Ode to Astrology: That Cursive Writing in Them Skies Above

“Que será, será.

Whatever will be, will be.

The future's not ours to see.”

Doris Day

I cannot but marvel at the night sky canvas filled with stars and imagine how they influence our lives on this tiny blue planet. We have various tools at our disposal to try to make sense of what is happening to our human lot down here and they can range from philosophy and religion to astrology and the occult arts and humanities. I am omitting sciences here not because I don’t believe in them or their utility but rather because disciplines like biology tend to be microcosmic and reductionistic in nature and are often set and grounded in their views and outlook; to illustrate, the one astronomy course I took as an elective (and as one of my science requirements) bored me to tears despite its grand scope and scale.

Astrology is to me akin to psychoanalysis like a distant cousin or a half-sister. It expresses a deep hidden truth that the more earthbound sciences (choose to?) miss out on. Astrology not unlike Tarot or I Ching dives into the unconscious and unearths gems and treasures that are not visible to the naked eye and impervious to cold facts and hard-boiled logic. It is not about selecting one or the other; it is about acknowledging that reason is valuable but so is our intuitive sense, something that we often ignore, underplay, or disregard to our own detriment.

Full disclosure: my own personal relationship with astrology has been spotty. I have managed to cover the whole gamut and spectrum starting off with teenage curiosity and with my young adult version casting doubts, as he was skeptical about its claims whereas at this stage of my life (i.e. midlife crisis), I find myself on the other side, hence completing my character arc from a cautious believer to a full-fledged fan and perhaps a few steps short of being a fanatic.

That I should eventually embrace astrology again and more warmly should not come as a surprise because I have been a fervent believer in oracles with some decades-long practice of reading and consulting Tarot cards that have been spot-on, precise, and uncanny in their predictions, alongside my unusual and uncommon habit of finding numerous playing and occasionally Tarot cards on the streets that would then guide me in my personal and professional life, including and most notably The World Tarot card, which at the time encouraged me to continue not only with my blog endeavor (Arash’s World) but to expand into podcast territory. The signs spoke, and I listened and acted upon them.

All these arts are linked and interconnected and are somewhat unfortunately labeled, stigmatized, and categorized under the occult rubric, which if you strip away the negative connotations can be simply seen as the diving into the unknown, a mysterious and mystic yet certainly existent and feebly tangible realm of sorts.

So what made me reconsider and turn around and embrace astrology more firmly? On a more objective level, I began to wonder how large physical bodies in space can affect each other in different ways. This goes beyond the gravitational push and pull and I’m not referring to spooky entanglements (though they are assuredly cool) but it also includes how emotions and perhaps outcomes may be influenced by a physical body from afar.

The moon does not merely affect the ebbs and tides but also our emotions, leading to restless and sleepless nights for some or a general surplus of positive and negative feelings for others. All the while, the moon is such a small body compared to the innumerable stars and planets all around us, and so, it is not farfetched to acknowledge that there may be something there.

Yet, more importantly, I have seen the stars work their magic on a more personal level. On one hand, there seems to be consensus and overlap among different readings and horoscopes. Of course, there may be fluctuations in how the data is interpreted and represented according to the given astrologer but there tends to be enough common ground across the board. A parallel I could think of, and I have mentioned earlier, would be psychoanalysis, another discipline that I moved heartily towards believing in its insights fervently and with all the fibers of my triple mind-body-spirit being.

Astrology like psychoanalysis is essentially an art form. For instance, a symbol in a dream may slightly change according to a psychoanalyst or the patient in question but there tends to be a general agreement and a baseline consensus among the professionals and practitioners.

Yet the poignant level of detail, depth, and accuracy never fails to surprise me in these fields. Sometimes my horoscope would not predict what happens but rather give me a very precise and uncanny snapshot of my emotional state of a given moment, which I can immediately verify to be true, and which is a staple of Tarot card readings that are referring to past or present circumstances.

At times, it may feel as if someone either has found access to my thoughts or to my journal or even both but that’s crazy talk of course, even crazier than what I am contemplating and saying in this blog post. But there is an at times jarring and spinetingling realization that there is more than is apparent to the eye or the logical brain.

I want to thank astrology and all astrologers that are engaged in this noble profession and who day in day out face the skeptics and non-believers with poise and confidence and their heads up; they know this to be true deep in their hearts and souls and are fully aware that their profession is noble and of help to others. Astrology is not unlike religion, but it is freer and more precise while fluctuating according to outward circumstances. It is about reading the signs and then coloring and interpreting them but one does not control the signs and becomes only a messenger and transmitter of them.

Also, over the last year or so, astrology has been serving as my unofficial guide and therapist (interestingly a both cheaper and more accurate and more competent one). What used to be sporadic findings of cards is now a regular daily practice for me. Not all predictions and observations are and come true of course. But when they are right, they are exact. And it is sometimes hard truths that I must face while also offering encouragement when I find myself drenched in doubt or stuck in a quagmire. The other benefit is that this source, like the other occult practices, is wise and sees beyond oneself in space and time and it can even read other people’s minds and intentions.

In a sense, Doris Day gets it wrong. The future can be read if you look at it closely. It is like reading tea leaves, runes, or cards; at the same time, you do not need any of them, you just need to understand to read the signs, which comes in the shape of coincidences (which incidentally do not exist and are not coincidental after all), happenstance, synchronicity, and intuition. The latter is similar to gut feelings but goes much deeper and is often harder to discern yet much more accurate and reliable with its straight and express connection line to the heart.

Moreover, there are two realms that exist simultaneously and may or may not be connected to each other. On one hand, the free will that we have, and which often comes with a surplus of mistakes and errors (such is the lot of being an imperfect human), while the other domain is fate, namely that which is embedded and engraved in the stars and cannot be changed, moved, or altered. Occasionally, they may be linked to each other in a certain degree or angle, at least in the sense of awareness, where one needs to come to a certain conclusion or gain certain insights so that one can fully embrace and embark upon one’s destiny.

I believe that many of our major life changes, including our eventual demise, fall into the fixed and permanent category. We can rail against it; we can try to avoid it, lock ourselves up in a bunker or a germfree hotel but when the time has come, we must leave one way or another. There’s no escaping that part of our fate.

Intuitively, I feel that finding true love or encountering one’s soul mate is also part of that domain. This gives me a sense of hope with a certain relief since I may, with my free will, mess things up (romantically things almost always go haywire but not always nor necessarily due to my own fault and misgivings) but that the stars will already know this and take it into account by correcting, adjusting, and guiding me along the way. Eventually, they will put me on the path that I am meant to tread as opposed to the maze I am currently finding myself in. To quote from a motet by Bach (though not the one you are thinking of), I do not let you, but you bless me, nonetheless. *

 

*“Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn” BMV 1164 by Johann Christoph Bach who was Johann Sebastian’s father’s cousin and not to be confused with Bach’s son Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach.

Quinn Memorial Lecture 2025: Selective Attention and the Inner versus the Outer World

It is that time of the year again when I venture out to UBC to engage and grapple with the current year’s Quinn Memorial Lecture. This time around, I had to rush to make it on time as my online university course ended just an hour before the event was set to begin. But as usual, I ended up being early, so I had more than enough time to settle comfortably and wait for the lecture to start.

In fact, I have been going to the series for over a dozen years now. The first talk I attended was on “Free Will, Neuroscience and Personal Responsibility” by Michael Gazzaniga. There were a couple of Quinn Memorial Lectures I had to miss due to work scheduling conflicts, and then, there was the pandemic, which crossed out and canceled entire lectures and events across the board, including a beloved concert series celebrating my then-favorite composer Ludwig Van. (In case, you’re curious, my post-pandemic go-to composer has been Mozart, so in either case, I find myself in excellent and capable hands.)

Back to our sheep, as the French would say. Incidentally, today’s topic was selective attention and for someone whose mind tends to wander, not so much because of a lack of focus but rather on focusing on too many things at once, I was curious to learn more about this tendency of mine. Digression is my middle name as you may note and witness in this post of mine, heck, who am I kidding, the whole blog is all about digressing!

But I digress. Yet I must confess that from the get-go, my attention was split. I was there to listen and take notes because it is something I do at these lectures with the aim of reproducing the content as faithfully as I am able, alongside my own thoughts and reflections. But the split existed since the Winnipeg Jets were fighting for their survival at the Stanley Cup series, so I would glance or could not help peeking at the scoreboard, which updated the score on an infrequent basis.

The title of this talk was, as you may have already noted in the image, “Focusing attention on sensory x memory contents to guide behavior” by Dr. Anna C. Nobre, who was inexplicably nicknamed and addressed by everyone as Kia. So, I shall permit myself to continue with the same trend.

Kia’s talk was about the outward and inward arrows of attention, their influence and interplay in relation to memory, both stored and incoming. As she stated in one of her slides (I’m not making this up nor reciting from memory here): “Memory and attention work together linking past and future to guide adaptive behavior.”

So, what does this mean? Well, on one hand, we have stimulation, which could be objects or events that lead - or at least have the potential to lead - to perception and action. At the same time, this interacts and is in flux with our internal attention, which is comprised of memories, either in our working memory or as part of our long-term memory. This then works as a way of anticipating, prioritizing, and selecting information, data, and stimuli, and would then potentially trigger or prime our reactions and actions upon them.

In other words, we have not only a perception and action loop, but we are dealing with our own cognition and objects in space versus objects in time (basically moments in space) as well as the inner world, thoughts, reflections, feelings, emotions, distractions, what-have-you. That includes and involves stimulation and processes that have been stored in the past leaving trails and traces in the present moment.

Hence, selective attention is not a state but a function. Put differently, goals and objectives from the inside are guiding the process of attention, whether we acknowledge this or not, and they all interact with the outside world. These “memory traces” then aid us with picking up signals and relevant cues from the world.

In these cases, voluntary and involuntary attention are happening together, and this is a highly dynamic system, which can also be flexible and reversible as we are actively engaging with the world. This is occurring because the brain is shifting and moving constantly between intangible memories and concrete sensory objects.

To illustrate this, we can look at two different examples. Imagine you are sitting cross-legged and meditating. Your focus is on your breath. Now as you are predominantly switched to our inner world, the outer world may be tugging on your attention strings. At this point, we are ignoring the inner distractions, such as random thoughts seeping into your focus, and we will also ignore and disregard the pain or discomfort in your legs as you are not new to this meditation practice, at least in this scenario.

But what about the car alarm sounding on your street? You may immediately switch back to your meditation because it is not yours. As a matter of fact, you don’t even have a car, so you’re all good. The situation would be different if it was your building’s fire alarm. At that point, you would most likely - and hopefully - stop the meditation and quickly get yourself to a safe place.

Here we see how the inner and outer world is vying for your attention, but you are selecting and prioritizing which one to attend to. In my next example, the situation is more complex as you are about to fulfil a task: making coffee.

Now as I have written previously on “How the Brain makes Coffee and dislikes Multitasking,” according to cognitive psychologist David Badre, a seemingly simple task is much more complicated than we think; making coffee involves a number of processes that are previously stored in our memory and this is being retrieved and held in our working memory as we are going about the given task. In this case, we are also dealing with sequencing as you need to put in the coffee before running the water, or else, you just end up with hot water.

But what happens when the unexpected intrudes and disrupts your whole procedure? What if the filter is not in its usual place, or worse, you have actually run out of filters? In such situations, your focus would shift toward the outer world where it is not about making coffee but finding a way of procuring the necessary bits and pieces to make it happen. Coffee, especially in the morning, is the tangible object we want to physically drink not to just imagine or think about.

In such situations, you may resort to creative thinking or even use your intuition to solve problems. In fact, that was the question I asked Kia. She told me it was a good one but at this point, she was looking at simpler tasks and experiments so that she could provide the facts and hard data on them.

Once these were fully established, the goal would be to do more complex sets of experiments to test such fascinating and more juicy (my word not hers) concepts and notions like creativity and intuition. Although inherently interesting, it is also admittedly much tougher to study.

It is great, however, that the groundwork is being set. In her lecture, she gave a number of experiments they had done, including some that involved retrocue tests and other studies that measured and studied tiny movements of the eye, and those ended up being moments where my selective attention zoned out and focused on other matters, so my memory and knowledge are hazy regarding these points.

The simple fact is that I did not find them interesting enough to warrant my attention. This is perhaps the main reason that I’m not a psychologist. The most interesting aspects of human nature are hard to pinpoint and prove in a matter-of-fact scientific way, especially since each individual is different and their inner world is inherently unique and not comparable to others. This has also been a failing, in my view, of Freud’s overall attempt to turn psychoanalysis into a science. But guess what? Oops, I did it again! I digressed.

Nonetheless, there are a few takeaways that I found most interesting in the 2025 Quinn Memorial Lecture that I would like to flesh out here. First off, as previously mentioned, it is not either/or, or one or the other but these shifts of attention can occur very quickly and even simultaneously. When crossing domains, it will have an effect on reaction time and there may be accuracy costs, and there are studies to prove that.

Furthermore, there is no “domain police” (Kia’s words) whereas other control functions and parameters may be at play. It may even be a battle or an interplay between external and internal domains. In other words, at times, they may be at odds, and at other odds, they may be working together hand-in-hand.

In the end, our brain wants to help us and help us figure things out. Another interesting bit about the brain that Kia mentioned is that the brain is frugal and super lazy. I shared that observation with my teenage son, and he agreed whole-heartedly with the finding from personal experience.  

In fact, the brain does not want to waste energy and tries to do as little as possible to get things done. This is not necessarily a bad thing as there are a lot of things on the brain’s plate, so it tries to cut corners as much as possible. Yet, in certain situations, this may complicate things or lead towards actions that are not in our best interest.

For instance, when we need quick information, we may rely on experiences that may be too general, and in some cases, they may be inaccurate or not offer a whole story. We may pounce upon or hold onto salient images or perceptions in our mind that are not based on rigorous analysis but on vague feelings or impressions. In those cases, we may be vulnerable and susceptible to hear-say, gossip, or prejudices instead of taking the time and effort to look at the situation in a more objective, balanced, and reasonable manner.  

A final thing that Kia mentioned in this talk is that essentially everything is in our head. This is because we perceive the world through our eyes, thoughts, and experiences. In fact, she admitted that there is nothing but inner world and that everything is essentially thought or experienced through and by each of us. Yet such essentially mystic musings would preclude any kind of scientific study, so we need to accept, confirm and reaffirm the outer world as a separate entity, which interacts with us in the same way that we interact with it.

And in that process, we learn and grow and gain knowledge and wisdom. But to do so, we ought to first overcome our inherent neuroscientific laziness, we need to accept that we do not already have all the knowledge and information at hand – that we do not know it all - and then, choose and select to be open and flexible to incoming information, stimulation, and experiences, these objects and moments in space and time.

 

The Sudden Awakening of Canada’s Slumbering National Pride

These are strange times when one must not only state the obvious but also mean it and wholeheartedly stand by it: Canada is an independent sovereign nation. It is not a state of another country, it is not up for sale, and it wants to live in peace and harmony with its neighbors. The fundamental values of liberty, freedom of choice, equality, human rights, and democracy are not only cherished and valued here, but we know deep in our hearts and bones that they are worth fighting for.

Yes, Canada is relatively young and not a perfect country, but it has forged ahead with strong values and good and well-meaning intentions while also setting itself apart from its neighboring superpower by making conscious choices and efforts steeped in peacemaking and respect of other nations, cultures, and ethnicities with an official bilingual system and a living practice and emblem of multiculturalism.

There is lot to be proud of, and yet, it is rarely demonstrated or talked about in terms of national pride, for different reasons and under separate pretexts. As an immigrant to Canada, I was surprised to see how Canadians often downplayed and subdued national pride. Unlike their often boisterous and unapologetically proud neighbor, this northern side of the continent was rather humble and humbly modest.

Almost sixty years ago to the day, we officially adopted our red and white Maple Leaf flag but they were not waved about unless there was a serious international hockey game in the offing, and flags could be spotted here and there - albeit diminishing in recent times - on the first of July, Canada’s Day and a sort of counterpart to the July 4^th of our American neighbor - minus the grand festivities, the overflowing enthusiasm, and the fireworks.

Why do Canadians not embrace their nation more wholeheartedly, I asked myself, a previous asylum seeker who has grown up in Germany. Here in Canada, there seemed to be a block and reluctance to freely express national pride, as if Canadians were insecure about themselves and their nation or just incredibly shy to make any waves and as if they were uncomfortable putting themselves in the spotlight. Back in Germany, we would hear very little about this large country up north and would hence imagine snow-covered huts and cabins, waterfalls, diligent hard-working beavers, and lumberjacks hunting for bears.

And yet, this modest poise and calm seem like a cool outward veneer, a type of facade that could be punctured, and then erupt in wild and sudden outbursts, particularly during hockey games where bodychecks would be dispensed and delivered with glee and the gloves would be dropped; in fact, fighting has become a staple of this popular national sport.

Who could tell, especially if day in and day out, we would see Canadians everywhere apologizing for everything regardless of if they were at fault or not, and they would be walking on eggshells afraid of accidentally and even unconsciously offending others and avoiding microaggressions like the plague, except of course, the previously mentioned fighting in the ice rink, which was more bravura and fun and games than a blood sport.

This contrasted with the brash expression of Americans and the direct and upfront demeanor of Germans. With each of these nationalities, there would be not much mincing of words and especially with the former, there would be no shortage of personal, often unsolicited opinions no matter how outrageous they would seem to others. Germans in terms of their nationality and the expression thereof were heavily burdened by their horrible and devastating past and their flags would be the exclusive domain of international soccer games, their source of pride but also the vortex of pain considering the lack of success and accomplishments in recent times.

Yet the American dream and this lavish, carefree, and often careless lifestyle were filled with an enthusiasm, a sense of freedom and unfiltered patriotism that in some ways are the envy of many countries, including us here in Canada. Evidently, the American experiment is not without its flaws, detours, or shortcomings. The issue of race and the unconcealed practice of slavery as well as oppression of others tend to be ignored or brushed aside.

Moreover, the involvement in political wars and international affairs, be it Vietnam or the Middle Eastern wars are downplayed and even ignored, while the focus and attention are posited more on positive results and outcomes, be it their budding economy, their innovation, their steadfast and unwavering determination and the firm handheld belief that anything is indeed possible, and no dream is out of reach. These are commendable perspectives and attitudes as long as they are carefully calibrated, and checked and counterbalanced with the negative aspects and counterparts, the push and pull and gravity of truths and reality.

When it comes to Canada, we seem to have been carrying an invisible stain of guilt and shame all along and this exploded when news hit us regarding the atrocities of residential schools. No nation is perfect, and every country has its dark side and its bleak past, but this hit hard and temporarily sank the little pride that Canada still had in itself. The same way blindly believing in oneself despite and against the facts and reality can be detrimental to the psyche, being haunted and weighed down by feelings of guilt and shame are also harmful.

Over the past years, this has gone into overdrive with the implicit approval and even insistence of the government. Any person who was or could be oppressed was hailed as a hero and any who had privilege, whether merited or not, whether through their hard work or not, was seen as potentially evil or was seen as part of the problem. Not only would a large portion of the population be accused of engaging in “microaggressions” – a vague term that could be applied to pretty much anything - on a daily basis, but they would also be considered racist unless they were from a minority, who were incidentally given carte blanche and were automatically and a priori exempt from any potential blame or wrongdoing.

This led to an obsession and preoccupation of offending or slighting others that it became even frowned upon to wish someone Merry Christmas or for busses to support our local hockey team because anyone who did not like hockey would and could be potentially offended. This misguided relativism dilated, weakened, and undermined many of our traditions, practices, and even values, so we wished people happy holidays to be as inclusive as possible while ironically excluding large swaths of our population.

This untenable and unsustainable state continued, and people would even avoid saying “Happy Canada Day” as if the nation was a dirty word and needed to be eradicated and replaced with something else or a different name. Any citizen with an ounce of national pride would be cancelled or ridiculed and be “educated” and put on the supposedly right path and side of history.

All this continued and put in question our identity and values until our very own sovereignty and existence came under threat. It was a seeming running “joke” by the American president that was actually meant as a serious comment underlining and harboring a malignant intention of usurping this young country that has stood on its feet and has a strong reputation and standing in the world. Suddenly, we all woke up, put our elbows up and showed grit and stamina that no one, perhaps not even ourselves, thought we had.

Suddenly we realize that we have taken so much for granted as we have either wallowed in self-pity, shame and guilt or were divided and polarized, with all of this weakening our resolve, will, and confidence along the way. Yet this existential threat to our land and our home put us back on the map. We may have weakened but we remain strong and resilient, and we can come together and fight for our freedom and independence as we have done in the past and shall in the future.