The heliocentric chart for Spring, 2005 is clearly divided into two distinct poles. On the one hand is an overwhelming excitement about beautiful and interesting relationships, coupled with a useful and lucrative creativity that is making something new.

But on the other hand, there will be many people slipping further into confusion and fear, unaware of their unfortunate and unnecessary fault because they are incapable of self-criticism and are busy blaming something else for their predicament.

If we look at the positive side of the chart, we can see a bright and happy year ahead. To accomplish this chosen positivity, a strict self-control and an unshakeable faith in the ultimate benevolence of life are required.

Perhaps the only way to do this consistently is to spend a little time in quiet contemplation every day, in order to remember the blissful security and peace that have always existed in the deep mind within, and only then to return to the outer world, refreshed and eager for experience. Full aware that the outer experience can only mirror the inner expectation, everyone should make that expectation as wonderful as it can honestly be.

A playful, childlike nature giving full expression to a joyous creativity --- this is a major gift of this year. How long has it been since you truly played? How long since you used your gifts of intellect and art in a beautiful exchange whose purpose was simply for the fun of it? This honest, good child who only knows laughter and love --- this one, no matter how hidden, is ready to come out, and to dance a new dance never seen before --- like Krishna playing the flute and loving all the girls, this is your long-forgotten, smiling soul who is really, really good.

There is a fine seriousness too. After playing all day, the child needs a benevolent and wise parent who prudently maintains intellectual contact with the true source of security --- the remembrance of ancient wisdom, the habitual reading and pondering of classical literature, the cautious and skeptical avoidance of excess in the world, preferring to balance a small amount of world with an ample inner strength.

Life will suggest that this serious, conservative quality be developed this year, pointing out the immense advantages that will thus ensue. Indeed, it will be easy to see that the simplest way to handle worldly difficulties is to momentarily retreat from that world, even for an hour or two, and to lessen the world while you increase yourself by dwelling in the place where you reign supreme --- right there, in the inner sanctum of your own quiet mind, the mind that goes on deeper and deeper, forever and ever without an end. Once you see that mind a little, you finally remember that the world is nothing but your perception of it, and is ultimately only a thought, a paper tiger, nothing much. Then you can laugh at your former consternation, let go of roles invented by half-asleep people, and return to the fun of being Krishna or Radha or yourself.

There is also some work to be done, but not any work that you have done before. No, this work is new, it is gentle and profound, an application of spiritual-mindedness to the realm of science and analysis. It is a very gentle, unobtrusive, scientific way of looking at the perceptual details of the world while fully understanding that these details have no permanent existence and no fundamental claim upon action. It is like Buddha watching Maya, curiously interested in the show for a little while, but then he is off to better things. Meanwhile, however, he might have something to say about it.

For those engaged in research into higher consciousness or into the ways and means of attaining such consciousness, this year may bring breakthrough discoveries, even though the awakening will be violently and fully opposed by the illusory world --- which, after all, depends upon the illusions for its self-important, domineering continuance.

There will certainly be many opportunities for wealth, for obvious increase of enjoyable material things, and for using the newfound wealth in youthful, childlike ways. The first step toward obtaining the abundance will be a lengthy, respectful contemplation of the essential generosity of the universe. Seeing and understanding this truly, the material result will be truly in accord.

In making a beginning on the way to this wealth, it may be helpful to consider that wealth and money have no actual existence at all, being mere conventional symbols of human exchange, mental artifacts made by a society that creates intentionally confusing images to clothe its ever-confused ways. The way to wealth, then, is first to realize your own mistaken acceptance of this tired social paradigm, to see how this keeps you in unimaginative bondage to a decrepit material idea, and then to instead mentally move into a happier world, a more wonderful myth, wherein people are good and goods are abundantly given.

But by far the greatest gift of the year is that of true relationship, souls meeting and bonding in happiness and love. As the year proceeds, there will be a quickening, an excitement, a not-quite-understood new idea on the tip of the mind. Images of alluring beauty will form, attractions will appear and disappear, all pointing toward a singular, essential, primal and eternal attraction to the beautiful one.

Here is where the feminine energy reigns supreme, where the gentle, girlish part of everyone should focus and shine. It is a relationship unlike any lived so far in this lifetime, something better, happier, more innocent and good. This will gradually take form for those who can hope for and believe in such things. This relationship can deepen and grow for many, many years.

And lastly on this year's High Road, the male energy must intellectualize with the very best, most courageous and honorable integrity. Manliness has many aspects, but this year the aspect of right intellection will be paramount. Wherever it is the prerogative of the male energy to go forth and create, to initiate and to energize, there the male must be prepared to withstand every possible temptation to the contrary.

All men, and the male side of all women, should strive mightily to think noble thoughts, to speak with truth and beauty, to read many great books, and to align all communications with a continuous self-conscious remembrance that this mind, these words, all speech and every sincere idea, all are ultimately made of the unknowable divine, of which we should all strive to be worthy.

On earth, the place where souls paratroop down in order to get wet and muddy with earthian experience, there is always also a Low Road, a degenerate path that leads to unhappy experiences that should have been avoided by wisdom. But how else can we, who are more eager than wise, expect to learn?

This year, the lower path, unfortunately, will appeal to many people, especially to those people who would rather avoid personal responsibility by playing the victim. For these, who would rather go on deceiving and being deceived, it will be a memorable year.

In recent years, a major collective neurosis has been building. In the outer world, it has appeared that collective forces have become more dominant, that the economy has become more difficult and uncertain, and that danger is likely to appear unexpectedly. Disasters are more unpredictable, governments more anarchistic and simultaneously imperialistic, and the rule of dependable law is, more and more, only a memory.

This appearance, of course, is only a mental projection from the collective mind of humanity. To understand it, we should ignore what humanity seems to be seeing, and instead ask what new thing humanity is unconsciously being.

Who suffers all this uncertainty and cataclysm? Who fully believes that the universe is a dangerous place and oneself is a frail body utterly subject to the danger? Who else but the helpless victim? Who, then, faithfully believing in its own projections, actually causes the cataclysm? The helpless victim.

Only the helpless victim, having stolen into the center of the mind, can change the dream-apparatus of human creativity into these terrible outer scenes --- like a terrified, frightened man, full of guilt at his transgressions, who got ahold of much money and decided to become a movie producer. What kind of movies would he make?

Such are the movies now confronting humanity, psychodramatic outpicturings of essential weakness, cowardice, lawlessness, escapism, and dishonesty. Whether these appear as insane presidents or as wild tsunamis, they are a reflection of exactly what humanity is doing.

Rather than denounce the insane presidents or build useless walls against ten million tsunamis, it would be better to realize that we all are being hit with the same mental suggestions that have produced these phenomena. How well have we responded?

It is time, perhaps, to remember that fear is the actual cause of fearsome things, that mind in the center is always the cause of phenomena at the periphery, and that a mind filled with fear will always cause an endlessly frightening world.

Rather than feel sorry for ourselves when we fear, rather than protect our children from fear's outer creations, would it not be better to eliminate all the scary things entirely by replacing the fear with simple courage?

This year, it may occur to many people that the soul is forever free, that death is not a problem, and that the dignity of the self requires transcendence over all that the earth might threaten. To do less is to be ashamed, to hide from the shame by becoming less conscious, and thus to enter the semiconscious realm of the ignorant, mindless fugitive from conscience that then explains itself as a victim.

Seen clearly, this victim is something that is simply scared, a wild sub-animal that will do anything to live, evading detection because it hides in the basement of humanity's subconscious mind. Even as it wrecks everything with its anarchy, it defends itself with a simplistic social camouflage, pretending virtues that are human, good, and wise.

In 2005, this low sub-animal will come to a maximum power, and the neurosis that has been building for a few years will reach its peak. The people who survive by weakness and deception will tend to be at their worst, the liars will lie even more, and the wastrels will find more ways to steal the public funds.

In addition, the neurotics will tend to become suddenly violent, allowing anger to flare up over nothing. Degenerate family traditions, lunatic religions, drugged-out winos, and those who unfairly take advantage of the welfare system are all likely to erupt with absurd momentary power. Suicidalness leading to violent harm is simply a psychological symbol for the self-destroying impossibility of a conscience running from itself.

Normally, humanity treats these areas with a sort of superstitious aversion and repugnance, then counters its feelings by offering a general condescending pity and kindness, even while it is afraid to look too closely at what is really going on. But this half-sincere attitude and method can become evil if not continually guided and disciplined by the good. And this year, it becomes evident that a major overhaul in thinking is required.

This year, life will attempt to remind humanity of a very simple fact, something like this:

The universe is a great consciousness, mental everywhere. It creates by thinking. Humanity is a little part of this universe. Humanity, the child of universe, creates just like the parent.

All thoughts, believed in, come true for the believer. Positive thoughts create happy realities. Negative thoughts create hells. The law is very simple, and absolute.

The mess that you see all around you is the result of everybody's negative thinking, all of it coming true, all of it gathering and accelerating, more and more, right now.

Any evil thing that you see has an absolute right to be there, since some misguided person wanted it to happen, believed in it fully, and brought it here. When no one feeds it, it will gradually fade away and die.

As difficult as it might seem, the only way to make evil disappear is to sublimely ignore it, turn the other cheek, return the insult with a smile of love. And meanwhile, do all the good and create all the happiness that you can. The basic idea is that God is and acts through ourselves. If we do not be good, who else will?

This right way can only be understood and accomplished by each individual alone, since the actual thinking that accomplishes the reality takes place within the individual alone.

And then, I think, life will also add that the major obstacle to the above is that everyone keeps forgiving, excusing, and making jokes about weakness, cowardice, dishonesty, drunkenness, irresponsibility, craziness, incapability, disorderliness, rebellious anarchy, and careless parasitism --- and that the widespread glamorization of these ugly qualities necessarily leads to corresponding experiences coming back in humanity's face, saying, "Is this really what you wish to empower?"

Those who decide to grow mightily this year should examine themselves for any of these things hiding within, to pluck them out and replace them with the virtues that should be there.

It is a major year, a year to remember. Perhaps the best thing of all, the most useful and helpful thing, would be a little bit of thoughtful repose every day or night, just a little self-reflective meditation in order to remind yourself that you, your mind, your belief and your feeling are the one who is actually here, the one who makes everything that you see.

Sincerely,

Robert Tkoch, astrologer since 1970