Understanding Mars' Fundamental Needs (meditation)

[Jim Eshelman]

The proposal is that everybody spend about one week on the following meditation, keeping a record of your results and sharing them here. Enjoy!


Fundamental Need of MARS: Power needs: aggression, dominance, controlling others, opposition, independence, contrariness, defense, deference to strength.

• Ensure that you understand the words of the definition.
• Identify this specified need in yourself. Recognize that you have it. Reflect on how it manifests in you at a simple, basic level, and then as secondary motivations and behaviors that arise from the simpler ones.
• How strong is this need in you compared to other needs? Compared to its strength in other people? How has it expressed itself in you at various stages of your life (from earliest memories through later life stages)?
• Have you been able to satisfy this need? Or has it gone largely unsatisfied?
• What are the worst things in your personality and behavior that arise from this need (and from succeeding or failing at satisfying it)? What are the best things?
• As far as possible, answer these questions about other people you know well.
• 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.
• Please share the results of this exploration on this thread and feel free to engage in such discussion as arises.
• Was this exercise valuable to you? If so, what made it valuable? If not, what would have made it more valuable?

[Jim Eshelman]

I forgot this was still here since I was on vacation.

Does anyone want to report?

[Veronica]

No. No I dont really want to report about this.
but I will try.

The thing that I'm struggling with again, has to do with purity of my Mars, or I suppose trying to get a clean and clear view of my Martian traits. It feels like everything I do, say, think and feel has Mars in it somehow angling for power with my Mars in Scorpio. I have a mundane Sun Mars square. My moon in Scorpio is a Martian Moon, as is my Scorpio Jupiter, Scorpio Neptune. So In a way we can say I have moon, jupiter, Neptune and Mars all conjunct Mars.

So like you said years and years ago to me before I knew about Sidereal Astrology...I have Mars aplenty. Which was so shocking to me at the time.

I feel like I have found very healthy outlets for my power needs, I sing, dance and hike, do yoga (not as much as I would like), I love doing hard physical work like deep cleaning, yard work, painting houses, rearranging furniture, dog training, fixing broken mechanical things and cooking big meals for some examples.

I try to do good things and make healthy choices.

I try to see and honor other peoples Martian needs, but my jobs seem to be of being in charge, or the allusion of in charge, of running things and getting things done, surrounded by people who have very very little Martian needs. I welcome and encourage those around me to step up, to take some responsibility but most would rather not, and I'll be darned if I'm going to sit in a meeting with everyone clammed up, not willing to speak first...even though I'm usually the least educated person in the meeting I'm the one who offers feedback/response/idea. It has nothing to do with wanting power, or wanting to feel special/intelligent, interesting or general egoic stuff, but my lack of fear. I mean what's the worst that could happen in a meeting...I slip out some sailor speak and someone is aghast, that I look like a fool because I thought I knew what meta data was and didnt?
Other people have lots and lots and lots of fears about being in their power, of being seen as aggressive and assertive.....and the ol mores of culture say deep down...women arnt aggressive and assertive it makes you unfeminine. Well I'm all girl and look lovely in a gown as Martian as I am.
The worst thing about this, hurting people because I dont understand my strengths and their softness, I hate hurting people. Even dead people I watch how I speak because I dont want to hurt feelings.
The best thing....I'm still alive. I'm still kind and loving and flexible.

I suppose a bad thing is when I'm in a relationship with a man and he really gets to know me and feels that I am too much for him.

[Jim Eshelman]

Your Scorpio Moon is always evident. I think it is enor. Ously important to you not to harm others. Many Scorpios don't want to harm others though, being human, I think all of them frequently do. (I could be wrong, of course.)

[Veronica]

Your Scorpio Moon is always evident. I think it is enor. Ously important to you not to harm others. Many Scorpios don't want to harm others though, being human, I think all of them frequently do. (I could be wrong, of course.)

I try so hard not to hurt others. I spend so much thought and care to be sensitive and I fail miserably.

[Jim Eshelman]

I think I will abandon this series of explorations due to everybody's lack of interest.

[Veronica]

I think people are very interested and are just shy about posting their results.
I think too that I deter some people from commenting.
I have found these meditations very helpful in understanding myself and bringing to my front brain understanding of others and how I can have better relationships and communicate more accurately and effectively with others in real time.

[Patrick Machado]

I find the proposal of the project--specifically the construction, individual and communal, of an understanding of the planets as specified dynamic and driving forces in us that impel behavior--enormously valuable and desirable. I do, however, have a particular theoretical reservation regarding the nomenclature employed therein--which may be ultimately inconsequential in practice--due to which I refrained from participating. I haven't gotten around to voicing it yet (and it would be off topic to these threads).

Myself aside, the exercise does entail more commitment than previous similar group projects (which themselves sometimes had sparse participation). That may have turned away some folks.

Just to give my input, for what it's worth, and to "cast one vote" from among the community that the subject and effort is valued.

[Jim Eshelman]

Based on the feedback from two people above, I'll continue this. The compromise with my prior view is that I won't share my own reflections unless/until several people have posted on the thread. (I am certain my posts on these have something of a "conclusion" effect that I don't want to create. The goal is to get a large number of people doing these and posting their responses so that I get to see how the teaching tool works in practice.)