Inconvenient Truths

And, no ⸺ not the Al Gore kind…

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors.” ⸺ Nasim Taleb, Antifragile

Being the happy, Pacific Northwest mountain hermits we are, Ariel and I don’t have the desire to get out much. But we recently traveled to do intensive work with an out-of-state client, and that travel involved quite a bit of airport time. What we experienced was a stark reminder of the dramatic impact brought about by the last 5 years of the collective’s psychological pummeling. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a collective as rattled, distracted, dissociative and as generally glum as I experienced on those travel days.

Can that be blamed on the intense astrological weather as of late? Yes, of course it can. That weather has ⸺ and continues to be ⸺ incredibly intense. And yet, we are all sovereign beings. Astrological weather serves us each energy, nothing more. What we do with that energy is another matter entirely.

The past several months have seen an incredible comingling of the outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) along with the outer boundary guardian of the traditional seven (Saturn). At its root, this ongoing alignment of the outer planets is setting the baseline rhythm driving the evolution of the collective. With each and every one of us within the collective receiving those same “marching orders”, in our own, unique way, through the placement in our charts ⸺ and our natal relationship with ⸺ Saturn.

That is to say, your unique (via natal placement, transit, dasa, etc.) astrological relationship to Saturn acts as the swing man as to how you receive, and ultimately act, on these “marching orders”.

This is a great example of how the collective energetic force is made personal. That’s happening to some extent all the time, of course. It’s just being amplified and made even more obvious now. And this intensity will continue well into January of next year. Largely because this energy is reaching each of us individually through our natal Saturn, and there are few in our culture who have a good working relationship with the planet.

Mundane chart for 8/26/25 at 4 PM CST. Notice the “minor grand sextile” between Pluto, Neptune/Saturn, and Uranus. All of which are at critical positions in the US chart. Also notice the Sun, which has been the apex of a Yod (active from 8/22 - 8/26) with Pluto and Neptune/Saturn. The Sun has been pressing the cusp of the US 9th house during this period and, as such, we’ve seen much activity in the very domains this house governs: courts, ideology, higher education, and foreign policy. In just a few days, major rulings have reshaped voting rights, curtailed DEI funding in academia, and tested the limits of judicial independence, while executive action has criminalized flag burning. We also have ongoing foreign trade disputes framed in moral terms. All told, America’s ideological core was under intense stress and redefinition over the past few days, with the 9th house acting as the battleground for how the nation tells its story to itself and the world.

In truth, each of the four planets in question here can be rather difficult to work with. Saturn, being the cosmic drill sergeant, the disciplinarian, just happens to get the most bad press. Uranus, though, is the Promethean figure; he can hand you an incredible, out-of-the-blue opportunity, but not the wisdom required to truly utilize it. Neptune gives the ability to see behind the veil, but not the fortitude to accept what is seen (that’s Saturn’s domain), so his energy tends toward delusion and escape. Nothing to see here, folks! And then there’s Pluto with his cosmic-level Etch-A-Sketch. Completely erasing the past so that the new can be refashioned and born from the destruction of the old and evolve free of the weight of the past.

A quick aside: if it seems there is more “malevolent” than “benevolent” energy in the universe: (1) it’s a matter of perspective; energy is neither “good” nor “bad” from the Universe’s perspective. Perspective and labels are simply the product of human judgement, and (2) that humans perceive the heavy and difficult to outweigh the ease and flow is because this is, after all, “earth school”. That is, we are here to learn, grow and evolve, and that generally involves discomfort, resistance and heel-dragging. Facing what is uncomfortable to face, and learning the lessons therein.

And perception is why Saturn gets the bad rap that he does. Pro tip: if you want more peace, ease and flow in your life, forge a great relationship with your natal Saturn. Discipline truly is freedom.

So this on-going and extremely intense four-planet alignment is pushing each individual within the collective, by way of their natal and transit Saturn placement, to engage the uncomfortable, inconvenient truths that are being dredged up by the outer planets. What truths specifically? We’ll get to that in a moment. But first:

When these planetary forces push on us, they don’t just test our circumstances or resolve. They test our stories (2nd house ⸺ money, needs, resources, values, beliefs). If you’ve ever wondered how one person can survive an unthinkable setback while another is felled by something (objectively) much less damaging, the difference is almost always in the narrative they carry with them. If your personal story can hold and make sense of your suffering, your body and psyche will rise to meet the challenge. Or, as Nietzsche put it, “He who has a Why can endure almost any How.”

No one demonstrated this more clearly than Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that those who endured the concentration camps were often the ones who could still anchor themselves to a thread of purpose. A loved one, say, waiting for them back home. An unfinished work, or even a stubborn resolve (Scorpio) to outlast their captors. When their “Why” held, survival was possible. But when their story collapsed, death was not far behind. Out of this insight, Frankl recognized that our deepest drive is not for pleasure, or for power, but for meaning.

And this is largely Saturn’s domain. Saturn doesn’t hand you comfort or clarity; that’s not his job. He demands structure, discipline, and a framework strong enough to withstand the pressure of the storm. He is the gatekeeper that insists our “Why” be more than wishful thinking. When Neptune clouds, Uranus shocks, or Pluto erases, it’s Saturn who forces us to integrate those blows into a story sturdy enough to endure. Frankl’s survival insight is the same lesson Saturn has been drilling into humanity since time immemorial: without structure, we collapse; with it, we endure.

What I witnessed in my travels wasn’t exactly a collective malaise. There was more of an unnerved edge to it. Closer to something German poets and philosophers call Sehnsucht: a kind of deep, wistful longing, the ache that comes from sensing how far experienced reality deviates from the ideal. It’s the quiet grief of watching the systems you once trusted unravel into theaters of the absurd.

It’s tough to name a single legacy (Saturn) institution (Neptune) that can be trusted. Government, legacy media, the banking industry, the Medical-Industrial complex.. the list goes on. The collective feels as if they’re losing the plot. It’s as if the collective has finally come to realize that this whole Monopoly-like, chase-for-riches charade has been exposed for exactly what it is: in the end there is a single winner, everyone else is broke, and the bank gets all the money.

And to make matters worse, there is no alternative on the horizon.

The collective is simply reflecting the pain, disillusion and shock of attempting to escape experiencing the systems collapse in real-time.

In other words, comfortably numb beats facing, head on, those inconvenient truths. Not to mention, planning for the repercussions of those truths coming to fruition.

And so, in true Neptunian fashion, the collective distorts, distracts and dissociates from the rapid-fire dredging up of one inconvenient truth after the next.

There is no amount of technological advancement, though, strong enough to distract from the inevitable specter of a collapsing system. Technology cannot solve the problems that technology itself has created. The market will not regulate itself toward human flourishing. We cannot consume, distract or numb our way to enlightenment. Try as we may. And boy are we trying!

This is, astrologically, a tempest by grand design. Because we are all being pushed to grow and evolve.

And the central nervous system of the collective is responding accurately to a world where those once trusted institutions are creating both the problems and the proposed solutions. It’s called a Hegelian Dialectic, and people may not be able to name what that is exactly ⸺ but they sure as hell can feel the hellish uncertainty in it.

So the demand of this alignment is not so much whether you’re actually seeing clearly. Neptune is more than happy to hand over the x-ray specs so you can peer behind the veil. The real question is: what do you do with this terrible clarity, this inconvenient truth, once it’s there writhing in your lap?

What’s being asked of the collective now ⸺ and of you, personally ⸺ is to witness the unsavory specter of reality as it is, and yet still strive for something better.

In John’s gospel, Jesus described this balance as being “in the world but not of the world.” The Saturn-loving Stoics carried the same wisdom in two maxims: (1) amor fati: love of fate. Not passive resignation, defeatism, or victimhood, but an active embrace of what is, while still striving for what could be, and

(2) memento mori: remember, always ⸺ no one gets out of here alive. It’s where we get the idea (solid advice, in my opinion) to concentrate on the process vs the outcome.

Once we have those two under our belts, we can get back up, dust ourselves off, and rejoin the fray.

Of course it's easy to feel helpless in the riptide of this powerful, history-making Neptune–Uranus–Pluto alignment sweeping us along right now. That energy feels bigger and more powerful than any one of our abilities to challenge it. Can you love and embrace that part? Can you fight the good and noble fight anyway (amor fati)?

Can you stop bargaining for escape (Neptune) or some kind of an immune, immortality, and instead accept the warrior’s path of a good life (Uranus) being defined in no small part by a good and honorable death (Pluto)... all the while, remembering (embracing, even) your mortality? And when all of that is funneled through the discipline and conviction of Saturn, we find ourselves right where this confluence of planetary forces is pointing us: toward what Nassim Taleb calls “Antifragile.”

That is, to be not merely resilient (able to withstand shock), and not merely robust (able to resist change), but to be strengthened by volatility, stress, and disorder. The very forces that break lesser systems become the fuel for growth in greater systems. Like our own immune systems. Antifragility is the paradoxical art of being improved by stress and chaos, and it’s exactly what these outer-planet lessons are demanding of us now.

If we take all of this seriously, the invitation is to push through despair and embrace the reality such as it is. To know that this obstacle before us is placed there by design. To know that the very chaos that feels so unbearable at times is also the perfect crucible capable of producing something sturdier, wiser, and more alive than what came before.

We can choose to be the victims of the storms of Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto. Or, we can choose to metabolize and integrate their lessons. The collective nervous system may be stressed, but that doesn’t have to mean collapse. It can mean initiation into the realm of the new. Some will grasp that brass ring. And unfortunately, many won’t.

These inconvenient truths present an opportunity for evolution. For the collective and, for you, personally. Antifragility, being another byproduct of personal sovereignty, is born by becoming the kind of people who grow stronger because of the storm.

⸺ Keith