Fundamental Need of SUN: Individuation needs: to forge a distinctive, integrated identity, to be a single distinct (distinguished) thing.
I suppose before the week gets passed, I should post on this. I was hoping that a number of other people would do this first - that I could wait and not bias how people wrote about this - but, by their nature, these threads are likely time-limited I should write my own reports if I'm going to. (These have been half-century meditations, so mine won't sound like someone sitting down to do this for the first time.)
Meditation on the luminaries is, I think, necessarily different from the other planets. The solar and lunar needs seem to me to be different
kinds of things - related to deeper constructs in the psyche. Isn't maturing and fulfilling the solar need the entire course of unfolding life? Isn't it the universal "great work,." something that needs to be fulfilled at higher and higher points of the spiral, constantly unlocking fundamental things about ourselves? I think so.
It seems certain to me that every one of us is
at once a single, distinct, irreplicable individual AND that we are inseparably connected to everyone and everything else. We begin, though, as part of the collective - the herd - the family and community - with minimal individual distinction. Our entire life is about
emerging as that
irreplaceably distinguished specific individual - retracing the developmental steps that the whole species traversed millennia ago. While this is a normal human path of psychological development, there does seem an
imperative (connected to the solar force in us) to be a thing that is unique in the sense of
their isn't another quite the same as me and
the universe needs this specific thing as part of its function. Whether exactly true or not, these psychological pressures are the birthing process of
distinguished individuality. They force the collective glob of toothpaste out the narrowly focused opening in the toothpaste tube. Our mother's parturition delivered another generic-seeming member of the tribe into being, then our psychological maturation (sometimes supported and sometimes resisted or misdirected by family, society, and peers) similarly births the specific individual that we will be in the world.
Or so it always has seemed to me.
So, first: Yes, I recognize and can discern the specific need in myself to force a distinctive, integrated identity that emerges as a single distinct (distinguished) thing. Aside from the
other consideration that I am just another member of the human race, it has always seemed utterly
imperative that I stand out from that milieu, distinguish myself as a
particular something that has his own role or contribution (or perhaps some other reason to exist as a particular something). - Notice how pretty close to 1005 of all good, bad, and indifferent traits attributed to Sun in astrology spin out of this one inner imperative.
When I look back through my life, the turning point was probably puberty (which does seem to me like the birthing moment of the solar phase of most people's lives). From that point on there has been the sense described above and a pretty clear (albeit spiral) path to its attainment.
I think this is everybody's path (though perhaps less evident in some people because of their innate nature or their conditions). In any case, I know it's been basic to my life, as natural as my hair growing. (Samson analogies probably apply, but that would be a digression.)
Speaking of digressions, a brief one on my chart: Why is this solar need so powerful in me? I'm not a Leo and don't have Sun on an angle. - I created these meditations to be performed outside the context of what is actually so in our charts (allowing us to
discover how it fits or doesn't fit when we reflect on these things in their own terms), so I've written the main part above first. But perhaps I should say something about this. First, Sun (19° below Ascendant) is my second most angular planet. Though Moon is my only foreground planet, and the lunar strength gives even more reason to think the opposite-toned solar side would be less evident, that doesn't seem to be true. Sun at 60% angularity strength, no other planet having more than 46% strength. (That's quite a gap.) So, over the years in judging how angularity curves work, I've always had to keep in mind that my middleground Sun is (quite measurably) my second strongest planet - even if not foreground.
Otherwise, I tend to think the solar needs are similar strong in pretty much everybody - that it's not just me. I'm probably in the worst possible situation to judge if this is true based on my own wiring, but I think it's true. I think it's nearly the whole of Jung's message. It's the entire "path of the Hero." As we were born from our mothers at age Zero, our solar self needs to be born from our lunar selves eventually then follow the path of leaving innocence, leaving the mother, venturing into the world for adventures and shaping (refining) experiences, and eventually cycle back to the center - the center of ourselves - and take our throne. Isn't everybody Parsifal?
Returning from the digression, then: How strong is this need in me compared to other needs? It seems pretty fundamental. I don't spend my days thinking, "Oh, that spotlight needs to be on me! It's pointed the wrong direction! I'm who you should be looking at over here!" No, but the inner pressure to discover
which specific, distinguished being I am has been with me (and acted on) at least from puberty. Before that, I can't detect anything quite like that. Before puberty, the closest equivalent seems to have been curiosity (a natural characteristic of the pre-pubertal development stage for everyone, and perhaps more for me),
e.g., curiosity about "what I would be when I grow up."
Is it more important than other needs? I don't think it's
ever been more important than curiosity and wanting to learn. It often was bound up with Uranian or Plutonian ideas,
i.e., "being a distinguished person" has always for me been tied up in "being unlike others," "being the one who clearly doesn't belong here and isn't like the rest of you." (That surely will come out in other needs studies as we continue.)
I don't know how comparatively strong it is in me vs. other people because it seems to me that it's basic to simply being human and alive on this planet - but this could be the groups of people I've attracted to hovered near in my life. Even in my work life, I'm almost 100% around extraordinary people who are accomplished and distinguished. I think it's pretty universal, though I have only my own psyche to trace through memory all the way back along the corkscrew path and see its roots.
Yes, I have been able to satisfy this need: I am a distinct person, quickly recognizable as such by anyone who even briefly knows me (and certainly reflected across my life).
My worst and best traits arising from this are close to text-book Sun. Insistence on being a
distinct somebody has led to distinction, clear paths, and success, and also to seeming aloof, outside, bossy, sometimes self-absorbed. Obviously those things that let my motion to most smoothly involve outside voices authentically noting that I am a particular, individual something-or-other and those things that bring out the worst in me are outside voices portraying me as an undistinguished member of the general herd. (I suppose I could go through the formal list of Sun Foreground traits to flesh this out, but this is what comes to mind as I write these "guided stream of consciousness."
For this week or longer, as you meet and interact with other people, observe the presence of this specific need in yourself and in the other(s) during the interaction. What can you observe in terms of both how you share the need with them and how differences in the need’s intensity, your psychological maturity, and other factors produce different expressions.
I haven't pointedly done that as part of a
current practice. Maybe I'll do that this next week (or maybe I need to be working on the lunar equivalent). I think I've answered some of this above. I tend to exist in social and, especially, business circles where recognizing each other's solar elements is pretty engrained and automatic.
Maybe that's it for now.
They couldn't understand why a child wouldn't want any gifts and special attention. They were determined to give me gifts and thus still tried, but I refused them.
