"Ajax" : Aptitude and Career Assessment

[DDonovanKinsolving]

A friend would appreciate some objective guidance from the group.

Let's call him "Ajax." Born: August 15, 1986, 09:16 AM CDT, Katy, Texas.

"Ajax" needs help settling on what his true passion is. He is in a dead-end job, wants to be an entrepreneur, but has trouble sticking to anything. He has trouble trusting inventories like the Meyers-Brigg because he can't generalize anything about himself as being true.

I don't want to say too much that might bias a reading. Feedback will be provided.

Thanks in advance people.

-Derek

[Jim Eshelman]

It's interesting that he can't trust external measurement-assessments because, for the most part, his psyche responds primarily to the response he gets from other people.

He has different arrangement of lunar and jovian markers. He's a Cancer-Sagittarius with Jupiter 2° off Descendant, and Moon 2° off the other side of IC. Uranus is also foreground, and squares Jupiter.

Cancers often are "lost" in the same way. I'm pretty sure he either has some image - some mythic concept - of what he will look like when he finds his way, and he has a (let's call it) superstitious relationship to it - doesn't want to screw it. He's looking for approval and something that fit his image, and these hide him from actually finding his passion. He's looking in the wrong direction.

From a simple Gauquelin point of view, the angular Moon and Jupiter alone point to creative directions - arts, acting, writing. He probably loves science (and science fiction!) in an idealistic way, but he doesn't have a temperament to be a scientist, or anything else that requires doing the same thing, exactly the same way, over and over and over again the rest of his life. He needs soft boundaries and fluid definitions.

Within this, we could look for Cancer and Sagittarius themes. These are numerous. Just to pull one: Sagittarius Moons are heavily connected to aviation, the Gauquelin aviator sample had an excess of Cancer Suns, and he has the same Sun-Moon sign pair as the first man the U.S. set in orbit and the first man to set foot on the lunar surface. But there are other styles, too, from Hemingway to Schwarzenegger.

One more thing: His mind needs to be free to shift, evolve, and rearrange ideas. Mercury is partile square Pluto, almost partile trine Saturn, and partile sesqui-square Uranus. He can dig in when something holds his attention, and even be dogged in pursuit of answers. He's inherently investigative, and needs room for his interests to wander widely. He just doesn't do this easily within other people's sense of order or discipline.

So... investigative and, especially, creative. Not so good about following rules or being told how to think. Needs to get practical in the sense of admitting a picture of himself that isn't just in his imagination.

Saturn is sitting on his Uranus, square his Jupiter, crossing his IC over the upcoming months. Its not a particularly good time to feel inspired and show insight. But it IS a good time to start building for the next 14-to-29 years. If he's living at his birthplace, I don't see him being too happy with whatever he learns here: His SLR today has a Moon-Saturn conjunction setting and Neptune near MC. So I think the most important work he has to do isn't in finding a category, but in reframing himself - getting real with himself - getting ready for an industrious period of training and preparation.

[DDonovanKinsolving]

Thanks, Mr. E. I'll send the comments along. I think he'll have questions about some of your turns of phrases.

For any return charts, he lives in Tucson, AZ.

Regards,
Derek

[SteveS]

Next SSR for Tucson: Rising Sun 1,37 trine SSR Saturn, Mars partile cnj EP partile 150 SSR Pluto. t. Saturn cnj his n. Moon during solar year.

[Jim Eshelman]

Then I reverse what I said about his SLR, since it now will have Venus rising in stead of Moon-Saturn setting

[DDonovanKinsolving]

Thanks, all. I'll be going over the material with "Ajax" Sunday and post feedback then (or early Monday morning).

[DDonovanKinsolving]

1. It's interesting that he can't trust external measurement-assessments because, for the most part, his psyche responds primarily to the response he gets from other people.

[True. Needs real-time feedback. Doesn’t trust tests because he believes that the tests give general feedback without having individual specifics. Thinks they lack context especially when people are involved in the question, to be able to answer. Tests answers can change depending on current state of emotions.]

2. Cancers often are "lost" in the same way. [Ajax asks: “Same way as what?”] I'm pretty sure he either has some image - some mythic concept - of what he will look like when he finds his way, and he has a (let's call it) superstitious relationship to it - doesn't want to screw it. He's looking for approval and something that fit his image, and these hide him from actually finding his passion. He's looking in the wrong direction.

[Myth: Fears failure on first attempt. Extended practice is OK, but the first real-world effort must be perfect and go exactly as planned. Expects exaggeratedly positive results. His concern: He perceives his passion is public speaking, but is not confident in his level of knowledge about any one topic to do so; that he doesn’t have a unique contribution to make.]

3. From a simple Gauquelin point of view, the angular Moon and Jupiter alone point to creative directions – arts, acting, writing. He probably loves science (and science fiction!) in an idealistic way, but he doesn't have a temperament to be a scientist, or anything else that requires doing the same thing, exactly the same way, over and over and over again the rest of his life. He needs soft boundaries and fluid definitions.

[Arts: Yes to musical improvisation and poetry; but not drawing or painting]. Acting: More like role-playing in real-life, not a theater career. Writing: Does a lot of journaling, and makes notes about ideas as he thinks of them. He prefers hard-science fiction, but not fantastical SF; not a major SF fan, though. In regards to not being a scientist who repeats actions: A major Yes! He wants to be in situations that require adaptability, not strict by-the-book rules. Likes being free to figure out better ways of doing things, or free to change-up when he feels like it. At this point in our conversation, Ajax started to be impressed.]

4. Within this, we could look for Cancer and Sagittarius themes. These are numerous. Just to pull one: Sagittarius Moons are heavily connected to aviation, the Gauquelin aviator sample had an excess of Cancer Suns, and he has the same Sun-Moon sign pair as the first man the U.S. set in orbit and the first man to set foot on the lunar surface. But there are other styles, too, from Hemingway to Schwarzenegger.

[Likes to explore buildings and territories. Ventures into areas of buildings where he actually has no business. Like to see new places; entertains new ideas; does out-of-the-box thinking. Doesn’t like being stuck in one place, whether intellectually, methodologically or philosophically.]

5. One more thing: His mind needs to be free to shift, evolve, and rearrange ideas. … He can dig in when something holds his attention, and even be dogged in pursuit of answers. He's inherently investigative, and needs room for his interests to wander widely. He just doesn't do this easily within other people's sense of order or discipline.

[Feels he has many good ideas but these ideas keep changing, one replacing another after another, thinking each new one is better than the old one. Gets side-tracked easily. He does dig in whole-heartedly, but holding his attention to something, to begin with, is difficult. Stable attention may last from a few moments to a few weeks. Has been told off-hand that he has ADHD or OCD, and self-admittedly uses these as excuses. Being made more aware of this contradiction, and that the horoscope can show such contradictions in the personality, Ajax remarks, “That’s why I don’t trust standard personality tests. They don’t show the contradictions.”]

6. So... investigative and, especially, creative. Not so good about following rules or being told how to think. Needs to get practical in the sense of admitting a picture of himself that isn't just in his imagination.

[To the first two sentences, Ajax says: “Absolutely. Spot on. Perfect description. On the money. Right on.” For the third sentence, Ajax doesn’t understand the meaning of this. How can he begin distinguishing between this imagined self and his real self? Could it be this: He thinks he may have programmed himself to act like a narcissist because he thinks that’s how to display confidence. My note: A lot of this has been modeled on popularized TZ Leo interpretations.]

7. Saturn is sitting on his Uranus, square his Jupiter, crossing his IC over the upcoming months. Its not a particularly good time to feel inspired and show insight. But it IS a good time to start building for the next 14-to-29 years. … . So I think the most important work he has to do isn't in finding a category, but in reframing himself - getting real with himself - getting ready for an industrious period of training and preparation.

[Ajax is engaged in a particular self-improvement program which emphasizes practical procedures and (important to him) actual practices or things to do. Ajax says: “On the spot again.” He is already aligned with this recommendation. Ajax asks: “Can you recommend some reframing techniques or resources to help me along with this?”]

[Jim Eshelman]

Thanks for the feedback, Derek. I'll make some responses below but, mostly, I'm happy this may have helped him, and that it also represented Sidereal astrology well.

I want to point out, as an educational point, that I've always said astrology was simple (at least conceptually, and usually in practice) it you first filter the very most important few items from a chart to build a core idea about the native. Everything I wrote was based on knowing he had Cancer-Sagittarius luminaries, Moon and Jupiter (plus Uranus) foreground - the Jupiter-Uranus square standing out - and some zany Mercury aspects. The angular planets and luminary signs easily collapsed into "Moon + Jupiter" personality style, especially in sharp contrast to the Saturn personality style (with Saturn immediately background; I could have added background Sun, but that wouldn't have said much you hadn't already said, or that wasn't inherent in the Moon/Cancer temperament). Just a few things, really...

1. It's interesting that he can't trust external measurement-assessments because, for the most part, his psyche responds primarily to the response he gets from other people.

[True. Needs real-time feedback. Doesn’t trust tests because he believes that the tests give general feedback without having individual specifics. Thinks they lack context especially when people are involved in the question, to be able to answer. Tests answers can change depending on current state of emotions.]

Ah, I hadn't even realized how precisely I'd said it: He needs the direct response from others. This tells me something about how his mind works. He primarily gets empathic communication. It may even be (this is true of some Mercury-Pluto and even Mercury-Uranus types) that he has a hard time framing meaning inside of a flatly written communication unless there is someone actually present from whom he can empathically extract the meaning (emotional meaning, mostly) that he should attribute to the words. His brain doesn't necessarily assign meaning to words out of context (that's his Cancerian context need) - to some extent, they're just words. This cascades into several other interesting directions that, if I were a cognitive therapist seeing him, I'd definitely explore over time just to unlock practical insight; but he can probably run with that seed idea himself.

Something that might be useful to him - and he may already be doing - is getting that one clear fact, that meaning is not inherent in any fact. Meaning is always added by each of us after the fact. And the situations in which he assigns meaning are different than when/how others do it. And he doesn't feel he has a whole communication based on words, but only when he has some other channel (empathy, usually) to know what those words emotionally mean to the communicator.

But I digress from the astrology...

2. Cancers often are "lost" in the same way. [Ajax asks: “Same way as what?”]

I meant: In the way you had already described him as being lost. Especially with a background Sun, this probably takes the form of not feeling compelled, from the inside out, by a driving sense of innate purpose and direction. Lack of an irrepressible direction or quest, plus extreme adaptability, often has Cancers pick up many things and feel less focused, to start with great promise and then end up going nowhere - because they never exactly pick a primary road. That he has a Spoke Moon fuels this a bit.

Or, if that's not exactly right, then it's something similar; but that's the general thing that was in the back of my mind.

Myth: Fears failure on first attempt. Extended practice is OK, but the first real-world effort must be perfect and go exactly as planned. Expects exaggeratedly positive results. His concern: He perceives his passion is public speaking, but is not confident in his level of knowledge about any one topic to do so; that he doesn’t have a unique contribution to make.]

Awesome concrete details! Yes, I've this sort of thing in other Cancers. Please tell him from me - someone regarded generally as a good-to-great extemporaneous speaker that you have to fall on your face a whole lot before you get that good. Unless someone has a rare, overwhelming genius for it, the only two real paths are to so rigidly follow a formula that one is praised for sense of form, and the form carries the day - or to learn to trust one's independent instincts, and that takes a LOT of practice and, especially, a lot of failure. Failure is the instructor. (I mean small failures, not utter failures <g>.)

Speech classes, if well taught, give this experience and critique. If well taught, one expects and wants to have one's flaws disclosed. Even better, he may want to take a class in improvisation or even (an enormous growth exercise!) in stand-up comedy. There is nothing that matures you as a comfortable improvisational speaker like working hard to get people to laugh at you for the things you secretly fear people are laughing at you about.

6. So... investigative and, especially, creative. Not so good about following rules or being told how to think. Needs to get practical in the sense of admitting a picture of himself that isn't just in his imagination.

I realized, on rereading this today, that I wasn't clear enough that the first two sentences are description and the third one is prescription.

[For the third sentence, Ajax doesn’t understand the meaning of this. How can he begin distinguishing between this imagined self and his real self? Could it be this: He thinks he may have programmed himself to act like a narcissist because he thinks that’s how to display confidence. My note: A lot of this has been modeled on popularized TZ Leo interpretations.]

Something like that. Also, the work you said he is already doing probably will help with this. It's harder to get a Rim-Spoke to respond foremost to interior messages instead of the outermost, but he has the sensitivity to help. One other thing that might help is for him to drill in concentration. There are numerous concentration excercises, there are well-known yoga methods, and it is something he lacks. If he had the ability to place his attention where he wants, and then to hold it there for prolonged periods of time, many helpful things would come naturally to him. (I could recommend some basic things, but he may already have that resource, or may want to find them on his own.)

[Ajax is engaged in a particular self-improvement program which emphasizes practical procedures and (important to him) actual practices or things to do. Ajax says: “On the spot again.” He is already aligned with this recommendation. Ajax asks: “Can you recommend some reframing techniques or resources to help me along with this?”]

I think he should get these from the source he's already selected to help him through this process.

[DDonovanKinsolving]

There are numerous concentration excercises, there are well-known yoga methods, and it is something he lacks. If he had the ability to place his attention where he wants, and then to hold it there for prolonged periods of time, many helpful things would come naturally to him. (I could recommend some basic things, but he may already have that resource, or may want to find them on his own.)

I've tried to help Ajax with meditation techniques that require concentration, such as mantra meditations. The problem is, he finds it boring - too repetitive, again. We try basic shape visualizations and he wants me to tell him EXACTLY how it should look - 'What color should it be?' 'However you want.' He doesn't like that kind of answer - too unspecific. With the internet, he has learned of many different kinds of meditation and this smorgasbord of options only activates his inability to stick with any one thing, a dilemma that I am not sure how to address.

"Ajax" and I have yet to discuss your lengthy response, but I can say much (virtually all) of what you said is appropriate. Thanks.

-Derek

[Jim Eshelman]

You're welcome.

Yes, as a Rim-Spoke with limited concentration ability, I'd moving him toward things that are in motion rather than things that are fixed; and to advise suspending judgment or interpretation.

Simply watching his breath might be the one. (But I'd probably also throw in: At the same time every day, sit 30 minutes alone in a room with the lights off, no electronics, no disturbance. You have to sit in place and think whatever you think; no other instructions, no other limitation or guidance.)

Hmm, I have a PowerPoint around here somewhere that might mess with his mind in the most useful way...

[DDonovanKinsolving]

Hmm, I have a PowerPoint around here somewhere that might mess with his mind in the most useful way...

Thank you. I'm advising him to take to heart what you say (as I am, also ).

[Jim Eshelman]

Derek, I just posted the PPT here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1546

Not sure if it would be useful to him, but it's there if you want to try. It seems to me it could play to the trade-off his Cancer meaning-mythologizing vs. his Mercury-Pluto and Mercury-Uranus.

[DDonovanKinsolving]

... I'd moving him toward things that are in motion rather than things that are fixed; and to advise suspending judgment or interpretation.

Since these earlier exchanges, Ajax has found Robert Bruce's Energy Work exercises. In my opinion, this combines two things which keep his attention: a moving point of concentration and a strong emphasis on feeling. I didn't mention Ajax' strong appreciation of tactile sensations (he can very touchy-feely), but this modality seems more suited to him than the typical yogic approach of pratyahara (sense-withdrawal).

How does this strike you?

-Derek

[Jim Eshelman]

I don't know the method but, from what you've said, it would seen to fit him.

I also think that the simpler forms of pratyahara that amount to "mindfulness of mind" - witnessing the thoughts flow without judgment or selection or resistance - will benefit him, give him a sense of how the world is in motion through his mind.

[James Condor]

I Cancer suns I know have healthy daily routines that shift also routinely into a similar yet different version of the habit before. T is always Practicing, what he calls- ‘biofeedback’. He sees doctors often. All kinds. He is obsessed with his health. He also finds unhealthy people very offensive.
A is also very health conscious and practices religion, weight lifting and basketball.
Both have good, clear speaking voices. Both were very good athletes. Both are lucky their fathers got them a job. Both are easily and quickly aroused and over sexed (not as in with a partner) . Both don’t care for marriage but long for love, or what they think is love.
A is bipolar.
T says he’s ADHD
Both aren’t really good at accepting their self. They are hard on their self.