America's Wound and How it Can Heal
From the perspective of the soul, a wound is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the soul may require the presence of a wound in order for a being to discover their true gifts, and to manifest their true destiny. If we look at the United States from the vantage point of her soul, the fact that she came into existence deeply wounded may describe how truly amazing an entity she is.

A woman comes into my office and doesn’t know why she is there. She says she is fine, but clearly she is agitated. Eventually she admits that she is exhausted. She doesn’t want to complain, but she just can’t do everything and keep it all together any more. The stress of her life is coming out through pain in her lower back that won’t go away, she has trouble sleeping at night, and it really bothers her that she is gaining weight and can’t seem to take the weight off. Between her job, her kids, and her husband, it’s obvious that she has no time for herself. She has a nice home in a good neighborhood, but at this point she tells me, “I can’t appreciate anything, I don’t know why I do what I do, I feel trapped inside of my own life. I just want it all to end.”

This woman is the United States of America, and almost every adult in the U.S. can relate to her. A surprising number of children feel the way she does as well. The symptoms of America’s wound are obvious for all to see. Bizarre as it may seem, the traumatic event called 9/11 was a desperate strategy on the part of America’s soul to attempt a healing of this wound - it was truly an emergency call for help. To understand this wound’s core and how it can heal, we turn to a microscope that can objectively reveal its essence, America’s astrological birthchart. This map of the planetary environment at the moment of America’s birth describes her life “set-up”, the karmic situation and challenges she has taken on in her lifetime so her soul can experience its glory by uncovering and offering her unique gift to the world. Like the buried treasure in fairy tales that is guarded by the dragon, a being’s unique gift to the world is hiding underneath its wound.

If the United States were a person, here’s the story her birthchart might tell us about her childhood wounding, her karmic life “set-up” or challenge. Keep in mind that this is not her complete story, but only the story of her wound. It’s not pretty. The child is born sensitive, kind, giving, open-hearted, attuned to her feelings, imaginative, prone toward insecurity, and craving connection with her mother. The child’s father is strict, rigid, harsh, emotionally and physically abusive, tells the child she is a loser, tries to “toughen her up” so she can handle the world, and belittles her creative gifts as idle fantasy. When she gets to be a little older, he sexually molests her. To the degree that her mother is complicit in the girl’s abuse by denying its existence and not protecting her, she feels abandoned by her mother.

Fortunately for the girl, her father is a workaholic and is gone much of the time. She forges a bond with her mother, who understands her sensitive nature, and who brings her culture, music, and an aesthetic appreciation of life. Of course her father is abusive with her mother as well, and as she gets older the little girl does what she can to protect her mother from him by standing between them and taking his abuse. Because of this, she learns to be tough. She also learns to be the strong one, the protector, and place her own needs secondary to the needs of others. The girl doesn’t understand why her mother stays with this abusive man. But she senses her mother’s insecurity concerning her ability to “make it” in the world, and the father is a very good provider – the family is quite well off.

Periodically a family crisis occurs. The father goes out of control, or the mother can’t stand her frustration anymore and fights back, triggering the father’s abuse even more, or the girl herself has had enough and acts out by getting into trouble, bringing shame to the family. After the crisis is over things are cooled out for a while, but eventually the old patterns re-surface.

It’s not difficult to see how this little girl becomes the adult woman who comes into my office and is so deeply unhappy. After a childhood of crisis and drama this woman is seeking shelter in “normality”, a job, a husband, a family, but more importantly, she has created a life where everyone else’s needs come first. She has created a life where her responsibilities do not allow her the “luxury” of feeling her feelings. Her life is actually designed to protect her from her feelings, for if she were to feel them, she would have to confront her pain. Materially her life is rich, so she says to herself that she “has no reason to complain or feel sorry for myself”. This is another strategy for protecting herself from her deep, repressed feelings of rage, terror, and ultimately, abandonment.

If we were to see the United States as a man with a similar upbringing, as an adult he becomes driven to succeed. At all costs he must show his father that he is a winner. He takes on whatever profession will afford him the most status and obvious success. All his life his father has told him that he is not good enough, that he wimps out, that he can’t afford to show any weakness. Fortunately or not for him, he has a sensitive nature underneath his ambition, and sometimes he helps those people whom he sees as underdogs even when they are his competitors. He could never let his father know that he does this, but those are rare moments when he actually feels good about himself. The horror show for him is that he actually succeeds in becoming very successful at what he does. While everyone is toasting his success, he feels miserable inside. He thinks about committing suicide.

In order to gain the respect of his abusive father, he has almost completely let go of his individual uniqueness, squeezing himself into a package that will bring him the success he craves. His victory is hollow because he truly did not inhabit it. He may even have what Americans crave more than anything in the world – financial independence. But his young, beautiful, trophy girlfriend left him for the surfer dude in Fiji. She couldn’t handle that he had become obsessive and boring and was never around. Without the addiction of work to numb him, his other emotion-numbing addictions start to take over – the pills, alcohol, and disconnected sex. Very likely he will go back to another work addiction and start the whole cycle over again.

This woman and man inhabit the soul of America in the form of its wound. They are the modern-day portrait of the wounding America was born with, as described by its astrological birthchart. Their wounded energy colors the water that every person born or living in America swims in. And it is this wound that America’s soul attempted to address and heal through the traumatic event called 9/11.
In our astrological birthchart the planet that represents our identity, the core of our being, is the Sun. The Sun is meant to shine, radiate, pour forth its gifts, receive recognition.

One aspect of our wound is represented by the planet Saturn, which is also a symbol for the father. In America’s birthchart Saturn does everything it can to block the Sun, forming a right angle to it called a square. The set-up is this: it appears that America doesn’t get to claim and express who she really is, because her father has physically and emotionally abused her. She has internalized his judgement of her, and she does not really trust herself or other people, staying isolated and walled off, locked into her work addiction and time-consuming responsibilities to others. Her gifts are buried.

The most fortunate planet in our birthchart personality is Jupiter, the planet of luck, trust, expansion, opportunity, and the big picture overview. At the time of 9/11 Jupiter sat on top of the United States Sun and touched off her Saturn-square-Sun father wound. Jupiter not only touches off something, but blows it up like a big fat balloon. Jupiter made America’s wound huge and obvious in an attempt to bring attention and healing to it. Why healing? Because America’s Sun, her life purpose and identity, is in the section of the birthchart related to the transformation of wounds, referred to as the Eighth House.

Astonishing as it may seem, a core part of America’s soul purpose is to bring healing to the world! But her first task is to bring healing to her own wound, and 9/11 was a huge opportunity (Jupiter) to do just that. While Jupiter expanded the wound, it also gave us a broader perspective so we could experience ourselves as being larger than the wound. Here’s how it worked.

America was born on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania around 5:10 pm, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. She was born under the Zodiac Sign of Cancer. A healthy Cancer lives in their feelings – it is their primary way of experiencing themselves and experiencing reality. A wounded Cancer has shut down on her feelings, covering them over with a scab. In America’s case her scab is work-addiction and responsibility to others (the wounded woman) and/or the need for success in order to prove one’s own worth (the wounded man).

For anyone, healing does not arrive until one has felt the buried, repressed, painful feelings. For a Cancer, you don’t come into your power and purpose in life unless you are feeling your feelings. The soul has its times when it says, “Enough dilly-dallying already! Claim what you’re here to do and get on with your true calling!” 9/11 was one of those times when America’s soul called her to awaken and come home to herself, and to claim her power as a healer.

For four months after 9/11 something amazing happened - Americans felt their feelings! “My success” or “my problems” did not matter. Our focus was on caring for and nurturing those Americans who needed our support. The best of America came forward. It started with the amazing heroism of the firefighters, police, and emergency workers in New York City who sacrificed their lives and well-being to save others. Financial, physical, emotional, and psychic support poured forth from the corners of America. Grown men, stalwarts of politics and television, openly and spontaneously wept on T.V., breaking a huge taboo in American society, especially for a man.

America’s priorities became completely turned around. Instead of feeling isolated in our nuclear family homes, America became one huge village. And the entire world was with us, feeling our pain, pouring support our way.
Of course America was traumatized by 9/11 - we re-experienced our original wound of being violated and abused. Three thousand innocent people lost their lives. We were mystified by the “why” of the attack just as a child cannot understand why her Daddy beats her. But instead of simply being wounded, for four months America inhabited the position of the “Nurturing Parent”, comforting and attending to the needs of her wounded child. She became larger than her wound, the blessing of the “Jupiter” aspect of her personality. She became an adult. She caught a glimpse of her future destiny as a healer. Her soul spoke to her, and she answered.

The healing of America’s wound will occur on an individual basis, with each one of us. The aftermath of 9/11 showed us how we can accomplish this. Every one of us has strategies for covering up our wounded place, for putting a scab on it. Our wound is hiding those personal qualities that we have felt we need to repress in order to survive in the world, and they may vary from person to person. But for America as an entity, what sits in our wounded place is our innocence. Violation and abuse has destroyed our innocence, and our trust. The scab we wear to protect ourselves is our cynicism.

At this point in our history we are experiencing the pinnacle of our wound, the height of our cynicism - even more so than in the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal. Whether we are talking about politics, sports, or popular culture, our careers or even our lives - “It’s all about the money. That’s the only thing that matters”. This statement will end the discussion. A cynic is a person or a country who has lost touch with their dreams and ideals, who has let themselves become poisoned by their feelings of repeated disappointments.

The aftermath of 9/11 showed us the way home, the way out of our cynicism – feel our feelings. When we feel trapped in our lives, when we say, “I wish I could follow the longings of my heart, but I can’t because of x,y, and z” we need to slow down and feel what is going on inside. Our scab, our protective strategies always look like the voice of practicality.

We need to thank these strategies for doing a great job of protecting us from our pain, then ask them to sit in the corner while we converse with our juicy authentic self to see what she/he wants to tell us. We can actually start a dialogue with our soul. She will talk to us from inside of ourselves, and in our dreams at night, but she will also talk to us through what shows up in our external lives. She is trying to find us, pull us in a particular direction, get our attention.

By addressing our wound we can discover a buried treasure. Sitting underneath the wound is a gift we have, something that was buried in childhood, our soul’s gift to the world. No one in the wide world has this particular gift - it is unique to us. By dialoguing with our soul and moving into our soul’s gift to the world, many of our ego’s desires will begin to drop away, for they have been poor compensations for the loss of our connection with our soul.
The passage of Jupiter over the United States Sun at the time of 9/11 showed us a glimpse of how the wound can heal. In the past 12 months the planet Saturn has passed over the U.S. Sun, showing us the consequences and pain that ensues from ignoring our wound. Saturn’s passage is a call to action, a realization that our current level of numbness is dangerous. Besides work addiction, the most common form of emotional numbing in America is through food. We literally stuff our feelings. The realization that 65% of Americans are overweight is sobering indeed.

The passage of Saturn over the United States Sun is a powerful time when the karma or direction of this country can change in the direction of aliveness because continued numbing and deadness is simply too painful. Saturn brings up the consequences of what we have chosen in the past. Almost every American is looking at the ways they have chosen to medicate themselves instead of choosing aliveness and jumping into an unknown territory in their life

Our extreme orientation toward security is choking the lifeblood out of us. “What is originally experienced as security, over time, will begin to feel like a prison.”
Saturn will bring up the wound and raise its voice even louder - “Now is not the time to make changes, you’re hurting too much, your house payments and credit card bills are too high, you’re too stressed. Have a piece of pie, take a Valium, have a drink, balance your checkbook. You’ll feel better soon. You just need to work a little harder, get more disciplined, more organized.”

If we let it, the wisdom voice of Saturn will come back in and remind us, “Hey, you’ve tried all those short-term tricks before and where has it gotten you? Nothing has really changed, and you’re more stressed and unhappy than before. How about looking at the bigger picture of your life and where you really want to be going?” At this point we can have a conversation with our wound and let it pour out all of its feelings, all of the reasons why we can’t have the life we want. Once we’ve felt the pain and the hopelessness, an empty space occurs - a pregnant empty space. We don’t have to fill it in yet with a new plan for our life. Maybe we just let it be that way for a while and look around for a sign, a nudge, a desire, a longing that moves us. Like bird-watching, we are stalking yet keenly waiting for a communication from our soul.

When Saturn conjoins the Sun, an old chapter of our life is closing and a new chapter is beginning. Like a colt just learning to walk, the new way will feel shaky for quite a while. We will miss our old addictions, as painful as they were. But when we re-visit them, they won’t hold us, they don’t have juice for us anymore. We are stepping into the unknown, and it’s a bit scary . Our cynical self is going to be out of a job, and it will try every trick in its book to convince us that we still need him.

Allies will come in handy at this point. Our dreams at night can instruct us. A powerful tool is to write down our dreams, for in the writing more of the dream comes through. We can write our dream as if it is happening now, in present tense. Instead of trying to “interpret” the dream and throw it away, we can let it dialogue with us and continue working on us, listening to what it wants to tell us. Every part of the dream can be seen as a part of us. We can look at our associations with the main characters or elements in the dream, how we feel about them, what they remind us of. If we tell our dream to a trusted friend or loved one, they can help us by asking us questions about the dream, probing deeper into it, as opposed to “interpreting” the dream for us. After a while we’ll begin to see themes that keep recurring in our dreams.

Beings in nature can bring us messages from our soul - animals, birds, plants, trees, elements in the weather or the heavens. We can dialogue with them, ask them questions, tell them what is going on with us. Our soul is not just inside of us, but is all around us as well. The events and people that show up in our lives will bring us messages from our soul. Consider that your soul is trying to find you, and look at what you are feeling pulled towards. Your intuition and your body will know if something feels right to you.

We can treat our daily life as if it were a waking dream, seeing the people and situations in it as various aspects of ourselves, looking for the soul messages that show up in it.
Each one of us has special abilities and traits that were not acceptable in our family of origin. In our first 5 years we learned to repress these qualities in order to survive in our family. By going back into our wounded place we can uncover these talents, and new life will shoot forth from us. We can claim those traits and abilities that are unique to us as individuals. It may surprise us what gifts are buried deep inside.

The birthchart of the United States describes a being who has been deeply wounded, and inside that wounding lies incredible richness, talent, and yes, joy. At this stage in her development the U.S. is reminiscent of the young magician in the tale “The Last Unicorn”. Schmendrick the Magician comically blows even the simplest spell although his mentor is the most powerful wizard in the world. His teacher tells him, “I know why you are such an incredible klutz. Your potential magical power is so great that you need to bend over backwards to avoid it, because it scares you. You will need more than one lifetime to embrace your power, so I will keep you at age 25 until you come into your power.” Through contact with the last unicorn, Schmendrick comes into his power.

What power has the United States been avoiding? She has shown repeatedly that she knows how to exert firepower, but can she use the power of fire for healing and warmth? Can she be a beacon and inspiration to others? Perhaps her long apprenticeship is finally over, and 9/11 was a wake-up call asking her to come into her own as a healing force in the world, to claim her true destiny. A being who has been this wounded contains great power to transform others once she begins her own healing process. Her latent creativity, imagination, and joy is awesome, and would be incredibly infectious throughout the world. This is a far cry from the woman who originally entered my office overworked, exhausted, and hopeless. As a country the United States is still relatively young. She has great potential.

Each one of us in America has the power to claim her amazing birthright.

Copyright Spencer John, November 2004
Counseling Astrologer
Quirin@aol.com