Photo by Khongor Ganbold in Unsplash
{Image description: A rainbow rises towards the right side of the picture. Above the rainbow is a single white cloud.}
New Moon: 11˚ Aries 31’ | BST: Apr.1.2022, 7:24 am | EDT: Apr.1.2022, 2:24 am
I perceive the world through sensations, emotions and feelings. Meaning I’m hypersensitive, both on an emotional and a sensory level.
(To simplify, and because these are all enmeshed within me, I’m going to use the word feelings to talk about this cluster for the rest of this text.)
I feel a lot. I feel intensely and deeply. But most of the time I’m not consciously aware of what I’m feeling.
In order to become conscious of some of my feelings, I have to stop and stay there, with whatever feeling is present. It’s not easy. Sometimes feelings are very uncomfortable and don’t want to meet them face-to-face. I want to get away from them. But I already know that sitting down with them is the only way out, and, if and when I feel safe enough, I allow myself to break down and I let those feelings out so that I can actually look at them and get to know them.
I say look at them, because, usually, the feelings come with images. Not real images, full of details, contours and definition. More like subjective, dreamlike images, loaded with symbolism and meaning. A pre-verbal idea that somehow serves as a shape, or a framework, through which the feelings can become more distinguishable and visible to me. Sometimes the images are memories or stories that in my mind are descriptive of that feeling, emotion or sensation.
That’s why I sometimes have to tell a story to get my point across. Other times, if you’re lucky, I have already synthesized the story into a verbal formula that is more direct and easily digestible for others.
This is the last step, to verbalize the image. This usually takes time. A long time, depending on how new or unexpected the context is to me.
Sometimes I say nothing. Not because there’s nothing happening within me. Not because I’m not aware of what’s going on around me (although this is also true sometimes, but that’s for another time). But because I’m processing all the input in that initial feeling mode, and it’ll take some down time, preferably in a safe environment, to process my response into comprehensible words that myself and others will understand.
My default for beginnings is this sensitive, instinctual, very raw and almost animal like mode, where I’m very much aware of everything, processing all input on a very deep and unconscious level.
A lot of energy goes into this, and while it’s happening there’s really nobody on the steering wheel. The crew is having a staff meeting and they left the ship on autopilot.
I believe all our beginnings have the same pattern. Who we are and how we react in the beginning of any given process is analogous to who we were and how we reacted in the beginning of our life.
That’s why it is always so difficult to define myself when I find myself in a new context. When I’m in that sensitive beginning mode, I don’t know who I am. Definition only happens in relation, and if I’m feeling, sensing and processing on an unconscious level every input that I’m receiving from the outside world in any given situation, I can’t yet know who I am in that situation.
In my chart, asteroid Chiron, the knowledgeable healer centaur, is in Aries, the sign of definition and assertiveness, in the twelfth house, the place of unconsciousness and loss of identity. This asteroid’s symbolism is about suffering and wounds that never really heal. But it’s also about surrendering, accepting the wound and teaching others about it.
Defining myself is a double-edged sword. Being seen means I’m setting myself up for rejection. Not being seen means I won’t have my needs met.
My natal Chiron is very close to this past Aries new moon, which happened conjunct transiting Chiron. This means that I’m going through my Chiron return, that time in life when the asteroid returns to its natal position and makes you unpack all the baggage accumulated until the present time.
I’m actually at the tail end of the Chiron return, and I can tell you it has been a beautiful, very insightful and very intense journey.
The core of it has been my autistic self-discovery. Understanding myself through this rainbow colored lens, and finding my very own and unique outline in this hidden and mostly misunderstood dimension of neurodiversity is the teaching Chiron had for me all along. Two years ago I couldn’t have explained you my processing pattern, as I’ve described above, for the simple reason that it wasn’t known to me with this detail and depth.
But this discovery is not without pain. Naming myself, being able to say, “I am autistic”, is sometimes met with incomprehension or even confrontation. The double-edged sword.
The thing is, as I see more dimensions of myself, I can’t unsee them, I can’t go back to that undefined me that is so much more behaved, malleable and ready to adjust to the outside world. As I conquer more and more inner landscape, it becomes harder to fit other people’s expectations and social norms.
In this lunation, with Chiron conjuncting the Aries new moon, know who you are, define yourself and say your name.
I’m Bárbara. Astrologer. Autistic. Opinionated.
Who are you?