Last module, discussing Chi's yod.
Remember this?
"4.) Anything attached in a stressful aspect to the apex of the yod is commenting on how the problem came to be in the first place. (This is what I haven’t seen anyone write yet, but it appears to me to be the case.)"
At first glance, there doesn't appear to be anything stressful attached to the apex of Chi's yod, the Sun conjunct Neptune I told you was so bad. In fact, we learned some good things about it. There certainly aren't any ugly red lines like I have, that denote those fearsome things we call "squares." So far, we've only talked about the good parts of Sun+Neptune. We need to know that the Sun symbolizes YOU. Who YOU are. To understand this next bit, we need to know that Neptune in astrology symbolizes that "urge to merge," the need to transcend oneself and become blissfully one with something greater.
In the artistic sense, that's good. No doubt Michelangelo, when he was painting the Sistine Chapel, had some pretty hefty Neptune transits happening somewhere in his chart. I have Neptune in House Three, the house of communication, an indicator of writing ability (and the ability to learn astrology easily, natch!)
But in the interpersonal sense, that's NOT so good. Especially when a person was wounded in childhood, never really felt loved by the parents, and received a lot of messages that any kind of discord was one step from the sky falling, and that they themselves were actually pretty worthless.
In that case, people feel a deep longing to connect; a deep longing for perfection in the world, to find a place where there is no more suffering and no more pain. Some people with Sun conjunct Neptune become addicted to alcohol or drugs, searching for that blissful place where there's no pain and they feel connected.
Some people merge with other people in an unhealthy way, and this would describe Chi.
As an example, let me tell you this story: Once upon a time, after he'd moved out, Chi was telling me how excited he felt about what his future might hold. We were discussing moving in together, and he was telling me he was thinking he might purchase his own little house. He sounded very excited about it.
I then said I had never wanted a house. I wanted something small and easy to take care of, in a place where exterior work and yardwork were taken care of by someone else. I didn't want to spend all my free time doing chores; I wanted to write!
The living instant I said that, Blip! Suddenly Chi saw all the virtues of a condominium, and I heard no more talk about wanting a house. We talked several times about him living where I live, and he sounded just as excited about that.
Now, where did Chi go? In nothing flat, there were two of me, and none of him!
I remember having a distinctly uncomfortable feeling when this happened, as if something BIG had JUST GONE WRONG.
But then he talked on and on about living with me, and he sounded happy about it. I reflected that he was a grown man, and he was (and is) so successful in other areas of his life that if he told me he was happy about something, I should just accept that and be thrilled that we were so much alike.
And I was.
Until …
We discussed him getting a land line, so our calls to one another wouldn't show up on his cell phone. At first he told me he didn't want a land line, but then he agreed that it would be a good idea. Then it never happened. I'd ask him about it and I'd hear, "Yeah, I need to do that."
When weeks went by and it never happened, I concluded that he was having second thoughts about his wife Rory. Maybe he really missed her and just didn't want to tell me. Maybe he really didn't want to talk to me. Maybe he realized he was just infatuated with me and he really didn't love me at all! Maybe he was just beating around the bush, worried about how to let me know this.
WRONG. (As I found out when we talked again in October 2017.)
What was really happening?
Sun conjunct Neptune! An Unhealthy Urge To Merge.
I discovered this about Chi as soon as I started to hear what happened in his family after he left his wife.
When it was only me talking, everything he said matched what I was saying. (At least I had listened to him often enough that most of what I said reflected what he'd told me over the years he'd always liked or wanted for himself.)
But as soon as anyone else walked on stage and started talking, everything he thought would swing to match that person's viewpoint.
His daughter said he needed to stay in the marriage and resurrect communication that had been absent for twenty years, and BOOM! that was what Chi thought. Rory got angry and told him all the problems in the marriage were his fault, and BOOM! that was what Chi thought. He walked into marriage counseling determined it was going to be divorce counseling, but the marriage counselor started work and … he just never got around to mentioning it.
Does this sound at all codependent to you? It is, and in Chi's chart, this is showing up as Sun conjunct Neptune: The Bad Manifestation.
Chi has been so badly hurt in his life that he can't conceive of causing pain to anyone else, so as soon as they start to talk, his feelings merge nebulously into whatever their feelings are, and Chi himself disappears. Worse, this conjunction occurs in the fair-minded sign of Libra, which wants to see everyone else's points of view anyway. So, for years and years and years and years, it's, "But so-and-so will be upset if I don't …" and harmony must be preserved at all costs, so Chi will actually convince himself he's happy with whatever the other person wanted.
Except that, years later, we in the club meetings would hear about how unhappy he was. And how things had been everyone else's way for a long, long time.
And that's when I would start to hear things like, "Everyone else is happy. What's wrong with me?" Chi even started studying Zen Buddhism, trying to suppress his own feelings so he wouldn't know how unhappy he was!
The trouble is that you cannot disappear yourself in a relationship in order to make everyone else happy. The trouble is that you are a person, and you have needs, too, and relationship has to meet both people's needs in order to work. And relationship cannot possibly meet your needs if you disappear the living instant you sense that somebody else might want something different than you.
If you are taking care of a tiny, tiny baby, who can only cry and not speak, then it's appropriate for you to disregard yourself and for your feelings to flow and merge and become the other person's. A baby lies there and kicks and screams, and you have to ask yourself, if I were this baby, what would I be upset about? Is my diaper wet? Am I hungry?
Not only that, but you need compassion for the baby, who is helpless, so that you treat it tenderly in a fashion that child needs. The baby's brain is immature and developing; the baby needs to be babied in order to mature normally, and a good parent knows that.
But Chi's kids, and nobody else around him, is that age anymore. There is no need to merge nebulously into their feelings to avoid hurting them. They can talk for themselves, and furthermore, in relationship, we must talk for ourselves. The reason for that is, nobody else can do it for us. And if other people think you're really okay with what's going on, you're going to be miserable a lot of the time, and they won't even know it!
Furthermore, reacting to everyone else's upset as if you're still that crying baby who needs babying and is deeply hurt where you didn't receive it, and everyone else still is, too, eliminates an important source of learning. Past a certain age, humans learn a lot when they discover they can't have something, or that someone else's needs also have to be considered. When you rob another person of that experience, what happens?
This is codependency, known in Chi's chart as Sun conjunct Neptune, and it's ruining all his relationships by keeping him from being appropriately assertive within them … just as his yod is telling us.
This is because (and I haven't looked for this bit in his chart yet, although I certainly expect that it's in there), the child of an alcoholic learns that it's BAD FOR HIM TO HAVE NEEDS THAT DIFFER FROM ANYONE ELSE'S, and that if he does, HE'S A BAD PERSON.
And, as anybody codependent knows, you have to unlearn that if you want your relationships to have the faintest PRAYER of succeeding. If you want to know more, Lisa A. Romano, perhaps the best life coach on the internet for codependents, is saying the same thing here (minus the astrology.)
4a.) When having trouble with a yod, take a look at … Gee, wonder why I named Chi after this asteroid?
In Chi's chart, Chiron is located right in the middle of House 5, conjunct the Moon. (It's got a little OK sign on it, which is ironic since Chiron in a chart denotes where and how the person is anything BUT okay.) House 5 is concerned with creativity, play, children, and, oh--! Romance. So there's a deep wound in this area. One common interpretation is that the individual was rejected by their first love and is wounded in expressing feelings because of this. Another is that the individual's self esteem was badly wounded when they were a child. (No, I am not making any of this up.) It seems fitting that Chiron is sitting right on top of Chi's Moon, because the Moon, if you will recall, is telling us about what we need in relationship for our feelings to feel at home, happy, secure.
Thus concludes the second module of these yods, Chi's yod. I suppose I should do Chi's wife's next.