Last Updated on July 30, 2020 by astrologerbydefault

I have had my share of strange questions from clients but yesterday on this blog I got this one ‘(planetary configurations), and will I be happy in my old age?’. This was a first. ‘Happiness’ is very subjective definition. Eg I go and buy a car for Rs 20 lakh and seeing the car in my garage makes me happy. But then the next week I see an advert saying that this car’s price has gone down and now its available for Rs 18lakh. Immediately I regret buying the car and am unhappy because I bought it!

So what is happiness?

Your horoscope can grant you material stuff, a house, vehicles, a good job, one-one relations and the rest of it. If your kendra houses are powerful your pillars of life are assured. 1^st house will give a confident personality well adjusted in the environment which suits it best. The 4^th house will give nurture, home, security and comforts. The 7^th house will give you successes in one-one relationships. These partnerships may be with other humans or with your inner soul. A strong 10^th house will ensure that the you are able to use the resources of your chart to perform the work you are karmically supposed to. In addition if the kona houses, the angles, the 5^th and 9^th are capable of giving good results you will feel fulfilment. The 5^th house represents personal genius and creativity. The 9^th house represents the auspicious benefits which you have activated from your past life karma and in this life these are your luck, your divine blessings and the one-off event in your life which propel you onwards on higher trajectories. The three dusham-sthan, the 6^th 8^th and 12^th houses are responsible for all the turmoil that you go through in life. If you are protected by benefics from their onslaught your life will be less turbulent.

Your ascendant lord is of especial importance. He is the basis of your life. His position and power can single-handedly improve the quality of the horoscope. He is especially beneficial in the kendra and kona houses. The 5 tara graha, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are responsible for these things as they are linked to each one of the five lower chakras and everything that these chakras signify. All material stuff is from here. If these planets are powerful enough you will get all material things in life. Now the luminaries, the Sun and the Moon are the subjective forces operating at the deepest levels of the consciousness. Sun at the Sahasrara chakra and the Moon at the Ajnya chakra. These two do not ‘give’ anything material thing as such, but power the experience. So to analyse them also consider the houses/signs/planets they are influencing. The only job of these luminaries is to take you onward towards the non-material inner reality. All spiritual stuff from here. And finally the two chhya graha, the astral planets, Rahu/Ketu. These are Life. These push our perfect energy out of balance and the entire effort of getting them back in balance is called ‘Life’. They are responsible for the illusion called life. As per the story/allegory of Samudra manthan, they were one but separated into two, the head and the body of one being. They create motion, they disturb the tri-gun, they are responsible for manifestation. They create. They too operate through the houses/signs/planets they are linked with. They are the direction of your desire to experience. All karmic stuff from here.

If these things in your horoscope are powerful or capable of giving auspicious results then you will not want any essential thing related to life and living. The timings, when will you get these things is dependant on the transits and Dasha periods of the planets. If you have more planets exalted or in their own houses or having good ashtakvarga scores or shad-bala/power, good navamsha placements etc your soul has evolved significantly. You are internally more mature, more able to bear the strain of completing your karmic balance. And often your trials are of the emotional/ spiritual nature than the mere physical.

No one enjoys a life with continuous happiness on the material front. The events of life are a series of struggles, achievements and failures. Life experiences highs and lows and ultimately averages out to a straight line. Over the lives you have lived, you have gained tools, skills which are manifest in this current life. You use these tools to complete your quota of karma. Karma is mysterious. (Suppose you have two choices; the first is to marry, but this marriage will be marked with a short-lived spouse, no progeny and emotional/physical stress with delay in the spiritual progress or become a sanyasi stick to the spiritual and reject the material. Which one of these would make you happier?).

A chart always shows its typical nature, the energy going outwards, pravrutti towards the material or going inwards nivrutti-spiritual. Can you fathom these energies playing around you? For this the relationship between Sun, Moon and the ascendant lord are examined. (Thus for Leo and Cancer ascendants it is sometimes a short cut to the spiritual, if they choose to take it.)

There are 9 graha. If most of the planets in your birth chart are concentrated below the horizon, (ie center of the 1^st house to the center of the 7^th is the sunrise-sunset axis. The 4^th house is the nadir/midnight. The 10^th is the zenith/midday) you are more into rebalancing past karma. Things are not much in your hands as you are buffeted by the winds of your own past karma (good or unfavourable effects both), you are reaping what you had sown. Here you are more focused on the karma you have generated already, you cannot change them much but have to accept them. Eg you cannot change your mother or your family. You are holding the fruits of your past lives in your hands.

If majority of your birth chart’s planets are above the horizon then you have the option of taking decisions on the situations which are being presented to you. You have the luxury of choice, and choose well as this will give your current and future lives a totally different direction. This is an opportunity use it well. This is the life where you have the possibility of generating new karma. Eg the 7^th house, you have the choice of directing your energy, this is the time of the sunset, dusk, the setting sun, here energies are concentrated in very strange manners, do choose your one-one relationships very carefully so as to make the most of these 7^th house energies do not waste them however strong the provocation. (Even if your birth planets are placed equally, they still will be 5 planets in one half and 4 in the other, so one of these two above conditions will be seen)

So where is the happiness? In the material or the spiritual or the karmic? Find it out for yourself.

Real happiness? That is another story. My Sat-Guru would often discuss happiness. It is the state of ‘unsupported’ happiness – Anand, we all desire this in our deepest hearts. The constant state of ‘Anand’ also called Param-anand, cannot be linked to something else, material, spiritual or karmic. If it is so linked then it is not the Param-anand. When the linked thing changes or our perception about this linked thing changes the happiness will get destroyed, like the car example above. So for the infinite happiness you need to find that internal connect to your deepest self, the starting point is a regular spiritual practice.