Uranus in the Gate of Returning

We are at a turning point in human consciousness. In 2020, how we respond to chaos will set the pattern for our future. It matters what we do next.

Pluto and Uranus – the dynamic duo!

From 1964 to 1967 Pluto and Uranus were triggering the first round of a profound culture shock. Pluto makes the hidden visible and Uranus initiates revolutionary change. This planetary partnership was the beginning of the end of our blindness to the deep inequalities of power.

In 2020, these two planets are together again, bringing our attention to the key themes of power and change – the power to resist change (holding onto existing power) and the power to leap out of our comfort zones as change propels us into a new reality.

These are slow moving planets with very large evolutionary cycles. Pluto and Uranus won’t be in the same gate again until 2102, when they are both in Gate 27 – Nourishment. When Pluto is active it can feel as if we are grinding our way slowly towards destruction, but the life force energy being released from worn-out old structures will carry us through.

Read: Pluto in Gate 61

Let’s take a small sidetrack to introduce a bit of Neptune here. Neptune is a cultural creator par excellence. He is the visionary idealist who sees what is just beyond our old version of what’s possible. In 2026, Neptune will move into Aries (Gate 25), triggering a huge leap in consciousness. Between now and then we are dredging up the illusions and delusions, so enjoy!

Channel of Awareness

In 2020, Pluto and Uranus come together to activate the Channel of Awareness. This connection between the two planets doesn’t show up in astrology, but is a powerful energy for change in the Human Design transits.

Uranus in Gate 24

Uranus is a powerful channel of awareness* through which new ideas can be illuminated, bursting through old beliefs and structures, seeking new forms. Uranus will risk everything to re-organise our consciousness, preparing us for sudden changes. Uranus can have us feeling wired, on edge, over-excited, restless.

It’s possible for Uranus to catalyse negative outcomes, but only when we resist the change. We can recognise this resistance as rebellion. We focus on what we are resisting, rather than the change we seek to create.

The Ajna Centre gate of Returning (24) tells us how to navigate tipping points, when things have reached their extreme and begin to fall apart. We can’t keep going in the same way, the situation can seem hopeless, full of dark forces and decay. The law of change says that at this time the light will naturally return.

It’s not an easy process at this extreme edge of change. If you rush forward you will misunderstand what’s required. If you hold back, you lose momentum.

The Gate of Returning (24) is about iteration. Go out a little way, do a bit of experimenting, try a few small things, see what works. Notice what takes root and germinates. Observe where the path seems to be leading you.

Thinking differently in a time of great change

This is a powerful time of shifting our decision-making. We are so accustomed to testing our direction from the outside. Will we get approval? Will we find success? Will we be loved? Uranus in the Gate of Returning is teaching us a new skill; to be alive, dynamic, engaged with our own deepest knowing as we test each bifurcation.

Dane Rudhyar describes Uranus as the planet of individual transfiguration, where we can personally become a focal point for the release of an aspect of Universal Mind. As you experiment, there is a point of return when things fall into place because they make sense to you, and then you have silence. You have arrived at your own knowing.

When we add Pluto into the mix it becomes very unstable.

Pluto is slow and relentless. Uranus is quick and disorienting. The Channel of Awareness is about mutations created through alternating chaos/order. This is a natural structure of universal creation and one we will be initiated in during 2020.

We will learn to allow the chaos its space, not to be pressured into coming to false conclusions for the sake of feeling safe or certain. In 2020, uncertainty is key!

We will learn to trust our own silence, our own inner knowing, to become familiar with the feeling of being connected to our own fragment of universal knowing.

Freedom, Independence and Sovereignty

There’s another aspect to Uranus that’s playing out right now – the need for individual sovereignty. And it holds the key for how we need to move forward. In 2027, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus and Chiron will join in a shift of aeons. We will move from the age-old tribal structure of human consciousness and into a new Matrix of Brilliance.

We have relied on the structures of the tribe – schools, hospitals, roads – to give us a sense of stability and safety. We knew who we were, and that if we played by the rules we would be taken care of.

That kind of stability was important to the tribe. But now, we are entering a different kind of genetic continuity. In this new world, your brilliance catalyses a kind of chaos that shakes the old stability to its core. As the tribal structure breaks down we can no longer trust it to care for us.

The bargain seems irrevocably broken. All that sacrifice and no quid pro quo??

From the broken ruins of tribal consciousness, a new structure of society is arising. Do we have the authority within ourselves to create life? Or are we caught in a negative spiral of rebelling against the unseen dark overpowering forces?

That’s not to say we shouldn’t respond to the last vestiges of power-over that are playing out right now. Remember this is about no longer being blind to what culture wants to keep hidden. We must navigate the chaos between what we see happening each day, and what we choose to create. We have to begin to think outside of cultural contexts, which means anchoring into a deep inner sense of truth that exists outside the bounds of our current agreements of what is normal. 

It’s just, well, what is normal anymore?

Conspiracy, anyone?

There is an uprising in conspiracy theories right now, all having to do with the relationship between Pluto and Uranus. I want my freedom (Uranus) from those dark powerful forces that seek to control me (Pluto).

Pluto is in the Gate of Hidden Mysteries (61).

Whether they are 5G and covid lockdown, or systemic racism, whether we have facts to back up our version of rebellion or not, we are in the same boat here. There are hidden dark forces at work and we are trying to alert everyone to the damage they are doing.

Remember Pluto is in Gate 61 – Inner Mystery, deeply transforming our relationship to the revelation of truth.

The conspiracy theory of society is just a version of theism, of a belief in gods whose whims and wills rule everything. It comes from abandoning God and then asking: ‘Who is in his place?’ His place is then filled by various powerful men and groups—sinister pressure groups, who are to be blamed for having planned all the evils from which we suffer.

Karl Popper, Science Philosopher here

We are in a transitional stage of releasing our grip on the old tribal certainties, and it is creating a kind of mania to replace the known quantity of patriarchal leadership. But if that leadership is failing the tribe (look at health care and covid management for example) then what other more powerful and hidden forces must be posed against them!! It’s terrifying!

Instead, let’s look at what is breaking free, creating anew. Our new world requires individual responsibility for what we create. There is no more handing up to leadership, who we can then blame when things go wrong.

The truth of this Gate 61 is not an agreed truth, based on common interest. It is a truth inherent in the Matrix of Brilliance. We are shifting from an object-based reality to a web of consciousness holding limitless hubs of intelligent object-like processes.

You are one of those processes.

To find the real meaning we have to go deeper. We are rebelling against the creation of meaning by anyone other than ourselves. If we are to operate as free agents of consciousness, we must have all our faculties intact. Notice particularly what makes you uncomfortable. These places are keys to the treasure chest of our own latent delusion and we have to go there to release ourselves from the manipulation of ‘fake news’, fear and group-think.

Where we come together

The shift in 2027 is not about each person going it alone as a rugged individual, but a new more highly evolved way of relating to each other. This new moral arc is a central part of human evolution of consciousness.

We are in the midst of a cataclysmic loss of a shared sense of what it means to be human. But this again is simply the old tribal culture breaking down. We have to create a new shared human reality from the uncertain space we find ourselves in.

Darwin foreshadowed this moment, in his book Descent of Man, when he explored the idea that human evolution has shifted beyond the physical into the realms of love and moral sensitivity. Our brains can’t get any bigger, but our hearts can.

The neurons that created civilisation

In your brain are a set of specialised cells called mirror neurons, that allow you to learn from observing others. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran calls them the ‘neurons that created civilization’.

These mirror neurons allow us to feel empathy for others, but in the past we only responded to those in our own ‘tribe’. You’ll recognise this effect if you compare how you respond to a disaster in your own country to something that happens far away.

In her book Woman’s Evolution, Evelyn Reed quotes various examples of how early people engaged in cannibalism, but only ate those of other tribes. When asked, they explained that they didn’t eat ‘humans’. They considered anyone outside their own kinship group to be animals.

Globalism has been giving us an upgrade to our mirror neurons, teaching us to empathise with those we might not previously have considered ‘humans’ in the same way that we and our ‘kin’ are human. 

 The care we might once have reserved for those closest to us is becoming available to everyone, and not just humanity but the entire Gaian system. It may feel overwhelming to care so much, but we don’t have to be available in the same intense way we were for our tribe. We are refining what we need to act on, because its not all ours to do.

We are becoming conscious of the Global Immune System, which fine tunes what we are available for, what is our responsibility within the new living system of life.

Eris the catalyst

Its not just your individual consciousness that is shifting. It’s the entire matrix of universal consciousness. And that matrix is made up of relationships. Your every thought and breath are a butterfly within the system.

Dwarf planet Eris represents what we are blind to within any system. Too entitled to see racism? Oblivious to the sexism that keeps women lower on the career ladder? Still believe that oligarchs have your best interests at heart?

These are the places where Eris loves to create chaos. And we all have our blind spots!

Read: Eris in your Human Design

As I write this post, the USA is experiencing unprecedented protests over the murder of George Floyd by a group of Minnesotan police officers. Pluto, Saturn and Jupiter are all making an astrological square with Eris, triggering the chaos. This activation will continue throughout 2020.

Eris can play the blame game here, who’s ultimately at fault? But at a higher octave her chaos is about making all parts of the system visible. This is not about blame, but about responsibility for what we create as individuals – what we feed into the system.

Read: Eris and Pluto – Catalysing Chaos

It’s also about getting an upgrade to our mirror neurons. Who have we been excluding from our category of ‘human’? Will we suffer compassion fatigue? How can we be inclusive towards those we are so at odds with?

Arriving at non-duality

Chaos is all about birfurcation points. We are moving along a certain pathway and then we have a choice to make. Will we go with the known and comfortable, or branch off into the new?

Ra Uru Hu often talked about Human Design being a binary system. It’s not. The binary is simply the choice point. There is always a resolution, and that is the point of chaos, novelty, the need to find our feet in a new land.

The central channel in Human Design is about integrating duality, synthesising left and right, female and male, right and wrong. It forms part of the Individual Circuitry that pulses alternating chaos and order, inner and outer mutation, in a spiral of ever-increasing complexity. 

Read: Pluto in Gate 61

Ultimately, 2020 will be about learning that chaos is an integral part of living systems. Linear thinking/action are a single pole that makes us blind and vulnerable to manipulation. The times when we don’t know, don’t have certainty, are as much a part of the journey, and the choice, as when we do.

As we resolve each point in our journey by synthesising the duality of the known and the unknown we are creating something new. Our addiction to the illusion of certainty is the only thing standing in our way.

Important Dates

* Astrologer Steven Arroyo refers to Uranus as a channel of awareness in his book Astrology, Karma and Transformation.