An Interview with Eric Francis | March 2012
Note to Readers: This interview was part of a series that I did earlier in the year for my friend Lev Nathan. Some of you subscribed to it. Thanks to a team effort at Planet Waves we transcribed the interview and have it here for you in written form. This was transcribed form audio by Stacia Kilpatrick, edited by Kristina Holmes and proofread by Jessica Keet.
Lev Nathan: Welcome everyone to Week Four of the Evolve 2012 Initiative. My name is Lev Natan, I’ve been hosting this journey, all these incredible conversations and this week we’re focusing on now is the time, attuning your business into the 2012 era, and activating your down to earth intelligence of the evolutionary process. This is the final week of our initiative speaker series. In Week One, we focused on the value of seeing your own unique and essential role in this emerging evolutionary story that we are co-creating together. In Week Two, we looked at the larger movement that’s coming together, specifically the movement of evolutionary entrepreneurs; people who are feeling called to bring forth their unique and essential gifts at this transformative time and create their purposeful livelihood in direct contributions to the conscious evolution of our human relationships, systems, our economy and culture, and our planetary systems, all as one whole. In Week Three, we focused on the practical field, of how to build your purposeful livelihood.
So now in Week Four, we’re looking at our entrepreneurial journey in the context of the 2012 phenomenon, and how we are each impacted by the planetary and cosmic changes that are taking place right now. At the core of our discussion this week is the idea that as an evolutionary entrepreneur, being aware of the larger forces of change is highly relevant to understanding how to bring forth your essential gifts at this time. I can’t think of a better person to be talking to about this particular topic. I’m so grateful and feel privileged to have Eric Francis on the call with me today. Thank you, Eric, for being here.
Eric Francis: It’s my pleasure Lev, thank you for having me.
LN: I’m just going to quickly introduce you a little bit. Eric is an internationally published, award winning investigative journalist, columnist, photographer, broadcaster, and among the youngest professional research astrologers working in the US today. He’s reported in the Woodstock Times, which was his favorite place to publish, the Village Voice, Sierra Magazine, and the New York Times, and numerous other print and broadcast media in the US and abroad over the last 20 years. He moved into his current work as an astrologer and the creator and publisher and editor of Planetwaves.com from independent investigative reporting, specifically in the field of science fraud, or uncovering environmental cover-ups. So his astrology is very much connected to what’s happening here on this earth, and specifically in environmental issues and related to the economy and the culture that creates those environmental issues.
I know his work personally from Chronogram Magazine, where he is the astrologer every month. I’m a dedicated reader of my Aquarius astrology that he writes, as well as the article about the monthly astrology. I’ve been a big fan of Eric’s articulation of my own movement through time, so it’s a real joy to get some time to hear what he has to say. It’s wonderful to have you, and I’m going to get us started by asking this first question, just to give you the opportunity to really articulate the context. The question is: how do you see the 2012 phenomenon, both on a spiritual, energetic level, and also in terms of the science and on all the levels that you see it? What is happening astrologically, in terms of the planetary cycles, that are converging at this time?
EF: The first part of the question again please?
LN: How do you see the 2012 phenomenon on the different levels of being, for us individually, and also as a human family? What is it that we’re experiencing?
EF: There are a few ways to define the 2012 phenomenon. It all starts with Terrence McKenna’s book, “The Invisible Landscape,” in the ‘70s. He was looking at time pulses and kind of happens upon the Mayan calendar. But the Mayan calendar’s not really brought in fully with the day 2012 until the ‘80s. That is then popularized by Jose Arguelles with the Harmonic Convergence. It’s through that little sequence of history in the ‘70s and ‘80s among consciousness leaders that makes us aware of 2012. What Arguelles brings in is newer translations of the stone etchings and the possibly the codices that come out of that part of the world once the conquistadors arrived, bring the date 12/21/12 into consciousness, and it’s then sort of rebroadcast again and again, and we’re told that it’s meaningful.
When you look at it long enough, it starts to sound like a self-imposed deadline on the most enlightened side, and on the other hand there’s a lot of apocalyptic thinking on the negative side, which means it’s not really that different than any other form of wondering whether the tribulation is going to begin or we’re all going to become enlightened.
Now, curiously left out of the conversation for much of this time, almost all of it, have been astrologers. That’s kind of funny, I think. It’s not been especially helpful to have the conversation without astrologers, but now we’re in one. When you look at the Western astrology of 2012, when you set aside any speculation about millennialism, or about what the Mayans might have thought or said — by the way there’s no evidence at all that the Mayans believed this was any kind of end of the world — the tradition in the Mayan was to celebrate the end of the cycle having arrived there, not to greet it with doom and gloom. So there’s a lot of Christian apocalyptic thinking that’s been conflated.
When we take away all of that, and when we look at the Western astrology, there is one particular cycle that has been very active. It’s a cycle that was last active in the 1960s, peaking between ‘64 and ‘69, but it had influences easily seen if you look all the way back to 1960 and extending well into the 1970s. This particular cycle is always a threshold, there’s always a pushback against what some people call conservatism, but which is really regressive thinking and a quality of contraction, a quality of pulling back. So there’s a pushback against that, and there’s a sense that maybe there’s a better way to live than to always be afraid. Maybe we don’t have to live in constant fear. So the ‘60s were a very daring time, where people had the impulse to take a chance in many ways that we have not seen in recent years, but very recently we have seen more of them, for example, the Occupy movement.
The planets are Uranus, which is a modern planet. It was discovered in the late 18th century. That is the planet of revolutions and inventions. You see Uranus active in the chart of revolutionaries and inventors, people who are responsible for progress. It’s very prominent, for example, in the first flight at Kitty Hawk. Whether you believe that someone else invented the airplane besides the Wright brothers, somewhere else, in Italy or wherever it was, Germany, or not, that flight of that little airplane, that little canvas bicycle with a motor, it flew around North Carolina, had Uranus blazing out of that chart. It’s often the case that inventors and inventions have a very prominent Uranus placement. That’s planet one, the quicker moving one.
Planet two is Pluto. Pluto is a regenerative influence. It can also act like Lord Shiva, it’s the energy of turning over the soil in the Spring, it’s the energy Dionysus. When you click on a video of Jim Morrison, you will see the Dionysian aspect of Pluto. This deep connection with vital passion, which, to many, is controversial, but so be it. When you put the two together, you get an era like the ‘60s, where there is a clash of energies, where there’s enormous progress in many different facets of life. The ‘60s were not just a time of protest. For example, in 1969, the United States dropped some guys on the Moon, and the 747 flew for the first time, the Concorde flew for the first time, and the Woodstock Festival happened, all within a very short period of time. There are these surges forward, music, art, the 1960s were an incredible time for both music and art. You can go on and on.
Now, a little closer to 50 years after the conjunction that took place in ‘65 and ‘66, we have now reached the first quarter. The conjunction is a little bit like a New Moon, Sun conjunct Moon, that is the New Moon. Then when they’re square each other, we get the first quarter Moon, and you look up and the Moon is that perfect one quarter slice of the moon that you see, that incredibly straight line going down one side. That’s the point at the cycle we are in the Uranus-Pluto cycle. So they’re back together, they’re in a quadrature angle, a 90 degree angle, that means a lot of energy is going to be released. But typically it’s released in the form of confrontation and radical experimentation.
The thing to know about that and to apply to your life about that is that, first of all, there may be this moment of waking up and wanting to catch up, and wanting to participate in a way that you may very well have been scared to participate in the past. Let’s call fear what it is. How many people just stay home, or don’t try something, or don’t go to the audition, or don’t call the guy up because you’re scared. That is one of the things that is being directly challenged from an internal wellspring of energy.
The second thing is that we come to expect that the thing we want already exists in some form and is going to be waiting for us, like a great job. Under Uranus-Pluto, the thing that we might want is the thing that is being invented ongoing, that is emerging out of the fertile chaos, that’s emerging out of the contradiction and out of a sense of collapse that the culture is in a breakdown of systems, of values … a fertile decadence, you might think of it as being.
The signs that the planets are in are very telling. Here’s why. In 2008, Pluto goes into Capricorn. We have this energy that’s very slow moving energy that’s capable of doing things like knocking down the World Trade Center. When the World Trade Center fell down, Pluto was the big influence in those charts. Now it’s arrived in Capricorn, the sign of structures and systems. Immediately after arriving in Capricorn, the American financial system collapsed. All those banks and this whole heist happened, and it was commonly referred to as a crash or a collapse. That was so evocative of Pluto in Capricorn that it was eerie. I think that will be enough to make anyone an astrologer, but apparently not.
So we entered this time of system breakdowns that is going to last until the mid 2020s, so it’s going to be a long time. We all know all the infrastructure of our culture. Talk to any utility people digging up a sewer, and ask them what’s going on down there, and they’ll give you that look like it’s a miracle that it even works at all. So we have all this old infrastructure, and correspondingly old values all of which are in a process of collapsing, and room is therefore being made there for something new, and there is a regenerative quality that you might expect from Lord Shiva, who is one of the incarnations of Pluto. You think of Pluto as, on the one hand, being Dionysian energy, and then on the other hand, being a related energy of Lord Shiva that sort of gets the old out of the way so that the new can be born.
So that’s Pluto in Capricorn. That’s 2008 to 2025, so we’re right at the beginning of that, and yet we’re seeing the influences, and it’s been doing its work now for about four years, and that’s enough time to have made some room. It’s a little like you clear the counter and then you can do the dishes. That’s kind of like you’ve got a little foothold in seeing that things can and do change, and that structures can and do change.
Now the other part of the aspect, the other side of that story, is Uranus, which is an awakening influence in Aries, which is a very personal sign. That came a little later: that starts in 2010 and then it finally settles into place on the day before the Fukishima accident happens. It’s within hours, they both happened on the 11th of March, Uranus goes into Aries to stay, and then the Fukushima accident happens. There are collective events associated with this, but Aries is very deeply a personal influence – one’s self-concept, self-awareness, sense of presence, initiative, sense of mission, sense of being. The key words of Aries are “I am,” spoken approximately like that. When you put that radical awakening influence into Aries, there’s an image of the self-awakening on a massive scale, because that early Aries zone connects individual to the world. Aries is more than just about “I am,” it’s “I am, and the personal is political.” So there’s an extension from there. When you combine that energy of awakening with the previously mentioned energy of breakdown and renewal of Pluto in Capricorn, you find that, as Allan Ginsberg said, “I have become another child, I wake to see the world go wild.” So it’s awakening at that moment of the world going wild. “I never dreamed to see so deep, the earth so dark, so long my sleep, I have become another child, I wake to see the world go wild.” That’s where we are right now.
LN: Yeah, excellent. You really put us on the map. We know where we are. For me, that’s why it’s so essential, when I was putting the series together, to say, you know what, I need astrologers to be in this conversation. We had Barbara Marx Hubbard in the first week, and other conscious evolutionary people, from that perspective. In a sense, that’s part of my orientation, that there’s an intuitive sense of what you’re saying. But I think it’s so essential for us to have this confirmation from the physical universe that we live in, that there is energetic reference points, so to speak, from the cycles of our solar system. These two pieces that you’re holding, one in each hand, in a sense. We have this break down, then we have this emergence through an awakening, an emergence through that breakdown. This is precisely the energy that we’re focusing on in terms of what it means to be an evolutionary entrepreneur, that we have this awareness, what I’m defining as an evolutionary entrepreneur is someone who has this awareness of the breakdown of the systems, and we’re feeling that awakening from within and that need to create. Just that in itself, the need to create, but then there’s a step towards a need to create the new systems, the new paradigms, the new infrastructures of our society and culture.
The next question, which you touched on in terms of how it’s relevant to us, but I’d like to invite you to sort of take the next step toward how does this picture you’re talking about relate to someone who’s creating a business from the place of that awakening and creating a livelihood?
EF: The first thing that comes to mind is that in times of radical revolutionary change it’s really important to stay grounded. I would say get an accountant. If you want to be a great revolutionary, you need some traditional contact and you have to mind the structure. That doesn’t mean cling to structure, but it means if you’re going to be an outspoken revolutionary, pay your taxes, file your tax returns well, and conduct your business in a way that is ethical and lawful. Without taking unnecessary forays into territory that you don’t really belong in, and save that grigri, that energy, that positive karma for taking the necessary chances in terms of your point of view and the risk of authenticity. So it’s the combination of having the daringness to be authentic and to do something with passion, and on the other side integrated with a devotion to quality and a devotion to some of the minimal traditions of what makes a business work when it works. One of those is a sound financial structure, and another is an understanding that things cannot necessarily be expected to generate a profit right away, and the value upon doing things for their own sake, therefore increases. How we monetize things is crucial.
One of the things we live with, in our era, is this incredible opportunity for creative play and doing things with real content and actual relevance, but in the end it’s no more inherently able to generate revenue than taking a walk down the aisle of an office supply store or an art supply store. A Picasso might sell for so many millions or a Van Gogh for so many tens of millions, and all the raw ingredients are going to be available in the art supply store, but it’s putting them together in such a way that works for the moment that is the key. It’s necessary to have the room to experiment and the freedom to not have to be bound up. I know this is challenging because people need to make a living.
One of the treadmills we get caught on is doing “this” to support “that.” For a while that might be necessary, but it’s important that the “this” to support “that” is that the “this” that you might be doing for a while be energetically in harmony with the thing that you’re developing, and not be so depleting (or depleting at all), and that in some direct way, besides monetary, that it feeds the project.
An example is, I, for many, many years, supported Planet Waves by doing astrology consultations. My astrology consulting is in high demand, I turn away a lot of business. But for a long time I depended on that business to be able to publish a daily website. Pay my staff and in a sense, pay my own paycheck by donating that much money back, more than that, back into the company every week. So I was giving all my proceeds to the company. But in the process of doing that I was able to learn astrology, and then apply what I was learning to the writing and editing process, to the process of creating the content that Planet Waves has, so that there’s a symbiosis involved. Ultimately, we can only do counseling for so long before we start to burn out, and the demands of the publishing side began to take precedence over individual consulting. At the end of that, the consulting taught me to be an astrologer and gave me incredibly valuable experience that I bring into what I’m doing.
So if you can do it, create a symbiosis. If you want to learn music, if you want to be a professional musician, try to make your money giving lessons, so that you’ve got the instrument in your hands. Better than being a bicycle messenger, where you could end up with your fingers under the wheels of a car. Find an element of what you’re doing, that becomes a cash generating element in a little bit more efficient way. Teaching music is a great way to learn music because everybody knows that as you teach, you learn if you’re paying attention. I’m learning what I’ve been doing by describing this, because I’ve never quite answered these questions. So I’m learning something new. Try to find that symbiotic way to generate your cash.
LN: Is there another point after that?
EF: No, I think the main points were: get an accountant, make a structure, a flexible structure for your business, don’t be afraid to experiment, and try to make the money that you need in a way that is symbiotic with the ultimate mission that you have, are the big points I would touch on.
LN: In a sense, what I’m hearing from you is almost working with polarity, working with opposites. You’re saying, in order to be radical we have to have structure, and to be a master of that principle, is sort of like pick your battles and focus. Where is my energy most going to be valued? That’s the first piece, and then the second piece is how to hold the tension of “this” to do “that.” I need to make a living in the moment, but what is it that I’m ultimately here to do?
That brings me to something that’s been emerging for me, as I move through my engagement with this reality of 2012, and making meaning of it. There was a phase of a self-imposed deadline that I was engaging in that way. As we moved through the new year and coming up to the new year, I started to open to a longer term perspective that, yes, there’s something happening, and there’s shifts happening, but that we’re going to be here for this ride. So I’m starting to really engage that longer term perspective. I just wanted to offer that to see where that plays into making choices around livelihood and business.
EF: Long term vision is really important, and it’s important to have that be a flexible vision, but it’s still really meaningful to have a sense of what your kind of archetype is, what your ideal manifestation is, and then dance within that. Let that expand.
One thing about 2012, one of the things that has always irritated me that I’ve tried to address in my writing, is that the thinkers on 2012 have always described it as an end point, as a thing along a linear trail of thought. If you know anything about the Mayans, and anything about Terrence McKenna – and hence, if you don’t know about any of those, you shouldn’t be talking about 2012 anyway – but if you know about them, the whole concept that there’s a non-linearity involved, and there’s a process involved. If 2012 represents the “end point” of a 5125 year cycle, 13 baktuns of the Mayan calendar, even pretending that, we’ve been at the end for a long time statistically. 1.89 million days is a lot of days. So we were there in 1950. You could look at the whole rise of Industrialism as being a product of the “2012 era.”
That said, when you translate the whole thing into Western astrology, and we’re timing the event on the Uranus-Pluto square, there are seven events of the Uranus-Pluto square, the first of which happens in late June, and the last of which happens in early 2015. It’s going to go on for all of ‘12, ‘13, ‘14, and much of ‘15, with a long ripple on either side. There’s a process involved. The Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the ‘60s, there were only three events, three little events spread out over 18 months. The Uranus-Pluto square has seven events, more than double, spread out over three years with the same very wide orb of approach on the beginning and on the end. So there’s a process involved, individually and collectively.
Just as a historical note, think about where we were one year ago today. Gabrielle Giffords had just been shot and the Chief Federal Judge in Arizona, and six people killed that day, all the birds were falling out of the sky, thanks to the US Department of Agriculture, and there was no political movement whatsoever. The Tea Party had just won in late 2010, there was going to be a new conservative revolution, and we’re all going to be doing the goose step. Obama was sunk, and blah blah blah.
Then one day, Arab Spring happens, and like some kind of odd cosmic incendiary, the entire Middle East goes off, the Middle East and North Africa. We blame it on Twitter, but under Uranus-Pluto, this has happened faster than the mail could move. There was not a Reuters or an AP that could tell one city that another capitol 500 miles away was having a revolution, Pony Express wasn’t that quick. But the revolution spread across Europe just as fast in the late 19th century. So people wonder, historians really do wonder why this happens. If they would look at the Uranus-Pluto cycle they would see it.
So in January and February, whoosh, the Middle East goes up. Then quickly after that, Scott Walker in Wisconsin tries to gut the labor unions, and then Wisconsin goes off. Twenty five thousand people in the streets every day, people pack into the capitol building. Before Occupy, the people of Wisconsin were occupying the capitol building in Wisconsin, fast on the heels of Arab Spring. Then right around then, this guy Kalle Lasn, the editor of Adbusters, writes this letter saying you all should occupy Wall Street, that might have been in July. They have a meeting, then September 17th, the Occupy movement starts. Within a matter of weeks it spreads to an international movement. That is not the story of 2010, or ’09, or ’08, or ’07, or ‘06 , or ‘05, ‘04, ‘03,’02 ,’01. It’s not. It’s the story of 2011. And that is a Uranus-Pluto effect, but that’s how powerful it can be before the aspect happens. That was just the warm-up. That was not the real thing yet.
LN: It’s really a potent picture. As individuals, or small businesses, or small groups of people that are engaged in the creative, the bringing forth, there is obviously the place for the resistance, and the Occupy movement, incredibly essential and amazing. What we’re talking about here is that awakening, the Uranus impulse. Things like lights are going to start going off over those seven points that you’re saying over the next three years, and to focus on it being a process.
How does that mindset and that psyche translate into engagement, with vision and strategy, as an individual that’s creating something new and being part of that creative process?
EF: It’s important to remember that there’s an ongoing creative process. That’s the key thing, is that the vision and the results are going to constantly be in an evolving state.
Just to give you a parallel in history that anyone could relate to: the amount of time between “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “All You Need Is Love” and “I Am The Walrus,” from the kitsch kind of Beatles rock and roll songs to the most amazing psychedelic albums like “Revolver” was a matter of about a year and a half. The thing to work with in a work in progress, is to be a work in progress, and it’s necessary to look at the world, but I think also more necessary to feel the calling to change from within. And move from there in a centered way if you can. A lot of this energy pushes us off center, and we’re having to react to extremes, so it’s an interesting dynamic, it’s not always that easy.
The second thing is don’t try to do everything. It’s so compelling to want participate in everything that’s going on, to be at every Occupy encampment. It would have been lots of fun to have the Occupy versions of Planet Waves that were intended for that, but what I chose to do was deliver the message through my current structure for that, and work on the level of evolving ideas and putting them into the current context of what I’m doing. So I had to stretch a little bit within that context, but it was also a perfect demonstration of the astrology that I had been talking about for years. The contextualizing is very helpful. You can do it with anything. You can always contextualize.
There was one other thought I had there… It was based on not doing everything, which is another way of saying prioritize, or as you say, choose your battles. Focus on doing what you’re doing within the zeitgeist as opposed to trying to make the zeitgeist. We can’t really make the times that we’re in, but we can certainly be in harmony with the times we’re in and have interesting ways we stretch that definition.
LN: I appreciate that. I’d love to hear more along that path. Because that’s really my inspiration for the topic of this week, it’s how do we flow in alignment? How do we move in alignment with our own impulse that we each individually have, to be aware and awake to that impulse, and to be flowing in the river that all of us are moving through and not getting hit by all the boulders and getting knocked up against the side? So to be in full alignment from the inner to the outer levels, and you’re using the word harmony, which makes a lot of sense.
EF: And that’s kind of a funny word in the middle of Uranus-Pluto, because the thing is that it’s not always about harmony during Uranus-Pluto. There’s often a sense of upheaval. But in the middle of all the upheavals, I try to keep my publishing schedule, for example. That I like to work with what astrologers would call a Saturnian framework. We work while we’re busy being revolutionaries and changing things, that we work within a framework and work with that framework. I might keep my schedule, but then I might not be afraid to have my special edition when something’s going on. That’s kind of a silly example.
One thing that there’s a common feeling that I think needs to be spoken to more – “that all this big change is happening and I feel left out.” This a big one, a lot of people feel left out, that they can’t really participate and they’re stuck in a job that they don’t want to be doing and so forth. This, I think, may be one of the most common and important phenomena that anybody guiding others to wake up, if they want that guidance, is to watch that trap of thinking that, on the one hand, you’re not doing enough, and on the other hand, what a person who doesn’t like their job may have to do is quit their job and do something else. That the first change may have to be, “I can’t do this work, I can’t live in this place anymore, I can’t be in this relationship anymore, I feel constrained by what I now know are circumstances,” and the first change may have to be a personal choice. As opposed to throwing oneself into whatever kind of movement that there may be, the first thing to do may be to liberate yourself from the things that you know. People know what holds them down. It’s more a question of not having the guts to do something about it. The “what will my mother think if I break up with my boyfriend?” kind of thing. And there’s a lot in that statement.
Wilhelm Reich called the family the authoritarian mini-state. We’re trained for fascism by the authoritarian mini-state. If you’re worried about what you’re mother’s going to think, that’s Hitler. We don’t need the dramatic dudes in the jack boots and the moustaches and the concentration camps. One person controlling you, who you let, who you interject and take on as this sort of archetype of tyranny, that’s how it’s done. Nobody would listen to Newt Gingrich if they did not have father issues. Who could? Except for the entertainment value, and I had to wash the tomatoes off my television set. It’s fun watching Rachel Maddow make fun of Newt Gingrich and Keith Olbermann. But ultimately people fall for this crap, they fall for Rick Santorum because they haven’t addressed their own stuff. The most radical thing you might do is go to therapy, not take pills – I’m yelling – actually work it out.
LN: I want to tie the conversation together, because I’ve been having amazing conversations. Estelle James in Week One was talking about what is her definition of an evolutionary entrepreneur is — someone who doesn’t fit in to the structures of society, and therefore is going on the journey of creating liberating structures for themselves. I just love that phrase of liberating structures, and in a sense, that’s what I’m hearing you talk about, structures that are serving your ability to bring forth and express your gifts. What I’m hearing from this first powerful step toward liberation is breaking out of the structures that aren’t liberating, that are constrictive.
EF: Yeah, and at least knowing that you’re in them. Then you work with it. I don’t need the IRS breathing down my back. Therefore, I have a very good accountant. We follow all the rules. Just for example, I don’t need that version of a toxic parent controlling my life. And I have chosen to not have that. Therefore, I must choose what your other subject was calling a liberating structure. I’d much rather talk to my accountant, Valentina, than talk to the IRS. Wouldn’t you? So I have to pay her.
One thing I would make a pitch for is not denying the cost of doing business. It’s almost humorous the ways in which people will skimp on something they need, spend it on something that don’t need. But one thing you need, if you’re going to do business, is you need to factor in the cost of doing business and not be cheap and recognize that things have consequences. That’s one of the kind of holdovers from an era recently ended.
We’ve lived through a long time of thinking that nothing has a consequence. We’ve lived through – since Neptune went into Aquarius in 1998, it left on Friday, a week ago today, and it will be in Pisces until 2026 or something like that – we’ve lived through a phase where we think nothing has consequences. It’s all been water under the bridge. Stolen elections, massive hurricane calamities, I could name a lot of things, nuclear disasters, oil spills. We live as if nothing has consequences. And part of being this kind of evolutionary entrepreneur is consciously living in the world of cause and effect, and personally honoring the fact that there is karma. Because most people can’t handle this, where they work for a company where there is a legal department who takes care of all the problems, and they have to be less concerned about their personal karma. With karma comes dharma. Karma is action and the results of action, dharma is the choice to act in a way that is cohesive. I would add those two concepts to the idea of an evolutionary entrepreneur. Balancing those two, understanding cause and effect, and then initiating a cause that you could think of as acting in a way that facilitates cohesion. Holding the world together is the more direct translation out of Sanskrit, but I think of it as cohesion.
LN: It’s really a beautiful note to start to bring to this conversation, this completion around a heightened consciousness of what is the impact of our actions.
EF: And acting based on that and understanding that cause and effect are never separate, and then, realizing that we are right in the middle of that. We stand in the middle of that process of cause and effect never being separate.
One thought that came up, and this might be a good point to close on, is how do you enact that cohesion? One of the ways that we do it is by being clear. With me, acting with quality is something that’s really important. One of my business rules is you can do anything you want in the United States of America as long as you do it well. That includes being a bank robber, frankly. I don’t advocate bank robbery, but in a sense, bank robbers who are good at it, are admired-type people. Oh, they stole the money, and they didn’t hurt anyone and get caught, oh my god.
Skipping over bank robbery for a second, you can do what you do as long as you do it well. And one of the things we have to do well as radicals, as people on the edge, is be clear in our language, in what we say, to make sure that we’re understood, to not assume that people know anything special or don’t know anything, but to take our part in forming and setting context and using language well.
One of my jobs that I’m taking up as evolutionary entrepreneurs is being a writing teacher. So I’m starting to teach writing at astrology conferences, which is among a couple of important things I’ve noticed has been missing the whole time. There’s no one teaching writing, but almost all astrologers are writers and hardly anyone knows what they’re talking about. So they write, but most people don’t understand it. This is a universe lesson that can be applied, which is, communicate in a way that people can know what you’re talking about. Don’t be afraid to stop and explain the basics. And ask if people are following you. But take those steps.
LN: It’s a simple but a powerful point that you’re making, and it comes back to clarity in communication comes from clarity of understanding and clarity of intent. It comes back to what you were just saying about karma and dharma. Understanding cause and effect gives us an ability to then be clear about the reality of cause and effect. It then gives us the opportunity to be clear in our intentions and to be taking cohesive action from that place of intent. Then that action can express itself through communication that’s clear.
EF: And cooperation. One of the things that’s been really pushed on us in this whole corporate mentality that we’ve got is a lot of “every man for himself” kind of thinking. Like “I do my thing, and I’ve got my little iPod.” There’s not really any good radio stations anymore because everyone’s got their iPod. So everyone’s got their own private radio station which plays exactly what they want. This mentality has done a number on the vital human skill of collaboration. All anti-government movement is an anti-collaborative movement. We need each other to build the Hoover Dam. Nobody’s just going to do that on their own. We have to collaborate. So, in doing what you’re doing, look for those who are in harmony in what you’re doing and start to exchange some energy. I know the world is still very chilly about this. There’s a lot of “I’m going to do my thing and you’re going to do your thing.” But collaboration is a glorious thing, and even in small ways that you can help people, to get with what you’re doing can be immensely valuable. This really falls onto the general theme of service.
If you are doing something as a so-called entrepreneur, your job is to be used. You’re putting yourself into service, be grateful when there are demands on your time. Balance is another thing, we have to work for that, but as you succeed, you will do more of what you do. It’s one reason why I caution people who embark on doing something, is to make sure that you really like what you’re doing, because if you succeed, you’re going to be doing a lot of that thing. You might find yourself doing it 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Somebody said that’s not really that good, but at least, if you’ve got to do something 17 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, you’ve chosen something that you like to do. And that’s like, huh, well, did I really plan on working in astrology and publishing astrology 18 hours a day, seven days a week? Honestly, no. But at least I love what I do and I recognize the positive influence that it has. And having succeeded at that now I’m learning how to take a little more time and learn guitar, for example — a very ‘60s thing to do.
LN: I’ll just add, that comes back to what you’re saying, that we’re living in this evolving time. So as we experiment and try something, that should be the question always. As we experiment with different aspects of, like you’re saying, teaching guitar if you want to be a performer, we’re experimenting with how do I want to express in the general genre of what I want to do. Experimenting and always being in an evolving process so that we can really feel into, if I was doing this all the time, would I be happy? To be refining what it is that we’re doing.
EF: Yep. And there’s challenges. One thing along the lines is – I’ve got a lot to say about this – get help. One thing about being an entrepreneur is the first thing you should get is a competent assistant. Very quickly start to define tasks that can be done by someone else so that you’re left free to continue with the more visionary work. Master the task yourself, and then assign it to someone loving and dependable. This is more of an issue for women, I find, than for men. Men quickly form a team, typically. We’re taught very young to form a team, this guy’s the captain, I’m the assistant captain, all right, let’s play the game. Women, the training’s a little bit different, a little more self-focused, and I would say that particularly for women, but for anyone, find yourself a competent assistant as soon as you can afford to pay them and stretch a little bit on the thinking that you can afford it. Every time I’ve ever hired someone I had to take a little bit of a stretch, and I always made the money to pay them. Because we need to collaborate and you need to not, at a certain point, you need to prioritize your actions. And if that means getting someone to help you clean, and certainly the accounting and taxes, something that you can find someone good and in harmony with what you’re doing, and then getting the help in your home, in your hands, in your office. So let’s say you’ve got routine web work, find someone who’s good at doing routine web work and so forth. And then build that way, so that you’re not overwhelmed with tasks that are less important. You can concern yourself with the ones that are higher up on the priority list.
LN: Beautiful, that we’ve come from the cosmic down to one of the most essential business strategies that I’ve heard from anyone that I respect, is to delegate, to get help.
EF: Get help, get help.
LN: Thank you Eric.
EF: And feel good about it. People need to not be idle. And people want meaning. And if one of the things you have is a vision, and meaning, that’s a gift to the world. Your vision is a gift to the world.
I haven’t done my podcast in a month, I kind of burned out. I did about 24 hours of audio for my annual edition, all of which is on the Planet Waves website. But talking to you today has gotten me motivated, and reconnected me with my message, which I kind of burned out on the whole 2012 message, when I finished my annual the first week of January. I had to get out my bone patching compound, and patch my bones, and replenish my organs. Now, talking to you again, I’m psyched up. Go figure. And in theory, I’m helping you, but in truth, we’ve created energy that we can both bank on. The first thing I’m going to do when I get this recording is I’m going to transcribe it. I’m going to find someone, a transcriber to transcribe it.
LN: Beautiful. It’s perfect to articulate that. I just heard someone else, John Young, who was speaking in Week Two, he said, “We don’t want to walk or talk, we want to dance our song.” It’s perfect.
EF: Yes, finally we’ve got a re-write of the whole walk your talk thing. John Young said that, right, you said, that the name? John Young?
LN: Yeah, him and is wife are going to be in Week Two. It’s just beautiful to hear you present things that, dancing our songs, right here in this moment that we are collaborating, and we’re sharing energy, and generating energy through that collaboration. Beautiful.
EF: All right Lev, thank you.
LN: You’re welcome. I just want to give you an opportunity just to share with people how they can stay connected with your work and what you do.
EF: The easy way to do that is go to Planetwaves.net or Planetwaves.net/2012. Those are the two frequently updated websites, and you can read a fast moving blog at the main site, and you can get a reading, a really good personal reading done for the 12 signs, but with my magic touch at Planetwaves.net/2012, and that’s the best way. If you feel like emailing me, you can email me at dreams@planetwaves.net. There’s contact information all over the website. A lovely person named Chelsea will answer your call if you call. And that’s about it, I think, right? Anything else?
LN: That sounds great. If you wanted to just have one more word in closing, or not.
EF: Well, I’m looking forward to participating in the immediately forthcoming surge of energy that we’re going to start to see right around when Mars stations direct in April. We’re on kind of a lull right now. The energy is kind of a little more relaxed right now. Then, by mid-Spring, we will know that it is 2012. There’s a little question now, no one’s really talking about it except you and me, right? But, by mid-Spring, there will be no question about this whole 2012 thing.
LN: All right, great. And I’ll just say that this is a pre-recorded interview for everyone listening, for you Eric, so this interview will most likely be listened to soon. If you’re listening to this, it’s probably the middle of April. So it’s great to hear that forecast, that Planet Waves forecast.
EF: Excellent.
LN: Thank you, okay
EF: My pleasure, Lev.
LN: All right, bye.
