Time to Review Our Values?

This is one of those rare times where the shit could be hitting the fan seriously, yet somehow there’s a better chance than usual of learning what we need to and pulling it out of the bag in a creative way. It’s time to review our values and aims, and see if we need to make any shifts for the good of the collective whole. As well as apply common sense to our own specific lives.

Astrologer Thea Anderson has a remarkably apt way of putting things. She calls this summer a chance to manifest an unoptimized, cared-for life. Looking at US Americans’ tendency to value individual self-improvement over collective action, in her latest Substack she writes, You can’t Pilates your way out of sex oppression. It’s time to figure out how to work together.

Barbault’s Basket: will it be limes or limeade?

I just heard about this rare planetary combo yesterday from my astrologer friend Angela (see above) yet last night it came to life vividly in my dreams. This second half of July the powerful outer planets in the heavens have created a pattern that offers potent opportunities for change, most likely through crisis. This pattern was first described by the French astrologer Andre Barbault, hence Barbault’s Basket. Here’s Far Stellar’s excellent take on what it might mean now and for the years ahead.

British astrologer Penny Thornton also looks at this current pattern in the skies from the perspective of how it might influence human’s lives in the years beyond this fleeting moment.

The large outer planets involved in this basket pattern are Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Uranus was discovered in 1781, just as the colonies’ revolution against Britain was coming to a close. Neptune emerged into our scientific awareness in 1846, as the US declared war on Mexio, and simultaneously American settlers tried to create a short-lived California Republic. Pluto was identified in 1930, in the depths of a world-wide Depression.

Thornton associates these last three planets with the dawn of our current nuclear age. For whatever reason, scientists chose to name newly discovered highly radioactive elements after each of them: uranium, neptunium, plutonium. There is an association here between expanding awareness, the discovery of new things, and potentially dangerous developments. Best not to be naïve.

Penny Thornton has an enthusiasm for technology that I do not share. Yet, as she points out, it is with us. Since these planets were discovered, technology has taken us beyond our past experience. This particular configuration in the skies now could speed up technological developments. Yet there is another opportunity that she describes. There is a potential to expand consciousness here, with the ability to move between two or three realities at once.

I think of spiritual practice. In order to join with one’s sacred self, one has to be willing to open to other realities, let go of what our mundane mind insists is true. In other words, this could be a very good time to practice, to drop into deeper understandings about our values and actions, for a longer term benefit than just one that is self-oriented. As Penny says, out of crisis comes opportunity.

If you’d like to hear her presentation in its entirety, here’s the link. Her wry disclaimer is Some say I’m as spiritual as a brick.

It’s been a tough time for many

We’re just emerging out of what’s been a grueling Mercury retrograde period for many. In this moment, coming out of the multiple crises, it could be useful to open to the opportunities, in a non-linear non-structured way, as Thea Anderson suggests. If you’ve been birthing something new in the midst of all this labor, what glimpses of this can be seen now? Dancing, dreaming, journalling, meditating, riffing with friends, collaging together, now could be a good time to see where your recent experiences and deeper values bring you. It could be we will be making more open curious connections with one another, across a wide range of cultural experience, in these coming years.

I’ve mentioned here before the practical mystic Machig Labdron who lived in Tibet one thousand years ago. One of her students, Sonam Gyenma, asked her about the coming degenerate age. When this begins and whether it ends are not clearly articulated. Yet how it might look certainly is well-described. Some of Machig’s answers to her daughters are almost comical in their explicit truth now:

Everything will be upside down and mixed up. ..

The private counsel of the foreign and interior ministers and counselors will be blown helter-skelter in the wind and ripped open. Their private conversations will be as public as the wind. Private words and public words will blend like milk and blood, blending the essence with the refuse inseparably until it is lost.

All this amounts to trading the royal seal on the work of state law for wealth, and the stockpiling (of goods). ….(leaders) will have especially great hostility toward harmless, humble people and will show favor to the harmful, wealthy, and famous. They will maintain that unwholesome action is beneficial. They will welcome chronic liars with their chat.. . .

The Night of Tibetan Spirit this August 8, 2026 in Santa Fe

If you’re here in New Mexico and would like to connect more with Tibetan culture, our vital Tibetan community is offering a night of entertainment and education this August 8^th, 7 pm, as a benefit at the Santa Fe Women’s Club. Tickets are being sold at the Ark Bookstore.

Lead image: Gord, Angela, and me October 18, 2025 (hence the bundled up non-July look) much thanks to photographer Corey McGillicuddy

Bio: I’m a writer, Ayurveda health educator and Polarity Therapist practicing in Santa Fe, NM. My most recent seasonal cookbook Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda is on special here.