When The People In Hell Are Kinder Than The People In Heaven

The most recent posts on my blog are all part of a series. If you’ve read more than one, you may have noticed the thread connecting them, but don’t worry if you didn’t because on the surface they’re a bit all over the place.

They may appear unfocused, but there’s intense focus within the unfocused.

On the surface I’m a rather unfocused person.

I’ve been this way all my life.

It tends to drive people crazy, particularly those people who want to categorise me, pop me into a box, slap a label on it, put the box in a pigeonhole, and expect me to stay that way forever and ever.

My mother used to tell me this anecdote about wonderful-mommy-her getting frustrated at little-me because yet again I’d foiled her wonderful-mommy gesture by suddenly not liking something which only the previous day I’d liked and which she was giving me to prove how wonderful a mommy she was. She’d ask me why I didn’t like the thing today when I liked it yesterday = why was I doing this to her!?! After everything she’d done for me, how could I be such a brat!?! And my answer was – I’m different now.

Most of my interactions with my mother were her passive-aggressively trying to control me, usually by criticising me – nothing I ever did was right, good enough, as good as it could be if only I’d… luckily she was there to mercilessly point out the faults, flaws, errors, and tidy up the mess, fix me, shape me into the image she wanted.

Occasionally behind the surface appearance of scolding, nagging, punishing, criticising me for my own good to make me a better person mother there was something, someone else – a glint in her eye.

As much as she hated “different me”, there was a hint that she loved that me. That she admired the free spirit who refused to be tamed… no matter how hard she tried to tame it, and thought she’d succeeded.

I was reminded of that dynamic between me and my mother last night while playing a video game with my partner.

It was my turn to play, and… the way I control the character during a fight drives my partner nuts.

I don’t know if it’s due to having dyslexia, but I can only learn a few moves and those are the moves I use. To learn a new move I have to forget one I know. The fighting mechanics allow for lots of different moves, all of which my partner uses when it’s his turn.

He’s very good at fights. I’m lousy at fights and often get killed unless I run away (or hand the controller quickly to my partner) but I go for it anyway and…

I can hear him back-seat gameplaying.

Telling me what I’m doing wrong, how I could improve my gameplay if I’d just press those buttons I’m not pressing, use the targeting instead of slashing wildly at air, and on and on.

When I do make the effort and use a set of buttons I don’t normally remember to use while in the heat of battle… he points out something else I could do that I didn’t do, that I missed, I’d enjoy playing it more if I would just learn what he’s telling me to learn.

He’s right but… he’s also wrong.

My partner and I don’t fight that often.

We’re very similar… except in our gameplay, it highlights our differences (which work well together until they clash) and can lead to fights outside of the game.

We’ve had fights before about him criticising and nagging me for my own good about my limited range of fight moves.

It drives him nuts so he drives me nuts with it.

I didn’t get triggered or upset about it last night, so no fight ensued.

The previous night I simply pretend-stabbed myself in the heart with an invisible knife, slicing downwards, then mimicking guts spilling out that went on for a few minutes… afterwards I pushed it all back in and sewed myself back up.

He found that amusing if a bit disgusting and deranged.

Last night I just gave him the finger.

But I did think about it later on, not to work myself up into a lather of being angry at him, that’s not helpful or useful… since I’m focused on working through old issues, hidden stuff, bringing them out into the open to understand them, it was helpful and useful to hmmm about it, about what it connects to within me.

What’s the point of this experience, why is it a thing for me, why am I bothered by it, and how can I unravel this old knot inside?

The problem is mine… therefore the solution is mine too if I explore the problem. Don’t get trapped by it and think you’re stuck with it, search for other ways of looking at it which might lead to freedom from it.

The way out may be as simple as saying it out loud. Owning it. Claiming it with voice.

That’s the theme of this series, what connects all of my recent posts.

I’m challenging myself to say things which I might choose to keep quiet about.

Then I’m bracing myself for the consequences of doing that… and that’s where the healing happens because nothing happens other than me seeing that nothing happens so why did I think that it would?

The Moon via Aeclectic Tarot

The other day I read a post on one of my favourite astrology blogs – Elsa Elsa. The post isn’t about astrology (although it does mention the Moon), but about kindness.

Elsa, the main blogger of the blog (who has been blogging since long before the activity was easy to do, her blog is ancient in blog years) said that she was exploring the concept of kindness because she wanted to practice it more – she viewed herself as not doing it.

Here’s the post in its entirety, I usually only share excerpts of other people’s posts because that’s blogging etiquette, but I’m breaking that rule for this one:

““I want to learn to be kind,” I told my husband.

“Don’t break anything,” he answered.

This got me off to a humorous start, but I’m quite serious about what I’m doing.  I am on a quest in this regard. I’m studying kindness. It’s been thrilling, mind-boggling and best of all, it’s working.

A friend tell me that I am already kind. I’m not so sure. Generous, yes. Helpful, yes. Effective, yes. But kind? I don’t think so. I know some truly kind people and I’m not one of them. I admire them though, so I decided to try to cultivate this quality in myself.

As part of my study, I looked into the astrological ruler of “kindness”. It turns out to be the moon.  It makes sense this would be an undeveloped quality in me, considering I’m a Capricorn rising.  I’m disciplined and can be relied on to act with integrity but that’s not kindness! With the moon ruling my 7th house, this also explains how I can see this quality in others.

I’ve learned that “kindness” anticipates other’s needs and wishes. I do this at times but I want to do it more and I want to do it reliably.  I’m beginning to understand how the smallest kind word or action cannot only change a person’s day, it can change their life. It can save their life!  Is that not power?

I want this power to flow through me to help others. And if this means, I have to teach myself to be kind, then that’s what I’m going to do.

By the way, I was never taught to be kind.  It’s a real deficit and I’m going to fix it!

Are you kind?  Can you give us an example of what “kindness” looks like in your world?

The Moon Rules “Kindness” by Elsa of Elsa Elsa

Most of the people who follow Elsa’s blog think differently about her than she does about herself.

She’s very kind to her readers, to fans of astrology, she shares herself, her personal astrology (which a lot of astrologers don’t), her own journey through tough transits and what she’s discovered by going through them, and lots of astrological information, freely. Yes there are also paid services on offer.

It’s always intriguing to compare and contrast how others see us with how we view ourselves. How others experience us and how we experience ourselves.

I have Virgo rising and Virgo Moon. My natal Moon is in the 12th house – of hidden things. At the moment it’s being stimulated as transiting Mars, Venus pass over it. Stirring things which are normally hidden up.

My natal Virgo Moon is joined to my Ascendant – some astrologers interpret Moon conjunct Ascendant as wearing your heart on your sleeve, your emotions are visible to others even if you think they’re hidden, a few astrologers say it gives you psychic ability, other astrologers view it as your face is a mirror (since the Moon reflects the light from the Sun) and when people look at you they see themselves but think they’re seeing you.

I do get a lot of – Why are you looking at me like that? – Like what? I wonder since I was just gazing unfocused, looking at them because they were there, talking… wouldn’t it be rude if I didn’t look at them? When someone shares with me what that look they saw on my face meant, what they think I was thinking about them… I may end up very confused, but not for long since I remind myself it’s not me they’re seeing, and thank you for telling me what’s going on in your mind so I don’t have to mind-read.

I used to wish I could read minds… then the Internet came along and… be careful for what you wish comes to mind.

How it plays out depends on the sign of the Moon, the Asc (yep, I pronounce it that way too… heheh), on other influences (for instance my natal Mars aspects both my Asc and Moon. My Mars is in Scorpio – if I get stung I can sting, but I try not to do that since natal Venus in Pisces also aspects my Asc and Moon and it’s a very understanding, peaceful Venus – that side of me is often misunderstood, as in people take my kindness for weakness… and I may end up agreeing with them about that in their case I should have hit them with my staff of Hermes), and of course on you.

There’s at least one post on my blog where I know that I’ve written about the confusion other people experience when perceiving me.

It confuses me too which is why I write and wrote about it. I get a clearer picture while writing, after having written.

The placement of Chiron in Pisces (joined with North Node in Aries in the 7th house) in my chart is one of those which accentuates the confusion. I can’t see how people see me because… I’m not supposed to, because if I could I might play to the audience and lose myself in the process.

There’s no might about it…

I have lost myself over and over again because of trying to be who I thought other people needed me to be for them, because I wanted to be liked, accepted, allowed to join their group, because it’s lonely outside on my own like a little match girl watching others play and party in the warmth inside while I freeze to death outside, because it’s exhausting, painful, to be constantly ejected, alienated, ostracised, and rejected, ignored, considered not one of us…

“Chiron in transit seeks to activate your emotional and energetic sensitivity, which will involve opening you to more vulnerability and, possibly, activate the childhood wound of rejection you likely still carry.

Before you realize that it’s about you and your own healing, you may notice others’ issues – pain, suffering, insecurities, inability or unwillingness to grow up, rejection fantasies, confusion over how to deal with their feelings, poor energetic and emotional boundaries, etc. – more, as well as more acutely. You might find others’ difficult experiences leave you feeling a bit stung, wondering if you need to close off from them (or just shut down in general) in order to maintain some semblance of sanity.

Chiron’s transit ask you to sensitize what it’s contacting in your chart. Your experience of this will depend upon several factors: The specific aspect (explained in the paragraph below), how comfortable you are with navigating hurt and other touchy emotions, how willing you are to take responsibility for what you feel and not wait for others to make you feel safe or save you from your pain, and if you’re committed to allowing your awareness of unhappy energies and emotions in others and in the world around you to unfold and deepen. Hint: You can be aware without absorbing! Learning this is critical to healthy energy/emotional management.

excerpt from Transits of Chiron by Tom Jacobs

Transiting Chiron is at the moment challenging my natal Uranus and Jupiter in an opposition, and also poking my North Node. I’m just moving away from my Chiron Return period.

So revisiting old wounds, old dynamics, scenarios is par for the course, and has been revealing, healing, liberating.

In the past, whenever I’ve lost myself to belong… it has eventually triggered my natal Uranus/Jupiter in Libra which also happen to be in league with my natal Pluto (Hades) in the 1st house.

What seemed like a heaven I wanted to enter, once entered… begins to look like a hell I want to leave. I feel trapped… I must break out, break free, break the bars of this gilded cage.

I was reminded of that process last night while reading an article – How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition by Daniel Markovits.

“A person who extracts income and status from his own human capital places himself, quite literally, at the disposal of others—he uses himself up. Elite students desperately fear failure and crave the conventional markers of success, even as they see through and publicly deride mere “gold stars” and “shiny things.” Elite workers, for their part, find it harder and harder to pursue genuine passions or gain meaning through their work. Meritocracy traps entire generations inside demeaning fears and inauthentic ambitions: always hungry but never finding, or even knowing, the right food.

The elite should not—they have no right to—expect sympathy from those who remain excluded from the privileges and benefits of high caste. But ignoring how oppressive meritocracy is for the rich is a mistake. The rich now dominate society not idly but effortfully. The familiar arguments that once defeated aristocratic inequality do not apply to an economic system based on rewarding effort and skill. The relentless work of the hundred-hour-a-week banker inoculates her against charges of unearned advantage. Better, then, to convince the rich that all their work isn’t actually paying off.

They may need less convincing than you might think. As the meritocracy trap closes in around elites, the rich themselves are turning against the prevailing system. Plaintive calls for work/life balance ring ever louder. Roughly two-thirds of elite workers say that they would decline a promotion if the new job demanded yet more of their energy. When he was the dean of Stanford Law School, Larry Kramer warned graduates that lawyers at top firms are caught in a seemingly endless cycle: Higher salaries require more billable hours to support them, and longer hours require yet higher salaries to justify them. Whose interests, he lamented, does this system serve? Does anyone really want it?


Escaping the meritocracy trap will not be easy. Elites naturally resist policies that threaten to undermine their advantages. But it is simply not possible to get rich off your own human capital without exploiting yourself and impoverishing your inner life, and meritocrats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive themselves. Building a society in which a good education and good jobs are available to a broader swath of people—so that reaching the very highest rungs of the ladder is simply less important—is the only way to ease the strains that now drive the elite to cling to their status.”

excerpt from How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition by Daniel Markovits

It’s a very long article, but it’s very worth reading it all – it’s actually adapted from a new book, The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits.

I very briefly got caught up in the edges of that trap, but I had an unusual ally which saved me from being sucked in deeper.

For most of my life I viewed that ally as an enemy. It wasn’t a person, it was a decision I made.

A decision which made me into an outcast.

A decision which everyone told me was a terrible decision, it was very very very wrong, and they seemed to be right… if what I wanted was to belong to and live in a certain societal version of heaven offered only to those who had what I had chosen not to have.

To have or to be?… ah, Erich Fromm! One of my favourite books.

I’ve hated myself for making that decision.

I saw it as the fork in the path where I chose the road less traveled and lived to regret it. The point where I chose to make my life harder for myself, why would I do that to myself?

It was the first thing which would pop into my mind when people asked – If you could go back in time and change one thing…? If you could give your younger self one piece of advice…?

I could have changed that decision in real time at any point… why didn’t I?

Was it because I was incredibly rebelliously stubborn aka stupid?

Was it because I was afraid to admit to myself that I’d made a mistake… or afraid to do what I had to do to rectify the mistake?

Was it because making that decision got me caught another trap and to reverse the decision I’d first have to get out of the trap the decision got me into and that wasn’t going to be easy because there was someone in my life who wanted to keep me forever trapped with them?

I dropped out of high school. Which means I didn’t go to college or university. I went to work instead.

I used to be open and honest about it. But over time the reactions people had to it ended up making me feel ashamed of myself – originally I’d been rather proud of myself because I knew why I’d made the decision. It basically saved my life to make the decision, but it ended up making me want to kill myself.

Eventually I kept quiet about it, because I was fed up of the reactions others had which were always the same, criticising and nagging, pointing out the flaw, fault, wrong… It was a broken record, a program stuck on a loop. The worst part of their reaction was that it was as though they’d been trained to have that reaction by someone else.

Keeping quiet about it was interesting… people tended to assume I’d been to college, quite a few people thought I’d been to Oxford. I have been to Oxford… I’ve had lunch there in a nice pub.

When I took one of those silly online tests which “guess your education level” it told me that I had a Ph.D. I don’t, of course.

When people do find out about it, usually because I tell them, and if they had this image of me as someone intelligent and thus I must have degrees… pop goes the image.

Sometimes they’ll be very disappointed in me about it.

Think less of me.

Look down on me.

It’s weird. I’m exactly the same person I was before I told them but suddenly I’m not, I’ve changed without actually changing.

A similar change in others happens when I tell them I have dyslexia… some people even start talking s l o w l y after they find out about the dyslexia.

“Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind.”

Erich Fromm

Those reactions often come from people who are certain they’ve reserved a place in heaven for themselves even if they’re atheists. Good people. Who view themselves as kind, considerate, thoughtful, empathic, moral, ethical, and so on.

Which they are until you offer them a challenge for which they were unprepared, you’re going off script, or to which they have a set reaction which is considered to be the socially correct one to have. They can continue to view themselves as good people while treating you badly, unkindly, inconsiderately, unempathically.

Did you read about that man in South Korea who has been arrested for murder – he turned himself in, the first time he turned himself in he was sent away from the police station because he was at the wrong one for the area where the murder had been committed… – when asked if he was sorry for having taken someone’s life, he said that he was a bad guy who killed another bad guy.

I have to admit I respect him for saying that instead of trying to stick with a narrative of him being a good person who did a bad thing which wasn’t his fault, it was the victim’s fault, etc.

People often claim to want authenticity… but then authenticity presents itself and they reject it because it’s not what they wanted.

Huxley vs Orwell by Stuart McMillan from Amusing Ourselves to Death

I wonder if your view of me will change now that you know that about me?

Do you know why I’m sharing… yes, the whole 12th house thingy, but… while I was writing this post my partner shared some momentarily mind-blowing news about someone we both know and have known for a long time.

They’re transitioning.

I think that’s great news.

It’s going to be hard for them, but it’s already been a lifetime of hard for them.

It’s going to be hard on the people around them, especially those who thought they knew everything about them, who relied on them for their own self-image, for stability, for security, and such, who will have to do their own version of a transition.

When someone close to us breaks free… we have to break free too from old training, patterns, ways of being.

Now they get to be who they truly are.

I was inspired by their news, by them.

This person is one of those people who has always accepted me as I am, and has always made me feel welcome on planet Earth.

It sometimes seems as though those sort of people are rare… are they rare?

Or is it that we don’t notice they’re there accepting us as we are because we’re noticing those who don’t accept us as we are, and are focused on trying to get those who don’t accept us to accept us?

Like when we focus on those who aren’t following us on social media or those who’ve unfollowed us… sort of taking for granted the ones who do follow us, and may have followed us from the beginning and are still with us.

Or is it that we look for them in the wrong places…

We’re looking at surface appearances, public image, facade and not looking beyond, below, behind what we see superficially…

This beautiful bitch… Persephone from The Atlantis DLC, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

The title of this post is inspired by the story in the game which my partner and I have been playing, and where we are at in the story – we’ve just been kicked out of Elysium (heaven) into Hades (hell), which was our objective.

Frankly it’s a relief to be in hell after our stay in heaven.

Everyone in heaven was selfish, petty, mean, manipulative, power hungry, back-stabby, wounded and wounding others because of it, while wearing pretty clothes, lovely smiles and pretending to be perfect people.

Persephone was a total crazy bitch…. who thought she was the poor victim who deserved to make others suffer because their suffering was nothing compared to hers, besides she’s queen so there!

Persephone tried to kill us the moment we set foot in her queendom.

Hades on the other hand is a really reasonable, logical, welcoming guy… he was very understanding about the fact that we killed Cerberus (Persephone set this up to happen) and caused a big old problem.

Thanks to our deed all the worst souls in hell can escape hell and bring chaos to the living (not that there isn’t chaos already in the land of the living because of the living – The Spartans are fighting the Athenians and in the latest DLC the Persians have arrived to fight Spartans and Athenians).

Hades asked us to help out, fix the problem we caused… sounds like a rational and fair request.

The people in hell, thus far, even the nasty ones we’ve encountered, are far nicer and kinder than the people were in heaven.

I’m guessing this is done deliberately by the creators of the game… they have a rather wickedly twisted sense of human… I mean humour. That was a dyslexia typo… typos are awesome sometimes and so is dyslexia.

That’s a very long it from me…

I’m handing the controller to you now, it’s your turn to play and have your say!

Long comments are totally welcome here, as are comments which have nothing to do with anything I’ve said in the post. It doesn’t really matter if you read the post or not… what matters is being yourself as you are… but only you can make that decision for yourself.

“Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world. “

Erich Fromm