Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for January 2019 (#1232)
You’ve been through many unusual changes in the past two years, mostly centered around eclipses of the Moon and particularly those of the Sun in your birth sign. The question now is of restoring some stability to your existence. The place to focus your efforts and your energy is the work and wellbeing angle of your chart, which means some form of enhanced work/life balance, or work/life integration. There are two approaches, though I would suggest that what you’re doing is all about integration rather than balance. For you, life and work are not distinct entities. Work is so integral to your existence that it’s essential for any notion of living well. This will mean, in the coming seasons, working at what you find to be the most meaningful, and making the most of each day as it passes. There’s a word tossed about lately, I believe improperly: that is sustainability. This is not an especially helpful concept, since nearly nothing qualifies at the moment. You would do better with the notion of resilience. This is a working principle that can be applied from moment to moment, rather than something that exists only in theory. It’s the ability to recover from the expenditure of energy; this implies having some reserves — of energy, of cash, of time, and of other resources. Leave yourself headroom, rather than pushing your efforts to 10 or 11. Prioritize, and master the art of collaboration, so that you can shift the nature of your responsibilities and your efforts to accommodate your energy level and other demands. Consider time your ally, and be bold about making the changes you need to make.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for February 2019 (#1236)
Be bold about adopting a new vision for your life: where you want to go, what you want to do, and ultimately, who you want to be. Though you cannot be someone different from who you are, you can correct your trajectory and veer back in the direction of your true being. Much of what happens in life, from the beginning, blows us off course from who we really are. Various insults and injuries have a way of doing this, and the effects add up. Yet at any time, you can claim your true self, though this is a matter of faith. It’s also a matter of making a commitment to live in reality, not in a fantasy rendition of who you are or, worse, someone else’s fantasy. Chiron entering your fellow fire sign Aries will help you pull focus on your ideas about yourself. Be prepared to give up all that is not true — willingly and generously. You have so much to discover, you would be amazed if you could see it now. It’s also true that you have considerable territory to cross on important work- and health-related matters, yet Chiron’s presence will offer you focusing power like you’ve rarely had in your life, particularly in the past seven years. Focus is the thing that you need the most; scattered and chaotic energy is not your friend right now. Order and organization will serve you well, and save you much time and effort.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for March 2019 (#1237)
You can afford to be more ambitious. You would be; however, your daily responsibilities and sense of commitment to others keep getting in the way. Yet there are big changes going on in the world and in the depths of your psyche, and it’s time to break free. You will always be someone who maintains a high level of responsibility, though it will help you if you set minimums so you know that you’re at least meeting your bottom line. You can then define success by the new creative and professional territory that you take. You don’t need a revolution; you only need an idea. Remember that ideas are fragile in this world, especially for someone like you who has so much for which people are depending on you. Yet with each passing day, you can gradually modify your work patterns, and you can incrementally renegotiate the expectations others have of you, and what you have promised them. Better still, engage those same people to support your projects. This will be instructive. Not only will you discover who around you has talents, you’ll find out how they feel about expressing them; and better yet, you will get a sense of who in your life has a concept of mutuality. Who cares about you enough to get behind what you want to do? Who will watch the kids or watch the store or take care of your critters and plants while you do something new and interesting? Ask politely, and see who responds. The results of this experiment will be interesting.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for April 2019 (#1240)
You’re in the process of working out deep issues with someone close to you, and you’re gradually finding your way. It’s not usually so easy existing on the line where self meets other, where lives blend, and where your individual identity melts into that of someone else. It can be a frightening place to be, as you experience both communing with another person, and also the sense of being a solitary creature in the universe who can never fully blend into another person. As the old song goes, "two is the loneliest number after one." Yet something different is happening right now; something new is opening up. It looks like your ability to see and experience common interests with people close to you — spiritual, emotional and otherwise. You are determined to heal and resolve certain very old situations in your life, and this sense of commitment is entering your relationships. You are in a rare position to take total responsibility for your existence, and this makes connecting with others much easier. When you work your side of the interpersonal boundary, it’s much less complicated having a real exchange with others. I suggest you continue doing that. The more you keep your primary focus on yourself, the better your relationships will be. And the more energy you will have to invest in what is really beckoning you as a frontier, which is doing something new and really, truly interesting with your professional life.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for May 2019 (#1244)
Your solar chart is bursting with the theme of expanding your horizons, both personal and professional. By personal, I mean a true evaluation of your long-term goals, your spiritual condition and where your self-concept intersects with who you actually are. What is the story-arc of your life? Where do you want to be on the planet? By professional, I mean doing something exciting and different — and taking an inventive approach to what you’re doing now. You tend to be stable in your work commitments, and making changes does not come easily to you. This same astrology also suggests that you tend to hold patterns for a long time before you realize that you need a change — and you most definitely do. This will begin with a new approach to your current involvement, and then develop into scoping out the possibilities for the future. And, plan as you may, it’s possible that you’ll need to make some rapid adjustments that are based on opportunities that come your way, or circumstances that seem beyond your control. Therefore, lighten your load, and take on only new commitments both that you like, and that have a reasonable exit plan. More than anything, be open to progress, and remember that progress not only implies change — it necessitates change, movement, adjustment and flexibility. These things are not happening for their own sake. Everything you do, and everyplace you go, is in accord with new revelations and discoveries you’re making about your purpose on Earth. You have one; and you made it all the way here to get it going and bring it into full expression.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for June 2019 (#1248)
Keep a close pulse on your fears this month. The challenge here is that fear is something most people would rather not think about, so they tend to push it under the surface of consciousness. I suggest you do the opposite, which is to bring your fears to the surface, and use them as a guide to your awareness. However, there is an issue at the moment in that we’re being pelted with reasons to be afraid pretty much around the clock. They seem to come from across your phone, every news feed and, most of all, from inside your mind. That is the real source of fear; it is a thought. Then one has a series of responses to that thought. Some objects of fear, held in the mind, seem rational, and many make no sense at all. Yet they are all the same, in the sense that they are mental phenomena. While it may seem odd to take fear as one’s teacher, on this plane of reality, we have little other choice. When you hear spiritual teachers talk about "working with shadow material," this is what they mean: to pay attention to "negative" emotions including fear, guilt, anger and shame, all of which are related. Do you notice these feelings? Do you judge them? And what do you do with them? Your options may seem like taking them out on yourself, or taking them out on someone else. Neither of those is suitable. There are other possibilities.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for July 2019 (#1252)
There is either cruelty or communication. One will supplant the other. There needs to be a high standard for what constitutes an exchange of thoughts and feelings. The first thing to be cautious of is any form of scorekeeping. If you notice you’re working from a list of grievances, I suggest you put it away and listen. More than anything, track your own expectations for the relationship. Where do they come from? Are they grounded in reality, or are they based on presuppositions? You might take the exactly opposite approach: what can you offer to serve the situation? Note, the answer to this question is, itself, not predicted by much of anything except what is right. And it’s based on what the situation calls for, rather than what you think is appropriate. So therefore, it might turn out to be bringing more of yourself to the relationship, or less. To know that, you will need to listen, and listen to yourself. Meanwhile, whole new prospects in life are calling you: from the look of your solar chart, there is something new and unusual that you want to devote yourself to, with your time, your body and your soul. This is described by your astrology as something that is vocational or not necessarily profitable, rather than a career kind of thing. It’s the deeper calling than what is merely professional, and it will mean more to you. This does not insinuate it will not in some way support you financially, though at the moment, that’s beside the point.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for August 2019 (#1254)
Keeping secrets from yourself is known as denial, and there is one particular matter for which this will no longer work. While you don’t have to put your inner life on display for the world, you must be real with yourself, and sooner rather than later, with people you’re the most intimate with. By all outer indications, you are a tower of strength at the moment. There is a New Moon in your sign on July 31, accompanied by both Venus and Mars. Jupiter is offering support from fire sign Sagittarius. Yet it is your inner life that is calling for your attention, and calling loudly. Be aware that in our time of history, though, the “inner life” is a concept that is, for most people, nonexistent, of little interest, or something they have never made contact with. Even older people, from the pre-internet era, may have difficulty dialing in their inner reality, which digital consciousness has turned inside-out to the degree where you cannot call it internal. Still, you must find your way in, and make contact with the thing you’re thinking, feeling and discovering. It may frighten you; it may irritate you; you may be exuberant once you make contact with it. Your response matters less than your need to actually probe, meditate, and notice your thoughts, and in particular, how you respond to them. There is plenty going on in the outer world that may distract you, and there are many opportunities on offer. Yet without sustained contact with your inner being, they will be of little use.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for September 2019 (#1259)
Set your priorities in order. That means knowing what comes first: the one thing above all else. This may take some thought and deliberation; but then, you may go right to the answer (and even if you do, apply some true contemplation to make sure you’ve got it right). Once you are aware of your first agenda item, the others will fall into place. You will have a better idea what to do every day, because you have acknowledged what is the most necessary or urgent. You will have an organizing principle. There is no right answer; you must decide. We are talking about things on a higher order, not a lower one. You might make the determination based on an external deadline you must meet. It might be something that has been troubling you for a long time, which you know you have to accomplish or resolve. The challenge is that you seem to have many pressing concerns, yet they are not all equal. Something among them will stand out. You may notice a pattern: all things influencing your mental health; all things influencing your body; all matters of your diet; the way you structure your time toward any one of these particular ends. Note, based on other factors in your chart, the most important matter is likely to skew in a direction akin to what I have mentioned. The top item will go to the level of the structure of your life, and that will help determine the content and your approach. Yet you must identify what it is, and act on it.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for October 2019 (#1262)
Keep your focus on your health: good food, enough rest, and making sure that your work feeds you rather than depletes you. Yes, there is such a thing as work/life balance. But if you find yourself focusing on that too much, the time has come to question your work and why it’s not in the category of “life.” Your work has to be vocational. It must be a calling. It’s not enough that it be about responsibility or a sense of duty. Yes, those things are relevant as well, though you need an element of sacred honor — and you cannot fake this. As the next few seasons unfold, the question of vocation comes to the forefront of your existence. So where are you called to serve, and what are you called to do? And what is the origin of the message? Sometimes the phone rings, and someone has an assignment or wants you to do something. At other times, there is an event that shapes your life and sets you on a certain path. I think that at the heart of the concept of vocation is an inner summoning, coming in a form akin to a necessity like eating or breathing. That sounds compelling, though most people are shallow breathers and don’t eat especially well. Diet and whole breaths aside for the moment, your astrology is potent enough that you are probably hearing your inner voice speak loudly and clearly. If you’re willing to listen, you will get the message about your assignment or your mission. How you might go about it is another question, though that information usually flows from the commitment and not into it.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for November 2019 (#1266)
You might decide it’s finally time to say what you feel. Not what you think people will agree with; not offering "both sides of the story"; rather, what you actually think and feel. You don’t need to take out full-page advertisements or sponsored Facebook posts. Rather, say what you need to say in the moment when it’s appropriate. That could mean when you feel it the most, or when you decide it is the right time. Here is the thing to keep in mind. You’re figuring out where you’re coming from. The angles of your chart that address ideas and communication are in flux. It would therefore make sense to let people know you’re thinking out loud rather than making firm statements of certain conclusions. In our times of lazy, incomplete partisan thinking, being able to argue or at least explain both sides of an issue is an excellent exercise. What you may discover is that one side is usually approaching the question rationally (or what it thinks is rationally) and the other is doing so emotionally (and may be claiming absolute logic). Sorting this out involves going deeper into human nature than most people are interested in, but you’re already there. There’s one other factor that usually gets left out: how creative is your approach to reality? Can you see things in a way that’s both original and interesting? You will know this is happening when a question you’re trying to resolve suddenly ceases to be boring. Your curiosity is invoked and you want to dig in and figure out how things got to be the way they are. That is truly living.
Planet Waves Monthly Horoscope for December 2019 (#1270)
Be cautious of how much you’re willing to sacrifice for what you consider a cherished goal. Sure, you will have to give something, though you need to be making conscious decisions as you do so. Right now the end result is not the question; how and where you travel is. You could easily lose yourself in all the endless activity and potential stress (particularly at work) suggested by the Capricorn alignment now in progress. Yet in truth, you are being guided by a bright star to discover something about yourself you’ve never known but have long suspected. The notion of finding yourself is no longer something you have to read about in books, or practice in some structured way, such as a workshop. Rather, your whole purpose for existing is now making a series of discoveries that will lead you to a new understanding of who you are. This is a process; yes, it’s true that some people report those stunning sudden breakthroughs. Usually, self-discovery is a journey of putting one foot in front of the other. The question is whether you look down at the ground, or up at the horizon, while you’re traveling. Now, I say this knowing you are probably involved in some important, time-consuming and high-pressure situations, such as related to work or health. By all means take care of those, though at all times remembering the central nature of your life mission. That might be described succinctly as true self-awareness, which you can and indeed must practice all the time.