Today is Monday, December 5, 2011. We are in the last several days before a potent total eclipse of the Moon. This Saturday, Dec. 10, the Moon in Gemini opposes the Sun in Sagittarius, in the complement to the partial solar eclipse two weeks ago. Eclipses are all a little different, yet share some qualities; one is the feeling that you’ve stepped into a bit of a time warp (not the Rocky Horror kind) – or a continuity shift. That is, eclipses are evolutionary gateways. We go through the gate no matter what we do or don’t do, whether aware of the event or not. The beauty of working with astrology is the beauty of applied awareness – even in the smallest measure.
It’s always good to do something you really love on or around the day of an eclipse. The reason has to do with this shift in continuity; with it, stuck patterns can come released and new patterns can be established. This can be challenging, given adult obligations, but even a simple act of enjoyment or beauty (watching a sunset, preparing a favorite meal) is going to set an emotional tone of gratitude and love – always worthwhile intentions to set. At the very least, be prepared for what you ARE doing to be the thing you will be doing more of. Therefore do that thing well, and really get into it. In that instance, the emotional tone of gratitude/enjoyment/sense of purpose can turn out to be exponentially more important than the thing you are doing, in terms of the most important thing we can shift: our perspective and awareness.
Why should an eclipse be able to work this way? Think about it: You wouldn’t be shocked to reflect on the course of a month that had just passed and realize your perspective on something had changed. Well, a total lunar eclipse is like a month in miniature. In three hours, the Moon goes from full to new to full again in that short time. That’s the effect, however symbolic – and there is great power in symbols. If astrology shows us anything, it shows us that.
This eclipse, in particular, has some special astrological symbols involved. The eclipse is square a conjunction of the asteroids Apollo and Psyche in Virgo. This speaks to a self-critical quality that feels like: I am such a fuck-up, there must be something psychologically or spiritually wrong with me. I keep making the same mistakes over and over again and the only explanation I have is that I have some kind of deep-seated issue I don’t understand and that I fear that I can never resolve. That last part is an especially vivid feeling associated with Psyche; Apollo is about making the same mistakes over and over again.
Take a deep breath, and read that section in italics over again slowly. If it strikes a chord, you may be feeling like you have your work cut out for you right now. It’s a harsh and painful thing to be feeling, true or not. Psyche has this odd illusion of a ‘sense of what will never heal’, but of course that is not really true — it’s part of what you might think of as the psychic wound of Psyche. Healing is possible, but a Psyche aspect can help us confront the fear that it’s not.
Here’s the beauty of this moment: These days near eclipses are available to you to re-pattern the ‘mistakes’ you may keep making with your choices as well as the self-critical script that goes with them. Even if you only set in motion one half of that equation, you’re still on your way to shifting the other half, because our choices and our feelings about ourselves influence each other reciprocally.
Because the Psyche-Apollo conjunction is square the eclipse, the sensation described above is the key thing to work with as one psychological complex. It ties directly into the stuff that has been coming to light since around Thanksgiving having to do with deep ancestral/familial patterns. The effects you experience in your life have an actual cause and you cannot work out the effect until you go to the deeper level. Don’t worry about ‘going all the way in’. This isn’t about putting pressure on your self to ‘get it right’. Rather the idea is to go in the right direction, and then keeping going. You’re on your way through the gateway anyway – might as well add a little extra awareness to the ride and see how far you go.
Looking for insights on how this week’s astrology affects your personal Sun and rising signs? Try out Planet Waves Light, our streamlined horoscope service. For deeper cultural context and astrological investigation, the premium Planet Waves subscription includes the same horoscopes, plus extensively-researched articles on Fridays.
Yes, I combed the thread. Very useful Eric.
It seems to me that reliable therapy resources are something people are crying out for – a bit like a reliable mechanic or plumber.
You can’t put a price on your freedom but, as you point out on that thread, skilled folk who are truly equipped to help free us decisively.. are in short supply!
Interestingly, the more in tune with myself I get the less interested I am in therapy.
My feeling is that therapy is a surrogate for the nature of creative community – something that at once frees us from the shackles of individualism yet offers true prospect of self-actualization. 😉
Well now — brilliant…
http://planetwaves.net/pagetwo/daily-astrology/a-question-for-those-in-therapy-and-grads/
😀
any therapist has to be a lot fucking smarter than you are. that subverts the neuroses/rationalization. but there is one key piece. I wanted to feel better. I had to. I had work to do and fun to experience. I knew that I was not going to get anywhere without both the right help and helping myself. I was motivated, determined, persistent.
this developing thread is incentive to get that piece going — it would be a big hit. there is a LONG thread in the archives of this blog setup about just this subject — experiences finding therapists. Would anyone care to dig it out for me? It should search up in the in-house search engine, or through google — might take a few minutes — there were easily 60 comments all of them just great.
Here is one article —
http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/865057546.html
I have a book started called JOE. It’s the story of the 10 most important lessons I learned from Joe, less as ‘therapist’ and more as trusted mentor.
It starts with, “How to Say Goodbye” and moves on quickly to “Use What You Know.”
The thing with Joe is, he’s fucking smart. He’s not a Ph.D. (I had a ban on Ph.D. therapists as part of my vetting process.) He’s a composer, gem cutter, trained therapist, educational consultant — he’s human. His sex library fills a room in his little suburban house, and overflows into other rooms. He is 71 with strength and stamina to make any 47 year old a little envious.
Through that reflection I could see that I am human; I am competent. And I met him because the guy who was fucking my girlfriend gave me his phone number. I called him, I showed up — 20 years ago next month.
bkoehler —
thank you! though i have to say as much as i do love what i do for PW, this is less about devotion and more about very longstanding issues with time management, prioritizing, choices, starting things earlier…. etc. i am easily a night owl by natural tendency, but my life works a little easier when i can guide my rhythm earlier. the times it has worked, it’s great. but i can never seem to maintain it. believe me, i do not work any more hours for PW than anyone else, i just have a hard time corralling them.
i really appreciate the offering on this thread, and eric, i hope you can get to that article sometime relatively soon-ish! (yes, i know all of the obstacles.) as alexander points out, the pitfalls in the vetting process have loomed large enough to be one set of factors for my delaying the search.
yes, i totally get the trust-building part. and i also agree that while talk therapy should not be put down, it’s not ideal for all things — depression being a good example. and i know my own abilities to rationalize and talk/write my way around something without necessarily getting to the heart of it — which is one reason why i think at the very least a mix of traditional talk and other modalities might be what i’m looking for. the energetic/spiritual branches hold one avenue; the yelling/hitting things branches appeal to me sometimes; the talk/trust branch as well.
for sure, expanding my net of local testimonials is part of the process.
Eric, what you do is way beyond therapy. It is the ultimate therapeutic offering because it recognises that people need to be able to understand their own processes to get their bearings and then shape their path. Therapy is less interested in that and more in fixing brokenness – which is fine, but the hidden assumptions are not exposed.
You don’t fix something in a single moment of time in any case. What you do here is give folk the personalised instruction manual. Therapy will only ever take folk back to baseline ‘wellness’ (whatever THAT means).
This is why I love the Pythons clip of alms for an ex leper – precisely because it says ‘removal of the illness is not really the point’ it is ‘how do I live *well*’
The whole arena is loaded but thanks to you for offering a crucial and truly viable alternative to the merry-go-round bandaid.
At the end of the day, one has to fall out of love with their defenses and fall in love with authentic existence. To do that, one has to learn the difference between the two. Alex — this is the brain functioning part I am getting at, the limbic pathway thing.
I am not a therapist, I am an astrologer. Without ever meeting someone I am able to tune in and apply ideas, which are also energy nodes, and help people I will never hear from. Some therapists – many of them – would say this is utter bullshit. However, I would not be able to do what I do had I not had a kind of extreme success in longterm therapy, including what I learned from my therapist Joe about how to think, how to conceive of myself, and how to work with people.
Yet I could also not do what I do without my foundation in A Course in Miracles, which (from a therapy standpoint) I agree can be extremely dangerous. But I was able to do what I need and extract what I need and actually get the point of the course in-body.
And — one catastrophe in what I consider to be one of the best techniques of therapy (Hakomi), but the authentic trust was not there. There was too much emphasis on the process of therapy which itself decries process. There was too much guru shit going on with the founder of the method, who was brilliant but his adherents were not so much. But the techniques are just amazing — in the right hands.
One approach to assessing therapy is that it does not work without an actual spiritual connection — that is, both parties working with the healing agent, the Holy Spirit. But try telling that to a therapist.
There are some practical matters to take into consideration. My take is slightly different to yours Eric but I hear you.
Actually, in my own work role what you describe is the way I practice.
Nevertheless, in the vetting process (which is a perilous business), two things bear heavily in proceedings: (1) Cost. Time is money and a bad experience of therapy is costly as well as damaging on many fronts. It is also a very real practical constraint – one which speaks for time limits. Much therapy is a ‘luxury’ that folk struggle to afford and this is why trust is an ideal that we don’t always get the benefit of appropriating.
It is also not necessary in all instances. If you break your arm (depending on severity) it can be left to heal with minimal protection and support or maybe pinned.There may be some clinical judgment and experience deployed in the decision making process but technical skill deployed bears little relationship to the compassion of any surgeon performing a procedure.
When we think of *broken* minds we often forget that philosophy is winning out over biology. Brains are important in terms of minds. Sometimes we mend minds by re-templating brains. That has nothing whatsoever to do with trust apart from trust in the competence of the practitioner.
So (2) More than a contract of trust with the therapist – which always implies a long term process (simply NOT necessary in many cases and part of the *old* therapy thinking) – confidence in the therapist’s technical competence in use of their techniques is crucial.
Seek bona fides and testimonials. Insist on a discussion of a decent length before you begin to pay for the person’s service. Ask the right questions. Make sure they are ethical and set sessional limits, not merely milking you as a source of regular income.
This whole idea of being in therapy for years is a testament to primitive practice and the exploitation of the vulnerable, little different to the pharmaceutical ruse employed in hardcore mental health settings.
The reason people’s problems become chronic is because of misunderstanding the nature of brain functioning. Problems and the often resulting illness/dysfunction emanate from failure to understand matters of learning style. People don’t ‘get ill’ because there is an illness but because they are not able to fulfill the learning imperatives of the brain.
The whole of Eric’s approach is geared to putting that right by helping people in a process to re-wire themselves. This is much better than therapy and as Eric points out much cheaper!
But if you are paying for therapy it is important not to confuse autonomous processes with external technological application – both have their place. And as I say, time is money..
There are many views of therapy and since this is something I feel strongly about (from much experience) I will sum up my view in a few lines.
Therapy is about the cultivation of trust. That is the thing learned; the missing experience had. The therapy relationship, or any healing relationship, becomes the vehicle for that experience of learning trust, not in theory but in actual practice. That takes time.
Trust leads to the ability to be vulnerable. That openness allows you to discern when you feel safe and when you do not. It replaces defensiveness with discernment.
Without trust and vulnerability, very little fulfillment is possible. I don’t believe the technique of the therapy matters, except that the technique should not hamper trust, per se. “Talk therapy” is often put down. And truly I have been sitting on a stack of research about how to find a good therapist because it’s such a daunting prospect, given how many charlatans and messed up people are working as therapists (often, the most messed up people). There is an element of synchronicity to finding the right therapist.
But when talk therapy is put down, that’s a misunderstanding of what therapy is for at all. Most people struggle with trust and vulnerability. The therapy relationship becomes a place to experience those things that were largely missing, to open up to the missing experiences, and then to model other relationships off of that.
The best therapists have the flavor of part sage mentor, part peer (in that order). They become the authority which we aspire to be, which we then internalize. This is the development of true respect.
Therapy/healing relationships supplant the influences of parents, whose authority we also aspired to, but who betrayed our trust, usually by abusing their power and passing their irrational fears onto us.
Your therapist must be someone who teaches you to respect and take care of yourself — by example, and through the relationship. And with that space prepared, it’s possible to be yourself and take care of yourself, in the presence of someone you trust. You learn to respect yourself in the presence of another, with the affirmation and knowledge of another.
Hi Amanda!
The first thing is ‘be affirmed’. You are a special talent and I sense that your authenticity and congruence is somewhat born out of your pain. There IS a positive side even to the hang-ups.
Second, just a recommendation flying blind. So ignore if you don’t feel it relevant. From what you said I’d avoid talking therapy or specifically Rogerian stuff. My gut tells me that with such issues you are better with a therapist who deploys technology – by which I mean at least NLP techniques and preferably Hypnotherapy.
Talking therapies that are non-directive can get lost and I think you need a solution-focused approach that can get at the wiring, so to speak. Mental loops are best addressed via expert help if they address the emotional triggers in a state of low arousal. Detachment from intense emotion is a prerequisite.
Often the attempt is made to identify and reshape the belief first but it is not adequately acknowledged that a state of high arousal is sponsoring that belief more than its cognitive content.
I have long been struck by your immense talent. You do not need to compare yourself with anyone else. You are unique. And a rare talent on many fronts 🙂
alexander, always good to hear you weigh in! you and eric make a great tag-team. gratitude to you both.
“a little bit of therapy can go a very long way.”
aaaaaaaaaand there’s the first step that needs to be taken. i’ve been between therapists for over 2 1/2 years now, and have been talking about looking for a new one for too long without doing much looking. (it’s been fits & starts; two therapy modalities that have appealed to me do not appear to have any practitioners within striking distance of here.)
so today: an email to some acquaintances who may know local counselors they can recommend and a phone call to someone who does some fascinating counseling/healing work, though i don’t get the sense she’s a “therapist” per se. trying to get a little closer to concrete action here; the trick is always keeping the momentum going long enough to actually get anywhere with it.
🙂
amanda,
I find that in myself it is the compulsive energy that will keep me driving away at a project when I should be sleeping or my tummy says feed me feed me, or the critters are supposed to be fed now, or I still need to call my brother tonight. Upon examination of transits I usually find something about Vesta (either natally or transiting) being aspected, or Pluto has got hold of my natal Mercury (or vice verse). What will drive me is probably a combination of things, but there has to be the Pluto or Vesta element above all.
It is a matter also of balancing what the mundane world demands of us and what (we believe, suspect) the Universe is calling us to do. That could involve Libra stuff and Venus stuff and as some astrologers feel Pallas Athene has “strong links to Pluto”, even she could be pushing you to stay up past bedtime.
Bottom line could simply be that you just love what you are doing and know that it is important to all of us. If you don’t find a way to bring balance, and if it is supposed to happen (the balancing), the outer world will provide a way to stop you in your tracks, I promise!
be
Most people don’t know what they want, but it’s like an odd blind spot about being disconnected from wanting and even the path of reasoning, “If I want to do this, I have to do this.
—————————
A great crux interpretum! The perpetual, under the radar, uncertainty it fosters makes it well nigh impossible to shift patterns (toughest stuff on the planet to detonate).
I’m struck often by travel support programmes for those with severe anxieties that sets the goal of independent travel as a key marker for those debilitated. Many of these folk not only experience mental blocks but have successfully habituated their fears into the behavioural wiring and have have not been developing large areas of their experience.
These travel programmes are flawed and their results rarely consolidated. That’s because the point is not to master issues mechanically as per some austere textbook. Rather, success can be expected once there is a greater motivation to travel places than not travel.
Being self-directed and motivated consistently is a very rare thing in the human arena – that is why most people settle for being defined by their roles and routines – where something OUTSIDE OF THEM drives the life. It is a locus of control issue.
Once, as Eric so clearly explains it, what one desires is not accessible viscerally then there is a permanent dissatisfaction lingering – an angst.
It is this chronic state that leads to the confidence issue. For how can anyone have confidence about anything one is not regularly transacting around? The frustration born of perfectionism and lack of direction is the first thing to be tackled – which means putting it down…
You ARE good enough as you are and don’t have to be anything else.. I assure you. Check in with your real friends – they will assure you this is so. Problem people will put MORE pressure on you..
When you realise you really don’t have to be anything for the sake or on behalf of anyone, then you may find yourself in a position where you can decide for yourself what you really wish your core business on the planet to be.
Simplify. Get rid of all things extraneous. When you are left with only you then time needs to be spent experimenting. Really.. it is the Oracle for Tuesday 6th coming in here!
The rest is the adventure. You don’t get to script that!
Take it from one in the thick of that whole mess.. Recovering YOU is all that counts. At times such as that a little bit of therapy can go a very long way. 😀
I post one of my fave video clips to illustrate the point!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmtLOQKeDs8
There are a lot of ways to look at that ‘mess’ — and the first place to go is to understand childhood: the dynamics of your household and family, especially your parents’ relationship and what that taught you about existence. You cannot know this too well, but some bold lines of connection will get you a long way.
Typically parents install governing devices on children. One of them is confusion: in particular, confusion about what they want and guilt about wanting it.
By want, I don’t just mean the ice cream sundae, but rather the ability to see an objective and move toward it. It’s the whole process of identifying a goal and taking steps that has often been strewn with mines. This is some of the best territory for therapy, not for blaming parents (though some anger is appropriate, then you get over it) but because we get to see that our inner process have rhyme and reason, even if it’s a little weird. There is a ‘logic’ of sorts and it really helps to see that logic.
Most people don’t know what they want, but it’s like an odd blind spot about being disconnected from wanting and even the path of reasoning, “If I want to do this, I have to do this.” You might think that the breakdown of a task into steps lacks a certain spiritual subtlety, but — does it really?
I’m not sure how far I want to go into the gender thing, and I am not one to speak too compellingly about “thinking like a man” — but when we start to get into goal oriented thinking: that is to say, win the game type of thinking — that’s what we’re doing. It’s more satisfying than you may think to make subtle changes in organization patterns that actually get results; and even before you get the results, it’s good exercise having faith in yourself.
Learning actual discipline is essential for accomplishing any creative or technical task on a dependable basis. You have to learn how your mind works, and work with rather than against those tendencies, as you learn to evolve them.
And there is something about listening: to yourself, and to others. I don’t mean listening as “doing what you’re told” but rather in actually hearing.
Underneath this all, there may be some very large questions: What does it mean to run your own life? This question comes down to overthrowing the parents (often certified narcissists) who strove to run our lives as children. Those tendencies get installed into us, and we can end up being our own enemy until we see the tendencies and the patterns and go deeper into the roots. Then there are ‘benefits’ we may get from that enmity/chaos/confusion; there is a responsibility question. Confusion means not taking action and getting the ‘benefits’ of not doing so — but that does not work so well in adult life.
My father didn’t want me to be a writer, ostensibly (he said) because I would be poor. So I managed to become a world-class investigative reporter barely able to pay the rent. (More common than it seems, I know.) I had to make a lot of decisions to get out of that, and they ALL and I mean ALL involved taking back authority over my life from him. Then I started to figure out how motivated he was by jealousy. Then I started to figure out how little he knows about the things he professes to know the very most about (nuclear power, communication, etc.).
Let’s put it this way. It’s not his prerogative to make sure I don’t play guitar. And his conduct toward me relating to music was blatantly debilitating, but in the end, that has nothing to do with my learning to play a blues scale. And as my dear friend Rosanne said to me recently, “When you know the blues scale, everyone can go fuck themselves.”
right.
of course, i put this comment here because this sentence speaks to it so perfectly: “I keep making the same mistakes over and over again and the only explanation I have is that I have some kind of deep-seated issue I don’t understand and that I fear that I can never resolve.”
it’s that seeming impossibility, the fear of being unable to truly understand, let alone resolve, the root problem, that makes it all feel so far from “simple.” sure, viewed form the outside, it’s all cut-and-dried little steps and choices. it’s the mess on the inside that confounds me.
“i’ve done it before” tends to lead to “then why is it so hard to do it again,” rather than establishing confidence. at least, at the moment.
We are around the time of the event.
Goals often need to be broken down into smaller steps; “in order to accomplish this specific thing, I need to do this, by this time, and not do this.”
What needs to be got out of the way, in order for something to be more readily possible?
It’s not merely about will power, it’s about organizing one’s will and applying it. Not doing something at night means doing it some other time, but when exactly would that be? There is a second choice involved.
Also it’s important to stay connected to one’s motive.
There may also be a confidence issue. It’s important to tell yourself that that you’re capable of something, you’ve done it before, rather than any other message.
Why Amanda, simply ‘correct’ your outworking around the time of the upcoming lunar event! 😉
help!!!
during the last set of eclipses, i found myself becoming very involved in the writing of the Daily Astrology feature — which has been an amazing learning experience.
HOWEVER, that period also saw me writing the things late at night — a pattern i had not wanted to set. sure enough, with only brief exceptions, i keep finding myself working on these WAY later at night than is ideal. And here i am still doing it. and i’m not entirely sure why my attempts to set new habits with this have been so thwarted — except for general difficulties with time management, etc.
any suggestions? i’d like to continue loving the good parts of this, but the whole working-at-midnight thing might make me crazy if it keeps going for another 6 months…..
oy.
Definitely got some old mother shit going on with a co-worker & my tendency to hook up with her codependent ways as I did with my mom’s. I get her approval that way but the situations do not end up being good/healthy for me. But it’s my choices & my responsibility getting me in trouble. Nobody is holding a gun to my head. It is possible to be too much heart & not enough head.
Each time I read “Dec 10th” I am hit with the reverberations of 22 years ago that date, this year…..the day I married my former spouse and father of my two children. Marriage was something I had intended to never enter into – and if my experience holds any weight; I would have best adhered to what my instincts had told me! But I bought lock, stock and barrel into family patterns — that I subconsciously had to prove I could fulfill.
Reality said I could not, and had chosen a partner who would make sure of that.
So — this is more than a moment for me, just now. And I must say that this is also the most Merc Retro-y Merc Retro I have ever experienced. Can’t get brain to compute properly at all, everything techonological or communicative or electrical is broken or messed up or whatever, including my body.
I set out this morning to look into Psyche and Apollo in my chart and now the day is over and that went out the window too.
Thank you for the article, tomorrow is another day….
Ok then, tea and bed it is.
xo
don’t worry, i had the same reaction when i read that italicized bit. so if anyone on the writing team is spying, they have a multifaceted crystal ball. either that, or this “astrology” stuff really does effect everyone. 🙂
so yeah — i’m definitely in this same struggle, & it came to painful attention last week.
bkoehler — interesting detail there about QB1. that would put it roughly opp my natal Uranus, which Saturn has recently moved past in my 10th.
Be – Interesting thoughts about the Aries’ portal. In my chart, Aries bridges the 9th and 10th houses, with my natal moon in the 9th and nearly on the midheaven. Gotta watch those messages now…
bk,
Thanks for telling us about the portal. Aries is on my 8th house of sex, death, taxes, other people’s money and so on. I have no idea what a portal there could mean but I will stay open to that. Mars (ruler of the 8th) is in my 5th house conjunct Venus.
Great info to start the week with, thanks everyone!
marymack: In return for your inspiring courage, please accept my compassionate thanks.
Aries in the fourth house. Makes sense to me! Thanks, b!
We all seem to be floundering around for solidity and identity in these days of impermanence and here-today-gone-tomorrow. I’m watching two astral bodies as they approach their opposition, probably late tomorrow, that might bring clarity to this situation. Saturn at 26+ Libra, symbol of permanence and solidity is opposite Transneptunian (1992) QB1 at 26+ Aries. QB1 never got a name even though it was discovered almost 20 years ago, so it really has the mother of all identity problems.
I like the phrase of Eric’s about QB1, “a process of arising phoenix like into new incarnations within our current lifetime, often as a result of near-death experiences or an ego death” because it so suits these transformational times we live in. The fact that I don’t know if QB is male or female also seems appropriate as we struggle to leave the restrictive parameters of polarity. QB has no specific gender or even a name to relate it to something else, but it does seem to represent a place maybe, the threshold from one place to another as Eric has told us. A place where identity is dropped by the wayside. If so, that would explain why our own identities seem to be disengaging as the reflective quality of the opposition to Saturn appears.
Someone years ago said that “the main theme of QB1 is ‘systematic search’, like the search of new planets; the systematic search by the computer, when checking the telescope data, is based on a secuencial analysis that is repeated until the new object is discovered, like the PIN search in the movie ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day”.
He goes on to give some musical examples which put me in mind of the tom-toms of the Occupy movements recently. This might be an opportunity for the entity OWS to pass over a threshold, away from the Saturnian structure and into a new level of consciousness and identity. At least it won’t hurt to be watching for something of this nature in our own lives. Be looking for a portal opening in the area of where Aries is in your chart. QB1 is retrograde but I’m not sure there will be another opportunity for these two to find a balance like this again any time soon.
be
The one thing I will add, though, is that I feel blessed, blessed, blessed to have friends, lovers and situations in my life that most decidedly do *not* mirror that fucked-upness back to me. So perhaps that is the start of some welcome change.
Getcalm – Yes, it is as if PW is privy to my thoughts and conversations right now. Just last night, I was bemoaning the belief that I have that I am “fucked up” – and irretrievably so. It was pointed out to me in return that if a friend had told me that, I would probably have no hesitation in telling them to cut themselves some slack. My background has taught me that slack-cutting is not only finite, but comes with payback. *That* is my history/ancestry flying at me full in the face.
Ooouch! But also AhhhHa! Those italics hit me where I am currently most thrashing around for clarity and sanity. Thanks for the pause for breath.
I hate when the italicized quotes seem to come directly from my journal writings … are you guys spying on me???
I’ve committed several weeks to an intensive psychotherapy process, bringing in some new modalities (hypnosis, somatic therapy and EMDR) to try to touch the core elements of ingrained patterns and have seen over the past two weeks the deep ancestral/familial roots of these patterns. This morning I was wondering, “will I ever get through/to the bottom of this!”
Last night I dreamed of needing to move backwards through a door to get into the scene behind the scene. PW helps me to see how the pieces are coming together in another way and the weekend Tarot and this column give me another bit.
Thanks for the reminder to make Saturday nourishing for new patterns.
No kidding, as I try to take hold of my old detached self, I’m flailing around in self-defeating swamp of feelings. Whoa. Thought I had myself together (ish) and felt connected to soul energy and whammo — I’m out in the cold battling old demons.
Funky energy as one moment seems to connect with clarity and then the slightest hint of “rejection” and I’m spiraling into crazy … only to look up and out and I catch hold of sunlight or I read such illumination on planet waves.
Bless you(s) — amanda & eric, et al, for helping me let go of the crap and go with the (evolutionary) ride forward/upward/inward/outward.
mary
When Mercury goes direct, I’ll introduce the writing team.
PS
[DAS] hello to those who are writer / intern applicants. If you have not heard from me, please drop a note to me at dreams@planetwaves.net and include the tag [DAS] in the subject header so I can find you! Thank you.
thank you, though this could not have been written (or at least, would be missing some great stuff) had i not been working with Eric’s solid, extensive and excellent notes. definitely a team-writng effort, and this and some of the last few posts have also involved the input and support of some other writers we’re training (“Sadge just wants to have fun” being a particular example).
Thanks Amanda for this very nourishing article to start off the week. I’ve recently taken up Yoga again, so I intend to be in a Yin class Saturday, enjoying no doubt the wonderful company of talented and nourishing people…and new possibilities.
HS
Amanda, this resonates so well for me. Thank you for the advice on how to best use this amazing energy to our benefit, and that of the greater good. I am the embodiment of the energy right now, Leo working through adoptive birth certificate wait, and family patterns of estrangement. Gratitude and kudos.
Yup, that’s me right now. This is very, very useful – most especially the reassurance that I don’t need to do it all. The Weekend Tarot Reading I think reflects this in a way that is quite striking.
Thank you!
The eclipse conjucts my natal psyche in Gem and opposes venus & mars in Sadge. This will be interesting..
This is just so amazing. Your words shine so much light and awareness on what I’m grappling with right now. So what I needed to read.Thank you so very very much. xxx