Every planet in an astrological horoscope will bring both ‘gifts’ and ‘challenges’; sometimes the ‘positive’ side of the planetary placement (i.e. the gifts) is more emphasised than the ‘negative’ (i.e. the challenges), or the other way around, but both the positive and negative are ‘baked in’ to the placement. This means they will bring developmental gifts and challenges we have been karmically tasked with learning to master in our current life. Acknowledging our gifts and strengths can take courage sometimes, as those gifts sometimes come with a karmic obligation or responsibility to develop them and embody them within our work in the world. To understand more about what Vedic philosophy has to offer in light of these life tasks, please consult: ‘What is Vedic Counselling?’

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Bearing this in mind, the Vedic perspective is to fully own our strengths, and to utilise them to the fullest in life, while also acknowledging our weaknesses and working to strengthen them, while understanding that these particular traits may remain as challenges for us throughout our lives. The ‘Inner Critic’, an important aspect of our psyche, is worked with often in therapy. It’s represented astrologically by the planet Saturn and its psychological significations, and is an essential tool in this process. It has a necessary function in bringing things to light that are unsatisfactory, and need improvement, whether within ourselves or in the external world. 

 

The other function it can take, far less helpful and more attacking, is when it becomes an ‘inner bully’ – the negative expression of Saturn, and seeks to stick a negatively-charged affective (feeling) state to our core essence. Saturn is the planet of consequence, karma, and punishment, if we are not careful, the Inner Critic can take on a ‘punishing’ role within our psyche. Whether it is focused on things we can change, that truly need changing, or whether it is demanding that we become a completely different person, can be the most important question when dialoguing with this part.

 

Acknowledging our challenges and limitations, usually takes courage, and pushes us to deeper levels of self-responsibility and ownership, while in many cases causing the most profound and lasting personal growth and development. The trick, especially if a person has a very strong, attacking Inner-Critic ‘part’, is to not use the fact of these limitations as ‘evidence’ of an indwelling sense of there being something ‘wrong’ or fundamentally ‘flawed’ in our inherent essence - an easy go-to place for the overly punitive Inner Critic to get to. 

 

Saturn is the planet representing our total life experience of limitations, hardships, struggles, criticism, coldness and harshness, discipline, endurance and mortality/endings. Saturn placed unhappily in the 4th house of mother, home and early childhood experience, or Saturn closely conjunct the Moon, or placed in the 4th house from the Moon, or placed close to the Ascendant degree in the first house or aspecting this degree closely from another angular house, are all placements that can indicate our Inner Critic is particularly harsh and oppressive. Other house placements of Saturn can dampen and colour our mind and emotional world with excessive negativity, but the placements described above are most relevant when considering how Shani (Saturn) may have affected the crucial early years development of our Psyche. To explore more about how Astrology can be of service in dealing with challenging life events, you can take a look at: ’The therapeutic power of Astrology in times of difficulty and suffering’.

 

The unconditional acceptance of ourselves (the main healing agent in softening an excessively harsh Inner Critic), including our flaws, brings us into close contact with our own innate narcissism – a quality that we all possess to some degree, regardless of the current societal (and much needed) discussion around how destructive it can become if it reaches the level of serious disturbance – as exemplified by the condition of narcissistic personality disorder. 

 

The very human need to feel special, exceptional in some way, and recognised or respected, can revolt at the idea of being truly, deeply okay with a mature acceptance of our imperfections and flaws. Ironically, our inner growth would progress us closer to inner perfection, if we were able to achieve this. This isn’t an act that happens at one time, and is then complete. As the Christian aphorism makes clear – ‘pride comes before a fall’; life has an ongoing way of revealing our limitations to us at times when we may least want to see them, perhaps in a time of egoic rivalry and competition with another, who may well be just as entrenched in their narcissism as we are, just for example.

 

Multiple planetary placements in Leo, and to some degree Aries or Sagittarius (the fire signs), especially if afflicted by Saturn and/or Rahu or Mars, can suggest a drive to feel special, exceptional or ‘larger than life’. The fire signs generally speaking can create the need to have a mythic story about oneself, where we are the hero, saviour, great leader, or exceptional being (in way that can be deeply competitive), that is the star of our own story. 

 

This is not to denigrate the fire signs; they provide crucial energy, courage, self-belief, leadership and drive to achieve our goals in life. The naturally warm, confident, self-expressive, shining energy of Leo, and the other fire signs, if aspected by the Sun or other benefic planets well placed, can act as a wonderful ‘alternative' sense of self, to the cold and harsh inner world of an unhappy Saturn, reassuring us of our inherent value and worth, regardless of how messy and imperfect we may be at times.

 

The paradox here is that people with placements mentioned above may well have exceptional abilities, or some significant role to carry out with their lives in the wider world, while it’s also true that this inner grandiosity, for want of a better word, can lend itself to an excessively inflated sense of being greater and more important than others. If we observe our life experience closely, we will find that often the most humble and unassuming people can surprise us with profound gifts and abilities, or have something to teach us that may be particularly relevant to us at that time in our lives. 

 

Saturn’s role in our lives is to ground us in a state of experiential humility, often only learned through many difficult and painful experiences. If we honour and surrender to this process, we can then transcend the more limiting, immature egoism that most of us are subject to in younger years, and can then bring our abilities into the world within a humble container of openness to learning and growing, which allows those abilities to be more easily and helpfully absorbed by others. This is why so many of the world’s spiritual traditions, through the lived experience of their mystics, saints and seers, describe the systematic cultivation of humility as being absolutely crucial to success on the spiritual path, and life more generally.

 

Here are some quotes, taken from the writings of some of the world greatest spiritual teachers, on the issue of humility:

 

“One should be humbler than a blade of grass, more tolerant than a tree, ready to offer all respect to others, and expect none in return.” – Chaitanya Mahaprabhu 

 

“As a tree laden with fruit bends low, so a truly great man bends humbly.” – Ramakrishna 

 

“The more you humble yourself, the more you are exalted; the more you are proud, the more you are humbled.” – Ramana Maharshi 

 

“Whose mind is well trained in the ways of awakening, who is without conceit and passion—him the devas indeed hold dear.” – The Buddha

 

“When you think you are right and others are wrong, that’s pride. Let go of it — then you will see truth.” – Ajahn Chah 

 

“Humility is truth.” – St. Teresa of Avila 

 

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” – Jesus Christ

 

“Be like the soil: so that even when they tread upon you, you give them flowers.” – Rumi 

 

“We are appearances, shadows on the face of the one light” – Ibn Arabi 

 

“I am just a simple monk” – The Dalai Lama

 

By cultivating humility, as the above quotes make clear, we become more and more of the best we can be. Saturn is the planet signifying humility, and if this quality is cultivated, and not made into a narcissistically inflated virtue in and of itself, its lessons become part of the solution to the deflated and negative sense of self-worth that it can suggest in a person’s horoscope. So, in another paradox we see in astrology, and life generally, the ‘poison’ can become the cure. Saturn’s maturation at the age of 35 to 36 usually marks a turning point in our ability to ground and integrate its lessons into our life and being in a more healthy and less self-attacking way. To be clear; true humility is radiant clarity, not self-denigration or punishment.

 

Spiritual practices that cultivate an ongoing connection with a benevolent, unconditionally loving, wider reality and intelligence (i.e. the divine, however we understand it), can act as a powerful antidote to this feeling state. The Buddhist practice of Metta-Bhavana, or ‘loving kindness meditation’, can create strong resilient states of love and acceptance for ourselves and others around us that we may find challenging. A simple example of this practice would be to take a meditative posture, and slowly repeat these phrases internally and silently, while also connecting with a bodily feeling that corresponds with the phrases we are repeating: 

 

“May I be well. May I be happy. May I be peaceful and calm. May I be free from inner and outer dangers”.

 

These phrases can then be extended to people close to us, that we care deeply about, then to people we have a neutral feeling towards, and finally to people who we have relational difficulties with. This practice can be used without having specific allegiance to the Buddhist tradition, and in conjunction with any other spiritual practices we may have. The point here is to cultivate a state of unconditional good-will, or “unconditional positive regard” as Carl Rogers put it, that we can direct at will to whomever we wish to. The human heart is unlimited in this capacity, and many people will live their entire lives without exploring it. 

 

If we have received a consistent and excessively negative perception of ourselves, from figures in our early life, or even later years, these negative messages and the corresponding feeling states become internalised, or ‘introjected’, and can congeal and coagulate into a deeply held sense of worthlessness or not being ‘good enough’, no matter what we do. This feeling, which could be called a part of the Inner Critic, often resides at a deeper level than our everyday waking consciousness, closer to our core identity (although not the same as it), and can bubble up from that level in a way where it distorts and contaminates our thoughts, speech and actions.

 

Often, an experience of being harshly criticised in life, making a mistake that causes negative consequences for ourself, or having an experience that is humiliating, belittling or reflects negatively on us, can activate this deeper layer of feeling worthless or lacking. The crucial work here is to generate awareness, by becoming aware that our mind has been identified, or trapped in this feeling state. The sheer act of becoming aware of it, should slowly bring about the realisation that it is a repeating pattern – it’s the same every time, and doesn’t acknowledge evidence to the contrary. It’s predictable, boring, and blocks our personal growth, it keeps mechanically repeating the same old feelings and thoughts, like a broken record.

 

Starting to generate an alternative ‘positive inner parent’ part, by using loving and parental phrases of affirmation, can act to affirm our positive traits, and our underlying inherent worth and value. The Jungian idea of ‘imaginal transformation’, or ‘re-visioning’, is relevant here; in this process we recall an earlier experience involving an interaction with another which was damaging to our sense of self, pause at the moment of pain or greatest distress, and then ask: 

 

“What would a wise, compassionate and loving person have said, or how would they have behaved in that moment?”

 

Or - “What could have happened then that would have brought healing, acceptance and meaning?”

 

These questions can be asked either from the perspective of ourselves in that situation, or from the perspective of the other - to create a more positive template for what we ideally would have received from them. You can also ask purely from your perspective: “What does the wise part of me think about this? What do they have to tell me about this situation? Would they have done anything differently?”

 

The different permutations of what you can ask are endless, but hopefully this gives a sense of what this exercise is about. Once some alternative, positive messages have been accessed in the re-visioning, they can then be practiced as silent, feeling affirmations, when similar experiences occur in the present day, that trigger that same Inner Critic part.

 

Sometimes, the underlying motivation of the inner critic is to protect against anticipated external criticism, which we may have received in the past in a way that was particularly damaging, stinging or difficult to let go of. It’s a big ask, but in these moments, if we have the presence of mind, the awareness of our internal process, we can acknowledge its presence, take a few deep breaths, take a leap of faith and follow through with our action and then see afterwards what resulted: Did we receive criticism in this instance? Did the situation result in another scarring experience, or was it less painful than the Inner Critic was imagining it would be?

 

At other times, the inner critic surfaces as a response to the realisation that we are not perfect and have flaws; as a kind of rigid intolerance, or narcissistic defence, to the fact that we are limited, have blind spots and often don’t meet the idealised standard of perfection our mind may be expecting from us. The thing this idealised self or grandiosity doesn’t see, is that its expectation of us is inherently unrealistic; that being imperfect doesn’t equate in any way to being ‘less than’ others, or fatally flawed. If we can imagine what it would be like to be truly ‘perfect’ and free of flaws, we would become robotic, predictable, immune to valuable feedback, inhuman and taken completely outside of life’s engine of progressive growth towards a realisation of our true spiritual identity.

 

It could be argued that the great saints of world history did reach a state of spiritual perfection, but this isn’t to be confused with the ideal of external perfection – even the greatest saints had their own idiosyncrasies and less-than-perfect behaviours, and were not privy to all the answers of existence; they didn’t become ‘God’, in the sense of being exactly the same as the ultimate intelligence that is the source and ground of all existence.

 

It can be helpful to give the Inner Critic part a name, or draw it, imagine it as a character, or write a letter from its position to ourselves, and think about where it tends to be felt in the body, if anywhere. If we can trace the development of the Inner Critic through our lives, this often bring a sense of understanding and compassion to it – which is an absolutely fundamental point here – the aim isn’t to criticise the Inner Critic into non-existence, its story needs to be heard appreciated and understood. We can thank it for any ways in which it may have been working to protect us or save us from painful experiences, while also acknowledging it may have outlived its usefulness, and may not be the most appropriate part to listen to in any given situation.