Suffering, Surrender and Sacrifice

I was looking at Romney and Ryan's charts the other day and noticing that they both are under Neptune's spell.  A few pieces of literature contributed to my deepening understanding of what that could mean.  I was listening in the car to a recording of J.R.R, Tolkien's Return of the King and was struck by the phrase "suffer himself to be led".  Here is Gandalf's 's horse Shadowfax, this great and noble stallion who allows no bit, bridle or saddle and few riders, who'd just taken the wizard at lightening speed to the Citadel at Minas Tirith; "suffered himself to be led away at the soft word of his master." This supreme act of sacrifice is met with the humility of being led away.

In the beginning of Portrait of a Lady, Henry James writes of his heroine, Isabel Archer and her cousin speaking about suffering.  She says; "It's not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not made for that".  And later: "Only if you do not suffer they call you hard." What is it about suffering that softens us? Does compassion arise from suffering? Is that what is wrong with Romney and Ryan?  They do not appear to have suffered much?

And in Mark's gospel Chapter 8 verses 27-38, Jesus asks the apostles and then Peter, "Who do you say I am?' Peter answers "The Messiah". Jesus cautions them not to tell anybody. Then Jesus begins to teach them quite directly that He will suffer, be rejected by the elders, be killed and rise from the dead 3 days later. 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?' What does it mean to gain  your life by losing it?  Does losing life imply surrendering the ego?

Suffering, surrender and sacrifice are in Neptune's realm. Romney and Ryan both are, at present, having planet Neptune transiting over their ascendants.  The ascendant sign is about who we are, our approach to life, the personality we show others, how we see our place in the world,  how other people see us, the mask we wear.  It is the window through which we see the world and dictates how we go about fulfilling the rest of the planets in the chart. With Neptune sitting there neither man can be seeing very clearly, nor can they be seen very clearly.  

Paul Ryan has Neptune rising on his natal ascendant at 0 degrees of Sagittarius.  He is getting a double dose of the dissolver of boundaries as Neptune is sometimes called. Romney has one degree of Gemini rising, with ruler Mercury in Pisces, Neptune's sign.  Both men are heavily influenced by the current  transit of Neptune coloring the way they see the world, and will be for many more months. Their words and actions speak to its influence.  Neptune is not only where we suffer or surrender or sacrifice, but also where we are in denial, are ambiguous, deceitful, where our imaginations have gotten away from us, where and what we are addicted to, where we sacrifice and for what.  What are they surrendering too?  Is it their egos? Or is it to a higher calling-one of service to a Higher Power where the ego gratification of the personal self dissolves into acting for the greater good and being able to see the whole picture.

If there has been one major theme in the Republican party's attempt to win in November, it is that they are vague on their platform, what they would do if elected to office to solve America's problems. This theme has carried on since the convention with the "weird" scene with Eastwood talking to an invisible Obama, the gaff when the Syrian Ambassador was tragically killed and just recently with the secretly obtained talk Romney gave at a high-end fund raiser where he clearly states he wants to be President of the "haves" not the "have-nots". Romney's position that 47% of the people do not pay taxes because they want to be taken care of and like their role as victims seems to say that some people are "better" than others.

Neptune has been at 1 degree Pisces from mid-August and will apparently move back to 0 degrees September 23rd, stationing there on November 11th. Neptune remains  at the 0-1 degree mark through January 2013.  That means that on election day, November 6th, Neptune will be the major influence in their lives.  I doubt whether any clarity will come forth from either candidate now or then unless they get clear within themselves who they are representing-all the factions of American society, for not just those like themselves.  Neptune will form a cloud over both men and either they cannot tell that they are lying or we are fooled by them or they are sacrificing themselves.  Maybe they really do not want to win.  If they have no solutions to offer, why would anyone want those jobs? They are in Neptune's dream.  

If there is one lesson to note here it is that it is easy to kid yourself and delude others if you are not able to transcend the physical and look at things from a divine perspective.  That is Neptune's kingdom.  Neptune asks us to dissolve our egos by letting go of attitudes, habits, belief systems and words that separate us from one another.  Neptune demands inclusiveness, it abhors boundaries. The boundaries we have put up to separate us from each other either by race, gender, age, sexual preference, religion, walls, gates, faiths, language, social class, income status, must be broken down.  Unless Romney and Ryan can understand that we are all in this together, they have not risen to their Neptune's higher calling and will be mired in the confusion that comes from not seeing the community of man in its entirety.