Most of the time, I’m thinking about how teams, groups, and organizations can improve the way they learn and collaborate to be better for their stakeholders, or for the people who make up the organization. I emphasize the value and importance of data because without an external reference point, conversations and critique are easily bulldozed by stirred emotions. I value discourse and dialogue because without it we find permission for nearly anything in the data.

The same goes for astrology, except that here my learning can expand past the individual into understanding of the entire idea of life itself. In studying others’ charts, I am painfully aware that I am also studying myself. Abstracted, philosophical concepts can be played out in studying a chart, and the problem of time evaporates.

While one can say that there is a past and a future in a person’s experience, using a chart as a representative of a modality of life blasts through basic conceptions of time. Questions of universal consciousness quickly become less hypothetical. The practice provides anchors for understanding the smallness of one’s understanding of human experience, while providing some hints as to how vast its range and scope might be.

Most importantly, astrology provides a system for understanding where the diverse joy and madness of society might come from – and how you might work with it.

What has surprised me most over the past year of actively studying astrology (reading books, writing essays, practicing with people’s charts and doing readings) is that people are easily intrigued when I start explaining that it’s systematic, and that because it’s systematic I can now more precisely describe some of my own self work to do.

Do I hope for a time when every leader of people will submit themselves to the introspective work of exploring their karma in this lifetime and learning to identify how those might play out for better or worse? Absolutely.