In-person Daoist Polestar Group

"Refinement of Thunder" cohort: Portland, OR Sep-Nov 2024

Daoist Polestar Astrology Group: Refinement of Thunder cohort

update: there was not enough interest in this so the conecpt is now on the back burner.

i couldn’t decide which graphic to use so here they both are (as a fun aside, let me know which one you like best in the comments section, #1 or #2)

This will be a six-session series, four hours each, throughout the autumn months, in which natal charts will be read in a group setting with additional Q&A, lectures and practices as time allows. This series held in a private residence in-person LIVE in SE Portland near the Hawthorne district, easily accessible via public transit.

Application process and a much more in-depth description of the cohort series is in this link: bit.ly/refinementofthunder

Daoist Polestar Astrology is a nondual, animist system of astrology (Time & its Cycles) from Confucian Daoism. A non-theistic understanding of Ancestral Momentum and all that might stream into your life, habits and genetics: karma, curses, ghosts, and above all, where you have more Qi leverage to resolve fate and express freedom. 

The applied knowledge of this system can help to remediate issues that are based in ancestral karma, moving away from individualism, personalization and pathology and towards interdependence, responsibility and creative adaptation.

Particularly nourishing for Therapists, Parents, Facilitators, Teachers, Addiction & Rehab Recovery Roles, Counselors, Social Workers, Medical Practitioners, Birth & Death Doulas, Ritualists and Astrologers, and anyone who wants to dive into a complete nondual animist system/art-science of fate-freedom and apply it to their birth chart in real-time in a group setting.

OK that’s the main event!

Please let people in the area know if this is something you feel they would enjoy being part of.

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What follows is some of my thought-process/commentary so that you get a mini blog post this week as i finish up longer articles.

Learning is Virtuous, not Virtual

While zoom and online containers aren’t going anywhere, nor should they, i have noticed a steep decline in the potential for real learning to occur on them. A combination of being in your house, able to mute or turn video off, not having to clean yourself up and get dressed, not having to leave the house and do the social group behavior adjustment things, not being in a group body (which is what Confucian Daoism is all about, not to mention clown, acting, theater, ritual…)

All of these factors lead to some kind of maladaptive non-learning creep. The information not being applied correctly in the body, the experiments of learning not really sinking in. It’s hard enough to learn in person, in group as it is, as it has always been, and over the last few years i have witnessed a worsening. So much so that i have had to resist the urge to indulge in the easy behaviors that come from online spaces. I have to guard myself against the creep. I have to create rules and guidelines for myself as to what is possible, what is respectful, what is permissible for each online space’s vibe. Sometimes i do just tune out and mute, listening in the background while doing chores around the house. But usually, if i care about something, and i’ve paid for it, i show up as if i had to leave the house to attend. I put myself in the mode of all those pre-virtual learning spaces i have been in, all the workshops, dance classes, acting studios, etc. I get real and i get ready.

But that’s me, and I’ve had the privilege of hundreds of hours if not thousands idk of non-college-based classroom workshops. I spent every extra cent i had for a period of around 5 years in my mid-thirties doing every dance, theater, clown and weird somatic workshop that i didn’t get to do in my youth. I sweated through my clothes around other people. I looked like an idiot in front of other people where i couldn’t hide. And that’s what made it real, and that’s what made it awesome and beautiful and necessary.

The teachings have to affect the body in real time, and that’s hard to do if you’ve never really exposed yourself to the correct environments. Learning is a somatic process, it should change the posture and the perception, the nervous system. You have to “try it on” and “get up and walk around in it”. It shouldn’t be merely an exercise in imagining abstract concepts that are “out there” somewhere.

So, let’s do a little etymological digging.

The word "virtue" has its origins in Latin. It comes from the Latin word "virtus," which means "moral strength, high character, goodness, valor, bravery, and excellence"¹²³. The original Latin term "vir" meant "man," and over time, the meaning evolved to include qualities such as valor, merit, and moral upstandingness.

The word "virtual" has its origins in Latin and Middle English. It is derived from the Latin word "virtus," meaning excellence or potency¹. The adjective "virtual" is related to the concept of potency, power, and effectiveness.

Here we see that the term Virtue and the term Virtual have the same basic roots and meaning. And yet, when i type into the search machine: “opposite of virtual” what do i get?

The opposite of virtual is¹²³⁴⁵:

• Real

• True

• Actual

• Authentic

Uh-oh Shaggy. Now Houston does have a problem.

Because if the opposite of Virtual is realness, authenticity, truth, then what does that say about how we’ve conflated our real, analog lives where we can actually touch grass, versus our virtual, digital lives where we can only see images of grass?

We’ve confused reality for our images of reality.

We use a term - virtual - to describe our fake reality that means power, potency and effectiveness, while simultaneously saying that it is not authentic, real or true. We have glitched our own systems.

This is an extension of the dualistic, colonized mode of perception. Where there is a “real” and a “fake” that we can decide at any time.

But this isn’t how reality works. Either it’s all real or it’s all fake, meaning, this dualistic dichotomy falls apart at the slightest breeze.

If humans get to decide what is true or false at any moment, without any real rigor, that means that we can decide who is worthy of being human and who isn’t. If we can confuse what virtual means, switching between the virtuous version and the virtueless version… what does that say about how we conduct ourselves?

Now these are big questions and i won’t answer them for you. But you ought to question yourself more rigorously in your life and stop giving yourself too many escape hatches. Do things consciously and deliberately, with a little bit of honest awareness, and maybe this dualistic, colonial attitude might stop sticking its hand up your ass and using you as a puppet.

Maybe!