ASTROCARTOGRAPHY

Astrocartography maps astrological influences in an attempt to identify the most promising places for an individual to live during an incarnation—places where one may be less challenged by difficult circumstances, or where particular locations may appear more favorable for personal or spiritual growth.

Yet karma cannot be avoided or lessened simply by choosing a location, for it is often through challenge that the swiftest stimulus for growth occurs. If life were entirely ease and accommodation for the ego, there would be little progress for the spiritual self. Thus, astrocartography may do a disservice when it encourages the inclination toward a passive or protected life.

We cannot escape responsibility for karma by changing our location. Karmic experience follows and adapts to circumstances. Sooner or later, one must be prepared to accept the call and meet whatever conditions karma has provided. Location itself holds less attraction or meaning for the awakened individual, who recognizes that every place contains the potential for advancement.

The spiritual student should therefore become reconciled to the environment the soul has sought for its experience. Place of birth, family, country, physical body, character, talents, associates, and the quality of one’s environment may all reflect conditions carried forward from previous incarnations and accumulated experience.

Some places may provide a greater potential for karmic experience and may therefore accelerate existing karma, particularly in locations where political events are intensified or physical destruction is imminent. Such areas may attract individuals or groups who participate in the collective or planetary karma of that time.

Yet one should neither choose a location merely to escape the karma that is due nor rush in where angels fear to tread in an effort to hasten spiritual development. The spiritual student should be able to adhere to the disciplines of the Path wherever he or she may be, living beyond many of the mundane and planetary influences that dominate the unawakened individual.

At the same time, one need not deliberately seek out areas of political tension, physical danger, or economic instability under the mistaken belief that such circumstances will accelerate karma. Karma is responsive and adaptable wherever one happens to be. The wiser course is to accept the circumstances of the moment, neither seeking nor avoiding favorable or unfavorable karma, while recognizing the consequences of earlier thoughts and actions that may still require fulfillment.

If relocation occurs as a natural unfolding of events, it may be regarded as an opportunity for extended service, personal development, and the sharing of new experiences with others. Man is free to choose some of the conditions of life, but karma follows natural law and establishes the limitations and opportunities through which the individual is tested.

One may choose to live near or far from a city, in a rural or metropolitan environment, in a particular climate, or within a chosen profession. Yet previous karma remains present within the parameters of those choices. If poverty must be experienced, poverty may follow. If business success or a marital relationship is part of one’s experience, these opportunities may arise wherever one happens to be.

Individual karmic factors may influence wealth, health, relationships, and other personal circumstances, while collective and international karma influence communities and nations through economic conditions, markets, war or peace, inflation, commerce, and social change. These larger forces inevitably affect the apparent freedom of individual choice.

Regardless of physical location, it may be useful to distinguish among three expressions of karma:

1. Present karma—events or conditions that must presently be experienced.
2. Karma of character—qualities and circumstances shaped by accumulated experience.
3. Evolving karma—future conditions and character created through present thoughts, decisions, and actions.

Karma is continually being created through change. Individuals also participate in the collective karma of families, cultures, communities, and nations as they move from one society to another.

The laws of karma are not confined to a particular time or place. The soul is concerned with physical location only insofar as a location may provide a particular experience—through historical events, climate, collective consciousness, relationships, or other conditions.

The soul resides beyond the limitations of physical geography. Whatever is experienced on the physical plane is eventually assimilated by the soul as character and quality. It is this inner development, rather than the physical location itself, that ultimately contributes to spiritual growth.

From this perspective, astrocartography may offer an interesting map of planetary influences, but it cannot determine the destiny of the soul nor release an individual from the lessons that karma has placed upon the Path.