Hungry Ghosts

Tiny throat. Giant mouth. I haven't actually read recently whether the Buddhist story talks about giant mouths and tiny throats or what, but I have changed my hungry ghosts to be about consumption for its own sake not even tied to hunger. I think it's a kind of hungry ghosts Buddhist imagery didn't quite describe.

Who could imagine a whole collective body so divorced from its own hunger that what motivates it to consume, despite its inability to be nourished, is the fear of not consuming? The fear of space. The fear of stillness. The fear of so many things that are needed to live.

I'm choking lately on excess when what I crave when I drop into my body is space. I'm noticing that I'm trying race ahead because technology and curiosity have converged in this way where I can get a firehouse of only the most hyper-palatable "content" delivered right into my head...but all of the precious places to store knowledge in the metabolized ways...the curated and embodied ways, they only have so much flesh to land in, so many waking hours to be experienced. AI can speed up everything, and all it does for a hungry ghost is make eternity feel short. Unoptimized. The algorithm that keeps feeding us more, even when our eyes ache and our stomachs turn, is a hungry ghost that learned to code. I didn't get to sleep until 4am last night. I think it's because I was so juiced up on coding, the workshop I facilitated, the socializing an with engaging new friend. I am in whitewater rapids of ideas, creativity, possibility. But what I crave is landing somewhere long enough to make meaning of it all...meaning that can be savored. Stillness, spaciousness that stretches the present enough that I feel like I can have full body contact with the surface of reality. Intimacy with being. Pillow talk with purpose. Landing into my own aliveness. Settling deeply enough into now that I can reach my hand across the hungry expanse and ask …have you had enough? And we laugh while we lay on the grass and marvel at the oaks and waxwings.

"In the classic imagery, hungry ghosts (Sanskrit: preta, Chinese: èguǐ) have huge, distended bellies and needle‑thin necks or tiny mouths. They’re starving, obsessed with getting what they crave, but their bodies literally can’t take in enough to feel full. Everything they eat turns to fire, or ash, or filth. No matter how much they reach for, they stay empty. "

*breathe*

Lately writing is a process of allowing things to land. Of slowing down. It's part of me trying to metabolize overconsumption...even while I too feel the urge to accelerate the overconsumption. Urgency + care + capacity have a seductive quality...that siren song of "solve it all!" is taking its toll on me somatically. I'm enjoying the slowing down that writing by hand requires. I also am really enjoying reading my own writing because no one else can write my thoughts. There's a lusciousness to what is generated in the squishy substrate behind my own eyes. Writing is itself a ritual of presence. My astrology writing lab is also inviting me back into the uniqueness of every moment both through broad cycles of time and the simple act of setting aside time that isn't for consuming more Content™️. Only I can answer what feels alive when I look at an abstraction of this moment.

Oh shameless plug for Starchart if you are a writer/astrologer too. (also let's be friends please)

TRANSITS TO ZEN · MAY 14, 2026 · 8:00 PM EDT
Mars square Chiron-0.22° separating
Uranus trine NNode0.47° separating
Neptune sextile Mars-0.62° separating

A square is a tension that doesn't resolve. It generates movement and friction at once. It asks for change. Mars in the sky is currently in its own crib in Aries. Mars feels very comfy and fully equipped to hold its own in any conflicts. My natal Chiron is in Cancer, conjunct my natal Moon by sign (I am grateful not by degree 😅) My natal Cancer Chiron in the 12th carries a wounding around being nurtured. I carry a belief — one I recognize as foreign and painful — that my needs cannot be met by those around me. That belief leads me to hide myself and makes it harder to see what resourcing is actually available. Aries is my natal 9th house. Mars is here to add movement and friction and fire which can often illuminate in a dance with my 12th house watery Chiron. The 9th house is noisy today and it's been noisy for a while. It's got the transiting Moon, Saturn, Chiron, and Neptune all ganging up along with Mars. I gotta be honest...I hate to see an Aries pile up. It's got a quality of making visible where sustainability isn't. Conflict, contagion, collapse, all kinds of collisions that can be excruciating to live through, and some won't live through them. The 9th house is the frameworks of belief. Where you reach beyond the familiar into inquiry, research, travel, deep thought. It's all of the processes that expand your sense of horizon in this life. A 9th house in Aries for me makes me particularly sensitive to noticing systems of coercion, control, confinement, anything that undermines dignity, sovereignty and belonging.

Doesn't opting out of receiving the care you so desperately want to be nourished by (the wounded urge to hide when vulnerable) undermine your access to dignity, sovereignty and belonging? That's the gut punch in the sky today for me.

How are the planets bullying you today?