Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend – Transcending Family Karma

by Robert Wilkinson

Since my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend contains gems of wisdom and insight for those who want to overcome old karma, today we take a new look at individual and family karmas and group Souls.

I last gave this to you over 4 years ago, and have added another section to the dialog. From Chapter 4, “Saturn, Dharma, and Karma” we have two commentaries. This is the first, from the section “Transcending the Family and Cultural Matrix.”

When we are younger and developing the lower ego, of necessity we use the tools and values we’ve learned from the cultural matrix. Our pre-formed ego is not really who we are; it is a manufactured entity and a temporary place holder until we find ways to enhance its power, or transcend it entirely. It is a construct that helps us deal with the pressures of the social environment, the accumulation of influences and learned responses to social and cultural demands on our evolving awareness. Some of them are consciously chosen, while others are unconscious patterns we’ve built into our mental and emotional vehicles for coping purposes.

Over time and experience, we find ourselves confronting situations where we either reaffirm learned values and responses, or rebel against them because they are inadequate to explain or deal with the crises we confront. The key to mastering evolution is to learn to be ever-more conscious in the choices we make and why we are making them. Are we trying to conform to a set of inadequate or unfulfilling behaviors? Are we trying to fit the unknown into the known? Are we trying to use the skills of a child to deal with the crises of our adult life?

Saturn helps us understand the boundaries of our religion, belief systems, and social-cultural matrix in dealing with life experiences assisting our personality growth. While the values and responses of our childhood conditioning and early adult assumptions are necessary up to a point, because of our eternal nature, the evolutionary process leads always to crises of individualization. These crises challenge us to learn and/or bring forth skills helping us transcend conscious and unconscious patterns which create trouble, problematic emotional responses, and ineffective ways of dealing with crises.

All of this serves to make us more aware of self-perpetuating negative influences we must transcend. As we become more aware, and choose to transmute negative and ineffectual responses into positive and more effective responses, we individualize as Soul/Spirits who can cultivate and maintain good human relationships as well as healthy attitudes about who we are, who we’re not, and what we’re here to do and be. Then we’ve effectively transcended any sense of helplessness when confronted with a crisis, since we have the power to change our patterns of response, unhindered by family, religious, or cultural limitations.

From later in that same chapter, in the section titled “Family Karma,” we read:

The choices our parents make influence our lives, but only up to a point. When our lower ego begins to take shape through our mind’s sequence and selection process, we find we rely on some of those family and cultural patterns, but also separate from some of them.

As we individualize, we understand how we were conditioned by the family and cultural matrix of beliefs, superstitions, taboos, and aspirations, and can consciously choose to renounce and grow beyond those which are no longer adequate to our evolving higher awareness. Put another way, many family systems were fine for who we were when we were born, but are not appropriate for the Higher Self we are to become.

There is a widespread belief that often one or more family members are part of our larger “group Soul,” and we are bound to the Karma generated by our group Soul. However, this illusion still places the power of how we evolve with external factors, when in truth our evolution is entirely determined by the interactions between the lower ego and our Higher Self.

Whatever Karmas we deal with as part of a group Soul, even those we share with others in our family, in the final analysis we each have our own karmic path and lessons. It is impossible for any of us to live a previous generation's Karma, or anyone else’s karma, since each of us has our own ticket to ride as we navigate the River of Life.

We all are born with a unique “vintage” within a larger “vintage” of the times. Each generation must deal with the issues and detritus of the previous generation, as well as the aspirations, illusions, and qualities of their own. There is also the all-important factor that life is a continuum that flows ever onward, and as we are constantly learning from and reacting to our past experiences, we also are forever compelled to deal with unintended developments in the here and now.

There’s a lot more in this chapter and the others about how we can transcend unhelpful learned family and social patterns while creating new views which help us see how our life is fulfilling our purpose. To become our Highest Self, we must leave old views and embrace the greater adventure of Self-unfoldment.

Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend offers you an entirely new look at our inner Saturn and the power it gives us to take command of our lives and destiny. If Saturn represents all that limits us and holds us back, it’s only so we can master those lessons, becoming spiritual adults living our lives on our own terms, fulfilling our purpose for being alive on Earth.

By knowing our Saturnian strengths, we can overcome fear and any sense of victimization or powerlessness. It was written for both astrologers and non-astrologers, and gives the reader the power to understand why some things happened when they did, offering ways to “make friends” with this inner power to take command of your destiny.

As you move on this journey of self-discovery, you’ll naturally become more aware of how everything has led you to Soul growth. This book will help you see how your ultimate Destiny (Dharma) has led you through various types of karma, some of which you created and some you didn’t. It will also help you understand the importance of Saturn as our “Ring-Pass-Not,” or that part of us which must learn certain lessons so we can find purpose and meaning in each chapter of life.

The second part of the book examines how Saturn cycles mark major points of choice and change throughout life, and what we can expect when Saturn makes conjunctions, squares, and oppositions to our planets and Ascendant. There are tables assisting the reader to know when Saturn was in each sign, so even those with little or no understanding of astrology can track the timing on their major life changes. Of universal importance is the chapter dedicated to the Saturn Return, perhaps the most crucial times of choice and change in life when our decisions profoundly shape our future.

Part two closes with a chapter on one of the most crucial factors in our personal unfoldment: how the progressed Moon and transiting Saturn cycles track each other throughout life and relate to our emotional growth, and a chapter on a global phenomenon which happened between 2003-2020 impacting everyone on Earth for decades to come. The Epilogue offers insights about living “the spiritual life,” spiritual forces we use to come out of suffering into Wisdom, and the multiple dimensions of higher and broader possibilities of personal evolution, regardless of which path to Truth we may be on.

This is a book you will reference many times for many reasons, and each time you pick it up you’re sure to find undiscovered gems of insight on each page. This book can help you throw off all the attitudes and memories which have held you back from finding and living the life and purpose you’ve been searching for since you were young. Welcome to the journey of self-discovery, and finding your power to live your life on your own terms, fulfilling your reason for being alive as an Eternal having human experiences!

You can order your copy by going to the Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend Amazon page. If you would, please write a review on the Amazon site, since the more reviews, the bigger the boost on their site. You may also order the ebook there or at B&N’s Nook site.

© Copyright 2021 Robert Wilkinson