Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Hey there, Ghosties. In this episode, I'll be doing a live reading with one of my beloved listeners. Every Wednesday, listen in on an intimate conversation and get inspired as we explore perspectives on life, love, and the human condition. Along the way, we'll uncover valuable insights and practical lessons that you can apply to your own life. And don't forget to hit Subscribe or, at the very least, mark your calendars because every Sunday I'll be back with your weekly horoscope. And that you don't want to miss. Let's get started.

This is a gentle content warning for this episode you're about to listen to. In the reading, we discuss topics related to the violence in Israel and Palestine, and complex emotions around the topic come up. If this feels helpful, please listen on. If not, I'll talk to you in just a couple of days.

Jessica:      Andrew, welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Andrew:          Thanks for having me. So the context is that after the Hamas attacks on October 7th, I was really caught up in it and having a lot of strong feelings. Because it was so intense and because I was kind of checking in on how I was feeling, something that came up was that I really wasn't having the same level of concern for Israelis that were killed or kidnapped, or injured, even, in those days. And that really disturbed me, and it kind of fucked with me because it brought up something that I think I've known about myself, which is that I have these sort of righteous feelings of, "These people are correct, and these people are⁠—these people are right in their values, and others aren't."

                        And in this context, the people that were killed were citizens. They were innocent. I don't know that they were actively contributing to any kind of conflict, and there was children and all that sort of stuff. And so it really kind of hit me differently when I realized that⁠—you know, how can you be concerned with the well-being of people, be for social justice⁠—I say that like I want an end to cycle of violence and oppression, but that didn't extend to these victims.

So I guess that's the context, and I guess what I want to talk to you about was why, why it's kind of fucked up. And I think it manifests itself in other ways in my life, but this was a really strong example of, why don't I extend compassion and empathy to all people in all circumstances, I guess? And then the subquestion is, like, is there something about staying in the theoretical realm of learning about social justice and anti-oppression, and how do we move into actually putting that into practice, even for people that⁠—in this case, it's not that, but even for people that we disagree with? I'm really struggling with that, and I don't know if you have any insight into that.

Jessica:            Yeah. And just to be clear, part of what you're talking about is that you do have a ton of empathy for Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank who are under occupation and bombardment from the State of Israel, right?

Andrew:          Yeah. Yeah. So my heart really immediately⁠—and also, just based on social circles and life experience, having closer ties to Palestinians and Israelis, though not necessarily to Jews as a whole, like a lot of Jewish friends and stuff like that. But I've lived in the Middle East. I have friends who are Palestinian, and just politically also in terms of anticolonial movements. That's what you kind of are⁠—or I have been pro-Palestinian for many years. And so my concerns immediately went for them, and also immediately dreading what was to come after those attacks, right? I was like, "Oh shit. This is not going to be good for anybody." So concerned for Gazans, kind of to the exclusion to the Israelis.

Jessica:            Yeah. So I just want to, first and foremost, sit with the realness and the vulnerability of your question because I don't think you're alone in having a hard time sitting with the emotional complexity of the "and/also" of something that is so big. And the treatment that Palestinians have endured from the State of Israel for decades has just been⁠—clearly, we agree that it has been clearly atrocious. And what is happening now is beyond words.

                        And also⁠—right? And also, lots of little kids and adults and just⁠—there's really terrible things that happened on the 7th of October.

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And just to get a little context around this, when you're talking about this and when you're thinking about this and reflecting on your experience, is this about specifically and exclusively the Israelis that suffered under this specific attack? And there's still hostages, right? Is it specifically about that, or is it about Jews in general or Zionists in general? Do you have a sense of that? Israelis in general?

Andrew:          Yeah. I think it's the conflation of Israelis and Zionism because my Jewish friends⁠—not all, but for the most part⁠—are a lot of anti-Zionists that are really stepping up in their activism these days. And so it's not the conflation between Jews and Israel. It's Israelis and Zionists. And I think it's the Zionism that I've spent so much more time being critical of that and thinking about that, that I don't separate the two, which also rationally doesn't make sense because I know that⁠—and this is actually from Israelis that I've met that are the most critical of the State of Israel are Israelis.

                        And so there's this incoherence in my mind. I'm like, I know rationally that a lot of Israelis don't support what their state does that are actively fighting to come to some kind of solution or to come to an end to the occupation or to come to some kind of two-state solution. And I know rationally about the long history of Jews fighting for all sorts of different social justice causes. And so that's where it also really jarred me, this, like, how can I be so numb to the suffering? That's kind of what my subquestion was about. How do you tie the rational and the emotional lived reactions?

Jessica:            Well, I'm going to keep on unraveling this question with you for a moment, but I want to just kind of⁠—I don't want you to worry. I see it in your chart. We will get there in a second. But I want to ask, do you have the same feeling of having a hard time separating the actions of the United States of America from Americans, like all the wars⁠—

Andrew:          It depends who we're talking about.

Jessica:            Okay.

Andrew:          When we talk about Americans, there's a caricature of Americans, I guess, that⁠—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Andrew:          And they're based on stereotypes. It's based on representation, you know? That kind of stuff. But it's a good question. It's like once there's a personal relationship, then there's an exception made. But I fall into these broad strokes, kind of, and generalizations, I think.

Jessica:            So, related to that, then, the colonial project called Canada⁠—ditto. It sounds like you don't have the same⁠—you see where I'm going with this?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you feel that all Canadians⁠—do you feel that same feeling that you feel about Israelis about Canadians because the country of Canada is bloody-handed when it comes to its treatment of people indigenous to the lands?

Andrew:          Exactly.

Jessica:            But do you have that same feeling is the question.

Andrew:          Sort of. Canadians, capital C, as this faceless mob, yes. But it's not as strong, right? It's not as⁠—yeah. But I do get into those kinds of, like, "This group⁠"—and I do the thing that I criticize right-wing people of doing of, like, "This group, without any nuance, is bad. And this other group is virtuous or is good."

Jessica:            So I have another question, and I'm going somewhere here. So Russia, the Government of Russia, is a propaganda machine, lots of fucking problems. But then there's the people of Russia. Do you have the same feeling that you have about Israelis/State of Israel, which it sounds like is⁠—on a scale from 1 to 10, that shit's a 10. Americans, maybe it's⁠—I don't know⁠—like a 7 or something. Canadians sounds like maybe it's a 4, 5. I'm making up these numbers, but it seems like around your activation. Do you have that with Russia at all?

Andrew:          No, and I think it's because it's much less on my radar.

Jessica:            Because it's less on your radar, even with what's been happening in Ukraine?

Andrew:          It's been on my radar a bit because of Ukraine, but this is like⁠—I went to high school in the Middle East, so I've been thinking⁠—and then I'm friends with Palestinians. The first guy I ever hooked up with was Palestinian, and we talked a lot about it, and I knew his family well, and a lot of⁠—you know? So that's been on my mind a lot, too, and also the [indiscernible 00:09:34] growing up in a place where a lot of my schoolmates were Jewish and hearing a lot about the Holocaust.

And so that was just more present, and the same thing with the States. You can't avoid⁠—Canadians can't avoid consuming American media and hearing the news. And so it's just like I think the time scale is very different. But if I think about Russia, sort of. But it's like this sort of⁠—yeah, it's kind of like prejudice, I guess, that I have that I know rationally that there's plenty of resistance to Putin's regime and to what's going on, but I also have this unreasonable but gut sort of assumption that most Russians probably support the regime.

Jessica:            Interesting. Okay. So I'll just tell you why I'm asking these questions. One is just to kind of understand you a little bit better and what it is that's up inside of you, and also a little bit to understand, what is the relationship that you have to Jewish people versus Americans, which is a bazillion different kinds of people, a lot of different kinds of people in Canada⁠—a lot less diversity in Russia, as an example. But I'm just kind of trying to understand that a little bit. And what's really important in all of this is that, first and foremost, you're being honest about your emotional stickiness. And as a Jewish person with family in Israel, I want to say I really appreciate it. I really appreciate your honesty.

                        I don't think you're alone. And before we started recording, I said I do not think you're alone in feeling this way, and you were like, "Maybe I think I am." I don't think you are. I think that it is very hard to "and/also" when we are in a state of activation and passion in small matters and in big matters. And I don't think this is exclusive to you, though I'm going to tell you exactly how it's about you in a moment.

But ideologically, when we are looking at things that are happening in other countries, when we are learning about these things and we see⁠—I mean, what the fucking State of Israel is doing is⁠—I never feel comfortable with the words because they're never enough to describe the horrors that are happening. So to look at that and to not have any extreme Plutonian emotional reaction is really hard. And when I say Plutonian, Pluto governs our flight-or-fight mechanisms, our survival mechanisms.

And so, when we're in a state of Plutonian activation, it's all or nothing, good guy/bad guy, enemy/friend. That's it. And whenever our survival mechanisms get activated, it is exceptionally hard to sort through those to get to the emotional nuance that you're kind of talking about, which is recognizing that you have an emotional block about something that is not in alignment with your values. You can talk about, "Oh, I have empathy for these people," but you're not feeling it is what you're saying.

Andrew:     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:      Yeah.

Andrew:     Well, I doubt that I have empathy because I don't feel it.

Jessica:      I see.

Andrew:     That's what made me feel like a sociopath.

Jessica:      Right.

Andrew:          Yeah. There's a question that came up there that was what I'm judging also in myself is, why am I having such a strong reaction⁠—I don't know. Maybe it's human. Maybe it's a stupid question. But I'm like, "It's not mine. I am not of these communities. I am not of these things." And in the smaller instances, also, in my life where this sort of thing comes up, sometimes I'm like, "Mind your own business. You're not"⁠—you know? The injustice that I'm seeing there⁠—and "injustice" is a strong word for the other smaller examples of somebody running a red light and I'm thinking that person deserves to have a ticket; the cops should pull up and arrest him. It's not about me, and it becomes about me in this strong way that⁠—like, is that appropriate? You know?

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So what you're talking about is punishment. You're talking about punishing the bad guys. It's not fair for there not to be consequences for people who do the wrong things or who are wrong.

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's like you want there to be a consequence. And I, again, don't think you're alone in having that thought and having that feeling. Whether we are talking about the passion and fervor of the Zionists or the passion and fervor of anti-Zionists, I think there is a lot of that on both sides. I don't think we can look to any atrocity being perpetrated across the world and not have that reaction on some level.

                        When we're talking about, I mean, somebody running a red light, yeah, it's not exactly your business unless you're involved, I guess. But in terms of what's happening in Gaza, yeah, it's all of our business. It's a humanitarian issue, and we need to be concerned. But what you're speaking to is that part of you that you don't feel like you have control over who's self-appointed yourself judge and jury, and not only without enough data, but kids were murdered. Little children were murdered. They saw their parents murdered. And that doesn't spark empathy. And that, you cognitively understand, is, like⁠—it's not justice.

                        So let's get into your chart. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud first.

Andrew:          [redacted]

Jessica:            Oh. That's interesting. Okay. So part of what happens for you is you kind of get wound up and wound up and wound up on an issue. So, certainly, we're talking about this, but you're right. This is not just about this. It's just you want to work on it. Again, I appreciate that. You get wound up and wound up and wound up, and it's almost like a high because you do feel a sense of certainty or a sense of purpose, almost, when you get⁠—

Andrew:          I get righteous is what it feels like.

Jessica:            Righteous. That's the word. Yeah. Righteous. I see it. You get really righteous. And it does make you feel better. And then you crash, and you feel worse. And this is the struggle of being a Scorpio Rising with a Saturn conjunction to the Rise, only three degrees apart. This is the struggle of having a Pluto/Moon square. It's out of sign, but, girl, it's a Pluto/Moon square.

                        This kind of Plutonian Scorpio with some heavy Saturn hammers in there⁠—it's kind of like feeling into or tapping into a shitty situation and making yourself feel better by being kind of, again, Saturnian, like the judge and jury. And it does make you feel above it a minute. And that minute might be a week, it might be an hour, or it might be⁠—whatever.

Andrew:          No. It's short.

Jessica:            It's short for you.

Andrew:          It doesn't last long.

Jessica:            Okay. So it's a minute, and then there's a crash. And then you feel worse than the worst. This is the problem with this Scorpionic, Plutonian energy, is that it's all or nothing. So, if they're all wrong, then there's nothing wrong with you in that moment. And then, if you all of a sudden find yourself acting like judge and jury and you're like, "I am the bad guy"⁠—and if you're the bad guy, then you treat yourself in the same way you treated the guy who ran the red light, like a judge and jury. And that same punishing and judgmental, kind of all-or-nothing attitude gets applied to your own misgivings and your own mistakes and your own problems.

Andrew:          Oh yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to just pull back and be clear. We are talking about the psychological, emotional, and spiritual complexity inside of you, and it's⁠—talking about in the context of Gaza and the State of Israel is a different thing, and we can kind of step in and out of doing that. But talking about the personal and the political at the same time can get sticky because we can't paint them with the exact same brush. Now, say your full name again in your native tongue.

Andrew:          [redacted]

Jessica:            This comes out of your mom's side of the family, this behavior?

Andrew:          No. I mean, I had a conversation with my dad recently that was really kind of similar to⁠—he can't say sorry because he's not wrong.

Jessica:            He's never wrong. Right.

Andrew:          He's never wrong. So I don't know.

Jessica:            How does your mom handle it?

Andrew:          My mom blows past it. It'll just be, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," and then just, like⁠—but doesn't pause and stay with it.

Jessica:            And she's still with your dad, eh?

Andrew:          Oh, no. They⁠—

Jessica:            Oh, they're divorced?

Andrew:          They're separated very recently.

Jessica:            Congratulations.

Andrew:          Although the ties⁠—maybe you're feeling energetically how they're not [crosstalk].

Jessica:            They're not separated. Yeah. Yeah. No, I do feel that, very much so. I would encourage you to consider not how this isn't to do with your dad, but how it maybe to do with your mom more than you've been thinking because her way is more passive, but it's not that different. And you move through the world with diplomatic language and better social skills than your dad. And in a way, this therefore looks a little bit more like it does in your mom than it does like you and your dad. I mean, not when you're going toe-to-toe with your dad. That's a different conversation. I mean, that's like⁠—it's a whole other conversation.

                        But I'd be curious for you to think about your mom and your mom's family and how⁠—whether it's martyred behavior or it's perpetrator behavior. In a way, they become kind of heads and tails of the same coin, eh?

Andrew:          Mm-hmm. It's funny because when you asked me about my mom, I was thinking about the grandparents and the relatives that are dead. But just now, I was thinking about my family that's still alive that I don't see very often. And I'm like, "Oh yeah, they like to get on their high horse and never concede a point."

Jessica:            Yep.

Andrew:          Yeah. Yeah. Just had forgotten about those folks.

Jessica:            It's fun facts, right?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think the more complex you understand the world to be, the more diverse and nuanced your lived experience is. The more different kinds of people you're around, the more different kinds of ideas you're around. And also, the more nuance you learn about a topic, the more it takes emotional resiliency to be able to stay emotionally present with whatever comes up. And most of us do not have the capacity to do that at all.

And it becomes more extreme, I'll say, in times like this where everywhere you turn, there is conversation about what's happening in Gaza. There's atrocities being shared. There's fucking people fighting, saying the worst. I mean, people are awful, it turns out, and saying and doing the worst things all over the place. And it's so painful to bear witness. It's painful to forget acknowledging how you're a part of it.

That's not even where I'm at yet. It's just about bearing witness to all of this pain and all of this rage kind of constantly, as I think anyone who's on social media and paying attention to what's happening is doing. And what most humans do is we stick our heads in the sand. We become hypervigilant. We become hyper-activated around it, or we do the fawn, right⁠—flight, fight, fawn⁠—where we just kind of freeze and we don't do anything; we let other people kind of do all the things around us. And in those states, it's not really realistic to be able to sit with emotional complexity.

So I want to just⁠—I wanted to talk about the two layers at once, and I have to pick a lane here. So bear with me for a second. I want to go into you really personally, and then we can kind of come back to the larger topic. So, in your birth chart, you have this Saturn conjunction to the Ascendant in Scorpio. And you were raised to believe there's a right and wrong, period, and that right or wrong has consequences. And were you raised religious?

Andrew:          Yeah. Catholic⁠—communion, confirmation, the whole thing. Went to mass almost every Sunday.

Jessica:            From your chart, it looks more like you were raised with the rules, regulations, and culture of religion because it's like what's right and what's wrong, how you live, how you don't live, who you connect with, who you don't connect with, as opposed to spirituality associated with it.

Andrew:          Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's what your chart says. And so you were given really clear, repetitive information about the consequences of being wrong and how there is a right and a wrong, and ultimately there is a judge and a jury on high. And I'm assuming you rejected religion young.

Andrew:          Well, it's funny. I didn't reject it the first⁠—like 12, I think it was, or 13, just really questioning Catholicism and how rote it was and how nobody believed anything, that lack of spirituality⁠. And so, by a weird twist of circumstance, I ended up becoming an evangelical Christian for a hot⁠—

Jessica:            Wow.

Andrew:          ⁠—four years, my teenage years. And then it was mostly to hide that I was a little Gay boy and that if I was just very religious, then I could say no to girls. And then, eventually, by the time I was, I think, 18, gave that up, too. Yeah. I gave up religion, but I'm very curious about spirituality, you know?

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Well, in your birth chart, you have this Uranus interception, Uranus in Sagittarius intercept your first house. And this makes you super individualistic, like a queerdo, basically, to use shorthand. But it's in Sagittarius, which is the zodiac sign that governs over religion. And so, for you, conventional religion is not it. The exploring and trying on different kinds of religions, questioning religions, is it for you.

                        This is what's important for me to say about this. You were actively discouraged from questioning anything. That's how Uranus got intercepted in your first house. You were not allowed to be a weirdo, let alone a queerdo. You were not allowed to question the rules that God gave and also father gave, right? Saturn conjunction your Ascendant. I mean, you don't get a permissive, supportive daddy with that placement. That's not a thing.

                        So, for you, there is this internal tug-of-war that is kind of chronically at play where your Saturn/Ascendant conjunction is really just like, "I have to do the right thing, and if I don't do the right thing, I'm wrong. And I have to be constantly scanning for good, bad, better, worst, good, bad, better, worst. And if I land on anything other than the best, I'm the worst." It's this very punitive and very black-and-white kind of thinking, and it's not your cognitive analysis. It's like knee-jerk reaction stuff.

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And on top of it, you've got your three planets. You've got Mars⁠—oh shit. Did we share your birth information? I feel like we skipped it like a couple of crazy⁠—

Andrew:          [crosstalk]

Jessica:            Okay. So you were born June 25th, 1985, 5:51 p.m. in Montréal, Québec.

Andrew:          That's right.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So you have Mars and Mercury conjunction in Cancer, and you also have the Moon in Cancer. Your Moon is square to Pluto. It's an out-of-sign square, but it is a square. This Moon/Pluto square indicates a lot of things, but core here is that you witnessed firsthand in your early developmental experience the consequences of standing up for yourself, of asking for emotional support, and this was probably happening to you but also around you in your parents' relationship.

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And what it did is it gave you this hypersensitivity to the good guy being worthy of love and the bad guy being a danger that you have to protect yourself from and, therefore, someone you have to be constantly tracking. So, for you, when you track things, you automatically⁠—with that Scorpio Rising conjunct Saturn⁠, when you start tracking things⁠—doesn't matter what you're tracking. The second you start tracking things, you go into super fucking judgmental mode.

                        So, if you're like, "I want to get these cute socks my friend has," and you start looking around at online sites at socks, all of a sudden, you become super bitchy about socks. Is [crosstalk]?

Andrew:          I mean, can't relate to the experience, but sure.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. About socks? Socks are not your thing?

Andrew:          About socks. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. That's fair. Respect. Respect. I used the example of socks⁠—and this is why I want to make sure if it's accurate or not⁠—because it's not about things that are so deep, necessarily. It's sometimes about things⁠—

Andrew:          [crosstalk]

Jessica:            That is right, eh?

Andrew:          Yeah. It's these trivial things. And since I wrote my question, I'm trying to track where I'm feeling this judginess, and it's fucking everywhere.

Jessica:            It's everywhere. Mm-hmm.

Andrew:          And once I see it, I'm like, "Calm down. What is your problem with policing everything?" That's what it feels like. It feels like I police everything around me.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Everything around you that you're tracking. So, if you're not tracking it⁠—if you don't really care about stray cats, you're not going to have a lot of judgments about stray cats until someone brings your attention to all the stray cats. And then you'll be like, "That one's ugly. That one's cute. I won't snuggle that one," or whatever.

Andrew:          Right.

Jessica:            The point is that your judgmentalness is real. It's real. It's very real. I'm never going to take it from you, okay? Not only do you have a bunch of Scorpio in you, but you've got a bunch of Cancer in you. I mean, Cancer is that zodiac sign that people don't say, "Oh, that's a judgmental sign," but it is so very judgmental. So you got a lot of things in your chart that speak to that. But what's actually important in this conversation is everything you fixate on outside of you⁠—all of your judgments, all of your condemnation⁠—you point towards yourself as well, period.

You really do treat yourself with that same hammer, with that same inspection and judgment. And you either fear that consequences are coming for you, or you generate those consequences for yourself.

Andrew:     Right.

Jessica:            And I will say as a person who's living through this time alongside with you and everyone⁠—and I'm watching people on social media and how people are behaving on social media, people I agree with, people I don't agree with⁠—both. Fervor and ferocity with which people are showing their asses around how they judge and condemn⁠—what I see when I see that is, "Oh, wow. You are so mean to yourself." Righteous about this issue or not, there are ways of communicating and holding things that are cruel and spiky, and then there are ways of doing it that are not.

                        And listen. I'm not trying to be like, "No one should be angry." You know I'm a big fan of anger, like a big fan of anger. None of this is actually about anger. None of what we're talking about is really about anger. It's judgment and condemnation. What's really important is that the way that we treat others is how we treat ourselves, most people. And so this kind of core issue of⁠—so not the specifics of what's happening in the world, but this core issue of you struggling to figure out why you can have empathy for some victims and not for others, why you can perceive nuance in some places but not in others⁠—the thing I want to say to you is that's how you treat you.

Andrew:          Yeah. I just⁠—I don't feel like I extend much empathy to myself. But the judgment part, for sure, and I see how that relates.

Jessica:            Right. Right. I see that there are ways and moments where you can be like, "Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay." And you can kind of⁠—I don't know if it exactly feels like empathy for yourself, but you can kind of come to a state of neutrality with yourself. Right?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            But it's kind of like a condensation pattern for you. You kind of push things down really compact, and then you're like, "Okay, okay, okay, okay. I can tolerate this." Does that feel right?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            What's really important about this is that the way that you treat yourself eventually leaks into how you treat others. Within that, that means that eventually, if you're super judgmental and mean and unforgiving to yourself, eventually you're going to have a hard time forgiving your partner when he fucks up. And you're going to have a hard time letting go what a friend does.

                        Here's the big, fat "but." The "but" is, unless you've done a good enough job like a good Catholic boy to convince yourself that you're the worst, and therefore they can do whatever they want⁠—and what they do, no matter how bad it is, is not as bad as you on some core level.

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            This exact pattern is what you are finding yourself doing as you look at the suffering of some people versus other people. This is not a comparison. We don't need to compare sufferings. To compare sufferings is to assume that the actions of the State Israel and its greatest supporters is the same thing as the people who suffered on October 7th and who are still suffering, I'm sure, who are hostages. It is really important to be able to see that this issue in the world and inside of you has brought to your attention something that you're not happy with yourself about, that you want to have the ability to experience empathy for people that you objectively believe you should have empathy for.

But this is the thing that happens over time, is that the way that we treat ourselves⁠—it becomes really hard to not treat other people that way. The way that we treat ourselves has so much to do with our worldview. And I think that on some meaningful level, this explains why there are so many Gay republican lawmakers who are like, "Down with Gays. Gays are bad." It's just like the way we hate ourselves, we will eventually hate other people, which is why, from my perspective through my work, I really believe that self-care is a decolonial project when it's done from a perspective of community care because the way that we treat ourselves⁠—it will leak onto other people.

When we look at the most conservative elements in society, you have to imagine that these are not the most free people in terms of their own inner world and their own lives. They don't have a lot of options. They just have the options of the church or the options of their fucking square box. From a more psychological and spiritual and emotional level, this is where we come to understand yet again that hurt people hurt people. And it's not a justification. It's not like, "Oh well. Well, if you're hurt, then you can hurt me, and that's cool." That's not it. But it's to understand that the worst things that people do are always out of fear. They're always out of shame. They're always out of, on some meaningful level, something really wrong within them.

Andrew:          Again, that's one of those things where, for sure, I understand it. And whether it's some kind of geopolitical thing like Israel/Palestine or an interpersonal thing in my life, it still feels so unjust⁠, right?

Jessica:            It is unjust.

Andrew:          Just because it's been explained and I know how we got to this point, it feels so⁠—it doesn't sit well with me, and it doesn't soothe that part of me that gets indignant, that gets righteous.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. Let's stay with this.

Andrew:          And maybe it's not about soothing me. Maybe that's where I'm wrong.

Jessica:            It's not where you're wrong, but it's where you get activated and then go into condemnation, right? Because, as I was saying that, I could feel it shifting⁠—"Wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no." And you're not wrong. You're not wrong. You're understanding that just because a person is truly hurt or motivated from fear or shame, that does not mean they are fucking entitled to genocide, obviously, or to being a fucking bitch on a dinner date or whatever, on a big level, on a small level⁠—I mean, I don't think interpersonal stuff is small, but comparing it to world events.

                        So what this is is a couple things. First of all, it's information. You can feel the fire in your chest, in your belly, right now, eh?

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Breathe into the chest and the belly. What you're doing is you're trying to Saturnian compress it.

Andrew:          Oh yeah. [crosstalk]

Jessica:            Aha. Yeah. So the move is to try to actually continue to breathe into it and to receive it, and just stay with it for another minute. Stop watching yourself. Just breathe into the feeling. Interesting. You went away a little bit. Okay. So did you just, a little bit, disassociate? Did your mind kind of go blank?

Andrew:          I, like, touched it, and then my mind went elsewhere slightly.

Jessica:            Yeah. It just went pfft⁠—yeah, distracted. So this is not like disassociation, like you're a disassociated being. But that's like a disassociative response because the emotions⁠—they're so scary and hard for you. See, what happens when you start to get this level of, like, "That's wrong," is you get really angry. And what I started to feel right before you booped out was you're sad. You're just so sad that people are so mean, and you're sad that you can't do anything about it. Sorry.

Andrew:          Yeah. There's a lot of sadness.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's sadness. It's grief. It's hopelessness. It's helplessness. If I just name these emotions and it hurts your feelings so much, doesn't it make sense that you would instead be like, "Hammer. Bad. Hammer. Good. Move on," because it allows you to feel some measure of control⁠—

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            ⁠—and power, right? Condemning people feels powerful. That's why powerful people do it all the time. Obviously, it's an abuse and misuse of power. But in this situation with you, it's not about you abusing power. I mean, maybe you do. I don't fucking know. It's not what we're talking about, though. It's about your emotions are so powerful that the truth is, if you were to really feel them, really feel them, where would it end?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, where would it end? That's the problem, right?

Andrew:          It feels bottomless.

Jessica:            Bottomless. That's right. It does feel bottomless. And to a certain extent, it is bottomless. When we are looking at the level of injustice in Gaza and Sudan and the Congo⁠—I mean, we can keep going, unfortunately. That's how fucked up this world is. I don't know about you; I can't hold it all. I can't hold all that is happening in the Gaza Strip, let alone in all these other countries. I can't hold realizing I disagree with a friend that I thought I agreed with in fundamental ways, like one relationship, and it's like it just feels like an endless, bottomless pit.

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And honestly, that's the answer to your question. Listen. I don't know. Maybe you're anti-Semitic in some way that I don't know about. I'm going to assume that's not the case here, okay? That said, I think everyone deals with anti-Semitism, Jewish people and non-Jewish people. I think everyone deals with racism. I think everyone deals with homophobia because of the fucking world we live in, right? So acknowledging that, but I don't think that's the core issue here.

                        The real core issue is, on October 7th, not only did the fucking terrible, violent, just horrifying attacks happen to Israelis and other people who happened to be in Israel⁠—right? There's Thai nationals and other people that were there. But it was all of a sudden like everything broke loose, and we really started seeing images and videos and getting news and data about what's actually happening in Gaza. So, when I say that, I want to just acknowledge you poof off again. You disassociated a little bit.

                        And being able to be aware, like, "Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay. Wait a second. My brain just got distracted, and now I don't feel quite as emotional. I feel a little more empty." But that's good because you're feeling overfull.

Andrew:          Mm-hmm. It's soothing.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's soothing. Exactly. So, when we are in the state of experiencing emotions that are just so painful and awful to experience, I mean, how do you accept this reality? I mean, how do you not accept it, but how do you accept this reality? You hear me on the podcast always saying acceptance is not consent. Acceptance is not consent. But it does feel like it on some level, doesn't it? That's why I say it all the fucking time.

Andrew:          Mm-hmm. It feels like if I concede anything, then everything's lost, and again, on big and small issues, right? But it's like I have to hold strong; otherwise, the posture that I'm defending or the people I'm defending, or whatever, lose everything. And it's one or the other. There is no gray area.

Jessica:            Correct. Yeah. And so, from that place⁠—from that place in terms of the social and political realities we live in and in terms of your nature and in terms of the way you treat yourself and in terms of your own capacity to stay emotionally present when these emotions get so big, it makes sense why you would have to turn away from the, quote unquote, "bad guys," because to see the bad guys as vulnerable victims of the Zionist project and colonialization and a violent government and violent, horrifying attack⁠—even as I say that, again, you clamp down. You clamp down.

Andrew:          I noticed it.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Good. I'm glad you noticed it. It is okay to see we are all victims. It is actually okay to have empathy. So I say it's okay that we are all victims, and you're like, "Yeah, no. Mm-mm. We focus on the biggest victim. That's it. The biggest victim. And if we talk about or give any kind of emotional energy to the other victims or to the perpetrators, then we're taking energy from the biggest victims."

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You are not alone in feeling this way. Just open Instagram for evidence. But here's the truth. That is only true because we have a limited capacity to feel, and that limitation is not inherently a bad thing. There is a limit to what you can feel. That's okay. There's a limit to how much you can hold. That's okay. But when you accept the reality—or acknowledge the reality, let's say⁠— that you do not know how to have empathy for yourself, that you do not know how to hold the complexity of, "Yes, I was shitty to my boyfriend yesterday in this fucking stupid way that I've done 50 times before. And he forgives me because he knows I was just low blood sugar. But I feel fucking awful about myself, and I'm ultimately a bad person"⁠—if you can't hold the complexity, if you're just like, "I'm bad," or, "I'm entitled to be mean"⁠—it's either/or, right⁠—then this isn't going to really change. How could it? How could it change? Is this making sense, the connection I'm plugging between these two things?

Andrew:          Very much. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. What I'm going to say is arguable. And I'm going to preface what I'm going to say with, from an emotional development and spiritual perspective⁠—I would even say from a psychological perspective⁠—militancy does not promote freedom. There's no liberation in militancy. I mean, it's kind of the opposite of liberation. And you are militant with yourself, and you were raised in a family with militancy kind of at the core and within a religious structure that was militant in its application. Looking at your chart, I was like, "All right. He was either raised by a military family or in the church. It's a real either/or here," because it's so similar, eh?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And so militancy doesn't bring about healing. And also, there's a reason why people are fucking militant. It's because of fanaticism, right? There is that. But that usually, again, is sparked by fear. Okay. So it happened again. It happened again. Did you feel it when I just said⁠—

Andrew:          I was trying to⁠—that felt different to me. That felt⁠—I was trying to process and think about something. It felt more rational than the previous kind of in my chest⁠—

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Okay, because the way it registered to me, not being in your head and just tracking you psychically, was you're separating yourself from the feeling. So now you separated yourself from the feeling into analysis, versus before, it was into kind of just distraction. Again, analysis is not bad. Don't stop being analytical, obviously. Distraction is not inherently bad either. You need to be distracted from the world a lot of times in the day. That's fine. It's actually fine. It's actually fine. Did you think it wasn't fine?

Andrew:          I guess I have this notion that⁠—and this maybe goes to the Catholic thing or to that Saturn conjunct to Ascendant, but kind of a purist; things have to be a certain way all the time. The slacking is not allowed. And so, if I say that I have a certain value or that I'm whatever, it has to be true 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So you're talking to a triple Capricorn right now. I do not disagree. I am with you 100 percent.

Andrew:          You're like, "That's correct."

Jessica:            It's correct. I agree. But here's the tricky part, okay? The way you're doing it is not sustainable. You're doing it as though you've got 15 more weeks to live. You cannot sustain this level of perfectionistic drive for the course of your life. So while, yes, I agree, if you're going to have ethics and values, if you're going to be committed to a certain way of living or a certain way of functioning in the world, yeah, fucking do it. If you're going to do it, fucking do it. Go all the way. Go. Do. I'm 100 percent with you. But within that needs to be an acceptance of our humanity and the inherent⁠—you know the expression, no ethical consumption under capitalism, right?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. There is no way that you can be a nonindigenous Canadian talking about colonization without irony in your heart.

Andrew:          Right.

Jessica:            So, if we cannot be perfect because the world is so profoundly flawed, how can we bring empathy into our practices?

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Jessica:            So much of what Gazans are asking us to do is to not turn away, to not turn away. But does that mean you have to watch video after video after video after video? Is that what that means? Do you think that's what that means? I mean, I'm asking you that literally.

Andrew:          No.

Jessica:            Okay. No. So you've figured out how to pace yourself.

Andrew:          Yes. I haven't dropped everything to just be on Instagram and to write to my elected officials and be marching every day. I keep going with my life.

Jessica:            Okay. You're doing both. So you've figured out how to do this. And is that because this is an issue you've been activated around since before the 7th? Does that make sense, what I'm asking you?

Andrew:          Like why I have a certain amount of balance in it?

Jessica:            Yeah. You have a certain amount of balance, which is interesting because we were just talking about the ways in which you don't really have this balance.

Andrew:          Well, I just judge it when I don't⁠—that I have⁠—you know, and I just go⁠—

Jessica:            I see.

Andrew:          I go on with my life, and I just judge myself throughout it. I feel guilty for the other commitments and obligations of my life.

Jessica:            I see. I see.

Andrew:          I mean, not 24/7, but when I do think about it and I see people posting about the rally that they went to and whatnot, I'm like, "Shit. I wasn't there for whatever reason." You know?

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. Saturn governs judgment and condemnation and guilt. It also governs humility, accountability, and responsibility. Yeah. You know where you want to lean, right?

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Because the thing about condemnation and the guilt is it's so self-referential. It is ultimately about our own hangups. And it's much easier to see that in really conservative people, isn't it? It's so easy to see all that condemnation in all the fucking controlling people. It's really about their own weird, limited hangups, right?

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            That's easy. If you were to take the approach of saying, "This is my life, and I believe in x, y, and z as the most important things to take my attention right now"⁠—so let's say that means I actually have to go to my job today. That is the most important thing. I can't not go to work. You have a doctor's appointment, and you actually have to go to the fucking doctor or whatever. You decide that there are specific things that you have to do.

                        If you take responsibility for the choice and you own it with humility and you are accountable to that choice, then you're not wasting your energy and time on would-have, could-have, should-haves. And then you actually get to make a different choice later today, tomorrow, whatever. You don't twist up your energy. And I think that's a lot of what happens for you now, is you have the absolute best of intentions, but what do they say? Perfect is the enemy of good.

                        The perfectionism that you hold is so righteous. It's like you're stabbing yourself and others with perfection. And what does it do? And what this issue that prompted you to write me is really revealing to you of yourself is that you're losing access to your capacity for empathy. From my perspective, it is because you have overdeveloped your capacity for anger to motivate you or indignation or rage or whatever the fuck it is. You understand what I'm talking about, right?

Andrew:          Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            To motivate you so that you don't have to feel sadness. And I am a big fan of anger motivating us. It's like the dial⁠—you know the dial on a stereo?

Andrew:          Oh yeah.

Jessica:            It's only turning in one direction now. It can go up. That's all it can do. So your access to feeling sad and scared is where your empathy is hiding. And I know that what I'm saying is like, "Oh, just feel sad more," which is terrible, and I know⁠—

Andrew:          That's not how I'm interpreting it.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. Okay. Good. I'm so glad you're not. Okay. Good.

Andrew:          It's that I know it's there. I mean, I started crying when you just named it. And maybe it's not the right word, but having the bravery to sit with that is what is coming to mind.

Jessica:            Bravery is the right word. It is the right word.

Andrew:          You know, of that⁠—like I can feel it and still be okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. And also, you can not be okay. Let's be real. Three planets in Cancer? Three including your Ascendant in fucking Scorpio? Yeah. You're allowed to not be okay as well. And when you have this much water in your chart, I mean, real talk. You're going to drown sometimes a little bit. And who wants to fucking drown? Nobody, but especially not fucking Saturn and Pluto.

This feeling of sadness⁠—in order to actually experience it, to feel sad about, "Oh, I was mean to my boyfriend," or to feel sad about the fucking world and the horrifying atrocities of the world⁠—in order to feel that sadness, you have to be willing to allow yourself to take time where you're not doing anything. And that's really hard. Yeah.

                        The truth of the matter is we are at a terrifying crossroads as a global community. And if we don't find ways of prioritizing mutual aid, community-building, humanitarian motivations, what the fuck is going to happen to us? In order for that evolution to occur, I am of the mind that we need to broaden our capacity to feel, which doesn't mean to feel good or to feel right. It just means to feel, because it's so easy to look at boomers and be like, "Fucking boomers. Look at what boomers are doing. Look at all the things boomers have done." But what we're really just looking at is the first time in human history that we have a digital age where we can look at people who are older than us who have not done enough therapy, which is not in any way specific or exclusive to boomers. It's people.

Over the course of time, this way that you are so mean to yourself, this way that you are so unrelenting and unforgiving towards yourself⁠—yeah, over the course of time, it can turn you into somebody who's just yelling at kids from your fucking porch. You know what I mean? It could easily do that. And it's not just you. It's all of us. We all have the ways that we're hurt and that we have maladjusted coping mechanisms, but they're our coping mechanisms. And when big things happen in the world, we only know how to use those maladjusted coping mechanisms when we engage with the world. I mean, this makes sense. This is why so many social justice movements are with people in their 20s, because people at a certain point are just like, "I can't. I gotta go work on myself," which is⁠ not⁠—again, it's not an excuse, but it's a reality. It's a reality.

And so I don't think that what I'm saying is the only truth, but I think it's a meaningful truth. If our social justice movements are not imbued with heart, which takes a lot of fucking work when things get messy⁠—and they do⁠—then they're not really sustainable. And you're at the age where you've probably been a part of different activist groups or subversive communities and seen them kind of implode or crumble.

Andrew:     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:      Have you already? Yeah? Yeah?

Andrew:          Around me, yeah. Not so much me. I'm not the biggest activist, but definitely friends and stuff, seeing how things have changed from when we were in our 20s to our late 30s.

Jessica:            Yeah. this is what happens within groups and movements. And it's not for any other reason than groups and movements are made up of people, and people have shit. And it's not you. You alone do not have shit. I have shit. We both have shit. Everyone we meet has shit, and everyone has maladjusted coping mechanisms. And everybody makes mistakes. And what happens when we are unwilling or unable to acknowledge other people's fallibility, other people's vulnerability, other people's ability to make mistakes and not be aligned with those mistakes but have made them anyways⁠—that reveals that we treat ourselves that way.

                        And having the ability to perceive the humanity in someone else and greet it with the same way you would want your humanity greeted is good for your soul. It's good for your heart. It means you have to feel sad and bad sometimes⁠—a lot of times, these days. But unfortunately, I think that's what that means. And that's why most people aren't doing it.

Andrew:          To go back to my question, then, if I understand⁠—see, already, I feel guilty about this. But we'll talk about it. There's an element of starting within, within my own reactions to myself, my own punishing self, before⁠—physician, heal thyself sort of thing, like before fixing the world. But even that feels that wellness influencer/spiritual bullshit/yoga class stuff that I judge so harshly. You know?

Jessica:            Yeah. So let's talk about it.

Andrew:          You know what I want? I want permission. That's what I'm looking for. I want to, like⁠—Jessica, tell me I'm allowed.

Jessica:            So, first of all, I mean, I can give you permission, but it's not going to work.

Andrew:          I know.

Jessica:            It doesn't work. It'll work for 15 minutes, and then all your shit comes back up, right? Because these are your core coping mechanisms, and core coping mechanisms⁠—they're the foundation of the house. They're underneath the foundation of the house. I can't get in there and just fix it without picking up your house and moving it. So there's layers to this.

                        One meaningful layer is recognizing that there's something happening in the world that you mentally understand, "Oh. I objectively should have empathy for vulnerable people in this situation." And you do not emotionally have access to those feelings, right? So there's the acceptance piece, which, straight out the gate, you ain't got. It's weird because you asked the question, which is very impressive. I was very impressed by the question because it is vulnerable, and it is a vulnerable thing to admit to want to work through. But you don't accept it. And the lack of acceptance is because you don't want it to be true.

Andrew:          Yeah. Well, it goes back to that idea that if I see all sides, then the people that I land with, the people that I feel most⁠—that are the biggest victims, like you said⁠—that I'm taking something from them or that I'm⁠—

Jessica:            You're betraying them.

Andrew:          ⁠—betraying them.

Jessica:            Yeah. Let's use Scorpio language while we're here. Betray. You're abandoning them and betraying them by having any empathy. The thing that's so challenging about Pluto, the planet that governs our survival mechanisms, in a fixed sign⁠—so we're talking about millennials and boomers, two generations that have their survival mechanisms in fixed signs. The thing that's so hard about this is that it makes you feel like there is one way, and if I do not take that one way, everything falls. And we can look at boomers and be like, "Oh, look how that's played out over time." Not as great as they planned. They were fucking hippies. They were fucking hippies.

                        The boomers have done so many wonderful things, I mean just as a generation. I hate talking about generations like this, but whatever the fuck. It's useful in this moment. So they did so many wonderful things, and then things changed. Oh, but they changed. And then they didn't. The same thing can happen, unfortunately, with Pluto in Scorpio's generation because when we are so rigid, emotionally rigid, because it's Scorpio⁠—it's a water sign. When we are so emotionally rigid that we cannot access and experience complexity and alsos, then what we're doing is we're punishing ourselves, we're abandoning ourselves, and we're punishing others and abandoning them.

                        And that can happen on a social level. It can happen with family of origin. That can happen with your engagement in real-world issues⁠—all the fucking things. You have the double fucking whammy; you're also Saturn in Scorpio. So it's just straight-up nihilism. It's just straight-up, like, "What's the fucking point?" It's all, "Fuck it. No." You know what I mean? It goes really extreme, really in a heavy, sharp way.

                        Is there a part of you that believes that any Israeli deserved what they got, like just the fact of being an Israeli, that they deserved what they got?

Andrew:          Unfortunately, yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm glad you're honest, because I'm psychic, so I already knew you meant that. Okay. I mean, that's awful, obviously, right? I don't agree with that. I don't feel that way. But you do feel that way. I'm not going to tell you how to feel. If that's how you feel, that's how you feel. But I do want to challenge you to apply that to North America, to Canada and the U.S., and apply that to the different communities that you can apply that to here where it's not identical, it's not the exact same, but it's not radically different, is it? And see if it feels the same because part of what I'm seeing is that it doesn't for you.

Andrew:          Yeah, to sit with it more, but it's definitely different. Part of me gets into the⁠—maybe it's the nihilist part of, like, yeah, Canadians would deserve retribution that we got from Indigenous people or from other⁠—you know, it's mostly Indigenous people, but not just Indigenous people that we've victimized and oppressed. It's back to that punishment idea, that⁠—and this is what I have such a hard time with because when I hear, especially, abolitionists talk about prison abolition, it resonates intellectually so strong with me. And yet I have these ideas that I believe deeply in punishment.

Jessica:            I think part of what happens when you think about it is it's very theoretical to you. It's not personal. You're not thinking about a bunch of your friends going to a party with a bunch of strangers that they don't know and somebody who has a right to be really angry at Canada, at the government, at the colonial project of Canada⁠—and then raping and murdering and torturing children and old people and adults. Once it gets a little bit more personal, it stops to make as much sense.

Andrew:          Right.

Jessica:            This is the thing about condemnation and judgment, is that it requires putting yourself on high, King Shit of the turd pile, as my mother would say. It requires you separating yourself. And I am not suggesting that you are⁠—or I⁠—should ever tell any person who has been living with someone else's boot on their neck how to fight that person off and how to handle their oppression around that. That is not what we are talking about.

There is something incredibly important about being able to acknowledge that if I have my boot on someone's neck and then they break free, and then they kill you, who did not have your boot on someone's neck, that that is not justice. Now, it might be contextually making sense, and it might be, in a big social context, justifiable. But would you want people to not have empathy for you?

Andrew:          No. Right. Yeah. I'd want that for myself. I'd want the empathy.

Jessica:            The empathy. Of course you would. We all would. And also, there's something very inherently Western about the way that so many Westerners are talking about Indigeneity and talking about colonizers and talking about who we should have empathy for and who shouldn't and all these things, when we are sitting here, the beneficiaries of such violence, just such violence.

                        And it is very easy when we separate ourselves to come into these right, wrong, good, bad⁠—again, we're back to Pluto. But when you personalize it and you imagine your own friends or your own self, it starts to get a little more complex. It just starts to get a little more complex. That complexity is it becoming a little more human. It's about it becoming a little more⁠—when I say personal, I mean person to person.

                        Every time we start to get near that, the wall comes up of, "No. Mm-mm. What people are going through in Gaza is real, and I can't have empathy for what people are going through in Israel." And there's two things that come up for me around that. One is, on a mental level, understanding the difference between a state or Hamas and Palestinians. It's not the fucking same thing. Talking about those two things interchangeably is incredibly fucked up for the State of Isael and all Jewish people or Israelis themselves.

                        And on a personal level, if I think about the worst person in my life who is treating me the worst and just fucked me up the most, if you had empathy for that person, you would not be harming me in any way, shape, or form. If you were able to see the humanity in that person, to be able to hold the complexity of how they came to be so fucked up, you would not be harming me.

Andrew:          Rationally, I'm with you.

Jessica:            But emotionally, not so much.

Andrew:          And then part of me just⁠—there's this defensiveness. But what I'm getting from this and what's really helpful is that⁠—and I know this about myself intellectualizing things, but one of the remedies to that, for me, sounds like it's also in the⁠—do the visualization, which I don't. It goes straight to these big ideas. And I think that, to me, it seems like a way to accessing that sadness and to those emotions because it's part of my, it feels like, defense mechanism, too, of just going to this very brainy understanding of things because we talked about it. I was picturing my friends in a certain situation, and yeah. It aligns differently.

Jessica:            Another part that is really important for you to hopefully pull from this conversation is, if you do feel, let's say, empathy for Israelis, you have to tolerate⁠—you start to feel empathy for Israelis. Maybe you just start to turn in that direction. You're not actually feeling it, but whatever. You start to feel it, and then your grief and outrage for Palestinians gets bigger, bigger, bigger. And if you're going to actually be able to experience empathy for Israelis, you have to be able to stay present with the enormity of all the emotions, that you can actually have empathy for both peoples at the same time.

                        And it's not just that it doesn't steal from anyone; it makes you more resilient because you're not losing your humanity as you see displays of deeply inhumane behavior from the State of Israel and from the people who are holding it up. Say your name out loud again.

Andrew:          [redacted]

Jessica:            Thank you. I want to just come back to this pattern for you is, when you get emotionally activated, it's almost like you smooth out the sheets and it's totally flat. You get activated emotionally, and then either you intellectualize or just have a distracted thought and then it soothes you. It's like there's the smoothness. That's why I said flatten, like when you are making the bed and you flatten out a sheet. It's like it soothes you, and there's something about this soothed state that is actually emotional compression. It's not neutrality, and it's not peace, which is why underneath that soothed state is anxiety.

                        So, since I started checking in with you energetically through our conversation, I've seen you do it⁠—I couldn't count how many times you've done it, so many times. It's every 30 seconds or something like that. It's really a deep pattern.

Andrew:          Oh my God. Okay.

Jessica:            No, no, no. It's good information because it contextualizes. It contextualizes why it would be so challenging for you to be able to hold empathy for, quote unquote, "both sides." In a sense, civilians, including little kids, were killed and harmed and all kinds of terrible fucking things, terrible things. We're not comparing. We're not comparing. See, this is where your brain goes to. You start comparing.

Andrew:          I know.

Jessica:            Yeah. Your brain is just like, "Good and evil, good and evil, good and evil. Which one's worse? Which one's worse? Which one's more justified?" The way to work with that is to just notice yourself doing it. Don't fucking be mean to yourself. Don't be judgmental towards yourself. Don't be ashamed. There's nothing to be ashamed of. There's really earnestly nothing to be ashamed of because you're trying. You're allowed to be fucked up. If you weren't fucked up⁠—I don't know⁠—I kind of think we'd all be dead if we weren't fucked up. I kind of think this fucking project of being a human is just like working through trauma or something. I don't know. It's a mess.

Andrew:          That's why we're here.

Jessica:            That's it. It's what it is.

Andrew:          And then we float off somewhere else.

Jessica:            Exactly. I mean, let's hope it's an easy flow. All to say you are allowed to be fucked up. But I think taking accountability for, "Oh. Okay. This is the max. This is my max. Apparently, this is my max because I just went straight into judgment. I went straight into good guy/bad guy stuff. Okay." Just practice noticing it. Spend one to three months, we'll say, where you just make it your psychological practice to notice, psychologically notice⁠—psychologically notice when you do it, when you disassociate, if you can, and certainly when you go into condemnation.

                        But the practice of noticing is not the practice of judging. You know how to judge when you do it. That's not what I'm talking about. Judging is followed by shame or guilt or distraction. Notice⁠—

Andrew:          It's just noticing what is.

Jessica:            Yeah. Just noticing what is. Yeah. That's it. It's information. And it's generally going to be information about you being emotionally taxed.

Andrew:          [crosstalk]

Jessica:            Yeah. You're at the⁠—no. You're at it. That's the level that you can tolerate. So your survival mechanism kicks in and is like, "Good guy/bad guy. Consequence/punishment." You become judge and jury because you're scared of being condemned⁠—

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            ⁠—or falling apart. If you practice this, the only thing that's going to change is your ability to change, which is a really, really big thing. But it's slow. It's slow. What I'm recommending is slow because if your ability to change expands, then after one month or three months⁠—whatever you end up working with⁠—you can start noticing how you feel and tolerating the emotion. And over time, you can expand your ability to feel. And then you will be sadder and you will curse my name, but you will have less righteousness.

                        Within that, you'll have the capacity to experience greater nuance. You'll have the emotional, not just the intellectual, capacity to experience and/also, which will make you nicer to yourself and make your life easier to live in all ways and indirectly affect your ability to look at situations that are far from you and have empathy and compassion to all players, not just the biggest victims in the situation.

                        And for you, giving yourself the authority⁠—it's funny because you mentioned earlier, "Oh, just give me permission." You have to give yourself permission. See, you've got Saturn conjunct the Ascendant, but it's in the twelfth house. And having Saturn in the twelfth house⁠—the kind of core lesson is how to cultivate your own backbone. So, in the world, people with Saturn in the twelfth house seem very together, but inside, it's like, "Oh, I don't know if I have a right to do this. I don't know if I can give myself permission. I don't know if I'm an authority in my own life or even an authority on myself."

                        Uranus is currently opposing your natal Saturn. This is the time for this work. You cannot stop this freight train from running. This is the time. And what is happening in the world requires your attention and your care and your activism in whatever way is realistic and sustainable for you. But it is also mirroring something inside of you. That mirror is here so that you can look in it. And I don't believe⁠—I think you and I are on the same page of I'm not going to be like, "Go heal yourself. The world can wait." No. They're interconnected. And there is a string that goes really kind of deep through all these issues of the truth.

                        The truth is that you know what you believe. You have no ambiguities. I mean, I've not heard a lot of ambiguity. I've heard a lot of pain, but your understanding of the world⁠—you're really clear. You just haven't given yourself the authority to align with that clarity, and you haven't accepted what that means and how to hold it. And you're changing. It's going to change. It's changing. And if you're doing it right, it'll hurt⁠—not make you angrier and more judgmental. If you're doing it right, you'll feel sad, which I'm imagining in the last few months you have been feeling more of, in addition to the condemnation and the rage and all the things.

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            You're doing what needs to be done in a lot of ways, and then there's all this work, more to do. Now, is there a final question? Did I hit this for you, I mean as best as possible?

Andrew:          I mean, very, very, very much so. I didn't recognize how much it was about my condemnation towards myself. Essentially, you just mentioned that I'm changing because I was going to ask you something about⁠—I feel like I don't. I feel like I hoard knowledge. You know people who buy books and just never read them; they just like having books?

Jessica:            Yeah.

Andrew:          I don't necessarily do that, but I feel like that person sometimes where I like having information and knowledge, and then it just sits on my shelves.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Yeah. Saturn conjunct the Ascendant. For reals. Also, a bunch of planets in Cancer. These are not flexible and adaptable placements. It's not exactly what it is. But you are changing because you are going through a Uranus opposition Saturn. Starting February, Pluto is going to square itself. When Uranus is done with Saturn, it'll oppose your Ascendant. So you're judging. You don't need to do anything to change. It's happening. Prediction lobbied.

                        The only thing you need to do is to make sure those changes are improvements because that's not a given. Change is not inherently good. Evolution, improvements⁠—those things are great. But look at the State of Israel. The changes are not good. But you are going to change. And if you can care about those changes instead of allowing shame and guilt to motivate you, they'll be improvements.

                        What we grow from shame and guilt is generally more shame and guilt. So the work is to go from condemnation and blame and punishment to accountability, responsibility, and humility. It requires that you trust yourself. Accountability, humility, responsibility⁠—there's self-trust in there. Shame and guilt is, "What if I'm wrong about everything?"

Andrew:          Mm-hmm. Up until this year, I've been having this just⁠—it started kind of in the pandemic where I feel this idea of my feeling like a man-child came up where I'm like⁠, "I'm very young." And externally, people are like, "What are you talking about?" Whatever. But internally⁠—and there's some external conditions now that have forced me to be more accountable, I'd say, and more responsible. But I'm wondering if that's what I was tapping into without the language for it, of the lack of those things⁠—or not a lack, just not having cultivated them.

Jessica:            That's what it is. I mean, you were raised not to have those things. God gives you that. The church gives you that. Nothing else can give you that. And it's not enough to turn away from something. We must cultivate something in its space. So turning away from any number of isms or turning away from⁠—in this case, we're talking about something really deeply personal like your relationship to religion. That's step 1. It can't be the last step.

                        And what I think a lot of Queers do is we turn away from the things that tell us what's wrong with us, and then we step into Queer culture. And it feels like we're embracing something, and we are for a time. But there has to be other things that we build inside of ourselves and around ourselves. It can keep us in a state of⁠—not childhood, but a lack of belonging to ourselves. If you don't belong to yourself, then who do you belong to? I think a part of you still belongs to the judging, mean, jerk God who wants to punish everyone who's not perfect.

Andrew:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It's what we've been talking about this whole time. So you've got a lot of gently unraveling to do, and if you don't do it gently, then you're going to shut down and disassociate, and all those old coping mechanisms come back. This has to be done gently. And there's nothing in your chart that's like, "Great. Gentle." I mean, I know you have a Cancer Moon, but all that Cancer placement stuff can be so gentle towards others but so mean to the self.

                        Again, it's like I think there's a way that Cancer placement people⁠—I mean, you're not a Cancer, but Cancer placement people really get misunderstood. That pincher can be turned inside, and you can get attached to things. There is a part of you that still believes in all the things you were raised with on a core level, and I think it would be fair to revisit those beliefs. You may find that you need to put another structure in place, another belief system in place. And you might not, but it's worth exploring, right?

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Your mind is endlessly open. You have taken your heart offline. I think breath work might help you with that little bit, like breathing a little bit more intentionally into those parts of you that⁠—you know what I'm talking about, those parts of you that are kind of⁠—

Andrew:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay, because the practice is to receive yourself. It's not to do anything. You don't have to do anything. You just receive yourself. And it means that your thinking might get a little confused because you're more present with what's actually happening, which is that you're confused. You're overwhelmed. It's too much. You're allowed to have limits. In fact, working with your limits empowers you to be more whole. And then, when you do show up for your partner, your bestie, your dad, or the people of Gaza who you really wish to protect and advocate for, you can sustain those efforts and you can do things with more energy, more effectively.

                        And that's just fucking⁠—it's all really good words. I mean, I believe I'm giving you excellent advice, but if you don't give yourself the authority to be the boss of you, the dad of you, the structure bringer for you, then you're not going to do any of it because you keep on triple-guessing yourself and then falling back on the survival mechanism, which is perfect certainty and righteousness.

                        So this is big work, but you are ready. The time is right. But it is⁠—it's like your life's work. It's big work.

Andrew:          Thank you for holding this. I was really scared. And it feels really tapped into my emotions. The gratitude that I feel that you held that and made space for something that's kind of heinous, or that I feel is heinous, is⁠—it's very touching to me.

Jessica:            I really appreciate that.