I was in a conversation a while back with someone having feelings which he described as “devilish,” “primeval,” and “shadowy.” He saw that Pluto was conjunct his Sun and wondered if that could be associated with what he was experiencing. I told him “Sure, why not?”

All of us begin life ignorant and receptive to the cues the world gives us about what’s good or bad, “right” or “wrong,” and all the other things which shape our subconscious minds impacting our personality as we grow older. All of us are taught that we should be good and not bad, powerful and not weak, and pursue what we want with vigor.

The 7 visible planets represent “departments of labor” in our personality, each having a healthy expression as well as an unhealthy expression. We have to learn to turn the dysfunctional planetary expressions without ourselves to healthy external expressions of those planetary virtues. The outermost invisible planets represent factors in the global spiritual field which affect us all by awakening, dissolving, and purifying parts of our personality through situations “beyond our individual control.”

Because of so many ghosts and difficulties in humanity’s generic past, there are many “echoes of thought forms” adrift in collective consciousness, and some of them are pretty dark. As we move out of ignorance into understanding and wisdom, along the way we experience some things in collective consciousness as a means to learn how to deal with them effectively. Uranus will bring us revolutionary conditions which may seem erratic and willful; Neptune brings us confused collective conditions which encourage us to be discerning as we are immersed in the sea of unconsciousness; and Pluto takes us down to our private hell, as well as the collective hells created by and endured through the ages by humanity.

Pluto is Lord of the Underworld, but also represents “economy of energy” and the principle of Spiritual Will, as well as the power of seeds to replicate the entire plant. In our occasional journeys through the underworld, we will be exposed to feelings which are dark, primeval, shadowy, and even “devilish.” Still, as we experience these, we form responses which can lead us to power over how we navigate life and death on all levels of life. All our dark feelings show us a side of our inner nature, both past and present, that can lead us to great clarity, strength, and integrity if we understand our power to turn these seeds of negativity to good results.

Getting back to my original conversation, I told him that while I was a wild man when I was much younger, I learned over time that the dark side is only good until it begins to ruin your life by allowing your desire mind to run rampant in destructive behavior. While expressing “the dark side” can be illuminating, it ultimately obstructs the Loving Wise Intelligence of our Soul until we face the darkness with a fearless detachment and compassion. It took me a lot of crashing around and “getting it wrong” until I realized I had a choice of how I was going to suppress or externalize those wild (and often destructive) attitudes and behaviors.

Because we are living units of giving and receiving energy, a part of our evolution is learning how to feel all there is to feel. And since we’re never separate from the larger Field in which we live, breathe, and have our Being, we will from time to time sense parts of the toxic soup of modern existence. These are tests to see clearly what to do and not do, what to let go of and what to accept as part of our integrity.

Over time we learn to own what is ours and reject what is not ours, seeing what’s personal and what’s just a part of the greater human energy field. At this point in my life, when I sense the presence of these types of “shadowy” things in myself or another, I do not take it personally. I figure it probably something toxic in the atmosphere which I can transmute by not playing to it and if possible, consciously nullifying it.

When Pluto makes an exact pass over a planet, or even a hard aspect, it tends to strip us to the bone. In learning to with “the Lord of the Underworld” in “the underworld of our existence,” we are exposed to our deepest core. Pluto tends to annihilate everything that is no longer true for us, or which serve no purpose in our future.

Pluto transits show us who we are as a distinct unit of spiritual energy, and show us what “skins of personality” we must shed so we can be clearer and a more authentic expression of who we are at the core. It acts as a catalytic reagent that will precipitate out everything in the “solution of Self” that is impure or a particulate we don’t need to be a part of us.

In my own life, in 2013-2014-2015 Pluto was in a tight square to my Sun. Though by this time in my life I am no longer tempted to act out unfortunate behavior patterns, during those years I was shown some people in this world are toxic personalities, and even though it was painful, we had to say goodbye.

To put it another way, as much as a scorpion wants to share your space, if you allow it to be there you will at some point get stung. And again. And again. Who allows that sort of painful stuff in? We do.

A tight Pluto conjunction, square, or opposition to one of our planets shows us that internal function is under pressure in a big way. We can break free of old inner restrictions, old toxic things, and purify whatever needs purifying, but we need to do it consciously and finish transforming dross into gold so we don’t have to visit that part of our personal hell again.

Though the purifying process can be painful and at times impossibly ugly (since we cannot control other people’s responses to what we’re letting go of), it frees us to walk on into a new chapter that feels a whole lot better than the old. And yes, we will experience echoes of feelings from time to time, since what is purified and released from the deep wells of our lives is bound to hurt a little.

This brings me to a classic “punch line” of life I read long ago by a very wise man, who told us that though life is painful, we do not need to suffer. To end our suffering, we must master the antidotes to our suffering using detachment, dispassion, discernment, compassion, and our ability to generate positivity even in the face of outrageously dark things. Once we make the Lord of our Underworld our friend and companion, then we no longer fear our private hells, and become a powerful and fearless companion for others who are stuck in their hells.

As we master the 7 Sacred Planets and turn them to positive function, we can become the healthy expression of the spiritual field’s qualities of individuation, inclusion, and integrity. By trusting the process of self-purification and ever-unfolding self-realization, we can come to know who we are at the core of our being, and live our spiritual Power, Love, Wisdom, and Intelligence in active conscious ways. And that’s a very good thing. Thanks to the Friend who inspired this!

Reprinted on crystalwind.ca with written permission from Robert Wilkinson. Copying this article to other blogs is strictly prohibited. It is copyright protected. 

© Copyright 2022 Robert Wilkinson

© 2022 crystalwind.ca. All rights reserved. We track all IP addresses. Using a VPN will now also get tracked to original source IP.