Book Review

Soul Sick Nation by Jessica Murray
WARNING: THIS BOOK COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE

It’s on! The first square of Jupiter to Uranus has activated what I have called the “Coming Storm” of the opening Uranus/Pluto squares which promise to re-awaken the 60’s counter-culture. Several tens of thousands of people marched in Washington D.C. on Saturday January 27, 2007 to protest the decision to “stay the course” in Iraq. At the rally, a 12 year old stood up to say: "Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar."

Evidently, even a 12 year old can identify the “Cult of Immaturity” that Murray points out pervades U.S. policies and culture. In her new book, Soul Sick Nation, humanist astrologer Jessica Murray takes a long hard look at the chart of the U.S. Murray examines the chart of this entity piece by piece, in a way even a relative beginner can quickly grasp and understand. Murray’s conclusions, after much reference to the facts of the situation, are that “the USA lacks maturity of mind and soul” and “America’s Pluto casts a long shadow.” This shadow manifests itself in imperialism, corruption, materialistic obsession and a “throwaway culture.”

In Soul Sick Nation, Jessica Murray puts all the cards on the table. On whatever level you have bought into consensus reality –you are quite simply playing a losing hand. This may be not-so-surprising news for many, but if you think that Denial is just a river in Egypt –then this book will rock your world. Whatever your level of socio-political awareness, you can certainly learn something here. Murray lays out her case with humorous factoids too numerous to mention –but each one worth examining and many worth follow-up. Page after page, the irrefutable, incontrovertible evidence piles up: The current dominant worldview is quite sick, in fact it is dying. The U.S, as the current global political and cultural Hegemon, is the symbol for this sickness. The prescription is that this “Cult of Immaturity” is each individual’s responsibility to resist.

“Gradually, this sense of responsibility starts to feel inner directed rather than outer-mandated. We begin to conduct or lives as if everything we do matters…the goal of the seeker should be to tune into this role, commit to it, and pump energy into people, ideas and activities that match it.”
Murray, Soul Sick Nation 2006 AuthorHouse http://www.mothersky.com/book-announcement4.html

This is an important work, because whether or not you agree with Murray’s assertions is incredibly important. In fact, there may be nothing more important to your personal growth than a challenging viewpoint such as this. As Jupiter continues to interact with the forming Uranus/Pluto squares (by square to Uranus and conjunction to Pluto) throughout 2007, we will no doubt continue to be challenged on issues requiring us to take a moral stand. Saturn’s opposition with Neptune is giving us pause to ask “is there a higher path?” Is the suspension of habeas corpus and indefinite detainment of people the “higher” or “lower” path? Is an indefinite state of war a real answer or just an Orwellian justification of a primitive path?

I personally recommend Soul Sick Nation to the reader along with Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael as possibly the two most important books you may ever read. By starting with Murray and gaining a grasp on just how profound the current sickness has become, the reader may then proceed to Quinn and discover just “how things came to be this way.” In fact, if I suddenly had a million dollars to donate to charity, I would hand out copies of these two books and pay people to read them. It’s that important.

see also my review of this book published by The Mountain Astrologer

Murray's prescription, of course, matches beautifully with her theoretical stance as a Humanist Astrologer. As a fellow Humanist, I would like to remind that uncomfortable feelings this work brings up should be warmly embraced -rather than shrunk from, for:

"The best way to stop living in fear is to educate oneself...arm the mind, so to speak. The most spiritual way to deal with fear is to approach it rather than run from it. It is from this commitment that true progress is made and that solutions unseen become solutions made real." -Michael C. Ruppert -From The Wilderness

If this material makes you feel a little uncomfortable -that is a GOOD thing!

As a prominent Humanist theorist has stated:

"Psychoneuroses 'especially those of a higher level' provide an opportunity to 'take one's life in one's own hands'. Thus the person finds a 'cure' for himself, not in the sense of a rehabilitation but rather in the sense of reaching a higher level than the one at which he was prior to disintegration. This occurs through a process of an education of oneself and of an inner psychic transformation - followed by a conscious affirmation or negation of conditions and values in both the internal and external environments. Through the constant creation of himself, though the development of the inner psychic milieu and development of discriminating power with respect to both the inner and outer milieus - an individual goes through ever higher levels of 'neuroses' and at the same time through ever higher levels of universal development of his personality" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 4).

http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/#overview

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Gary P. Caton

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