#29. Do You Know Why Character Is Destiny?
Posted by khieriel on January 23, 2009
Dane Rudhyar changed Everything. He was the Father of modern Astrology, and though he sounded an alarm against trivial Astrology practice, and taught us Character is Destiny, this important understanding went back at least to the Greek Heraclitus who said, Character is Fate.
Other Astrologers (like Alan Leo and Marc Edmund Jones) were aware that as the character is formed, a person’s path unfolds before him, but Rudhyar in 1935 in his book, The Astrology of Personality, brought this to public attention, and changed forever how persons like you and me approach this gift from God. Previously practitioners used Astrology to approach people as types and satisfied the ego’s desire to know the future (Fortune-telling). Rudhyar taught us to work with the whole psyche to achieve holistic understanding of the great questions of life.
Ego-driven personality asks, “Will I meet a lover this year?” Soul-driven Character asks, “How will I grow spiritually if I meet another person? I’ve seen the patterns of my past experiences.” Ego focuses on gratification of pleasures and pursuits. Character is seen in growth as in fulfilling core values and Maslovian needs. Maslow spoke of the Hierarchy of Needs that lead to the fulfillment of the whole person, not just the personality.
Soul-inspired Character is holistic. Ego-driven personality is fragmented, latching on to passing desires.
Our need to discover selfhood of Selfhood and reconnect to our Source is Character, and an appropriate Astrology helps us in the “soulution” of our personal and interpersonal issues, mostly in assistance of the actualization our birth-potential (symbolized in the map or Astrological chart).
What makes up Character includes the Meta-Needs (as Maslow called them) of which aesthetic needs and self-transcendence are primary. If these higher needs have no outlet or actualization, then the difficulties of life are likely to increase-and worse, the person has little comprehension or ways to cope with the difficulties that occur.
Character is Destiny means that the dominant parts of your psyche determine what arrives at your doorstep. Rudhyar said, “Events don’t happen to people. People happen to events.” He meant that the mind is over matter in such a way that matter and events conform to the person’s deep beliefs, values, and attitudes. The ego wants gratification. The Soul wants growth. The events respond to deeper levels of the psyche and maybe not to the superficial levels of personality at all.
So if you want to change your events and your future, you must emphasize attention to higher needs, to richer Character, and feed the personality a good deal less.
