ASK ABDI: DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY OR NUMEROLOGY?

QUESTION: Do you believe in astrology or numerology? And if yes, do you practice it or look there for advice?

ANSWER: Astrology and numerology can be useful tools on our path. The main problem is that we turn to these practices when we are confused, and hence leave our intelligence at the door. Few people use them when they are centered in their lives. That fact alone can strongly color any experience. In the holographic model, a piece contains information from the whole. That is how these technologies work.

These techniques can be useful when looking at ourselves from an archetypal angle. It can give us a sense of strengths and weaknesses, or trends. But we still have to do our inner work. Most of us want fast answers or magic bullets, and that is where things become tricky. For example, a reading can be like a weather report: it can tell us if it is sunny or cloudy out. Even if the reading is 100% accurate, which it rarely is, it is up to us how to respond. We all have had times where we were miserable on a sunny day or had amazing insights on a rainy one. So the weather report is just one factor among many.

I knew a world-renowned astrologer with many years of experience who had helped many people. He had a client, who had just finished a reading with him, die of an accident immediately after the reading. Nowhere in the reading had he picked up that this would happen. That episode shook him to the core in his practice. Such is life in all her mystery.