Stargazing, #123

John McLaughlin:

As a tool, this allows people to look behind their systems of conditioning and begin to say, oh, that whole idea I had about how I should live, that doesn't necessarily come from me. That comes from outside me. What is truest to my own self? And this is where the work really gets very, very deep. What is closest to my own heart? And what are some of the lessons, the learnings that I need to do about my own state of consciousness in order to go free?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 123, Stargazing, airing for the first time on Sunday, January 19, 2014. Today's guest is psychologist and holistic astrologist John McLaughlin. Today is my birthday and as such gives me an opportunity to think about where I have been, where I am going, and just exactly who I am. The latter is an elusive idea. To be sure, just who any of us might be is impacted by many variables. I know I am not alone in giving this serious consideration. Each year on the anniversary of my birth. This year I am indulging in a guilty pleasure in having my friend John McLaughlin join me to talk about the stars. We will spend our hour discussing how we are impacted by the energy of the planets, an idea that has basis in ancient astronomy and is increasingly verified by modern physics. We know you will be intrigued by our conversation. Thank you for joining me on my birthday show.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today's show is my birthday show and

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

what I have learned about myself as a doctor who has many, many years

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

of Western medical training and also many years of Eastern medical training is that

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've become fascinated with the stars.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It may be somewhat counterintuitive because it's not always something we consider to be rational. The stars actually have been studied for thousands and thousands of years by civilizations and actually there's a scientific basis to Some of the astrology that has been studied. So I thought I'd bring in another very well trained Portland psychologist to talk to me about astrology today. This individual has done probably more years of education than I've done and still finds himself fascinated by the stars. So, John McLaughlin, thanks for coming in. And in fact, thanks for coming back because you came in in one of our early shows and talked about laughter. And now you're gonna talk about stargazing.

John McLaughlin:

Ah, stargazing. One of the things I'd like to say about astrology, which has some bad press, which we all have to admit, is that if we look at the history that you all have as physicians in hospitals, we always discover that in birthing times, in terms of disturbance, in terms of accidents, in terms of major illnesses, the full moon, it's always sort of the ripe and pregnant time for all sorts of medical emergencies and sudden births, et cetera, et cetera. So furthermore, aside from the moon affecting the tides, it actually affects our whole energy field. And one of the ways that sort of as apologia I describe astrology to the skeptics is let's for a minute take say the planet Jupiter or Saturn, just completely take it out of orbit, eliminate it. And what is going to happen there is going to be such a massive reorganization of the entire solar system that if we think anything, even a palm tree is going to be left standing on Earth, we have our heads in a sack, there will be death, approximation of everything, because all the orbits will be reorganized and very quickly, so that we're not living isolated on our planet. We're part of a huge energy system. All of the energies of each planet, which are the heavenly bodies, as the ancient astrologers used to call them, relate to one another. And in that relationship we are part, just as the people who give birth at the time of the full moon or the new moon. And the new moon also has an effect. Those births are most often ones that are precipitated by a certain energy field that occurs with a full moon. We can't ignore these things. And I worked in the Netherlands in what was called the Neurose Clinik, a clinic residential hospital for the truly disturbed, the psychotic. All of them were taken within two weeks to a month off any medication. So we worked in a non medicated atmosphere. I initially went to train the psychiatric staff and then joined the staff after that when I was in the Netherlands, which was about six months a year. And all of us knew that as we approached the time of the full moon, our Alertness levels had to go up substantially because the change in the tenor of people's disturbances was absolutely clear. We couldn't ignore it. And those sort of facts in terms of how hospitals work, how physicians work, what happens in terms of birthing and accidents and disturbances in people who have psychological problems, we can't ignore that. So that is part of the whole astrological field that, that we're dealing with. To me, it's very simple for people for whom this is more difficult to swallow, to digest. The way in which I suggest a solution is to begin to understand how deeply related we are to everything. Years ago, I sat on the deck of the house I had in Arausik and there were chipmunks and squirrels playing. And it was in the fall and the chipmunks were filling their cheeks full of nuts. And the realization of how utterly common to Earth we are, we people are. We're totally common to this Earth. As common as a chipmunk, a squirrel, a seal, and there were seals right off the shore. And the eagles lived on an island in the middle of the river in Kennebec. And all of us are common to this world, and we are all affected by it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I did an article, I wrote an article for the Farmers Almanac one year,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and we were actually talking about the

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

seasonality of illness and of birth and death. And there have been studies that tell us that especially older people, but really people of all ages die more during a certain time of year. We become ill during certain times of the year. So there is something about the weather, the light, the energy. I did try to look up things about the full moon because I had been in the. I had delivered lots of babies under full moons. I had been in the emergency room during times of full moons. And it was crazy. It was always crazy. And yet we have nothing yet that has studied the impact of full moons. And I think it's not possible. It's not possible that there is not an impact. I know that's a double negative, but there's got to be some relationship there.

John McLaughlin:

And there is a relationship at this point. Most of it is what is called, scientifically speaking, anecdotal. And anecdotal evidence has, in our paradigm, which is basically materialistic, been relegated to a sort of some closet somewhere that we don't really open or a bureau drawer that's lower down, that is too far to stoop to because we depend upon double blind study. Well, in terms of the influence of the movement of planets, even the cycles of the moon, we can't have a double blind study, there's no way of doing it. We can't have a group that doesn't have the Moon affecting them and a group that does. We can have a group that denies the moon will affect them, but that's very different. So we can't really do a study within our paradigm, our scientific paradigm that satisfies those questions. But from years of working with people, I know that when there are certain transits of particularly major outer planets to the personal planets or to your ascendant or your descendant, there are changes that are pushed. Now, we can respond to them or we can resist them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I want to back up because I have studied a little bit of astrology, not a ton, so I'm familiar with things like transits and ascendance and descendants. But I think a lot of people think about the 12 major signs of the zodiac. And in fact, now I believe it's possible there's 13. There's a new sign that maybe has been put out there as a possible new sign. But what you're saying is it's not as simple as that.

John McLaughlin:

In terms of the 12 signs, we look again at those points that are right on the border. It's called a cusp. So that, say the 21st of January, that's a cusp point. It's partly Capricornian and it's partly Aquarian. And the people born, say on the 21st of January share both qualities. And the Capricornian quality of wanting things grounded real solid. There's a very strong success orientation, responsibility in the outer world. And then the Aquarian energy that says, oh, I'm just going to fly off a little to the left field and explore something that doesn't actually fully relate to the field that I'm really grounded in. And there's an expansion of the Capricornian energy that tends to be a little limited by its relationship, its close relationship to the Aquarian energy. So that a person born, say, on that date stands with one foot in Capricorn and one foot in Aquarius. And it's a balancing act. But people that are solidly in one sign to some extent have it easier because they don't have to do quite the same sort of, oh, I'm some of this and some of that, and how do I synthesize that within myself?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I had you do my chart before

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

we sat down to have this interview because I am so interested in this. And I'm born on January 19th, so

John McLaughlin:

that's not quite on the cusp yeah, you're very close. You're in the last two degrees of. I think I'd have to look at that year, the last two degrees of Capricorn, but you're sharing some of that Aquarian energy already.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And then I have my daughter who was born on the 25th of January,

John McLaughlin:

and she may really, she may be 3 degrees or 4 degrees of Aquarius. I'd have to look at the ephemeris again. An ephemeris. A friend of mine jokes that ephemeris is a dog that you keep in the cellar and you feed live rats, too. It's actually a book with all sorts of symbols and numbers that we astrologers use to see where the planets are at any one time. Now, that's when I, at age 24, began working with astrology. That's what we had. We had to do all the mathematics ourselves. Now they're computer programs. All we do is we throw in the name, the date, the city or town, and the time of birth, and within less than 10 seconds, the whole chart is done. It's much, much easier so that then the astrologer can actually sit and work with a chart without spending half an hour, 45 minutes doing all the mathematics.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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[Unidentified voice]:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

so we started with the 12 signs of the zodiac, and then you told us about people who are on the cusp, and now you're getting into different degrees and different, you know, different years being different things. And where you're born means something different, too. So it's actually, it's already starting to get complicated, and you're not even very far into what it means to read somebody's chart.

John McLaughlin:

The place we're born really has to do with what is called the ascendant and the 12 houses. There are 12 signs, but those are also related to the houses. The houses are descriptions of life experience, the various essential ways we move through existence. The first house, for instance, is how the public, the world, sees us and how we mostly unconsciously present ourselves to the world. For instance, I have Aquarius rising. Now I have it right on the cusp. So I'm partly Capricornian, partly Aquarian. But people with the Aquarian energy see me as very intellectual. In actual fact, hiding behind that is a cancer moon and a cancer Venus that are very, very full of feeling that doesn't appear immediately. The second house, for instance, has to do with our values, what we hold dear. And those values can extend anywhere from money, to qualities of ethics, to fairness, to issues of how we relate to one another. The third house is the Gemini house. The second house is a Taurus house. There was a period that I had a farm up north in the Netherlands. The next plot, so to speak, there was a bull, and the bulls and the cows know where their boundaries are. They have clear sense of boundaries. The field is fenced, and that's very Taurean. Then you go to Gemini, and Gemini said, oh, I'm going to look at this and I'm going to look at that, and I'M going to look at this and I'm going to be all over the place and all sorts of ideas and we can go. And that's the third house. Now, somebody, for instance, with a Capricorn natal sun sitting in the third house has a very, very different quality of Geminian energy than somebody with, say, a Libran sun. And Libra is the sign of relationships. The Capricornian energy just says, all right, I'm going to look at a lot of ideas, but I have to know that they work, that they're solid, that they can be put into practice, that they are useful to the public. Somebody else will say, a Libran sun in the third house will say, oh, there are all these possibilities for multiple relationships with all sorts of different people. I wonder where I'll go next. It's a totally different energy field. So that we. When we come to reading a person's chart, the astrologer really has to look at several different factors. Now, what's easy is we open up the Portland Daily sun, for instance, and we say, okay, we read I'm a Virgo, and we read Virgo. But the little ditty for the day that describes what a Virgo or a Gemini or a Leo is going through is extremely surface, primarily. And secondly, those astrological readings in newspapers are based on the position of the moon with the assumption that your sun sign is in the first house. So they just are not accurate. So you can throw all of that out. And if you really want to know how your chart working for you or how you are working against your chart, I really want to emphasize that one needs to either learn how to read a chart oneself, there are a lot of books in that area, or have the assistance of somebody who has been doing this for years and years. How we prevent ourselves from living. Our basic map of consciousness is, I think, really basic to most of our lives. We all get conditioned. We're told, this is so. This is so. This is the paradigm you live by. These are the precepts that you follow. We get that from our parents, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents, our schools for those who raised in any sort of religious household. The priests, the ministers, the rabbis, the imams, all of those are bringing to bear on us their particular ways of living. And we absorb those when we're young. Often those have nothing to do with the map of energy. And we're really talking about an energy field that affects how we respond personally. A lot of it has nothing to do with that at all. So that many, many People live their lives out behind a sort of curtain of not knowing. I often like to describe astrology as a wonderful process of pulling back the veil and saying, oh, and people will sometimes. I can remember working for one man who, after 45 minutes, big, tall guy, he was six four, six five, strongly built. He'd been very successful. And he started to cry, which was a bit of a surprise to me. And he looked at me after he'd sobbed a little. He said, all my life I've been struggling with that and trying to push it away. He said, now I can feel that's just there. That's just part of me. So that as a tool, this allows people to look behind their systems of conditioning and begin to say, oh, that whole idea I had about how I should live, that doesn't necessarily come from me. That comes from outside me. What is truest to my own self, what is closest to my. And this is where the work really gets very, very deep. What is closest to my own heart? And what are some of the lessons, the learnings that I need to do about my own state of consciousness in order to go free?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're saying this not only as somebody who works with spiritual astrology, but also as somebody who is trained in psych and also as an individual who yourself. You have gone through these learnings and these experiences, and you've struggled with these things firsthand. You've known what it was like to be born into a certain family and to go in a certain direction and then realize that wasn't the direction that perhaps you were ultimately meant to go in. And you've gone in a lot of different directions.

John McLaughlin:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me, how did that happen? What was your, you know, you're born. You're a little Johnny McLaughlin.

John McLaughlin:

Little Johnny was supposed to become a jurist, a lawyer, a judge. That was the program. It was very clear. I will Never forget, at 19, one of my father's colleagues on the supreme Court in Massachusetts looking at me and saying very emphatically that I was supposed to live according to the plan and the program and that I would be sorely disappointed if I didn't. That has not been the case, that I'd been sorely disappointed. Something in me got permission fairly early to explore areas of my being that were not characteristic of the kind of family that I was raised in, which had a lot of education. I mean, generations of education and very intellectually positive parents. And there were certain expectations underneath, particularly in my mother. There was this sort of ripple of a little stream of, you've Got to explore yourself. And she had an aunt and uncle and two first cousins who spend a lot of time in Zurich being analyzed by Jung. And I can remember asking Brookie, who was one of the two sons, on the back porch of the house in Bailey Island, I guess I was 10 or 11, did anything change? And Brookie said, no, no, no, I'm more used to my neuroses than I was. And I can remember sitting there looking out over the ocean, thinking, there's something wrong with this picture. If nothing changes, then why bother? Now, that family, along with two others, were instrumental in bringing Jung to Bailey island in the 30s, and he gave several lectures. The family still has videos, movies of his walking into Library hall, which my great uncle Perry designed and giving lectures. But I thought, well, if nothing changes, then why bother? So something in me started asking those questions and started reading Freud and Jung. As an undergraduate intended to major in psychology, but it was a department at Oberlin that ran rats was experimental psych. Well, by the middle of my sophomore year, I had not taken a psych course. And Van Atta, who was my advisor, said, you've got to start, you're getting rather late in the game. And I went out into Tappan Square and looked around and the most beautiful building on campus was the art building. And I went and declared an art history major. And that was one of the smartest things this wet behind the ear kid could have done because he came in touch with not only beauty, but the spiritual that opened up all sorts of levels of consciousness. When I was in grad school at Harvard studying art history, that's when I started studying astrology because I knew there was somehow more to this whole field than the whole field of art, as well as psychology as our humanness. And somehow the study in art history led me to a grasp of, oh, there's something about the human condition that is so profound and the images that really are still etched in my being, like the image of the face of Sacconi, which is one of the great statues on the outside of the Duomo in Florence. All of the pathos and the feeling and the sadness and the wonder and the awe of being human in this extraordinary mystery. The face of Nicodemus in Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross. My God, you know, looking up at his dead savior. I mean, those images said so, so much to me. And I knew that I had to expand way beyond art history in order to start touching that in myself. And I did a four year training analysis with a Harvard psychiatrist who was in Newton during the latter part of my twenties. And then it went further and further and I got a lot of all my training in the field of therapy has been outside the walls. It's been non academic. I finished the academic degrees in architectural history and philosophy. But all the real exploration of consciousness needed to go beyond the standard understanding of ego. And we can see this in charts where we're caught by the ego mind. And the ego mind is very easily the mind that is conditioned, conditioned by external circumstances, conditioned by all of the influences we had when we were young. That conditioning doesn't allow us to explore where our true being I often refer to the soul where our souls are wanting to take us. And where our souls are often wanting to take us is not exactly where we're conditioned to go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth Main to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy

[Unidentified voice]:

when was the last time you took a break from what you were doing? From the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up? I know that during the course of my days I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe. But when I do, I feel energized because in those moments I'm able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow. Sometimes those are the aha moments. If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we are doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can in fact come true. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmain.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

when you and I had a conversation

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

about laughter on one of the early shows, you talked about the religious background, your family, and how that didn't exactly match up with what became your own spiritual sense.

John McLaughlin:

I hope nobody is offended or listens to this, but at age 7 or 8, my mother, with a wonderful wave of her hands, would say, the Christ craze is on the way out. The Christ craze is on the way out. And my father would say, oh, it's all hypocrisy. So that I had the fortune on one hand to be raised with a highly skeptical attitude toward religion. That's one hand. The other hand is that it gave me freedom to explore. And I refused. Going to a high school, a boarding school that was strongly Anglican and wound up going to a Quaker school. And every morning for 15 minutes or all of the students sat in one big hall and we were silent for 15 minutes. Well, you can imagine what at 14, 15, 16, a bunch of guys silent for 15 minutes was like, I mean, talk about shuffling the feet. The restlessness. For me, it was a real eye opener because occasionally we'd go to Quaker meetings. And the meeting house in Providence was right on the grounds of Moses Brown. And those hours opened a possibility of something that I had not seen in my upbringing. And that is part of what took me on another path, a really deeply spiritual path. And people think, oh, spiritual, airy fairy. I often slam the two words together. New age, drop the capital letters, slam them together, and you know what? It rhymes. And there's a lot of newage out there that really is not grounded. To be spiritual really means to be here and to be awake and to be alert and to be present without all the layers of the mind. That's the real spiritual process. I mean, you see it in Buddhism. The writings of Pemachodron are absolutely amazing because they keep bringing us, no matter what we're going through, to the present and into our hearts. You can see this in an astrological chart. You can say, oh, this person's soul is needing to move in this direction, but here's where they're stuck. And in the work that I do individually with people, I help them look at where they're stuck and where they have tremendous gifts. And often we're oblivious to the gifts that have been given us, which, as somebody who counsels people, I get so frustrated by. I mean, I will really acknowledge that you haven't seen that gift in yourself. And it's such a surprise, because if that. The gifts that we have have not been ones that have been reflected to us from outside, we'll often miss them, but they're energetically set up. Our personalities are set up for many of the gifts that we have that we don't even see. But they're also set up for the challenges. And in reading a chart, I can almost always say, this is where your essential being, your soul, your heartfulness, is wanting to go. What are you doing about that? Are you listening to that? Because to use that image again, astrology is sort of tearing away the veil that we all carry within ourselves that doesn't let us connect with our own being. And that connection with our own being makes all the difference in the world. Often what we do is we betray ourselves. That's a strong word to use, but we can see it in any form of counseling and particularly with an astrological chart. How we betray ourselves. Oh, you're not hearing this. This is a gift, and you're not letting yourself feel that. For me personally, doing an astrological chart, though, there's a lot of mind stuff, information and mind work. It's really a process of just opening my heart to a person and saying, oh, here, please, look, just be real about who you are. What? And now we go back to laughter. The more we can see ourselves, the funnier we become. It's a gentling process. We can begin to say, oh, you mean I've been doing that all these years and I don't really have to. And then when the chuckle starts to come, that's when we start to go free. I mean, the laughter that comes and meditation will bring that on as well, that we begin to accept all of ourselves, whatever it is, the shadows, the tough stuff. I mean, a lot of people deal with addictions of one sort or another, controlled or not. I mean, all of that we bring home. We say, oh, this is all of me. This is part of me. Nothing gets thrown out. And one of the failings, I think, in a lot of the understanding that exists in Western psychology really has to do with the fact that we think we can get rid of something. There's no way. Please if this is part of the energy field that we are born with, you can see it astrologically, then that's part of what I have to work with. That's part of the clay that has been given me or the wood that has been given me so that I can create a form that is truly reflective of my own being. And that's an essential part of, I think, learning to be. Now, what's interesting, this is a technical point. When Freud came here the one time he did to lecture at Clark Institute, the initial translations of Freud from the German into English mistranslated the word zeal, which in German means soul, and the American translators translated as mine, so that they radically limited the understanding that became pervasive in Western, particularly American psychology to working with the mind. And the mind is only one part of our being. It's actually that which supports the ego. And the mind is always, if we can really look at it gently, without any judgment, is always trembling because it's going to be found out that it doesn't have a real grasp on the truth or the mystery of existence. As all of the great spiritual teachers say, we don't know. We don't know the future. There's no way of knowing the future. This is a mystery that we all have to live through. And it is not secure. There's no way of making it secure. I mean, we may be able to build up a huge fortune and live in a big house and it will still snow and there'll still be earthquakes or that all the money could be lost or our wives or our husbands or whomever could walk out on us or. Or there'll be a death of a child. None of that is controllable. How we respond to it is really the way in which we either go free or we stay bound by the mind.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.

[Unidentified voice]:

The winter landscape gives us a time of deep reflection. The ice, the snow, the slippery conditions give us an excuse to slow down. The winter landscape is something I pay close attention to when I am preparing a landscape plan. Japanese pine, Harry Lauder's walking stick, Twisted Baby, which is actually a honey locust cultivar, all have a unique sculptural quality to them. They have snow and ice collect on their branches. It accentuates their unique qualities. Low voltage outdoor lighting also brings out the winter landscape in ways that are just amazing. The shadows play off the naked branches and the gentle light washes over the night landscape. Otherwise, black glass turns into an outdoor living landscape. This black glass in your house comes alive because your eye goes through the glass and out into the landscape. When it snows, it's just incredible. You feel like you're out there, yet you're inside where it's warm and cozy. So it's important that we pay close attention when we're doing our landscape designs to really think about the long dark days of winter. I'm Ted Carter and if you'd like to contact me, I can be reached@tedcarterdesign.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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[Unidentified voice]:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

are there things that are happening in 2014 astrologically, especially January, February, March that people might start to feel?

John McLaughlin:

Well, the residue of the transit of Uranus and Pluto is still affecting all of us, there's no question about that. And there will be an exact Square again during 2014, and it doesn't happen in the first three months of the year. But this energy is basically breaking apart old structures. And we're talking about old structures politically, but we're also talking about the old structures internally in all of us. We're going through tremendous change. Basically, this is a time. And I think there's not anybody who is not aware of the tensions which we're dealing with. I mean, if we look just at our own Washington government, the breakdown in communication is absolutely extraordinary. And that's part of this transit that we're going through. That is the major one that is influencing us at this point. There's a second one because Pisces, Neptune has gone fully into the sign of Pisces. So that for all of us on the planet, we are being, in a way, encouraged. I even want to say exhorted energetically to opening up on a more spiritual level. And that Neptune rules the sign of Pisces. So it's affecting all of us, whether we have planets in Pisces or in signs that are related to Pisces by square or sextile or trine. Sextile and trine are easy relationships. All of us are feeling somehow, oh, there must be something more than this strictly material existence. Because as we get older, we begin to realize, oh, ho, ho, we're not going to last forever. I can remember looking down at my hands 10, 15 years ago and realizing, oh, they were becoming a little like my father's, which I could remember so vividly as he grew older. And I felt such a grace with that. But if we don't open to a deeper, higher, whatever adjective one wants to use dimension of our reality, then the changes we go through as we age, for instance, become more and more terrifying. More and more ones to be avoided, more and more ones to be. To be set away from. Consequently, endless cosmetics. We now have cosmetics for men to try to stave off the aging process, which really is becoming more and more difficult for us. Because the world that we're living in, the sort of increased chaos that has no point in it. I think of the pachinko game, the Japanese game on the wall. Just the little steel balls flying all over the place. Our lives are more and more disjointed or disjunctive. It was amazing. Yesterday I was up in Brunswick at Wild Oats, seeing four. They were obviously Bowdoin students. And I actually checked on that later. And they were spending time together, but they were all on their iPhones. And I thought, you know, when I was that age, we sat around and we talked. We talked a lot. We probably talked too much, but we thought we were talking at least about something important or essential to us. Now, they may have been texting Something essential and important to them. But right there, there were four of them and they weren't relating. And that's part of this chaos that we're living in, which is more and more disassociative. We can see it often in the charts of young people that one of the issues that they're really having to work with consciously and energetically is how do I learn how to relate Instead of existing in a solipsistic. In a sort of isolated individuation of self. I look and I think, oh, heavens, they've really got so much to learn about that now. On the other hand, I've read studies that indicate that they have capacities in their minds from having played video games. They're way beyond those of us who weren't raised with them. So there are trade offs. I just wonder what happens when we no longer can sit down at a table and really talk with one another. Because we human beings have to learn how to do that. And the Uranus, Pluto Square, and the movement of Neptune wholly and completely out of the cusp degrees in the very early part of Pisces. The movement of Neptune fully into Pisces is saying we've got to own a dimension of our reality that is not just material, is not limited to what we manufacture, what we produce.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We only have a few more minutes,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

but I think I'd be remiss if

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I didn't ask you what happens when

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you overlay one chart upon another. In the case of a parent and a child, in the case of a husband and a spouse. Are people always able to say, you have two charts that are in opposition to one another? Would you ever say to somebody, yeah, this just is not going to work out for you? Or would you say, these are your characteristics and you should both know about this because it might be more challenging for you.

John McLaughlin:

I always go for the latter, which is these are the areas of which you have to be really aware where there could be sticky points. So you have to be alert to those. But there are two ways of working with two charts. One is to overlay one on the other, and that's a comparison. And then there's a second way, which is to create a composite, which is to find the midpoints of both charts. And that creates a third chart which really is the chart of the relationship. I know two people that had, in terms of comparison, some wonderful aspects with one another and some very troublesome ones. The composite for those two people was made in heaven. But the composite only works if both people are able to Step into it. If only one steps into it, then the difficulties, the sticky points in the comparison will be the dominant factor. But there's nothing that can't be resolved with awareness. Now I can remember three, four years ago now working with a whole family down in South Carolina by phone because I do phone work. One of the issues that they raised was that their older son at 13 was a real problem. The father was doing the majority of the upbringing and the discipline and wanted a really close relationship with his son. The mother had sort of stepped back. There was a daughter in the family and her relationship with her daughter was closer. And I looked at the comparison between the son and the father. Well, it's not one I would have wished for, to put it easily. But the comparison between the mother and the son was quite wonderful. And I had quite an hour and a half with the two of them explaining to the father exactly what he had to do, which was to back off, really step back from the role that he played and to allow the mother to step into the role of guide and disciplinarian. A month later they called me up and they said, there's peace in the house. We don't know what happened. I said, yes, you do. You switched how you used your personal energies so that they could work better with your son. The father, you got out of the way and the mother stepped in. And ever since then, I've been in touch with them since then. Those teenage years have been incredibly smooth. Now that's how you can work in a familial situation. It's really quite wonderful.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

John, how do people get in touch with you?

John McLaughlin:

One way is Facebook, because I'm on Facebook and it's a very easy way to get a hold of me. I don't have a website, and that's fairly intentional. The other way is by phone, which is a 207 area code, 522-4465. And those are the two most direct and easiest ways to get a hold of me. And I'm happy to be gotten a hold of, John.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We could keep talking for hours and hours. I know that I. The more I learn about astrology, the more it just falls in line with things that I feel like we know as a society and also that I know personally. Quantum physics is sort of telling us a lot about the energy of the world. We get to look back at Chichen Itza and what was going on in Mexico and the astrologers back then. It's interesting to feel these things all coming together today. We have to stop. But I really appreciate your coming in and talking to all of us on my birthday. As a Capricorn and someone who's a little bit cuspy that way, I love hearing about things that we know in different ways and things that we can learn about in different ways and opening our minds and connecting to something more central to ourselves. So I really appreciate you coming in

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and speaking with us today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've been Speaking with John McLaughlin, who is a Portland psychologist and spiritual astrologer and many, many other things. Yes, thanks for coming in.

John McLaughlin:

You're welcome.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 123, Stargazing. Our guest has been John McLaughlin. For more information on our guest and extended interview, visit drlisabelisle.com the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our E. Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page, follow me on Twitter and Pinterest and read my take on health and well being on the Bountiful blog. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think about the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our stargazing show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day and happy birthday to my niece Eleanor and my daughter Abby in this upcoming week. I enjoy having you as fellow January babies. May all of you, our listeners, have a bountiful life.