12 Styles of Awakening

				*12 styles of awakening* The following is a brief description of twelve equally valid, equally unreal, and equally precious dreams that ego has the privilege of waking up inside of. Yes, each one of these styles of awakening can, when lacking a witness, cause us to undergo an “archetype possession,” condemning us to live flat and thin inside the lampshade of personality. What we are focusing on here, however, is what these styles look like when they are illumined, when we harness their archetypal healing power by locating ourselves as the light and, thereby, use our lampshade to animate the the rays of spirit. After reading each style, rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 as to how well you have personally embodied and said “yes” to this Divinely ordained crucible of awakening. Twelve Styles of Awakening 1. Audacious Individuality (Awakened Aries) 2. Shameless Embodiment (Awakened Taurus) 3. Truth in The Moment (Awakened Gemini) 4. Hurtable Humanness (Awakened Cancer) 5. Flamboyant Self-worth (Awakened Leo) 6. Reverence for Protocol (Awakened Virgo) 7. Surrender to Two-ness (Awakened Libra) 8. Befriending Darkness (Awakened Scorpio) 9. Passion for the Panoramic (Awakened Sagittarius) 10. Reputable Loving (Awakened Capricorn) 11. Visionary Credibility (Awakened Aquarius) 12. Efficacious Mysticism (Awakened Pisces) 1. Awakened Aries (audacious individuality) It takes a persistent kind of brashness to fully show up on this shore, to firmly resist the psychic undertow back into the ocean of terrified niceness that ego likes to call “Oneness.” Awakened Aries would rather err on the side of making a daring, improvisational mistake than cuddling up with some passionless peace because it knows that creative conflict is sometimes more separation-dissolving than superficial harmony. On a scale of one through ten, rate your ability to express this kind of bold, let-the-cards-fall-as-they-may individuality— the same kind of chutzpah, perhaps, that Spirit needed to kick off this risky dream-sport, where slumbering body-minds get more than a little roughed up and winners and losers are a brutal— if only apparent— reality. Unwitnessed manifestation: impulsive, arrogant, dominating. 2. Awakened Taurus (shameless embodiment) Awakened Taurus knows that spirit is matter named. It’s that shamelessly embodied, hedonistic and security-conscious part of the Divine that knows that the timeless absorption of the executive in a board meeting, the sensual abandon of beloveds giving/receiving touch, or the sweaty focus of a construction worker expertly hoisting an unwieldy slab of drywall are all potential mystical states— no less profound than a monk lost in chant. Rate your ability to meet the world on its own mundane, musky-animal terms and build a grounded, comfortable lifestyle that sufficiently cradles and protects the delirious Spirit incubating in your flesh. Unwitnessed manifestation: greedy, possessive, over-indulgent. 3. Awakened Gemini (truth in the moment) Knowing whether you are cutting short an energetically flat situation out of healthy respect for your own aliveness or whether you are aborting an opportunity to breakthrough into a juicier depth, is not always an easy call. For this kind of snap verdict, we rely on awakened Gemini. It gives us the ability to spontaneously capture, articulate and act on our immediate experience free of outdated agendas and overly worshiped abstractions like “direction” and “ultimate meaning.” How willing are you to follow the wobbly compass needle of your moment-to moment truth and embody the enlightened impatience that would rather err on the side of learning-through-too-much-movement than filling your shrinking birth/death interval with sluggishness? Unwitnessed manifestation: unreliable, mentally scattered, superficial. 4. Awakened Cancer (hurtable humanness) This vulnerable vantage point knows that allowing oneself to be hurtable is an irrational but essential part of birthing an authentically soulful and awakened body-mind. It has little patience with or interest in attempts to spiritually bypass our humanness. In fact, to Cancer, daring to walk the thin line between heartbreaking devotion and dysfunctional attachment to whomever they deem “family” is the most vigorous and life-changing kind of vision quest one could sign up for. Rate your willingness to traverse this messy, meandering path to the deliciously empty, storyless core of who we are. Unwitnessed manifestation: needy, temperamental, clannish 5. Awakened Leo (flamboyant self-worth) The ability to get up and present yourself as worthy of admiration for your God-given talents is no more or less egotistical than staying safe and small in the crowd. In fact, putting our self on the hot seat where the mind’s intrinsically insecure somebody-ness is made public could turn out to be the most humbling, ego-purifying path a soul could choose. Alas, our spiritually fashionable egalitarianism could simply be a way of keeping our superiority and pride a secret, if only to our self. Rate your ability to get caught doing a bad impersonation of the God within and, thereby, to provide a flawed— but vital— nucleus for the larger community of human “electrons” to spin around. Unwitnessed manifestation: vanity, bragging, megalomania 6. Awakened Virgo (reverence for protocol) A soul wakes up nowhere, if not in the lowly details of everyday life. The supernatural gift of Virgo is to discern the profound psychic significance of each service done with efficiency, integrity and humility, no matter how unnoticed it may seem. Virgo instinctively knows that everyday tasks reverberate through the collective consciousness. Rate your ability to know that earth and every workplace is, in potential, a smooth-running ashram and that modest things like cleaning your room and cheerfully catering to the needs of another according to a prescribed protocol are sacred rituals, Unwitnessed manifestation: critical, workaholic, pedantic 7. Awakened Libra (surrender to twoness) Much of our awakening to Oneness happens inside relational mirrors or containers. These containers must be stable enough to entice and endure the disturbing emergence of two egos. In this way, people stick around long enough to witness the subtle and repressed layers of their conditioned minds in action and, by grace, wake up as their witness. This is the diamond-like clarity of Awakened Libra love. Rate your willingness to gracefully enter into unions with a mutually understood contract, such that the inevitable conflicts that unfold within this crucible of awakening are mutually healing and creative, rather than a re-enactment and re-enforcement of early karmic wounding. Unwitnessed manifestation: co-dependent, manipulative, “peace at any price.” 8. Awakened Scorpio (befriending darkness) Rare is the person who will baldly admit that the sweet spring of pure awareness trickles under a thorny tangle of self-betrayal habits, and that blood is the price of drinking. This is the fierce grace of awakened Scorpio. It endows us with the spiritual toughness necessary to stare mercilessly at the ugly subterfuge behind every ego-inspired smile, and then to sense deeper, to the magnificent Spirit in chains in the basement. Rate your capacity to routinely notice and transform the mind’s impulses to control, manipulate, and abuse power, such that when darkness, pain and crises erupt in others you greet them like old friends: with hard-earned equanimity, resourcefulness and poise. Unwitnessed manifestation: ruthless, controlling, vengeful. 9. Awakened Sagittarius (passion for the panoramic) Sagittarius is the meaning-making impulse within us that refuses to let the ultimately ineffable mystery of this life discourage us from synthesizing our experience into an intelligent, inspiring world-view. Whether through travel or study, awakened Sagittarius searches for the panoramic perspective. These long distance journeys of the mind and body shape us into rigorous, yet humble, students of the mystery. Rate your ability to “venture far,” for truth and effectively transmit teachings that are, in the end, ungraspable to the mind, but crucial to the Spirit. Unwitnessed manifestation: preachy, commitment-phobic, adventure junkie. 10. Awakened Capricorn (Reputable loving) The world confers social recognition and its accompanying material advantages on those who can manage the ego’s erratic moods and uneven motivations well enough to offer a service with consistent quality. To those who measure caring more in terms of mood and atmosphere than being a dependable helpmate, this strictness of focus may seem rather dry and calculating. Awakened Capricorn knows that, here in this world where dreams turn solid, every so-called romantic” moment is built on the back of a previous moment of austerity and that divine beingness oozes equally through both of them. Rate your ability to let responsibility be the measure of your sensitivity and to process personal feelings indirectly— through disciplined work. Unwitnessed manifestation: cold, calculating, opportunistic. 11. Awakened Aquarius (Visionary credibility) Self-indulgent eccentricity and genuine genius have a way of flickering back and forth. Throw the blanket of conformity over the first one for too long and you smother the second one as well. On the other hand, indulging cutting-edge, bohemian beliefs and lifestyles can make you such an outsider that you’re unable to impact the very community you long to transform. Rate your ability to package visionary insights and new models of communal harmony in such a way that your message can be heard and utilized rather than dismissed as unjustifiably disruptive or anarchistic. Unwitnessed manifestation: rebellious, impersonal, freedom-fixated. 12. Awakened Pisces (Efficacious mysticism) There are many genuinely wounded and oppressed people that need catering to in this world. However, the perception of oneself as a helpless, misunderstood victim of an insensitive world, is a fate far worse than most outer oppressions. Modeling an alternative to this disenfranchised perspective is, perhaps, the most spiritually healing thing one can do. By boldly embodying one’s timeless dimension— untouched by the world— you ladle out more than just soup at the soup kitchen. Rate your ability to serve selflessly with an all-embracing presence of heart and, thereby, to extend genuine inspiration to a broken-hearted world. Unwitnessed manifestation: self-pitying, seductive, escapist.








	What impressed me about the reading I got from Hunter was his ability to interpret my chart in such a way as to present the influences and challenges that I needed to hear about at that moment. Not some general Pluto in my natal first house means whatever, but zooming down to specific issues in my life that I recognized right away and could act on in my daily life. - Peter Brouwer