on top one of tables in the lunch room, where this crime occured. He then ran across the tops of the long row of tables, leaping on to the kid who stole his milk, and knocking him to the ground.
He proceed to punch the kid with with his fists, until he retrieved the stolen goods. He was six years old.
He got in a lot of trouble for this…Catholic school, I think. He was in trouble, but what happened is his instinct kicked in. He’d cried and complained about the thermos, to some teacher of attendant in the lunch room. But they weren’t going to do anything about it, so he took the matter into his own hands.
He knew for sure, one man should not take another man’s coffee-milk, never mind his Bonanza thermos, given to him by his mom. So in that moment, he transcended the norm for the environment and he did what he knew was right to do, internally.
I consider this “transcendent”.
My husband and I both like to get along with people, but we’re not going to be easily held down, or held back from living our true selves and/or doing that we know in our hearts to be the right thing to do. Both of us will readily accept the consequences of our actions. It’s a flying leap and we’re gonna take it.
I see people who yearn for this kind of experience. They want to achieve something that will allow them to transcend something else, that’s holding them back.
I don’t know why transcendence comes easily to some while others feel “bound” no matter what they do. I do know this is a Saturn Neptune phenomena.
Are you a transcendent person? Have you tried to be?
I have a Saturn-Neptune friend (opposition), and she is the most transcendent person I know, by far.
I really like this story! As for transcendence, I am working on this. I truly want to be my best self. I am absolutely devoted to this goal.
I selectively transcend. Sometimes,it happens automatically- I hardly realise that’s what I’m doing! Other times, I TRY with all my might, but I can’t get past whatever it is.
Maybe it’s Merc/Saturn in Pisces? If I think about anything too much, or I try to quantify it, I lose my superpowers =D
Frustrating!!
I’m going to disagree. That’s not transcendent at all. To be transcendent is to rise to a higher level than the norm, not to devolve into fisticuffs or self-righteousness.
I understand, Trish. I am using a different definition of “transcendent”.
I understand it to mean going outside the normal limits, in whatever direction. That’s what the story is meant to illustrate. It’s a person who is not bound.
Elsa, I understand and like your definition of being transcendent.
The idea that being a quiet victim (and watching others get victimized too) is “transcending” does not make sense in all circumstances. Allowing bullies to prosper and harm others while I think of flowers and clouds? That’s not in my wheelhouse, either.
Thanks,Village. 🙂
I have Neptune closely aspecting many planets in my Chart, including my Sun ruler, and my Chart ruler. Also the orb’s rather wide, but it’s also involved in an out-of-sign conjunction with my natal Saturn. So yes, I think I lean towards transcendent. Both in the sense that I try to rise above circumstances, which is the only way to survive if you’re born under a Cardinal Grand Cross, and also in the sense that I’m very interested in Spiritual elevation. I don’t always succeed in these but the inclination is there.
Oh I don’t think so. I ‘move through it all’. I experience all of it deeply. I’m a coper. It’s taken me deep down. But there are a few very wretched events that I just plain had to get beyond and past.
I realize that there are some communication glitches going on elsa. It happens every now and again. 😀
Yes! I am a transcendent person. I have faith in myself and god. I think people who have been oppressed in some way learn how to do this. I learned young how to overcome hurdles. Or go around them. Or live happily with them. It’s a survival mechanism. Not that thats a bad thing. It brings you that edge of yourself that is so very exciting. It’s being alive.
I think it’s easy to tell who does this easily…people tell them what to do / what they can and can’t do. They do something different, because as they used to say, “they dance to the beat of a different drummer”.
I see people who feel bad all the time. No matter what they do, they receive no satisfaction.
Transcendent people have a high degree of satisfaction…
My screen name used to be “satisfieddog”.
Some intellectual wrote me, ‘You’re not really satisfied, are you, dog?”
I was stunned. Of course I was satisfied.
I wrote her back, with a long list of things I was satisfied with..,
my home, my body, my job, my hair, my friends…everything, really.
And then SHE was stunned.
But these are the facts and I have always been this way. Look at my book. I want to get to the store, right. OI want to get to heaven, so I do exactly that and have no way to NOT do exactly that, that I’m aware of.
I like Elsa’s use of the word transcend. It’s about not being a slave. To anything. Except ones own inner guidance system. You can call it god. It’s about using the gifts god gave you to become a free person. Man’a systems are flawed. God and nature are flawless. Animals and libra noir will always gravitate towards life and survival. And sometimes it means going against society.
I think one can be a slave and transcend.
So do I. I know this for a fact.
Because I was sent outside, sun up until sun down, with no shoes, in the AZ desert, summertime, to work. My work was meaningless (pull the weeds in the desert), there was no shade anywhere, and I was forbidden to drink water from the hose.
Guess what?
I might not have looked forward to it, but once I was out there, I pulled the weeds, enjoyed the feel of the sun on my back, ignored my burned feet and sang songs in my head all day.
It just didn’t matter.
I was tired at the end of the day…and gulped water once I was allowed to, but here again, it did not seem like anything in particular. Life is life.
I like this story. I like the fact that a six year old really knew what was right and appropriate, or in this case wrong and inappropriate from the other kid. Maybe the thief learned something that day. Your husband learned that he could fend for himself and right a wrong. A good thing to know when you are six!
My husband has taken this kind of action, all his life.
You would hate to be the man who raped the 80 year old woman in his apartment complex one time, or the guy who was robbing and killing cab drivers, because those people are dead.
I could tell you many, many stories.
If you pull some shit when my husband is around, you’re going to pay, because that’s why he is here, on this earth.
Hey Elsa, does your husband have a single brother? 😉
Ha ha! No, he’s taken. Sorry
Here:
https://elsaelsa.com/astrology/2010/02/11/control-and-comeuppance/
This has piqued my curiosity . .
Wouldn’t a transcended attitude be to let go of one’s attachment to the worldly goods -including coffee-milk and beloved Bonanza accessory – and think that whoever went into the trouble of stealing it must have been in a much less fortunate place than one with a mother to grant them thus? . . . which is the complete opposite from what you described, Elsa
As much as I understand the idea of the story here, and I like your husband’s reaction, it doesn’t add up for me, and might even seem a bit misleading to call it ‘transcendent’, rather than ‘go-getting’ or ‘ground-breaking’ (to keep with the ‘leaping ahead’ metaphor).
Feels like transcending – for better or worse- is more closely related to abnegation than not . . and therein probably lies a valuable lesson for all of us infused with much Neptune – a Saturn, or even Mars, lesson, perhaps?
(btw, I also have a very strong Saturn-trine-Neptune signature ;))
Dora, I respect your view, but it seems to me you may be making some assumptions about the thief, and are thus then sort of scolding the hungry 6 year old victim (Elsa’s husband in his childhood) who wanted that milk that was packed for him in the thermos his parents worked to buy. I’ve seen child bullies who existed in well-padded circumstances yet who did this to others. Unstopped, they did it again and again, more and more, on an escalating scale. Unstopped, they learn to take, not to earn. Thus I fail to see how this is good or how it is in some way noble or spiritual to allow thievery instead of conversation about need.
Transcendent….yeah I can get down with that description. There have been many times when I have come up against a blocker in life and thought, “Nope. I am not accepting this” and I moved on and over/around/under the blocker. I am not always able to transcend immediately. Sometimes an issue stumps me for a while, but eventually I get there.
“This does not necessarily mean he does not serve God. In fact, I’m pretty sure he DOES serve God.”
Well, sure. Even Jesus got pissed enough to throw the moneylenders out of the temple. More power to him.
If this is what you want to call “transcendent,” then yes, I’m one too. Since childhood, and even now in my 40s. But it does seem that the older I get, the higher the prices I pay for resisting the corruption and walking away.
Saturn in Aries (8th) quincunx Neptune in Scorp (3rd) here. And that axis is involved in four different yods in my natal chart (if you count the AC and MC) — one with Neptune as the apex, and three pointing to Saturn.
thanks for the welcoming, Elsa 🙂
I didn’t mean to imply anything negative with regards to your husband. I think I posted mostly to try to unpack -for myself first- all the implications inherent in terms like ‘transcendence’ rather than outright refute what you are saying here . .
@VillageGirl,
yes, I’ve seen lots of bullies doing that very same thing to other kids (I work with kids on a daily basis ;)) but then I always, almost unfailingly, also see the need for un-granted love and care that is the core of such bullying. Now I’m not saying Elsa’s husband should have done/thought otherwise, but I wonder if ‘transcendence’ is given here more credit than it’s due, or, whether, it’s time to get ‘transcendence’ a bit off the pedestal and see what it is and what it isn’t
I agree jilly. I was trying to express just that. But I think I accidentally expressed the opposite. I was thinking about “mans search for meaning” when I wrote that. He was in a concentration camp and transcended. There is a part of all of us that is only ours.
Yes! My bf from when I was a teen (we went on and off for 15 years), read that book when he was 28 (Saturn return). He was Jewish.
He told me that he was going to give it to me to read, but realized I could have written it when I was sixteen.
He added that a person should not postpone growing up, as he had. I thought it was funny.
He was a Cancer.
Also, think of the people who broke the color barrier in music and other arts. Clearly they felt they could and should go beyond the norm at the time.
I don’t think people do this without an angel on their shoulder, telling them they can…and they should.
great topic
I’m currently on something similar.I find it’s a great gift to be like this “by default”(part of why I enjoyed your book so much), BUT,thank God/Universe/Life, one can work his way out of what you call “being bound”.
I feel it more like a saturn-pluto issue in my case, because of the pull pluto has towards the past and the new,positive role I’m training saturn for,in order to heal engrained hurtful patterns and make room for the new.one can be held back for long, without having the slightest idea of living inside a transparent cage.
I warmly recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it so far, the work of David R.Hawkins.he definitely speaks about becoming transcendent.
when i choose to be.
Pisces transcendence and art, amazing.
it seems to me that the way one chooses to define transcendence depends directly on what one identifies as having been transcended. transcendence can be holy or it can be mundane; it is as you choose it to be.
with regards to the coffee milk story, elsa you say that your husband “transcended the norm for the environment.” by this i’m understanding you to mean that the and teachers and school policies wanted him to be passive in response to the theft of his thermos but instead he took matters into his own hands, took back his thermos and inflicted punishment on the kid who stole it. you indicate that this is an instance of not being restrained from doing what you know in your heart is the right thing to do, of being free from worry about consequence and having transcended the social norm. but isn’t responding to an unjust theft with rage and aggression the social norm? it seems really common to me and the stuff that wars are made of – and they’re a whole lot of wars going on right now all over the planet!!! so i see your husband’s reaction more as an instance of acting out the norm rather than of having transcended it. i agree that your husband took matters into his own hands, rules were broken, but i can’t see that a social norm was transcended in that situation.
also, you seem to equating a kind of spiritual transcendence (or an effort at spiritual transcendence) with a doormat-like passivity. and again i disagree. was gandhi a doormat? he got the brits to leave india by means of persistent nonviolent action and when he was shot, did he curse the shooter? no, he remembered his devotion; he chose love in a moment when the rest of us would choose hate. to my mind gandhi’s ability to instinctively choose love is an indication of spiritual transcendence and also a sign of true power. in his most dire moment he thought of another (his object of devotion) rather than himself. and this man was not a doormat. he made things happen AND he did it with compassion, kindness, forgiveness, nonviolence etc. he transcended rage, hatred, petty self-interest and acted for the greater good. from my perspective, this kind of nonviolent resistance is more powerful and transcendent than a senseless rage that inflicts punishment.
Hi, Tamara. I don’t think that not reacting = doormat. I think we’re individuals, each with a unique purpose. 🙂
I am quite transcendent by nature, sometimes it’s active, sometimes it’s passive,
Angie
“My husband and I both like to get along with people, but we’re not going to be easily held down, or held back from living our true selves and/or doing that we know in our hearts to be the right thing to do. Both of us will readily accept the consequences of our actions. It’s a flying leap and we’re gonna take it.”
I’m not very transcendent right now, but if I am dying like I believe my self to be, then I think I am handling this once-in-a-lifetime situation, splendidly-much better than anyone else I know or knew.