As not­ed in the overview for 2014, today marks the begin­ning of Mars mov­ing retrograde:

Mars Ret­ro­grade (March 1 until May 19)

The Avatar of your Desires is tak­ing you upon an inner jour­ney. You will have the next 80 days to reex­am­ine what your aims and inten­tions tru­ly are. From where do they come, and where are they tak­ing you? It is time to pause and recon­sid­er two points: Is this Goal True for you now? Is this the best path of action to take you there?

Your Avatar of Action, who leads you out­ward into the vast­ness of your jour­ney of dis­cov­ery and self-becom­ing, the Red Plan­et Mars is turn­ing ret­ro­grade and so you must turn too. He will lead you inward now, so that you might come to know and under­stand why you do what you do, why you want to go “there”, why you act they way that you do, and to help you turn your more lim­it­ed ener­gy of Desires into Spir­i­tu­al Aspirations.

All of the plan­ets will turn ret­ro­grade for us here on Earth. Some like Mer­cury will turn every four months, or Venus every year and a half, and all of the oth­er “out­er plan­ets” from Jupiter through Plu­to will do so once a year (and they will do so for many months). But Mars is the plan­et that does this less than any oth­er, only every 26 months or so. So this is spe­cial, this is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to con­sid­er the nature of your Desires, to reex­am­ine your Aims and Inten­tions, to see how you “Move” with and by these Ener­gy-Forms through the Sacred Space in which you abide.

Though some might con­sid­er a plan­et to be some­how “weak­ened” by mov­ing back­wards, you must remem­ber that this is only an appear­ance for us here on Earth. In the mat­ter of Mars, we on Earth are “catch­ing up” to Mars and pass­ing him, as if we were on an inside lane of a race track. He appears to be going back­wards, only because we are catch­ing up and pass­ing him by. More­over, as we do catch up we make our clos­est approach to Mars as he “grows” big­ger and brighter. Mars, the Avatar of Desires and Actions will shine red­der than ever, and much will be stirred with­in and around you too. You will see Mars at his most glo­ri­ous, a glow­ing crim­son orb, when he forms the oppo­si­tion to the Sun on April 8, 2014.

More­over, many have not­ed and it will be observed cer­tain­ly here at this pas­sage again, that when­ev­er Mars turns ret­ro­grade the forces of Self-Asser­tion will seem to slip beyond the bounds of cau­tion or self-restraint, and the man­i­fes­ta­tions of Aggres­sion will be both expressed and encountered…yes, there is “dan­ger” in this Air.

But of course the mis­use of Spir­i­tu­al Ener­gies is always a prob­lem no mat­ter what is hap­pen­ing “up there”, but it would seem that this peri­od of Mars Ret­ro­grade stirs more strong­ly those depths of the human psy­che where hurts and resent­ments have fes­tered, and the result of this stir­ring of painful ener­gies inflames pas­sions, stokes fear and anger, and this col­li­sion of pas­sion, pain and anger erupts in actions that harm one­self and others.

The Ener­gies evoked or stoked by Mars are nei­ther “good” or “bad”…rather it is your degree of spir­i­tu­al aware­ness and evo­lu­tion that will indi­cate how the ener­gy will be received and then how you will pass it on. How you receive the Ener­gies around you, how you work with them, and in what form will you pass them on is deter­mined by your Spir­i­tu­al Inte­gra­tion and Awareness.

To the extent that you have become Self-Mas­ter­ful, guid­ed by your High­er Self and not your Ego, then to that same extent will you be able to wield your Phys­i­cal, Emo­tion­al, Men­tal and Intu­ition­al Pow­ers in a Lov­ing and Con­struc­tive Man­ner. And, to the extent that you remain unin­te­grat­ed, with con­flicts with­in and between your Hier­ar­chi­cal Nature of Body, Feel­ings, Mind and Spir­it, then to that same extent will you act Destruc­tive­ly towards your­self and/or towards others.

In the end, as always, it comes quite sim­ply down to one thing, do you Love Your­self? Do you have and know the Love of your High­er Self as real and ever present and before you at all times, that you stand in its pres­ence and this most true love per­vades your entire being and all your doing too? It will always be so, and as long as you sojourn here as a human, as long as you strive to become out­ward­ly what you are in your High­er Self, to be a ful­ly awak­ened shin­ing one, you will con­tin­ue on this jour­ney to dis­cov­er, accept and embrace your true nature which is Spir­it, which is Love.

So in this pas­sage of Mars Ret­ro­grade, you are giv­en anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to more deeply pen­e­trate into the mys­tery of your Desire Body, and to dis­cov­er what lies at the core of your self-pro­pelling urgency to become, as you lift your­self step by step and draw clos­er to your Truth.

Mars is in Libra now, so you path of Soul Search­ing will be guid­ed and formed by the Sign of Bal­ance, Har­mo­ny and Beauty.

With Mars in Libra, you Desire to be sur­round­ed by Grace and Beau­ty, and you Aspire to act with Fair­ness and Con­sid­er­a­tion for one anoth­er. But to seek for that Beau­ty around you, to even see the beau­ty that is there, you must turn around and find the source of your Beau­ty that lies with­in you, or it will not be found any­where. Mars mov­ing back­ward in Libra takes you inwards to expe­ri­ence your Aes­thet­ic Heart, where­in the qual­i­ty of your palette of col­ors, your scale of notes and your tastes in all things of mat­ter-form are found. You must ele­vate your own beau­ty here, with­in your­self, and to love your­self and your sen­si­bil­i­ties in order to see and make your world more beau­ti­ful too.

Like­wise in your Social Sen­si­bil­i­ties, as you Aspire to live through and by Equal­i­ty, Jus­tice and Har­mo­ny with one oth­er, you must first expe­ri­ence this Con­sid­er­a­tion of Fair­ness with­in. For you can­not Love anoth­er, and you can­not receive the Love of anoth­er tru­ly, until you have looked with­in your own Lov­ing Heart and felt, accept­ed and known your own High­er Self. For it is this One with­in who will ever be stead­fast and true, who does and will for­ev­er embrace and hold you in your true nature, Uncon­di­tion­al Love. 

Mars leads you out­wards in your Jour­ney to the Stars…

But now he turns and takes you on more Hid­den Paths…

To the Source of Beau­ty and Love…

That is there at the Cen­ter of One and All.

You will be a Mak­er of Beauty.

You will be a Patri­ot for Peace.

You will be a Shin­ing Light,

You will Love and be Loved.