Challenges and Structures - Fragments from A Dangerous Age

A Dangerous Age by Dane Rudhyar

http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_drage_e.htm

.....
Actually there is not one dangerous age. Danger arises when something deep within us becomes radically dissatisfied with things-as-they-are in our lives. This dissatisfaction may be caused by what we have done, or failed to accomplish —or by what others, closely surrounding us, have done or failed to do. Dissatisfaction can be glorified into what poets and mystics have often called divine discontent; but more often perhaps it should rather carry the name of devilish restlessness. But we must not forget that even the devil ultimately serves God, even if he does not know he does, and even if it takes a long time for you to find it out.
...

Saturn simply helps you to arrange your life the way you want it, even if you do not know precisely that you want it that way. Saturn gives you the cardboard and the glue, the cement and the wooden-forms to build your life-compartments. If you hand these Saturnian tools to someone else, because you are tired or you do not want to dirty your hands, that is not Saturn's fault.

.... is just that you do not dare to be transformed where you are. The transformation would most likely affect and renew as well, to a degree at least, those around you

....

The difficulty is still more acute if change would mean giving up whatever security you have, physical, financial or spiritual.

....
life's demand for a change of level.

....

Many times what oneself considers a happy life, a happy marriage, is only a well compartmentalized attempt at not facing the crucial issue. Then something happens to disturb the equilibrium of this highly varnished status quo; the mask of conjugal tranquility falls, or that of professional success collapses, to show under the masks a great depth of insecurity, immaturity and pain.

...

Opposition aspects ask of you that you become fully aware.  In the situations we are now discussing what is necessary is to become fully aware of what one failed to do some fifteen years before or even thirty years before, at and after puberty. One must as well become aware, and even more so, of why one failed, or only partly succeeded. In a great many instances the masks could have been relinquished without tragedy or public show of excitement, if the meaning of the astrological "opposition aspects" of Saturn and Uranus to their natal places had been understood. Opposition aspects ask of you that you become fully aware. In the situations we are now discussing what is necessary is to become fully aware of what one failed to do some fifteen years before or even thirty years before, at and after puberty. One must as well become aware, and even more so, of why one failed, or only partly succeeded.

....

This is why so many of the people who come to psychoanalysts and religious or lay counselors are around age forty or in their late forties. They sense, more or less acutely, the need to become more aware. What precipitates the crisis may be some innocent enough flirting, or a seemingly unexplainable breaking-down of mental and emotional barriers so carefully erected to keep away intruders.

....

It must be so, simply because life itself—and all spiritual progress—brings you essentially most upsetting experiences! They try to set you up. Your reluctance, your fears, your refusal lead to the upsets.

.....

The evening was so lovely; he was so charming! I needed so much some nice, warm words that day!

. . ." Circumstances are blamed, more or less. But actually the occurrence has far deeper roots in a past, either long forgotten, or carefully interpreted away by the ego that was unable or unwilling to face fully life's demand for a change of level. "If you do not move upward," says life, "I shall strike you from your lower depths." The forgotten or despised root-energies of human nature can and do take their revenge, usually at the most inopportune moment, when the pain and anguish they inflict can be most acutely felt, most upsetting.

....

It must be so, simply because life itself—and all spiritual progress—brings you essentially most upsetting experiences! They try to set you up. Your reluctance, your fears, your refusal lead to the upsets. So, what occurs when Saturn opposes, around age forty-five, its natal place (that is, the type of order and stability which is individually your own) is practically always a result, direct or indirect, of what you did not do— or of what you allowed to become deviated—when you were around thirty and Saturn wasconjunct its natal place. The upset is "Uranian," but the urge to move "up" at thirty was really "Saturnian." It was the urge to be your Truth, to demonstrate effectively what you are as an individual—and not merely as a social type, or as the son or daughter of your parents. When the upset comes, what is there to be done? Essentially, you should welcome it as a sign that you are still really alive, or that you have not settled hopelessly into a rut, that you can still grow up. But to welcome an upset without fear, guilt, shame or emotional dramatics does not mean to rush blindly into the new path and the new direction outward it may present under most fascinating mirage-like forms!