Today our minds are focused, intense and alert. We can sense a change in the ener­gies around us. Some­thing has shift­ed and the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion are clear­ing now.

It is time to move for­ward with a new under­stand­ing that we devel­oped dur­ing the past three weeks. We were more intro­spec­tive and con­tem­pla­tive and that allowed us to reex­am­ine, ques­tion and improve our thinking.

At the same time, we need­ed to be more mind­ful so as to not mis­un­der­stand anoth­er or them us. That was because every­one was not as atten­tive out­ward­ly. Mis­un­der­stand­ings, delays and frus­tra­tions might have been the result. But now that phase ends as Mer­cury moves forward. 

Mer­cury ret­ro­grade cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stop, go back and repair your way of think­ing. Now you can think and speak with more assur­ance that we will under­stand one another.

Okay, okay I know, it hurts…but you just need to be patient and this too shall pass. Do not force things or ignore the lim­its now, you’ll only make things worse. Impa­tience is in the air and anger is ris­ing, and if we are not care­ful there is an “acci­dent” wait­ing to happen.

If you hold the ten­sion in, you might injure your­self; and, if you just let it out on anoth­er, you will harm some­one who prob­a­bly had lit­tle to do with the sit­u­a­tion. You can­not “hold in”, you can­not “act out”…what do you do? Remem­ber, there is always a “third way”, the path of under­stand­ing, which leads you out of your pain and into a new­er, more inte­grat­ed reality.

The pain you are feel­ing is mere­ly a less than gen­tle reminder that not all things go as planned. Some­times we face delays or resis­tance in order to stop, take a look and see why our way is “blocked”. We need to exam­ine if either where we are going is where we should go, or if we are get­ting there in the right way. So, life/reality/Saturn comes along and says, “Is that what you real­ly want? Are you sure you can get there this way?”

At the end of July, we began a new cycle of Mars and Sat­urn. It was then that we start­ed to take up a path of action to bring about some new aspect in our life/reality. Now, we face a choice that has been cre­at­ed by the lim­its formed by the very nature of our Sat­urn reality.

We always act with­in the lim­its imposed by Sat­urn. Though we have poured our self into a form in order to be some­thing, at some point that vehi­cle, that form, that real­i­ty, is exact­ly what we must move beyond in order to keep mov­ing in the first place. What once ful­filled us now has become a major obsta­cle to our greater ful­fill­ment. But what is the nature of this chal­lenge now?

The prob­lem is that we are in our real­i­ty, which seems to be a giv­en, some­thing that is fixed for us. Some­how, we must move beyond the old form while we are still with­in it. In order to trans­form and tran­scend, we need to cre­ative­ly com­bine Mars and Sat­urn, we need to choose the path of integration.

Mars in Capri­corn wants to act with ref­er­ence to and rev­er­ence for author­i­ty and pow­er. If you have title, if you have the pow­er, then use it. It is your duty to act author­i­ta­tive­ly; it is your right to exer­cise pow­er and con­trol. You have the pow­er, use it.

Sat­urn in Libra is “chal­leng­ing” Mars to remem­ber that the basis for author­i­ty and the exer­cise of pow­er is legit­i­ma­cy. Libra is about jus­tice, and Sat­urn in Libra is about the rule of law. (That is why, in the chart of the USA, Sat­urn is in Libra at the very top of the chart. The prin­ci­ple embod­ied in our con­sti­tu­tion is that the USA is a nation ruled by law, that no one is above the law and all are equal (Libra) before the law.)

Sat­urn is remind­ing Mars that the pow­er exer­cised by any author­i­ty flows from the agree­ment, that is, it comes from and through the con­sent of the gov­erned. The pow­er we wield comes through us, and we must hon­or and serve the true source of that pow­er. That means with­in any orga­ni­za­tion, local or nation­al, polit­i­cal or pri­vate, we must always be sure that we are serv­ing the needs of that group and not mere­ly our own.

So, the ques­tion about pow­er and author­i­ty before each of us now is “who or what do you serve”? Ulti­mate­ly, of course, this is a spir­i­tu­al mat­ter, because any and all pow­er is ulti­mate­ly derived from the fact that we are all sparks of the divine, we are all one in Spirit.

The truer ques­tion then is do you under­stand that you are part of a glo­ri­ous com­pa­ny of fel­low beings who are all con­nect­ed to one anoth­er in the greater life of Spir­it? If so, then you will act in accor­dance with that and your pow­er will be exer­cised with wis­dom and justice.

The gifts of Spir­it are many, but one of the most prized is patience. We need to be patient as we con­sid­er what is at the source of our anger or delay now. We will find that what we face is of our own mak­ing, we made this real­i­ty, this sit­u­a­tion. So, we can change it too.

Step back from your anger and frus­tra­tion; ask for help, and Spir­it will answer. You will find that you are nev­er alone; and the answer is that your jour­ney and des­tiny has and will always be in your own hands.

The good news is that by acknowl­edg­ing and act­ing with this under­stand­ing you can change your real­i­ty for the bet­ter. You do not need to fight, or retreat, you just need to choose to understand. 

Today is a day for deep self-reex­am­i­na­tion. With the Sun rul­ing the self and Plu­to rul­ing the deep­er process­es of our psy­cho-spir­i­tu­al nature, you can use this day to probe more deeply into the roots of your being. Most impor­tant­ly, you will be able to estab­lish a new under­stand­ing about the nature of your most pre­cious gift, your free will.

Back in Sep­tem­ber you faced a choice about the prop­er exer­cise of your willpow­er. Now, at the con­junc­tion (like a new Moon), you are at the begin­ning of a new cycle in the rela­tion­ship of the self and your will. What you need to remem­ber is that one of the most won­der­ful gifts of being human is the qual­i­ty we call “free will”.

The pri­ma­ry lim­i­ta­tion to your exer­cise and expe­ri­ence of free will is knowl­edge. The more igno­rant you are about your self or the world around you, to that same degree your life will hap­pen to you, your life will be “fat­ed”. Con­verse­ly, the more you know of your­self and the world around you, the more you can under­stand and exer­cise free will in your life. This has always been one of the most mean­ing­ful ways to mea­sure spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment, that is, are you a more fatal­is­tic spir­it or free spir­it. The pow­er to choose, and to choose wise­ly, is our most pre­cious spir­i­tu­al accomplishment.

This re-align­ment of the self with the will requires that you explore the deep­est recess­es of your nature; what is at the core of what makes you spe­cial, dif­fer­ent, yet part of a great sto­ry of spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion. Your life now is mere­ly the lat­est in a series of lives. You stand upon this core of evolved spir­i­tu­al progress. Take time now to look with­in and acknowl­edge the gift of your spe­cial self to yourself.

The Pluto/Sun con­junc­tion is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish a new rela­tion­ship of the self to the self. You should take this time to con­nect more deeply with your will, the pow­er of right choice, which is one of the three true sources of your spir­i­tu­al progress. The three aspects of Spir­it, which are Intel­li­gence, Love and Will, have com­bined togeth­er to bring about our universe.

Like­wise, with­in your own life, they con­tin­ue to help you on your jour­ney from unself-con­scious sparks of the divine towards your glo­ri­ous des­tiny as a ful­ly con­scious divine being. So, at this time, take anoth­er step along the path to ful­fill­ment, towards self-real­iza­tion, to your des­tiny which is to be a star among the stars. So be it.

The Solstice…The Sun Stands Still. What does that mean? How is that possible?

As we cir­cle around the Sun each year, we expe­ri­ence four major turn­ing points in our jour­ney. These four points mark the begin­ning of our sea­sons, and for Astrol­o­gy mark the begin­ning of the Car­di­nal Signs of Aries, Can­cer, Libra and Capricorn.

Two of those points, the equinox­es of Spring and Fall, mark the time each year that the tilt of the Earth is such that we have days and nights of equal length. The equinox­es are a time of bal­ance, with equal time between day and night.

The sol­stices mark the oppo­site “cor­ners” of our cir­cle where­in the dif­fer­ence between day and night are at their great­est. At the sum­mer sol­stice on June 21 we have the longest day and short­est night, the Sun is at its max­i­mum. Now as Win­ter begins, we are in the dark­est of times, the days are short, the nights are long, the Sun is at its min­i­mum. But why do we say the Sun is stand­ing still?

The fact is that for many months the Sun has been set­ting fur­ther and fur­ther South on the hori­zon. Today it reach­es the fur­thest point South that it will go. Now, for sev­er­al days it will set, again and again, at appar­ent­ly the same point on the hori­zon till.…on the 3rd or 4th day, on Decem­ber 25th, we will be able to see that the Sun is return­ing, mov­ing back North. The light of our home is com­ing back, the world will not go dark, our hope is renewed, our faith is restored.

But this sol­stice is spe­cial; it is coin­cid­ing with the Full Moon of Sagit­tar­ius, when the Sun is in Sagit­tar­ius and the Moon is in Gem­i­ni. And this Full Moon hap­pens to be an Eclipse. A Lunar Eclipse is when the Sun, Earth and Moon are aligned with one anoth­er so we see Earth­’s shad­ow pass across the Moon.

What this demon­strates, so vivid­ly and visu­al­ly, is how we are indeed part of a sys­tem of bod­ies that are in an intri­cate, beau­ti­ful rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er. These great orbs cycle round one anoth­er, and that they, and we, are part of a greater organ­ism we call our uni­verse. In oth­er words, what is shown to us now is that we are part of a great com­pa­ny, a mag­nif­i­cent host, wheel­ing through the cos­mos. What we should expe­ri­ence and mar­vel at now is our con­nect­ed­ness to this dance of the planets.

At each Full Moon we expe­ri­ence anoth­er rev­e­la­tion about the rela­tion­ship between the past (Moon), present (Earth) and future (Sun). At the Lunar eclipse, with the Sun rep­re­sent­ing pure poten­tial or the Future, and the Moon rep­re­sent­ing kar­ma or our Past, the Earth (our Present) is com­ing between our past and future. That means our present real­i­ty is hid­ing or obscur­ing the past.

We often feel bur­dened by our past, so we might feel relieved to be seem­ing­ly freed from it. This is cer­tain­ly true for a great many of our expe­ri­ences. But it is also true that our spir­i­tu­al progress has been most delayed by our capac­i­ty to for­get or ignore the past, so that we must learn our lessons over and over again.

We should use this eclipse to let go of those parts of our past that are a bur­den to us, to cast them out as we take out the sword of sev­er­ance and free our­selves from our doubts and fears. But we must also hon­or what has come before, what our fore­bears strug­gled to cre­ate, so that we pre­serve what is good and true in our jour­ney so far.

In ancient times, many feared eclipses because it tru­ly seemed as if “the light was going out”, and they believed ter­ri­ble events were to be expect­ed. But wis­er ones knew, as we should now, that we should cel­e­brate this align­ment as a gift from above. The shad­ow falling across the Moon tonight con­firms of our con­nect­ed­ness with the uni­verse and with one anoth­er. We are not nor will we be ever alone because we are part of some­thing mag­i­cal and won­drous. So go out tonight and expe­ri­ence the mys­tery, majesty, and beau­ty of being part of the uni­verse, your home in the stars.

Are you impa­tient today, or is it just “her”, or “him, or “them”? Well, of course, it is all of us. So, be mind­ful of what you say (and do). Do not let your mouth race ahead of your bet­ter judg­ment. Do not over-react to some­one else’s fact/opinion, nor be so quick to defend your own.

Just three weeks ago we expe­ri­enced this same aspect as Mer­cury was mov­ing for­ward. Now, while it is ret­ro­grad­ing, we are giv­en a chance to go back and make amends, to fix what was bro­ken, to grow beyond the old and famil­iar, yet lim­it­ing, habits of thinking.

Yes, we are being chal­lenged now to grow beyond our men­tal fix­a­tions. We need to take a fresh look and think “out­side the box”, to think cre­ative­ly. What we need to do now is demon­strate that we are intelligent.

When we are able to look at an issue or prob­lem from more than one per­spec­tive, to move beyond this or that, or black and white, then we will per­ceive a much more mean­ing­ful, rich and com­plex world. Before there was just one thing or the oth­er and we became stuck. We dug in our heels and refused to lis­ten; or we gave up, gave in and let the oth­er have their way.

But, when you open up your mind to anoth­er way, to an untried point of view, and you make the space for it, then spir­it enters in and shows you a way out of your dilem­ma. You can then chal­lenge and change your assump­tions, step into a new real­i­ty, and cel­e­brate the joy of a high­er con­scious­ness. This is the promise and chal­lenge of Mer­cury and Uranus. Free your mind, free yourself.