Gemini Birthday Reports 2005

Friday, May 20, 2005
Happy Birthday, Gemini!

If there have been hidden aspects of your psyche that you wanted to bring out, make good use of, or reveal to the world, this year will present many of your best opportunities in a long time. I say many. There is no rush, and there is no one opportunity that, if missed, will mean you have missed the boat of life.

You may be wondering what the relationship between living transparently and expressing your creativity and power is. It has to do with how strong you feel. And it has to do with how right you feel living on the Earth. There is a relationship between these things and worldly success.

An illustration from the medical art called homeopathy may be illustrative. Homeopathy was the first whole-system form of Western medicine, developed in Germany in the 18th century and still practiced today -- though somewhat quietly -- in Western societies, as well as in India. This rather brilliant system of healing depends on working with mental and emotional states as well as physical states for accurate diagnosis and cure.

One condition described by homeopathy is a mental state where the person tends to hide, or to have a feeling that it’s necessary to hide. It can be subtle; often it is this lurking sense that ‘it’s not okay to be myself’ or ‘not okay to reveal myself’. Some call it insecurity, but it’s exceedingly personal.

This state is debilitating and weakens the system. It is in a sense a mental weakness that becomes a disadvantage in life and can even lead to physical illness. And it’s precisely this state of mind, experienced at some time by all humans, that you have the power to work through, and emerge within yourself as a more solidly integrated person.

For you, this particularly adds up to professional freedom. There is likely to be a serious calling you are hearing. And the key to making it real, the key to going beyond your past accomplishments (or lack thereof, as you may feel), is going to be a kind of personal breakthrough that is based on your becoming aware of your integrity, and putting that first all the time.

This will, of course, only help your personal relationships. You may recognize the extent to which you have let this kind of issue affect you — and how much progress you can make in your relationships with people if you work from your center and express yourself consistently, honestly and clearly with as many people in your life as possible.

Remember always to observe your options, and choose the ones that look the most appealing. Remember that you have two actual choices for every one you see — so it would be productive to look at everything at least two ways, always search for another possibility, and commit yourself only when you know in your heart exactly what you want.

Friday, May 27, 2005
Happy Birthday, Gemini!

The stress level, or rather, the success level, in your life will be directly related to your ability and willingness to change — with willingness getting more credit than skill. As has been said of other walks of life, it's not what you have, it's what you do with it. Therefore, make the most of what you have, and be willing to recognize your own value in any situation.

The past couple of years have come with many intense lessons in self-sufficiency, living your true values and organizing your financial life around its most important task: taking care of yourself. It has become abundantly clear that you really must be your own first line of defense when it comes to self-care, though this will not always be the case. It is, however, the case at the moment.

If there is a 'spiritual' reason for this, it involves creating a state of mind where you are simply not afraid that your needs will not be met, because you don't need them to be met by another person. Once you are firmly in a self-sufficient state, you will notice that your relationships occur on distinctly more equal terms — and that time is not far off.

At the same time, a whole new cycle of experience has begun for you professionally, though it may take surprising turns that you could never have predicted. Yet while you may not have predicted them directly, you are certainly involved in projecting your thoughts into the future and designing something truly innovative.

Progress is another word for change. Events will progress to the extent that you recognize that building your place in the world is directly related to building your character, though this process usually requires us to leave as much behind as we want to become. The time really is right for you to do this in a meaningful way. You have a lot of help -- so it won't be as hard as you think.

Friday, June 3, 2005
Happy Birthday, Gemini!

Reading over someone's shoulder on a recent flight from Amsterdam to Newark, I saw mentioned in a mainstream article about how emotional intelligence is a prerequisite for leadership. That's a good thing to remember now, particularly given that your ambition may be functioning quite automatically, while your emotional intelligence needs to be something you access manually.

Whatever the past year has delivered, the results have arrived, and now you've got many options open. Or to put it even more simply, you've got options, period. But the act of guiding your life through choices, and by extension, the lives of the people near you through the impact you have on them, is something that will take leadership. This will mean listening to your feelings while not getting swamped in them. It will mean working within your limits at the same time you honor them.

And it will mean being aware of your resources and putting them to work, one of which is your capacity to not only think clearly but to feel your own needs and your own values, and act on them according to what you know is right. This is easier than we think, but in a world where we're influenced by everyone else's values, sometimes with enormous force, we do need to be extremely conscious of who we are and what we hold as important. It is a fine line to tread, listening to others while at the same time doing what you think is right.

Or rather, what you know is right. It may have nothing to do with what anyone else thinks. You may meet active resistance, or more to the point, resistance from internal influences you have been carrying for years and are still working to overcome. But you can do it; you stand in a rare moment of clarity, of self-awareness and of the drive for the freedom to exist with permission only from yourself.

I doubt that you'll ever be someone who sees yourself as truly equal to the world around you. I doubt you will ever minimize the impact of key partners, lovers or individuals who seem to hold such a strong place in your life. But now, and perhaps for a long time, you have the option to stand as if you are equal, as if your views matter and as if your own intelligence is subject to inner affirmation before it is subject to your own doubts. Practice at this and you'll get better at it.

This does not negate relationship; rather, it requires that a new kind of relationship become a habit you live by.

Friday, June 10, 2005
Happy Birthday, Gemini!

Choose your friends wisely. They will have much power in your life, for good or for ill; they will impact many people around you, and your relationships will make a profound mark on your life. So it's up to you to select your influences carefully, and relate to people as if they matter.

What you cannot do, however, is tiptoe around people. If anything, the message of the year is that you need to meet the people closest to you on equal terms, and persist in being yourself. Then, you will be freed from the unfair power that relationships have long seemed to hold over you.

There is the possibility that you will tend not to be honest with yourself about two points — anger and desire. There is another tendency that the first tendency will kind of disappear into the background. Then, it will have a third tendency to show up as an unidentified flying object in your relationships.

The way out of the maze is to start at the beginning, and acknowledge what you feel. Then, the second step is to be clear with the people around you about how you feel. It's better if you don't do this in a defensive or confrontational way, which will of course take practice. Just calmly state how you feel, making sure that everyone knows that they are not responsible; you just feel that way. Practice, yes.

But it will be practice well worth the effort, because if you can gradually clear out these inner hitches and begin to surround yourself with people with whom you can be direct, you will begin to experience some unusual clarity in your life. And, in particular, some old, nagging issues will begin to dissolve.

Indeed, with a little awareness, it will be an awesome year for clearing up old subject matter, spiritual matter, and psychological matter. It's as if at this point you have advanced far along the path of growth of one version of yourself. You have reached a point where you are near a limit of that growth within the way you now think of yourself.

The next step is to go entirely beyond, which means beyond your plans, your ideas and your definitions of yourself. You can't really plan for that, but you can learn to be honest with yourself, and you can learn how to feel truly comfortable doing so in the presence of others. What follows may seem like a miracle, and if it is, it's the miracle of true growth.

Friday, June 17, 2005
Happy Birthday, Gemini!


Creativity may be the single most misunderstood concept in the world. It's usually associated with painting or music, but what few people recognize is that in addition to creative talent, those who succeed in the arts all, with no exceptions, do one thing: they take a chance on themselves.

The ability to use one's energy constructively is an important part of the creative process. But the risk factor is the other vital piece of the picture.

This is the one step you need to take if you truly want to move beyond the past, and give yourself a chance to live in a way that's more fulfilling and closer to the potential you feel inside yourself. The slow transit of Saturn through Cancer, your 2nd solar house, has taught you what is important to you -- and helped you drop a lot of things that are not so important to you.

But there may have been an action item missing, and you're now getting ready for that step. It may seem that outer-world events or people close to you are acting as provocateurs; if so, all the better. Whether you like the people around you or not, one thing is certain, they are teaching you something, and they are pushing you in the direction of taking care of yourself.

And a very big part of that process is expressing your right to be and express who you are in your own way. Often, that involves standing apart from people you once considered close to you. You may have to make certain adjustments where your family's values are concerned, since these values have, in the past, been truly important to who you are.

In a sense, you're being pushed out of your comfort zone, but you're being pushed into a much better place.

These developments will, most likely, develop quickly from the place you stand today. What now exists in idea form, or as a potential, proceeds rather steadily to the level of an agreement. Yet this is an agreement you enter on your own terms — that is, on terms you feel are genuinely mutually supportive, and at the very least, actually fair to you. But in all likelihood, there is a real meeting; everyone gains; and you discover, in the process, that you stand on equal terms with the world.

This is a big change — and I think you'll like it.