“You can’t always know what you want”…With Nep­tune chal­leng­ing Venus, the ques­tion is how do you know, real­ly know, the val­ue of any­thing (or any­one)? What are the ways you can mea­sure it? Can you be sure that what appears to be the val­ue is accu­rate? More impor­tant­ly, how do you know what is of val­ue to you?

Today you need to be care­ful of promis­es and offers that seem too good to be true…they prob­a­bly are! Remem­ber Nep­tune rules many things, but among them is Illu­sion and Delu­sion. When you want some­thing or some­one to be some­thing for you, and Nep­tune is involved, well you do have the pow­er to make any­thing appear to be “real”, for a while. That is, you can until an unaf­fect­ed per­son in your parade shouts out, “Why, the emper­or has no clothes on at all!” And that won­der­ful fairy sto­ry reveals the key to the mys­tery and an impor­tant lesson.

The trick with Nep­tune is to approach the thing or per­son “like a child”, with no pre­con­cep­tions, no fil­ters, no bias­es. Then, there is a chance, just maybe, that what is tru­ly there will be revealed to you. For that is the oth­er side of Nep­tune. When you work with Nep­tune from a more spir­i­tu­al­ly cen­tered state, Nep­tune is revealed as the pow­er of Illu­mi­na­tion and Insight; it is clair­voy­ance or “clear-see­ing”. But for this pow­er to work your ego-desire has to be put aside; you have to want to see noth­ing at all in order to see what is tru­ly there.

So take up this oppor­tu­ni­ty posed by Nep­tune’s chal­lenge to your expe­ri­ence of val­ue. Let Nep­tune dis­solve away the sur­face appear­ance of val­ue and reveal a deep­er, inner truth about the nature of val­ue in your life. Your jour­ney is both inward and out­ward as you seek to under­stand your pur­pose and cre­ate val­ue in the Universe.

Ulti­mate­ly, the source of your val­ue, and of all val­ues, is to be found in the truth that you and all of cre­ation are sparks of the Divine. Your val­ue is immea­sur­able because it is part of the ever-unfold­ing, nev­er-ceas­ing won­drous dance of Life-Consciousness-Spirit. 

Shine on!

Vari­ety IS the spice of life! From now till July 3^rd, Venus in Gem­i­ni will turn your appre­ci­a­tions and affec­tions towards the delights of dis­cov­ery. You will need to con­trast one thing to anoth­er, the Hot to the Cold, the Bit­ter to the Sweet, the Smooth to the Rough…Extend your sens­es to take it all in, and then some! Let a thou­sand flow­ers bloom and may every one release its own spe­cial scent for you.

Venus rules your val­ues; it indi­cates what you find plea­sur­able, what you want and how you love. The gift of Venus in Gem­i­ni is that you will be inspired to give more thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion to the val­ues you share with loved ones. This is the time to have that talk about what brings you togeth­er, to exam­ine the val­ues that you share already, the val­ues that cre­ate the space called “we”.

But just as impor­tant, this is a time to extend your selves and dis­cov­er some new delights in your world and between one anoth­er. Won­der, curios­i­ty, play­ful­ness this is the Gem­i­ni world of eter­nal youth…and no mat­ter your age, you are always young at heart!

You are age­less, yet ancient; you are inno­cent, yet wise. You are Spir­it and your only pur­pose is to become.…so be it!

Anoth­er entry from my Overview of 2011 in which I said this:

The cycle of Jupiter and Nep­tune is about 12 to 13 years long. Their last con­junc­tion was dur­ing 2009. With Jupiter pro­vid­ing the prin­ci­ples to guide our rela­tion­ships, the align­ment to Nep­tune in Aquar­ius cre­at­ed a renewed sen­si­bil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ty and com­pas­sion. It was no acci­dent that the biggest push to uni­ver­sal health care in the US was attempt­ed dur­ing this time.

Now at the wax­ing sex­tile on June 8, 2011 the more prac­ti­cal work­ing out and man­i­fes­ta­tion of this impulse is seen. What were once inti­ma­tions, ideas and pro­pos­als have become real pat­terns of how we now see we must relate to one anoth­er. There is a sense that we have come to under­stand that fol­low­ing the path of truth requires that we must con­duct our affairs with tol­er­ance, com­pas­sion and for­give­ness. This under­stand­ing will be chal­lenged, and we will have to choose which path to fol­low, a year lat­er, in June 2012, when our present beliefs and dreams about our future face a test.

I would add that this benef­ic align­ment of Jupiter (Principles/Truth) with Nep­tune (Imagination/Faith) cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to more clear­ly see the won­drous process where­by your under­stand­ing of Truth unfolds and grows into Wis­dom through your Imag­i­na­tion and Faith.

Your jour­ney to a greater truth is a process known as Rev­e­la­tion, where­in each lev­el of truth is super­seded by a greater lev­el of under­stand­ing. And that lev­el is even­tu­al­ly super­seded by a deep­er, more encom­pass­ing under­stand­ing that fol­lows. Through each stage you must have Faith and use your Imag­i­na­tion to let go of a less­er under­stand­ing and move to greater Truth. This jour­ney, this growth, is the nev­er-end­ing Song of Spirit.

The ear­li­er, less­er stages of Principles/Truth were not wrong; they were mere­ly the lev­el at which your con­scious­ness could com­pre­hend your real­i­ty. But as you grow in spir­i­tu­al matu­ri­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty you must lift up your spir­i­tu­al aware­ness by dis­solv­ing (Nep­tune) your old belief bound­aries (Jupiter).

This ser­i­al tran­scen­dence of the famil­iar can, at times, pro­duce doubts and fears as you seek to find your way. But today you are at ease and com­fort­ed by Jupiter and Nep­tune in their har­mo­nious align­ment. Today you have proof that you are becom­ing more aware.

Today cel­e­brate your life which is this jour­ney; this delight­ful, nev­er-end­ing dance of Truth and Faith. 

Clear think­ing ahead! If you want to under­stand (and be under­stood), well today is your day! Mer­cury in Gem­i­ni has been dash­ing and dart­ing around and you can use a lit­tle focus and grav­i­tas, which is Sat­urn’s gift to you now.

If you have been strug­gling for an answer because you just could­n’t bring the issue into clear focus, or you seemed to be at a loss for the right words to con­vey your point of view, take this won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to think nim­bly and deeply.

With Sat­urn shap­ing Mer­cury from the sign of Libra, you will be able to make sig­nif­i­cant progress in a rela­tion­ship issue. That is because the adapt­abil­i­ty of Mer­cury, which in Gem­i­ni encour­ages you to see all sides of any issue, is now stead­ied by Sat­urn­ian com­mit­ment expressed through Libra and so focused upon endur­ing social values.

Right think­ing leads to Right Action. Right Action leads to Right Results. What­so­ev­er you think, you will make it manifest.

Think Well… Act Rightly!

Anoth­er tran­si­tion I spoke of in my Overview for 2011. Here is what I said then and some addi­tion­al thoughts:

Jupiter moves into Tau­rus for a year on June 4. With sol­id foun­da­tions and patience there is tan­gi­ble progress now. There is steady growth and phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty will increase for many. With the end of the Jupiter/Saturn oppo­si­tion, com­bined with the trine of Jupiter and Plu­to lat­er, Jupiter in Tau­rus should cre­ate a much more pos­i­tive result for those economies posi­tioned to ben­e­fit. The gen­er­al US eco­nom­ic fore­cast will be revised upward.

Jove moves into the sec­ond sign of the Zodi­ac. Jupiter, the plan­et of prin­ci­ples, is mov­ing from Ide­al­is­tic Aries to Prac­ti­cal Tau­rus until June 2012. It is not enough to declare “this is what I believe, that this is what I will live by”. Now you must make it real, you must bring prin­ci­ples into prax­is; your truth must take form.

Your beliefs and plans must be ground­ed in phys­i­cal real­i­ty now. A beau­ti­ful the­o­ry is fine, but does it WORK? The dri­ving moti­va­tor now is mate­r­i­al well-being. After the rush of new ideas and projects while in Aries, Jupiter’s sojourn in Tau­rus instills a more grad­ual yet steady approach to cre­at­ing your future. Secu­ri­ty trumps excite­ment; you favor sol­id val­ues over bril­liant promis­es. Con­ser­v­a­tive, prac­ti­cal meth­ods will be in favor now.

The ques­tion hov­er­ing over many is will the mate­r­i­al well-being of the world improve now? But the real ques­tion that Jupiter asks of you is what are you doing to pro­mote, pre­serve and pro­tect the beau­ti­ful world you live upon?