Jessica Shepherd's Blog, page 24

If you naturally use stress and resistance to leverage movement in your life, you may be disappointed right now. With five planets retrograde, including our action hero Mars, there is nothing to push against you. It can be harder to get things done. Wait for it. I wanted to write this piece and with retrograde Mercury in the sign of “the silent one” and I had to wait for it. Just as Taurus wears a situation or person down through perseverance, I made like Sitting Bull, which fits the current climate. Right now we can accomplish so much by taking a feminine approach to goals, going within, nurturing and balancing our energies, enjoying the best life has to offer.

There are two feminine planets in astrology – the Moon and Venus, the High Priestess and the Empress, respectively. The High Priestess holds sway over the spiritual realm of our inner knowing and intuition while the Empress’ dominion is the natural, sensual world. In my chart the Moon and Venus, are square, in conflict, each arguing with the other. More often than not, the High Priestess/Moon wins, choosing to do inner work over other pleasures. The High Priestess sits on her throne, lovingly nurturing her inner oasis, consulting the ethers for answers to life’s big questions, while Venus/Empress mopes about with hasn’t-seen-the-salon-in-months hair, feeling cheated out of sunsets, ice cream, friendship and laughter, imploring her to come out to play, already. I admire friends for whom laughter and laziness comes so naturally. I drink from their well like a dry tongued desert-parched gypsy. I could farm Venus out to others entirely, but like the burr in my existential side, that darn square continually motivates me to intentionally nurture her, in myself.

This Taurus season I’ve been playing in the imagination of my female energy body, nourishing it with color and imagery because it makes me feel good and peaceful. I’ve been gardening. I’ve been listening to lots of music. I’ve been singing my heart out while driving, and when my husband interrupted me before I finished a song, to his clear annoyance, I made him… wait for it…till I felt complete. I’m being stubborn about what I enjoy. This goes against the grain of everything many of us are taught as women. We’re taught to over-give, and ask for little. We’re taught we have to push to make things happen. Yet when Empress energy is positively self-indulgent, when instead of stepping back, we step up and satisfy our self, we become balanced and magnetic.

To work with Empress energy we can take a cue from Mother Nature. The flower accomplishes everything by receptively waiting for the bee and working with her own flower energy. She doesn’t get all tied up in knots wondering, “Where is he? I told him to be here twenty minutes ago!!” but instead stays well-hydrated, digs her roots securely into the Earth, feels the sunlight on her petals, wonders at her own lushness and fragrant scent. From all appearances it would look like she’s doing nothing. But… wait for it…she is intentionally nurturing the space for life to find her, for the creative yang force to softly land on her petals, and make a proposition. In the animal world this may look like wearing our favorite outfit, a mani-pedi, going out of our way to eat a yummy lunch at our favorite restaurant. When we feed our feminine energy we are more vibrant, abundant, attractive.

Taurus New Moon has radiant feminine Earth Goddess magic in it. What do you want to magnetize during this current astrological climate of fertile stillness? Abundance? Creativity? Beauty? Love? It’s growing season.  In her book Intuitive Astrology Elizabeth Rose Campbell said Taurus stabilizes growth. In April and May, the Earth’s ecosystem slows down into a routine and rythym that predictably works toward fullness. We, too, slow down, to create consistent conditions to support new life. “The result? Resources that reflect the values of the creative person who built them.”

Do you want to play with your female energy? Here’s a meditation* for using the rich soil of your feminine to grow your intentions: Go to your happy place in your mind, that geographical, natural place, either real or imaginary where you feel peaceful. Ground your body into the vision. Steep in the beauty of your surroundings for several minutes, visualizing your energy body fill up with colors that feel good to you. Imagine a gorgeous rose in front of you-project your New Moon wish into that rose. Root those intentions, with your rose, into the deep, rich earth. Watch what happens. Does the color, or the rose, change? Just allow. Release your wish into the Universe.

It’s easy to give our feminine energy away to our relationships and roles, then wonder why we’re feeling tired or burnt out. Most of us could stand to better nourish our feminine to balance our giving and receiving energies. The Earth does both at the same time, giving nourishment, water and life, while receiving those same things in kind; that’s the nature of the balanced feminine. The astrological symbol for Taurus may be a bull, but the mystical symbol for Taurus is self-contained energy that, like a fountain, moves energy out, then back into itself. The message is clear: If we’re filled up in our self, on the goodies -laughter, joys, comforts and indulgences- that make life worth living, we can do the same, give and receive, effortlessly, without it costing us anything energetically. So at this New Moon take a feminine approach: root into the rich soil of being, generously nourish your fullness, set an intention and then stubbornly… wait for it.

[image error]

*inspired by the class: use your feminine energy for healing by Mary St. Pierre.

image source: adobe photos

The sensual, physical world is your oyster while Venus transits the sign of Taurus (4/29-5/23 in 2016). Taurus is Venus’ home sign, which confers dignity upon all Venusian activities (art, pleasure, creativity, beauty, abundance, sensuality) undertaken during this time. Naturally, there are some sweet overlaps between Taurus and Venus –most of which revolve around relaxing, enjoying being in a physical body and appreciating this abundant, beautiful planet we call home.

In celebration of Taurus season, to kick-off Venus’ precession into Taurus, and help you make the most of it, here are 9 ways to lift your pleasure quotient up by at least a few hundred points (honestly, if you aren’t in bliss after trying these things, I don’t know how to help you.;)

1.Eat!

The way to a Taurus’ heart is through its belly. You may find your self hungrier during Taurus season (and a little lazier, truth be told, so watch those carbs). Healthy, creamy and fatty, naturally sweet foods (think: milk of the bull/cow) will keep you from over-indulging in too many comfort foods -Taurean downfalls. Mangia!

Coconut Vanilla Custard

Avocado Mayonnaise

Chicken Coconut Curry

2. Get Touchy and Tactile

Consciously engage your five senses. Tasting, smelling, touching… these are the pleasures of being in a human body. Can you sense, taste, touch, smell and hear it? If so, you’re feeding your Taurus energies.

3. Spend Time in the Garden

There are many ways to soak up your vitamin N- vitamin Nature. Create a cozy garden nook, plant a succulent garden, read a book in a hammock. Just get outdoors.

4. Visit Your Happy Place

We all have one: a relaxing, calming, happy place that always instills you with a feeling of bliss. Go there. If only in your mind…

Positano, Italy

Pebble Shore Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana

Komodo National Park, Indonesia

New Mexico moonlight

5. Nurture Your Empress Energy

In the Tarot, the High Priestess holds sway over the spiritual, inner world of the feminine, and the Empress, the physical, material and sensual world. Together, they are femininity embodied.  To engage the Empress: do things you really and deeply enjoy, make sure you feel abundant, opulent and lavish, spend time with children and animals. Here’s a question to get you going: What activity are you doing when you feel your most beautiful and abundant? Start there.

Empress Winona in lush, natural beauty

The Empress connects with animals…

births children, creativity and gives life.

The Empress is Earth Goddess, Mother Nature, embodied.

6. Relax… Get Grounded… Listen to Your Bodily Hungers

In order to feel good and strong in our body, the Goddess of Pleasure requires that we slow down. Spring for a massage, bodywork or facial and you won’t be disappointed; during Venus in Taurus, the aesthetic, beauty, body, spa experiences we buy are pleasing. Relax and get grounded to gain congruence with what your body wants and needs.

Simply give your self space to chill-ax

Spooning leads to forking

7. Slow Down, Appreciate The Simple Things

Venus in Taurus is not fancy. Its elegance is its simplicity. This Venus’ willingness to be fully embodied, present…its easy appreciation of inner and outer beauty…creates rapport, ease, connection. Take the time to be really present to your environment and people.

“Nobody sees a flower, really -it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like having a friend takes time.” -Georgia O’Keefe

8. Listen to Music from Venus in Taurus Artists

Taurus rules the throat; Venus rules music. Is it any wonder that our favorite musicians were born with Venus in Taurus?

Lana del Rey

Prince

More Venus in Taurus musicians: Paul McCartney, Bono, Ariana Grande, Kanye West, Alanis Morissette, Ella Fitzgerald, Steve Tyler

9. Hug. Liberally.

For Taurus, the physical generosity of a hug heals and calms the body and psyche in ways that no other form of casual affection can. Don’t skimp on giving hugs –and be greedy when receiving them!

[image error]

image source: all images were taken from Pinterest or Wikipedia

A few of my friends are in newly committed relationships. After the heady high of romance, things can get rocky. From listening to their stories, I’m reminded of the challenges a relationship faces during that precarious and magnificent time when two people decide to merge hearts & lives.

John and I very quickly decided we couldn’t live without each other; time was made irrelevant by the fact that we had found our other half. There is no more glorious feeling than finally finding the one you love. Cue: angel wings and the horns of heaven. So why then was the first year or two of our relationship so fraught with dramatic fights, fears and cry-fests (mostly mine)?

During those first years of commitment we seemed to bring out one another’s worst fears. He: that no woman would want to commit to a man who already had three children. He had proof of this, as a staggeringly high number of single women refused to give him, a single father, a chance. He also had other, more personal fears I won’t name here, irrational fears whose origins still bewilder me today.

As for me, I ping-ponged back and forth between care-taking his fears and verily actualizing my worst nightmare. Every fight was another opportunity for him to abandon me, for me to abandon me. Every fight inspired an ancient anxiety in me, the feeling I needed to flee, to save myself from being hurt. I was so deeply afraid that every argument meant our relationship was over, and so defiant in my self-protective instinct to save myself before it happened, this virtually guaranteed a fight would end up leading to that deep dark place in myself. My yo-yo behaviour could cause me to walk away, or plea in tears for his understanding. Sometimes I would go cold as ice while internally hugging my fragile self  (held together by band-aids, paper clips, chewing gum at this point) so tightly that I would come close to hyperventilation –a nod to the way I used to hold my breath as a child when my parents would fight. Where was the self-aware, courageous, open-hearted woman he fell in love with? I was becoming a hot mess.

It was horrible and glorious at once, to be so in so much love and so much hurt. Both of us knew we were one another’s soul mates, so why was this happening?  It was as if… our magnificent joining brought out our very best and our very worst. It was as if… we finally found the lock to the key that neither of us could unlock alone. When love really opens us up, everything opens up. The blood, the guts and the wounding.  There was no more hiding the fact that somewhere deep inside we each felt deeply unworthy, unlovable, abandoned, and that all the crimes visited on our hearts by those we had loved would be revisited by the person whom we now loved  – and more than we ever thought possible.

This is the point in the story where things could have gone either way. Looking back, I see that we were going through a powerful and painful process of trust-earning. By showing one another our respective wounds, we were asking each other, albeit unconsciously: Will you betray me? Will you go away, too? Are you sure?   If we had remained unconscious to those questions, if we had allowed them to secretly lurk behind every fight, our relationship would have spiraled out of control. But what happened was this: Neither of us left because neither of us wanted that. We wanted to be together. Over time, we caught on to what was happening. We realized that if we didn’t talk about and include our deepest wounds in our newfound love, we would destroy it.  As we both began to trust that the other person wasn’t going to leave, we knew the relationship could survive our deepest demons.

The Scorpio Full Moon sheds light on the honest, bloody, ooey-gooey guts of things. The truth is, we cannot be wholly loved without being whole, and we cannot be whole without being fully seen and loved by another, our icky, wounded parts and all. Whether we’ve been struggling with hidden patterns in intimacy, or we feel blocked from moving forward in our lives, this Full Moon shines light into the darkness. Under her cool light, our resource is the degree of emotional intimacy and honesty we have with our self.

There’s always a breakout moment in relationship, a critical point where all our shadow stuff is, often gracelessly and perhaps dramatically, revealed. Yet this isn’t a disaster. It could be the moment where we find the courage and love in our heart to fully face our self, our most unattractive parts, our deepest fears.   It could be the moment where our greatest love meets our greatest pain, and loves us through it.

During those first years, we learned to restrain our selves from compulsively pushing our relationship to the edge. We learned to understand exactly how our train went off the rails, and perhaps more importantly, we learned to pause during those high-emotional-stakes-moments and refuse to engage the story. For instance, if the thought “this is it, this is really the end” crept into every disagreement, it brought unsafe energy into relationship, energy that does not inspire trust and so undermines the container that can hold it all. We learned to back off during those moments, and to gently befriend our own wounds, sometimes in the privacy of our own self. Scorpio needs calming Taurus as a balance; it takes guts to quell one’s fears, to be gentle and kind. It takes wisdom to back away from the edge of a too-intense conversation and get an ice cream, instead.

We survived each other and lived to tell the tale. From the other side I can confidently say that being seen wholly by the one we most love, sticking together through hell and high water, has big healing power. Intimacy unleashes a river of healing and forgiveness that we cannot access alone. It is the ultimate compassion. At this Full Moon, look into the mirror of your Beloved, or the Moon herself. It takes courage to face your deepest fears, your disowned self-parts, to take a deep look at the truth and to finally… breathe.

[image error]

image source: Pinterest

When a planet stations, i.e. is about to change direction, it gets very strong. A stationary planet can show us our weak areas or blind spots related to that planet — areas that we could stand to work on during retrograde. Right now, you’re getting a sneak preview: How are you relating to Mars in your life?

I’ve been coming face to face with how other people’s energy effects me. Last night, while attending a class on using feminine energy to heal, we did an exercise where we were instructed to feel into others’ auras. I felt fear and paranoia (natal Mars-Pluto opposition) and had the profound awareness that I definitively did NOT want anyone to enter my energetic field. As people neared, I felt like a fierce lioness, or perhaps a cornered wolf, baring its teeth.  I described this feeling of extreme vulnerability, and my classmates respectfully backed off. The instructor graciously said I have strong self-trust and warrior-ess energy, but suggested this defensive impulse is also keeping me from fully expressing my gifts.  Yep.

With Mars in Aries in my sixth house, it’s vital that I learn how to use my energy in work, to work for me, not against me, but opposed by Pluto in the twelfth house, I can unconsciously absorb other people’s energy – typically the “garbage bin” feelings no one wants or likes. For instance, I was sitting with a friend and I was feeling fine. An hour later, after she left, I became overwhelmed by profound feelings of worthlessness that lasted hours. Luckily, I identified the energy as “not me” and was able to release it using EFT. But I can get confused; when others’ energy blends with mine, I can mistake their feelings for my own, and that can result in major internal conflict.

Working on my spiritual boundaries, and healing my wounds to feeling safe, are my Mars retrograde marching orders. Like a good Mars in Aries, I’m taking action: ordering books and I have teachers, but it will be a process- because, well, Mars is about to go retrograde, and everything related to Mars will be a process. I don’t think Mars retrograde is a period about *not taking action*, but rather, taking deeply considered action, in which refinements to plans and approaches will likely need to be made. Yet it’s also a time when people can go into a freeze response, be ambivalent about taking action, spin out into self-doubt and decide, out of fear, to not do anything — which is its own information.

Consider this week your pre-retrograde peep show of what’s to come during Mars’ extended stay retrograde in Sagittarius (9-0 degrees) and Scorpio (30-23 degrees) from April 17- June 29. Mars will station-retrograde square Neptune in Pisces, a spiritual warrior-ship planetary type combination that speaks to invisible energies, the subtle, unconscious realms we cannot see, but can sense and feel. Also, Pluto turns retrograde the same day. This is a “more than meets the eye” Mars period.

Mars Retrograde, Generally

Imagine your Mars as a furnace that creates steady heat in your life. As Mars goes retrograde, there’s more of it. If not channeled into an appropriate physical activity or goal, it can create inflammation – in the ego, body, mind. Mars is ego-central. It’s all about ME. Unfortunately, the ego likes pain because it feeds its innate sense of self-righteousness and desire for justice. That’s why so many people get addicted to rage and anger. It feels good to get fired up! Spiritual teacher Adyashanti says, “The ego is addicted to pain.” That’s a statement we might all meditate upon during this time. Adrenaline is, literally, an addictive drug, and one that gets fueled by our personal histories, built up resentments, and self-righteousness.

Mars holds our warrior energy, our anger, need to assert, protect our self, our approach to ambition and new projects –as well as our lack of those same things, and resultant feelings of fear, defenselessness, discouragement, anxiety. During Mars retrograde, we need to consciously work with our anger and energy in creative ways so that it doesn’t implode or explode. When Mars retrograded through Libra, my relationships showed me where I needed to hold stronger boundaries. We can see a need for, and acquire, new tools to work with our Mars issues. Constructively, I signed up for a course called Boundaries Bootcamp and bought the great book, Where to Draw the Line by Anne Katherine.

Mars rules courage, and the flipside of courage is fear. Fear is something to work with, yet not given free rein. I love this analogy author Elizabeth Gilbert uses in her book Big Magic. She says she allows fear to be in the car, the vehicle of her life, but only as a passenger – not supplying the map, not controlling what’s playing on the radio, and definitely not driving! Fear never dissipates through avoidance (which creates paralysis of will that keeps us stuck), but we can find creative ways of facing and voicing our fear during this period, thus diminishing its influence.

Impatience is another theme during this time. We may want to get on with things, to make things happen, and discover obstructors- both internal and external- to meeting our goals. If our energy is being stymied, we may feel stressed, like a shaken up bottle of soda. Engaging the physical body, blowing off steam by exercising, having sex, dancing, can help with the bottled up feeling. Relaxing activities, moving at a slower pace, can give us the calm and sustained energy we seek.

In a nutshell, don’t let your fear, or your ego, drive the show. A friend of mine once said, If you want the ego to stop making trouble, just give it something, anything – a house to clean, car to fix – to do.

Mars RX themes:

Rethinking how we: use our energy, anger, sexuality, assertion, ambition, approach new things.

Redefining our boundaries in areas of work and relationship, especially.

Refining our goals, approaches and actions taken during this time.

Slowing down, reassessing an area of life (initially, the area Mars transits, also area it rules/natal house placement), identifying a need to acquire new resources in these areas.

Expect projects related to the area Mars transits/rules to go slower than planned.

How does Mars work in your chart?

We only experience a transit through our natal placement. That’s a solid rule of thumb for every transit. If you are having a Pluto transit, a trigger will occur in the house/sign it transits, but your relationship to your natal Pluto determines the theme. Likewise, with Mars, you’ll want to look to the following:

-natal house holding 9 degrees Sagittarius – 24 degrees Scorpio

-the house(s) Mars rules (those with Aries and Scorpio on cusp)

-natal placement of your Mars (include its house and aspects)

As you examine your chart, think about how Mars shows up in your life. Is he reactive or proactive? Fierce or fearful? What blockages can you identify that this Mars RX could help? Are there ways you could work with his energies more constructively? Do you need new resources? As Mars loves strategies, this period may require us to develop some healthier strategies around our Mars – and that’s a good thing.

[image error]

image source: Canadian police officers meditate before starting their day

There’s a gif circulating on social media of an exhausted, sweaty rhino running on a treadmill while looking at a picture of a unicorn. Under it, the caption read, “In what way are you trying to be who you are not and will never be?” It reminded me of, well, me. Picture it: me, in front of a camera, all eyeliner, big hair and purple shimmery shirt, doing a test recording for MTV. I have no idea what I said. I babbled something about love and astrology. Underneath, I was terrified: I had promised my publisher, and my self, that I would do everything in my power to give my book the life it deserved, yet this wasn’t me. Luckily, the pilot I tested for never happened.

As much as I love creating, the publication of my books introduced the pressure to “be somebody” in ways I had never before experienced. I was excited to try new things, to embark on a journey that would take me far outside my comfort zone. Yet I had no idea who I was supposed to be, and I assumed that person – the unicorn– knew far more than I did. The unicorn was nowhere to be found so I consulted the unicorn’s representatives: The internet told me I needed a platform, a following, a brand, and I should bust butt to make it happen. I began following a woman who turned her home based creative, spiritually- based business into a multi-million dollar one. I soon burnt out. Ironically, because she ran toward goals like a hippo charging a target, the phrase “hippopotamus energy” became a way for me to identify people who shared her approach, which did not work for me. Eventually, I learned, she burnt out, too, and had to change her approach.

Aries New Moon has springtime energy. It charges at life with gusto. It’s full of enthusiasm and verve, passion and vivacity. One of my favorite words for Aries is moxie, a word that embodies its sexy energy and nerve. I see this in Aries friends, who don’t belabor and fret over a project, they just do it. I’ve seen my own Aries Moon’s easy ability to get fired up, a day later having produced a piece of writing, cleaned the house and started a new project. Aries rules the head, all “go, go, go”. That doesn’t always mean the head knows what the heart and body are doing. Often they don’t. Often we’re impatient, we rush boldly ahead, and make mistakes that we wouldn’t have made had we paused.

I’m also talking about the archetype of Uranus, here, too. Who hasn’t chased a picture of a unicorn while running on a treadmill? It’s exhausting. Whether the unicorn comes in the form of women’s body image baloney, the pressure to build an author platform, or get married by a certain age… We’re vulnerable to a veritable tidal pool of internalized expectations and fixations about how, what, who we’re supposed to be. These pressures are so ubiquitous that they could be in our DNA. Its favorite word: should. Under the “should”, we slog along in and slowly lose our liberty and enthusiasm for life. Until the day we are pushed too far. The corporate exec flies into a sudden rage and is fired. A woman, harassed for the last time, speaks out on sexual abuse. Or we push our physical body hard, in a direction not our own, and burn out. This is Uranus in Aries, alive in our culture right now, an era of adrenal fatigue, call-outs, about-faces and open anger. It’s a time of collective awakening – to injustices and oppression (Uranus), corruption, greed (Pluto) – we are each touched by this dynamic force. But we are also, one by one, waking up to who we are and who we are not. We are each, and all, waking up. That’s the power of outer planets.

Aries likes to be engaged- in a task, a project, a cause, a fight to fight. I once read the Gottmann Research Institute that having a shared common enemy can deeply unite a couple (I offer this to clients who have strong Aries in their relationship’s composite chart, a pre-emptive form of conflict prevention for their relationship). Stress is a good one. So are poor eating habits, debt, or a shared perceived threat. At this New Moon, which squares Pluto and conjoins, Uranus, the Great Awakener, we want to engage in something new, and maybe even find an enemy to fight. But with Mars and Pluto getting ready to retrograde (4/17), people will be easily and perhaps righteously fired up, and so we might take care where we place our anger, and examine its true roots. We might also wake up to a desire to be more engaged with the unfolding events of the world around us, not just be the witness. A friend has been exploring the question “how can I be of service during these changing times?” My rule of thumb: If it’s happening in front of you, there’s your personal, perfect-for-you invitation. Start right here.

I’ve been awakening, myself, courtesy transiting Uranus opposing natal Uranus and touching off all angles of my chart. Over the years I’ve become more committed to being awake, no matter how uncomfortable that is. I’m even willing to have the rug pulled out from under me for this – an amazing thing to say considering this was one of my big fears less than six months ago. I am deeply understanding how my ego has been trying to run the show for so long, and how that has created intense periods of struggle for me (Adyashanti, spiritual teacher, author of The End of the World As You Know It, calls ego simply “resistance to what is happening”. I love this). In short, I’m unshackling myself from old programming, surrendering. Every day, I wake up wondering who I’ll be today. As unsettling as this feels for the ego, it is refreshing, and surprisingly peaceful, to not need to have an answer.

Aries season is aspirational. We want to start projects, clean house, start something new. Follow your passion to see where it leads. Take a journey outside your comfort zone. Begin an endeavor that excites you. Yet as those with Aries planets know, it’s easy to allow our enthusiasm head us into directions that veer us off course, cause us to make dumb mistakes. Consider this New Moon a pre-Mars retrograde truth serum, a time to pause and deeply consider: What are your true values, and are they compatible with your actions and behaviors? Where are you investing your energy? Where do you want to be? What will it take to get there? Aries energy is initiating. It can surprise you with a burst of uncharacteristic moxie. So let Aries season get you fired up, but don’t let it make you foolhardy. Follow your enthusiasms, but take a pause and deep breath before you hit the send button on that fiery email. We all have more courage to act than we think, especially when we check our ego at the door. A little humility and patience never hurt anyone.

[image error]

Several times over the past few weeks, friends and clients, while talking about their experiences with both making judgments on others, or being unfairly judged, have asked me a leading question, “I bet you have been judged a lot, being in the public eye?” Before my first book was published, I had a channeled reading with one of my teachers who said: Expectations come with this new book and role. Many new people will love and elevate you, and there will be people whom you will disappoint. He was right.

Show me a Libra Rising who wants to disappoint others and I’ll show you an empty room. Yet, it’s true; many have connected with me, but I’ve let others down, too. About my books, I’ve been told that Karmic Dates, is nothing original, no better than what’s found on the web; that A Love Alchemist’s Notebook is too “Chicken Soup For The Soul” (is this a bad thing?). I’ve been told that Venus Signs, because it was written from and for a woman’s perspective, “offers little more than entertainment value”.

If you are committed to being vulnerable and real, there is no armor strong enough to protect you from the sting of judgment. People judge. Some more than others, but people judge. You can’t please everyone. You can only please your self. Because art wouldn’t be created if we spent our time worrying about what others will think or say. Because I don’t want to be the kind of writer or person who is so afraid of owning a perspective that her self-expression is robotic, and instead of producing a work of art, poetry, produces an encyclopedia of knowledge that, while exhaustive in its ability to name all the permutations and possibilities to account for everyone’s perspective who reads it, often reads more like a textbook and fails to touch the human heart. That kind of writing doesn’t turn me on. That kind of writing is not what comes out. It isn’t me.

I have been judged for what I have said, for what I have not said and, like many, I’ve been unjustly judged. Honestly, when my friend asked about being judged, my mind went to an incident I experienced last weekend, at a hotel. A mix of about twenty adults and teenaged kids, who were having a dance party late at night in the hotel lobby, decided to harass me for no apparent reason, as I played with my iPhone from the balcony above. The ringleaders were adults, which surprised me (I later learned, from the clerk, they thought I had complained about them being too noisy; I hadn’t, though they were). I was shocked at the example the adults were teaching kids; essentially, to bully strangers. I actually wondered if I was secretly being filmed on a reality show, because I am so rarely exposed to nasty people anymore that I could only associate them with t.v.

This eclipse falls on my Libra-Pluto, Aries-Mars, Cancer-Sun, Capricorn-North-Node cardinal cross, so I got to revisit the times I’ve bullied, picked on, harassed, violated. I got to revisit all the times I’d been called “gringa”, “white skinny bitch” and “Ethiopian” in junior high; and the time I was attacked in an empty stairwell. I got to revisit times I’ve felt grossly, unjustly misunderstood- to realize how futile it is to attempt to be understood. Heck, I don’t entirely understand me, why I have this particular lesson, only that I am learning, one experience at a time, the more I: refuse to get pulled down by negative behavior, continue to stand in my core value of kindness while deciding to not be a victim and stand up for myself… the more I honor my self. Frankly, it feels good to be at this stage of maturity, where I can so clearly see how much I’ve grown

And that’s why I give gratitude to this eclipse. Eclipses bring up old patterns, to show us how far we’ve come and just how ready we are to grow, to move ten steps ahead and close out the pattern, once and for all. As I’ve observed my clients face similar fast and furious eclipse growth lessons, they’ve been so literal it’s uncanny.  One client’s latest love interest, instead of leading with his strengths (the typical way people express interest in having a relationship with us), basically handed her a resume of all the reasons, and warnings, about why she should not date him. Still, for her, breaking old patterns isn’t easy. It isn’t easy for any of us. But right now we can and should reach, because the stronger the evidence we are being given, the more ready we are to end this pattern. As Jimmy Cliff once sang, the harder they come, the harder they fall. 

At this Libra Full Moon Lunar Eclipse, our evolution is tied into the lives of others. Who are your teachers right now? What are they showing you about your self? What lesson are you finally ready to graduate? Just because something is happening, again, and looks eerily similar to the past, doesn’t mean that it is a repeat performance, that we’re going down the cosmic toilet bowl, doomed to repeat flush forever. We have a choice: we can get pulled back into the undertow, or we can stand at the helm of our little boat we call our life and make a new choice. From a spiritual perspective, everyone is here to help you grow. Maybe that means experiencing judgment so you can realise only you have the power to give your self away. Maybe others are showing you bad behavior so you can see how good you’ve gotten at honoring you. Or maybe it’s about severing an unhealthy relationship and committing to healthy partnering. Maybe you are learning the Libran values of civility, kindness, empathy, because your behavior is being perceived by others as rude, unkind, tactless or self-absorbed. Whatever “it” is, your current growth path, the Cosmos have been giving you oodles of obvious clues, lately.

As we move into an Aries Sun month, let’s each take confidence in our birthright to unapologetically shine from our center and trust what comes out as true for us. It takes courage to take a stand, whether voicing your political beliefs, addressing injustice, or writing a book from a unique perspective. It takes courage to put your voice and choices out there for the world to see, to stand in your truth, to make yourself vulnerable to judgment. It takes courage to turn corners on an old pattern. You can do this. Just stand in your center, friends, make choices from your deepest, truest values. Because at day’s end, when you rest your head on your pillow, what other people did or said doesn’t matter. What matters most is how you feel about you.

image: Libra by Jesi86, Deviantart.com

[image error]

image: Libra by Jesi86, Deviantart.com

There are two choices to life’s pain and suffering: open to it or shut down. The healthy choice seems to be the obvious one. Bring it closer. But how do you hold it all when the pain of the world is just too much?

Pisces rules the principle of connection, of unity, oneness. We are all connected in ways that we often don’t realize, and while some of us are more empathic than others, like a ripple traveling a lake all the suffering of the world will eventually reach the edges of our shore. The emotional magnitude of that varies depending on how sensitive we are to the ripples, how much we buffer our self with escapist activities/substances, how much we’ve worked and healed our issues.

Sensitivity, empathy and compassion gives us each, by degree, more or less resonance with the world’s suffering, allowing us to meet it, and our self, with a level of heart-centered grace.  We can be the witness, process it so that it doesn’t compromise our own life happiness, and let it go and go about our life, maybe having been softened and more opened for having pulled the suffering a little closer. However, sometimes the world clobbers us, rendering its pain as our own. So what is happening there? Essentially, our unhealed issues make us more vulnerable to those of the world. That’s why, instead of a painful news item or story touching our shore of our life and then going back out to sea, it amplifies what is already within us because it resonates in a very specific way to our own unhealed story. Say a news story rocks us, but not our partner. They go about their life, but we’re emotionally disturbed for days. It’s as if there’s a frequency we amplify because only we have that frequency. That’s how the world’s suffering ends up either shutting us down, making us feel crazy/depressed/anxious, or being a catalyst for facing our own pain. For instance:

-A news story about a child that loses their mother hooks into your feelings of abandonment by mother.

-A story about a black child losing his life hooks into your feelings of racial injustice you suffered as a minority.

-A movie about immigrants suffering hooks into your story of hardships faced as an immigrant.

Of course, identifying with others suffering can be very heart opening and humanizing. It is part of our human experience. None of the above is a problem until it is compromising your life happiness. You can feel anything… and gently hold it all in compassion… but if you are weeks’ on end in a rage, worked up, unable to sleep, it’s a problem.

Chiron is the asteroid that sensitizes us to suffering, injustice, unfairness and victimization. Chiron is in Pisces, amplifying this phenomenon of identifying with victims of injustices we may not know personally, but with whom we feel their pain deeply… because we are all connected. The popularity of the Netflix documentary The Making of a Murderer is a prime example. If you’re unfamiliar, in a (no spoiler alert) nutshell, a man is wrongly accused of a crime he didn’t commit, serves time, is exonerated years later, only to be again accused of a similar crime via similarly murky facts and dubious investigative techniques. It is a very confusing, very sad story. There are a lot of “hooks” to hook into your own personal story of pain, because should you have any story about suffering abuse at the hands of others, you will likely find a way in, here. For instance: “power corrupts”, “power is always abused”, “the poor have no power”, “life is not fair”, “people suffer for things that they didn’t do”, “I am a victim”, “don’t trust the police,” “I am helpless to the powers that be…”  to name just a few. Watching a few episodes myself, all my hooks began rolling like movie credits. Add to this, I am empathic- I feel others feelings as my own. It turned into real exercise in understanding how I deal with empathic overload, and the origins of my own wounds.

Movies, news stories, scrolling through Facebook, sharing your neighbor’s burdens… there are so many invitations lately to invite suffering closer to your heart, but it’s often hard to know how to do that in a way that doesn’t trigger extreme emotions, and then how to take care when they do? With EFT/MR, I’ve learned to use triggers to see that they are pointing me to a hurt that needs attention. If I’m amplifying someone else’s suffering, I’ve got some more internal healing to do. For instance, watching Making, at a certain point I felt “trapped in the movie, held captive by others’ problems and suffering, unable to leave or walk away.” Using EFT/MR I went to the inner child that felt that way at a point in time and worked with her directly. After that, my nervous system relaxed, and I felt free. I also learned that because I’m so empathic I need to give myself permission to walk out of other people’s movies- whether it’s on a projector or in real life!

There are so many tools out there, ways of helping your heart open wider instead of shutting down in fear. There are people who can help you to embrace your suffering, and that of the world, without getting caught in a web of illusion and crazy-making. There’s so much to be hopeful about in this Chiron (and Neptune) in Pisces time – isn’t it marvelously inspiring to ride the wave of so many people getting involved with wanting to help ease the suffering of those we may not know?  It certainly makes me feel less alone. As we collectively become more empathic to the suffering of Everyone, empathy is no longer just a genius/novel idea written in a book about a few, but something we witness in everyday interaction. But if we’re feeling outraged/angry/depressed, we need to remember what every activist learns, eventually: On an ultimate level you can’t heal or effect change around what’s out there until you heal what’s inside here. As the saying goes: If you want to heal the world, heal your self, first. There’s no better time to do that than right now.

Chiron is in Pisces until February 18, 2019.

[image error]

image: weeper statue, Paris cemetary

There are moments of awakening, and they often happen in a form you do not expect or even want, but there they are, irrefutable in their magnitude. When Magnus, beloved pup of my heart, stopped eating, became depressed and lethargic last weekend, all of my nurturing attention was mobilized in only the way seeing one you love suffer, can. From Saturday on, every day following took on that hazy, otherworldly quality of being out of time. I started going into those dark places that we go to. You know the ones: the worry, projecting into the future, imagining the worst, imagining all possible scenarios, none of them true and all of them true at once. In other words, my mind had become a runaway train. Fear was the conductor and I was merely a passenger, holding on for dear life.

My own suffering was clearly looking far worse than his at this point …and that’s when Grace entered through the back door. I looked at Magnus, the epitome of surrender, of trust, faith, innocence and presence. My nervous system was wound tighter than a rubber band ball. He was everything I was not. I wasn’t trusting, I wasn’t in faith, and I certainly wasn’t surrendering. The fierce mama instinct in me was ready for war. Though, truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure what war I was fighting but if there ever was a deserving moment of screaming like a banshee at an unjust God this was it. Suffering animals? Come on, God. This experiment is seriously flawed.

Mostly I wasn’t being present, to either him or to myself, and that felt like a horrible negligence, a tribute unfitting to such a beautiful creature. Have you ever been so absorbed in your own process of negative emotions that you couldn’t truly be present with a loved one during their last days and moments? I have. It’s an awful feeling.  He was so bad off that I didn’t know what would happen next, but I did know I wanted to be present to him (How often do we do this to our self? How often do we become so consumed by our own personal brand of suffering that we neglect to love our innocent animal self when we are suffering- when we need our love most?).

As I looked at my love muffin I realized that the depth of my fear, worry and pain was in direct proportion to my love for him. The only reason I was feeling so tortured was because I love him so much.  That was the bottom line. I love this little guy so much and would give anything to make him happy, and I was allowing fear to obscure this sweet truth and contract me into pain instead of expand into more love. What if I chose love instead?

That realization stopped fear in its tracks.  Fear, worry, anxiety… It’s all a case of the emperor’s new clothes. There is nothing original underneath our worries. It is manufactured, a made up illusion to try and control the uncontrollable. Meanwhile, love is waiting for us to stop doing the crazy dance and listen to the music (it’s always a love song).

This Pisces New Moon Eclipse is a portal for opening your heart as wide as an ocean.  You don’t have to suffer. You can hold it all. You can accept that whatever happens you are here to love that. As we’re pressed by change from all angles, awash in the unknowns and uncertainties of Pisces season, there is no better time to practice faith, surrender, trust and presence. When I looked into those sweet eyes and saw love waiting for me to answer it with same, I saw my attempts to control the universe was an illusion. The game of “I’ll feel good and fine when life shows up differently” just doesn’t work. It only creates struggle and disconnection. I choose love.

This eclipse set (located at 18’56 Pisces and in 2 weeks 3’27’ Libra) falls on my 6th/12th axis- what April calls the axis of adaptation and retreat (click here to find out where YOU are experiencing your eclipses). I might ask April to change that to “the sh** hits the fan” axis; sick pet, being in process with a re-fi and remodel, and the environmental impact of the remodel on my health and work life… so much is in flux. In other words, I have so many opportunities to surrender to love. So many opportunities: to flip the switch, to stop resisting all the pain and inconvenience I want to keep at bay, to stop thinking “I can’t handle one more thing” and instead say “NO. I will not turn away from this moment. I will open my heart wider, deeper. I will love this moment. Hard.”

Eclipses bring change. Pisces is a mutable sign, which means there’s a lot of adaptation to changing circumstances occurring now. The New Moon Eclipse is closely conjunct Chiron; we feel the pain of mortality, and are reminded of life’s unfairness and injustices. A few degrees away, Saturn, planet of reality and limits, squares this New Moon, while Jupiter, planet of expansion and growth opposes it. It’s a big, messy enchilada plate of opportunity for viewing life from a wider lens — a more spiritual one– and appreciating the little things (Jupiter in Virgo). Can you remember that you are not your name, role or identity but a soul on a journey? Remember that life on Earth is a classroom, and while the agenda looks different, the lesson always loops back to learning spiritual truths personal to you?  Can your fed-upness with your own suffering lead you to the choice to surrender? Pisces lends us grace when we become willing to transcend our circumstances and surrender our illusions.

Because there’s so much uncertainty in life. We never know how our actions will turn out; we can only work with the information we have at any given time, which is often incomplete. For whatever our question, the answer is, always: More Love. Right now I’m getting so so much from Matt Kahn’s book Whatever Arises, Love That. As spiritual truths must be worked into our system, kneaded like bread, to be owned, right now my practice is lately looking something like this: What does this pain or ouch want? More love. Worry? More love. How will I get through this next hurdle? More love. How will we pay down our debt? More love. What does this client need? More love. What’s for breakfast? More love. What does 2+2 equal? More love. Try it. Even if you don’t feel the love, by extending the invitation for love to enter, your subconscious starts to resonate with your intention and a new program will emerge till, eventually, you bypass the love masquerading as fear part and go directly to the love. That’s where freedom happens- this delicious unraveling of everything into an endless pool of love.

If you’ve been holding your breath this far, wondering, Well how is he??!, he was diagnosed with Addison’s disease which entails a lifelong regime of hormones, and since we got him to the vet before he went into shock (as many dogs with this disease do), we were lucky- it could have been so much worse. This week, Magnus broke my heart open. While the human and animal have needed practical forms of earthly love (I’ve upped my self-care, the vets we’ve visited have been amazingly helpful!, and we’ve been rocking the Crisis Cooler and Rescue Remedy Flower Essences…), during this eclipse, the spiritual expanded into love. Now, every time fear knocks, I surrender my illusion that life is supposed to be anything other than what it is. I humbly lay down resistance, accepting that whatever is happening is an opportunity for more love. My heart becomes an ocean. I can hold it all.

[image error]

art: deviantart.com, love is just a myth by Delilah Woolf

Empowered is a word that gets used a lot. I know I use it to describe when I feel like I am strong, in self-respect and self-honoring, and can take on the world. I know when I’m not in my power. When I feel disempowered there’s always a component of helplessness, the feeling that I cannot control, or escape what is happening -for what is power if not feeling “in command”?

I am sure all of us are familiar with disempowerment, by degree; the banks own everything we have, we are the 99%, if anyone in our family got seriously sick our life fortunes would be compromised…etc., etc., etc. There is so much to feel disempowered around! My twelfth house Pluto in Libra certainly can feel there’s an imminent catastrophe looming around every corner. We may equate material and physical things with power, money, influence, health, social status, but you don’t take any of that with you to the other side. Spiritual power trumps all. Think of Nelson Mandela, for instance, whose imprisonment and torture did not compromise his self-respect, dignity or mission. Maybe I’m speaking from that Pluto when I say: it’s easy to be confused about what true power looks like and how it works for us.

So when a friend (also Pluto in Libra in the twelfth house) told me that an explanation of power I gave her during a tapping session had reframed her ideas about how she uses her own power, she said others might find it useful.  I was helping her with worry and anxiety over making a decision (Libra). After tapping on specific fears, we reached a point where she felt deep sadness and grief for the unnecessary worry she has put her self through over the years. I floated the idea that her sadness over fretting about outcomes outside of her control perpetuated feelings of powerlessness… and that this might be about power.

Then I said something very Pluto in Capricorn to her: Personal power is the ability to make a choice and then to deal with the consequences of an unknowable outcome.

This means if I decide to get my house renovated, then feel victimized every day by the toxins, noise pollution and invasion of space, I am not taking responsibility for my choice. I am taking myself out of my own power. In fact, that’s how this epiphany about power came to me.  I was tapping on feelings of frustration and disempowerment over my house being renovated, when I remembered: Wait, who made this choice? I did. So I get to deal with the consequences, too. As the saying goes: With great power comes great responsibility. Or, said another way: Where there’s power there’s always responsibility.

Working with this idea has since helped change my perspective on other difficult situations; situations I’d been experiencing subtle feelings of disempowerment, feeling out of “command”.

When we make a decision to do anything in our life, we always enter into a contract with the unknowable consequences. The reality is: none of us can control the outcome of anything in life. Not one of us. On a spiritual level, our power rests in making a conscious decision based on the best information we have going at the time and then taking responsibility for the consequences. Because, here’s the kicker– even if the consequence of our decision turns out poorly, even if life sends us lemons, we can still be in our power. We made the decision; we deal with the results (and if we didn’t make the decision, by dealing with the consequences in self-integrity, we restore power). That’s the deal with power. If we go into victim, into “poor me”, ie, if I weren’t so (born disadvantaged, sensitive, sick, broken, had more money, he wasn’t a cheater or liar, or whatever way we blame our self or other people or the government, etc.) then this would have gone better for me… we fall into a rabbit hole of confusion. Power does not work that way.  We are obligated to handle whatever happens on the other side of choice- our response to the situation.

It sure beats feeling victimized when things don’t turn out the way we want them to.

As Pluto transits through Capricorn, we are all learning about how power works. We see people in authority abuse it, we watch these same people pass the buck, and it’s easy to feel the injustice. We may wonder who, if anyone, is ultimately accountable at all. But as we work with this on a personal level, perhaps through a Pluto transit, or by having to make hard choices we’d rather not make, free will remains a constant. Where we have the ability to choose, and take consequences, we have power.

[image error]

On top of several other conditions I was attempting to heal, I got really sick last week. It was the full catastrophe. Suddenly I was flooded with self-doubt. Was it the chocolate (sugar-free) I had been sparingly eating lately that had taxed my adrenals and made me vulnerable? Or the gluten-free naan bread I had treated myself to a few days prior? Despite having been told by the contractor who had been working on our house that black mold was found, and removed, which certainly was the culprit of the latest problem, I still managed to attempt to take responsibility for all that was broken in me. I still managed to re-trace every possible false move I had made, every emotion not skillfully handled, because I was certain that if I had just done better- managing everything- I’d have been okay.

To add gas to the fire, my physician naively heaped a good old-fashioned helping of guilt on me during a vulnerable moment, insinuating that I was creating my illness by certain things I was not doing correctly (according to him). The sharp, sudden anger I felt woke me up to my own self- flagellation and I realized how tired I was. Of this guilt-ridden story. Of criticizing my own best efforts. Of being vulnerable to being made wrong by others. Of taking responsibility for everything that takes an unexpected turn or falls apart, when the reality is I’m doing the best I can. Because focusing on what’s wrong instead of what’s right is no way to live. In fact, it’s not living at all.

How often do we do this to our self? How often do we practice self-recrimination, self-comparison, self-shaming and self-loathing all in the name of “working on our self”? I know I am not perfect. I know I’ve got issues, but I also know that self-improvement efforts are not the source of my happiness. Taking responsibility for creating my entire reality can leave me feeling burdened and broken. When there’s always something to fix inside our selves it’s impossible to be happy. The fact is, we’re all a little broken. We’re all striving for something higher. It is good to want to improve, fix things. But if a sense of inadequacy, wrong-ness or shame is at the core of your self- improvement efforts, it will never feel like you have done enough. You will always fall short. You will also measure others by what you haven’t achieved – an idealistic state of perfection that doesn’t exist outside of self-help books. And you will never be happy. At least, that is my experience.

With expansive Jupiter in fix-it Virgo (until 9/9/16), we’ve received the cosmic missive that any improvements we undertake: perfecting our self, working on our issues, our life, can make our life better, bigger. Virgo’s shadow is shame, self-hatred, guilt, perfectionism, idealism… and Jupiter, near the transiting North Node, can exaggerate this shadow. There’s a dark side to chasing the light of some impossible standard that doesn’t exist on Earth, and I think we are all vulnerable to this.

What’s the solution? More self-love. Unconditional self-love, radical self-acceptance, is the antidote.

We each have healing to do and we still deserve love, from others, and most especially from our self. In my book A Love Alchemist’s Notebook, Soul Mate Secret No. 1 (there are nine of them in total) reads: You don’t need to be healed enough to be worthy of love, but you may need to heal before you’re ready for your soul mate. You deserve love, as broken or complete as you are. If this sounds like a paradox, it is (paradox is a close friend of alchemy), because it’s only by totally accepting where you are now that you can move forward into something more. I did a sh**-ton of work to attract my soul mate, and yet with this as my foundation (it is Secret no. 1), it didn’t feel like work. It felt like freely expanding into myself. Once I gave myself permission to unconditionally be who I was, no matter the situation, mood or demon I was battling, everything flowed from there.

This Virgo Full Moon will offer us plenty of ideas about what’s broken and how to fix it. It shines light on our aspirations and where we fall short of them. Paradoxically (that word again), Neptune widely opposes this lunation; things may feel, or actually be, messy, disorganised, chaotic, confounding and up in the air. There may be no immediate solution or fix in sight, because, you know what? Not every problem can be solved away through our attempts to fix it. Not every person can be healed or saved from their condition. Not everything in life can be made better, or make sense, by having it fit into a neat, tidy, well-organised color-coded box. Neptune rules Divine Compassion, self-acceptance, flow, surrender and letting go …and is the ultimate remedy to too much Virgo: of trying to control the world through logic, problem-solving (if I can just fix, understand, organize it, then this problem will go away!) as well as all the self-flagellation, guilt, shame and rigid feelings of not measuring up. If this is you– please have mercy on yourself. It’s no way to live.

My realization led to a recommitment to myself (I had thought I’d master this lesson off long ago, but just because I wrote a book based on self-love doesn’t mean I do it perfectly.  Hey, I’m human). I decided that I’m never going to look healthy on paper, at least by the world’s standards. But I can be well. I can live well, I can be happy. I didn’t have to listen to internal or external voices telling me to be better. I can accept all of my self-parts, inadequacies, challenges, and let my life flow from there.

So at this Full Moon: I challenge you to open up and let supreme self-acceptance in. Try this mantra: I’m as broken as a broke down bus, and yet I am perfect. I love and accept all of myself unconditionally. If self-loathing or shame is behind any of your improvement efforts, stop them immediately and head out to the beach, a movie or your favorite forest. Hang out, space out, lay in the Sun, create, lose your mind for a little while. Because in those moments, Neptune opens its wide arms and embraces us, saying, “No worries, be happy. It’s all going to be okay. Want to know why? I love you.” I know… there’s no logic to it. It doesn’t make sense that we can be so imperfect and yet so worthy of love. Yet there it is. Neptune loves and accepts you just as you are- in spite of your self. Can you?

[image error]

image: Grace Avenue