I am sitting on the roof deck in a small Mexican town called Troncones, looking out to the Pacific ocean. The sun is rising behind me, a dog barks nearby, a rooster crows the morning into being. I have just read the second page of a book called The Impersonal Life and at once, have been struck by a bolt of grace.

There is a bottomless stillness and a quietude that is deafening. And this all exists with and without me, in me and beyond me. The written words that triggered this grace, the afterglow of which I am still in?

“Be still and know that I AM God.” 

This happened in December 2018. But I could not make this happen. Nor could I have seen it coming, really. Or could I?

In hindsight, studying my natal astrology chart, looking at the fact that Neptune (the planet of enlightenment) was culminating by mere minutes on my natal Midheaven in this very location, that Neptune by transit was conjunct the precise degree of my natal Mars ( a once in a lifetime event), I suppose I could see the hand of grace at work. (I recently addressed the Neptune factor in awakening in a blog post called Can a Planet Herald Your Awakening ?)

Since then, I have been investigating just what factors go into a spontaneous awakening and whether there are markers that just might indicate not only when, but how, grace moves into action.

Ultimately, a natal chart is a lot like looking at an acorn and knowing that it has all the DNA to become a tree — but what separates the acorn from the tree is time. More so than transits (the literal movement of planets overhead), I am discovering that what Hellenistic and Vedic astrologers call “time lords” (symbolic time markers) are even more dependable for predicting events, including awakening thresholds.

In this sense, you are already awake to your true nature, but unaware of your wakefulness thanks to the buffer of time. (And yes, time in this sense, spans beyond any one lifetime).

But now I have just read a book called Doorways to Awakening by Orion Hawthorne which uses a Vedic or sidereal (see footnote) understanding of the planets to explore in detail eight portals (celestial bodies) to awakening based on a person’s natal chart.

Orion, who had his own awakening in the company of teacher Gangji  in 1995, wrote this book based on the work of an astrologer friend, Edward Tarabilda, who passed away in 1999 before bringing this understanding into the public. It became a years-long mission for Orion to complete what his friend and mentor had begun.

Today, Orion calls himself “an emissary for the planets” and using your precise birth chart provides “Planetary Blueprint to Awakening” consultations which can be booked on his website, Doorways to Awakening.   (Or click HERE for a special half price discount coupon JUST FOR MY READERS! )

In my planetary blueprint reading from Orion, I learned that Mars is my doorway to awakening, The Path of the Spiritual Warrior, or Laya Yoga. This surprised me at first (well, maybe not, I am rather combative ha), until I understood that the Mars portal is all about the power of will, of shakti and kundalini — the more visceral doorway.

It’s not unknown that my journey to the big shift of 2011 was one of several kundalini events that started with a kundalini yoga practice in my late 30’s, and that later I was involved with a spiritual teacher and friend known for his “shaktipat.”

I can also add, that the biggest awakenings have happened in the throes of separations, loss and deaths of loved ones — and Mars is known as the planet that severs or cuts away people and situations from our life (one reason the planet is considered malefic in ancient astrology is because no one likes the feeling of loss).

For others, what brought me to the threshold of waking up, might not work as well. Jupiter, for instance, the planetary doorway for Orion, is all about awakening through the path of karma yoga, which involves ritual, service or darshan. In his case, this is exactly what happened when he sat in darshan with Gangaji and was “annihilated by love.”

I asked Orion, what the real value of knowing which planetary energy is your “doorway to awakening.”  He wrote me this:

“Often the knowledge of which planet is a persons ‘doorway, or path’ gives them confirmation of what they already know deeply, intuitively, especially for someone who has been on a spiritual path for many years. This allows them to relax into the knowledge that they are indeed on the right path, and to focus even more deeply on all of the different aspects of that path while at the same time honoring and appreciating all of the other paths and the role they play in one’s own awakening and in that of others, including the pathless path. Sometimes, though, the knowledge of one’s path opens up new avenues of exploration and communion with the divine within ones own Self. “

One part of my doorway to awakening as a Mars Girl that did not surprise me were the sexual and the shamanic elements, given pre-awakening I spent three years studying and practicing sexual tantra and even more, a decade studying with shamans world wide. From my spiritual blueprint, as described in the book Doorways to Awakening:

“Laya Yogins enjoy experimenting with how they conduct their spiritual practices. They are also quite drawn to sexual activity (Mars). This gives them some affinity to Tantra. Nevertheless, they are Yogic practitioners and not Tantrics, and must learn not to confuse or mix the two approaches. This is also called the Shamanic path.”

So there you have it. My latest discovery in a playful quest to discover just what ingredients God uses in the secret sauce for awakening.

Again, if you want to grab my readers only HALF PRICE DISCOUNT CODE for a session with Orion (by zoom and recorded for you), just click HERE.  I really am excited about this discovery and hope it helps shed light on your awakening journey.

FOOTNOTE: SIDEREAL (Vedic) VS TROPICAL (Western) ZODIAC: Mars is not REALLY travelling through the sign of Libra this November, it’s travelling against the back drop (from earth’s view) of the constellation of Virgo. Vedic astrology uses the literal sky above us, not a symbolic one as that is used in the west, which anchors itself around the idea of zero Aries being bound to the Spring equinox.