Okay, so who let the Grem­lins out…again?

Yes, that’s right it’s your favorite scape­goat for every­thing not going accord­ing to “plan”, (tech­nol­o­gy fails, com­mu­ni­ca­tions become gar­bled and mis­un­der­stand­ings mount), Mer­cury ret­ro­grades for over 3 weeks till August 26. This time it’s a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed as I not­ed ear­li­er, since it will start in Vir­go and then go back into Leo. There are oth­er chal­leng­ing align­ments along the way too, so this will be an August to remember…

It does seem evi­dent that things seem to go awry when Mer­cury turns around. But that real­ly is not the “fault” of Her­mes; you just need to align your­self with the ener­gies around you, which have shift­ed indeed. The ordi­nary flow of your men­tal­i­ty will now be direct­ed inward, becom­ing more reflec­tive, focused and intro­spec­tive. This is good news; you need these oppor­tu­ni­ties to cor­rect false assump­tions, flawed per­cep­tions and misunderstandings!

But if you pro­ceed as if every­thing is “nor­mal”, if you do not stay alert to the changed men­tal ener­gies, then you will stum­ble and fall into error in both your per­cep­tions and com­pre­hen­sions of your world. And, since most oth­er mor­tals are sim­i­lar­ly “afflict­ed” by this lack of aware­ness with regard to the shift­ing ener­gies, the mis­cues, errors and con­fu­sion mul­ti­ply expo­nen­tial­ly. No won­der every­one seems to see these peri­ods as “chal­leng­ing”.

Mer­cury gets the “blame”, but as the bard wrote in Julius Cae­sar:

“Men at some time are mas­ters of their fates: The fault, dear Bru­tus, is not in our stars, But in our­selves, that we are underlings.” 

What Shake­speare affirmed is that your exer­cise of your most pre­cious gift, your Free Will, is not lim­it­ed exter­nal­ly by the ener­gies around you, so much as it is by your lack of self-under­stand­ing (and so self-con­trol). The key to your spir­i­tu­al progress is self-aware­ness; it is that unfold­ment of your aware­ness which leads to self-knowl­edge and the resul­tant expan­sion of your Spir­i­tu­al Will. And this is why you should cel­e­brate Mer­cury’s gift now. Why?

Why, because this is pre­cise­ly what is offered up to you now, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for greater Illu­mi­na­tion is here, right now. Her­mes is the guide who will lead you inward. He is the mes­sen­ger of the gods who will take your hand as you seek to re-vis­it, review and revise what you have come to expe­ri­ence as your reality.

But you have to par­tic­i­pate; you have to be alert, adapt­able and will­ing to use your pow­ers of dis­cern­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion and self-crit­i­cism. It is always up to you how you will “dance your dance” with the ener­gies of the universe.

So you can com­plain about all the pet­ty annoy­ances of the next 3 weeks…Or, you can under­stand that the uni­verse is offer­ing you a gift, a most pre­cious gift of greater self-awareness.

What can you do? From now till August 8, Mer­cury will ret­ro­grade in Vir­go so the empha­sis is upon a re-work­ing of your pow­ers of crit­i­cal think­ing which should be applied reflec­tive­ly now…That means, yes, it is a time to be self-crit­i­cal and weed out false assump­tions and pet­ty attach­ments. Be care­ful about becom­ing over­ly annoyed by some­thing or some­one; instead turn that back on your­self and see why it upset you so much…then let it go. Use a lit­tle Pis­cean imag­i­na­tion and keep step­ping back so you can see the big­ger pic­ture; remem­ber to counter any attach­ment to minu­tia by assum­ing a more encom­pass­ing view­point, one that steps back so as to con­sid­er the for­est and so pre­vent you from becom­ing lost among the count­less trees.

Then from August 8 to 26, as Mer­cury ret­ro­grades in Leo, use this reflec­tive focus to reex­am­ine your ide­al­ism, ego and pride as regards your thought process­es. Be care­ful here about being over­ly upset by some­one who is ego­is­tic, demand­ing of atten­tion or bossy. Again, you must look with­in and see why this is so upset­ting to you; what are you too attached to or fear­ful of…then release it. Use the pow­er of Aquar­i­an detach­ment to bal­ance out the pas­sions of Leo. Remem­ber always, that the noble path is the Mid­dle Way; that extremes of emo­tion lead to regression…your way must be calm, cen­tered and self-crit­i­cal. If you real­ly want respect, live that truthway…stay on the path.

Okay sparks of the Divine, are you ready for some new music, are you ready to show some new steps? Her­mes is pip­ing, lead­ing you through the veil of appear­ances to a greater understanding.

Ready, Turn, Dance!

Watch Out! …Some­times too much is well…way, way TOO MUCH!

This Sun Jupiter Cycle began with the promise of Boun­ti­ful­ness on April 6 with the affir­ma­tion “Growth is Good”; now you find that you will need to qual­i­fy this “truth”.

While growth is good, too much growth (or the wrong type of growth) is waste­ful, destruc­tive and will actu­al­ly lead to growth’s oppo­site or dis­in­te­gra­tion. There is good growth and there is less good growth…now you must choose. That is what the Square is for; it rep­re­sents a turn­ing point, a fork in the road of life…and you must choose a fork now in order to con­tin­ue on your (bet­ter) path of growth.

What is the choice you face? With the Sun in Leo you are being dri­ven by ide­al­ism as you seek to stretch your­self in dis­plays of lead­er­ship, cre­ativ­i­ty and love. Jupiter in Tau­rus brings mat­ters to a focus now by shap­ing the scene, bring­ing to bear prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions that are cen­tered upon sol­id values.

Basi­cal­ly, it is at time where you must not let the pur­suit of the ide­al or the per­fect to become the defeat of the pos­si­ble. You must adjust your plan and path so that your growth is mean­ing­ful and sustainable.

You will see how well you have man­aged the bal­ance when the Sun and Jupiter meet again in ear­ly September. 

What do you want, really?

Well… Tru­ly, you just want to be appre­ci­at­ed for who you real­ly are! And, you want who­ev­er walks along­side you to be free to be true to their self too! Well, today is that day!

Where­as on July 7 the jux­ta­po­si­tion of Venus and Uranus posed a chal­lenge to you (and them), today the Plan­ets of Love and Orig­i­nal­i­ty, of Val­ue and Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty align to forge a bal­ance between shar­ing and inde­pen­dence, between rela­tion­ship and freedom.

Today the promise of what was released on April 22 is met. What began as an inti­ma­tion of truth, of what ties and binds you one to anoth­er has now come as an experience…of real, of substantial…of True Love.

True love is uncon­di­tion­al; it is found­ed upon your fun­da­men­tal expe­ri­ence of your essen­tial self (mon­ad) which is but one spark among count­less shin­ing ones who are upon a great jour­ney out­ward and back from the One Divine Source.

Through many stages and many turn­ings you come upon oth­er con­scious­ly aware sparks of this same Divine Source…and there you see it, in their eyes…the Recognition…

You say, they say “I know this, I know this feeling…I know you”. And then, the recog­ni­tion, the acknowl­edge­ment is shared, by that most pre­cious, most gen­uine of signs…you smile!

Smile today…and say to one anoth­er, “I have always loved you…I love who you are…I love who we are becoming”.

Smile…

You have moved through the First Four, the Ini­tia­to­ry New Moons of the Astro­log­i­cal Year. The Fun­da­men­tal Vibra­tions have been evoked…Fire, Earth, Air and Water have each tak­en their turn around this, the first third of the Wheel of Life. Those New Moons released their seed-forms to inspire, inform and guide you on your journey…

And now you begin again, with a greater under­stand­ing, in the Fire that is Leo. Where­as in Aries you moved through the expe­ri­ence of being for itself; you formed your per­sonas (masks) so as to present your­self to the world. Now in Leo you must go fur­ther and so extend your­self through roles, upon stages and in the dra­mas that are the Dance of Life itself; here in Leo you must cre­ate, per­form and release your­self for you (and the world) to see.

Sing your spir­it song, dance your cre­ator’s dance, as you humbly acknowl­edge, accept and trea­sure the gift that is Life-Consciousness-Spirit.

Misunderstanding…Delusion…Deception…Confusion…

Which will lead you to…eventually…

Acceptance…Revelation…Illumination!

Yes, that’s right; it is anoth­er “Through the Look­ing Glass” moment when Mer­cury and Nep­tune stand oppo­site one anoth­er. Only this time you are real­ly going to be “chal­lenged” (and have a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty); with Mer­cury turn­ing ret­ro­grade next week, this oppo­si­tion is going to occur 3 times in the next 40 days! That’s a lot of Delusion/Confusion as well as Illu­mi­na­tion to deal with!

Mer­cury rules your mind (man­as), your intel­lect, pow­ers of per­cep­tion, analy­sis and com­pre­hen­sion, as well as your fac­ul­ties of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Nep­tune is one of the Great Three, the Avatars from the Beyond, tru­ly gifts from the gods, whose pur­pose is to reveal (re-veil) the mul­ti-dimen­sion­al uni­verse, the “Mul­ti­verse”, that you real­ly move through.

You had a sim­i­lar encounter with­in your­self back around June 3 when Mer­cury Squared Nep­tune. This time the dra­ma of Her­mes and Posei­don will play out more exter­nal­ly, seem­ing­ly between you and anoth­er (or oth­ers). That’s the way it is with an oppo­si­tion, the quick­en­ing of your aware­ness is elicit­ed by the jux­ta­po­si­tion of one con­scious­ness to another.

You may find your­self in a par­tic­u­lar mis­un­der­stand­ing that mush­rooms between you and anoth­er, or you will real­ize each of you have been mak­ing an incor­rect assump­tion about one anoth­er for some time…or you that you have stum­bled into a sit­u­a­tion of delib­er­ate decep­tion. (But, spir­i­tu­al­ly, it is true, that all decep­tion is ulti­mate­ly the prod­uct of self-deception).

But of course, as in all things, the real oppo­si­tion, con­fronta­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty will take place with­in you; it is real­ly between your more lim­it­ed aware­ness ver­sus your ever unfold­ing poten­tial for a greater aware­ness. Remem­ber, there is noth­ing to fear; you have been through this many times before; and there are many more steps you must take as you become the becoming…

Your unfold­ment pro­ceeds from one lev­el of con­scious­ness to anoth­er; at each lev­el you will even­tu­al­ly move from cer­tain­ty, to doubt, to confusion…Treasure that, for it is that con­fu­sion which is your gate­way for the release from the less­er real­i­ty; it is that let­ting go of the old cer­tain­ty that you were attached to that makes pos­si­ble a re-imag­i­na­tion and move­ment into a greater, more encom­pass­ing consciousness.

So Nep­tune serves you now as The Illu­mi­na­tor, who comes along to help you re-con­nect to your tran­scen­dent, intu­itive mind, your Bud­dhi Mind, and so frees you, for a time, from your more lim­it­ed, dual­is­tic low­er mind; Posei­don takes you into his “sea of mir­rors”, into a por­tion of The Mul­ti­verse, so that you may see the reflec­tions of reflec­tions of reflec­tions, the won­der that is Life-Consciousness-Spirit.

You will emerge out of the waters renewed, restored and hum­bled by the majesty of cre­ation which you have just, even for a moment, felt your­self to be one with.

This is the Truth that you are mov­ing towards, slow­ly, sure­ly but not yet able to hold.

Not yet…