Hudson Valley Astrologer

“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t being said”

~ Peter Drucker

This morning I dreamt I heard a dog bark at the back door just like our old rescue use to do. Just a single yelp that said, “let me in,” But this bark was different, and more like an alarm. It said, “WAKE UP.”

My eyes opened suddenly, synchronistically, with the bark at the door, and it occurred to me as I reentered my body, that I was “out there” too, beyond the door in my dream.

The image of The Fool came to mind, as is apt to do whenever we are about to embark into the unknown. I was about to step out over the edge in my dream, onto the thin air of the future, off the proverbial cliff, and barely noticed, hidden behind the veil, a void deeper than anything any of us has ever imagined. That is precisely when I heard the dog bark!

That about sums up how I communicate online. What comes to mind is a more numinous style than a polemical style, an esoteric flavor, but nuanced, like pink salt infused in honey and drizzled into a cup of tea.

For me there is both an obscurity to the process of communicating online and a whole lot of babel from famed influencers who seemingly to have much more to say than I do, and people who want to hear whatever it is they have to say.

What a great prompt! If I am being totally sincere (and the world is increasingly desperate for each of us to be as sincere as we possibly can in this Age of Post-Truth), not only have I been struggling with what to say, but also how to say it.

In 2012 I tripped over a YouTube channel by a clinical psychologist who thought it might be a good idea to broadcast his lectures to a broader audience. These were the early days of Jordan Peterson and his viewership steadily grew for years before going parabolic after the 2016 election; becoming something of a messianic messenger.

His early stuff was rooted in mythological interpretation that was well studied, and uniquely articulated. I was fascinated since I was steeped in the work of Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet at the time who wrote the most extraordinary astrology book ever written: “a new myth for a new Age; a journey through the 12 signs / lands of the Zodiac.” At the same time, I learned that reading Coire Sois by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh was a lot like opening a bag of chips – “You can never just eat one!”

Other social media influencers, Scott Adams for instance, have even more to say it seems and a particular way of saying it that gets them outsized attention. Adams is practiced in the art of persuasion, vis a vie Robert Cialdini, but in a cannon shot approach that makes one feel like the Wiley Coyote, over said same cliff, but with all their fur singed and blackened from the backfire of their rebuttals. He’s a very good communicator! Even if you disagree with him — which I often do.

Norelli-Bachelet and Ó Cathasaigh are deserving of millions of followers and the appeal that comes along with being recognized for producing the highest quality of work on planet earth, possibly in history. But what is most popular isn’t always what is most significant.

Peterson and Adams do not seem focused on Truth per se but on what generates attention, “the most likes.,” for example. This is not the place to critique their work because it’s tricky. They produce a lot of material and much of it is very clever. But the overriding component in their outsized impact, in my opinion, has to do with a certain deceptiveness that is saturated in self-importance. I’d add here that I don’t think they started out this way, but got swept up in the tide of provocative, rhetorical methods and ideological stances that feed our polarized egos. That tide will begin to go out, but not soon enough. I guess then we’ll be able to discern the TRUTH from THE NAKED TRUTH.

In 2016, I left Facebook and have become inactive on Twitter (X?). I have been more active on reddit, as a moderator on astrologyreadings. You can find me under the user name AstralCore. I even took a hiatus from writing my blog for a year precisely for this reason: to discover how to better communicate!

Since 2020, I have gone into a rather intense inward journey, Shamanic in many respects, searching for what it is I would like to contribute to the world conversation and also exploring how to say it.

I forced myself inward because I noticed that I communicate in ways that can make people tilt their heads as if they just heard a dog whistle. The intention I held entering into my studied immersion was to gain a better perspective on what it is people need, and less on what they want; less on satisfying something that I might want (a sale, persuasion, Cialdini). I reviewed much of the astrological literature, took deep takes on psychological and philosophical perspectives, and how these bodies integrate, the unified whole that gets bandied about; of body, vitality, mind, and spirit.

Today my goal is much more focused. My communication online is lacking right now, but my intention is to spread the word about what I’ve learned during my immersion, and to suggest we get our conversation going once again in a one on one fashion, offline as soon as possible. Why? Because the distortions and noise online has shifted the conversation to the point wherein we no longer truly communication.

I am reminded of Fredric Brown’s epic two sentence literary trope. Let me paraphrase: “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a BARK at the door.”

We may have to wait, just a little more before the big reveal.

HVA

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