{"id":49183,"date":"2011-11-25T00:01:29","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T05:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=49183"},"modified":"2011-11-25T21:10:11","modified_gmt":"2011-11-26T02:10:11","slug":"faith-belief-and-vision-sagittarius-solar-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/astro-daily\/faith-belief-and-vision-sagittarius-solar-eclipse\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith, Belief and Vision: Sagittarius Solar Eclipse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kingston Plaza. Photo by Eric Francis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For nothing is so cherished and protected, as is a goal the mind accepts. This it will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith, and with the persistence that faith inevitably brings.<\/em> — A Course in Miracles<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today is Friday, November 25, 2011<\/a><\/strong>. An eclipse of the Sun took place overnight in Sagittarius. That is a conjunction of the Sun and the Moon. Currently both are in Sagittarius, close to the eclipse, which takes place at 1:09 am EST. Mercury stationed retrograde yesterday; today let’s focus on the Sun-Moon conjunction, a New Moon eclipse close to the lunar North Node.<\/p>\n

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Eclipses shift continuity; what seemed to be happening in an uninterrupted sequence gets a chance to change. They’re useful that way — though they need to be handled with intention. If you’re in a pinch, the time around an eclipse (that exact day, few days or even a few weeks) is when to jump out of one movie and into another.<\/p>\n

Eclipses can also be used to set a pattern as well as break one, which implies something different emerging than was happening before. This is not always a pleasant experience. Some eclipses represent radical, even violent changes in the flow of events, but any negative effects can be mitigated by working with them consciously. It’s only recently that astrology generally accepts that they can be used constructively. The old books (and many fairly recent books and articles) take them as negative events, but most astrologers you ask will tell you that they take on the meaning that we give them.<\/p>\n

In Sagittarius, the general subject matter includes our ideas about how we relate to existence. This is the sign that encompasses faith, belief and vision. It’s associated with the content of religion rather than its form, which means the actual presence of the divine rather than a bunch of ideas about what it’s supposed to be. Sagittarius can hold the archetype of our highest ideals, such as what justice is supposed to represent rather than the imitation foisted on us too often. Sagittarius is therefore the sign of faith rather than of hope. You can think of the difference this way: Hope is a hollow emotion, grounded neither in our inner source or in tangible action; faith is connected to source and often leads the way directly to action. Hope is a kind of mockery of faith. You could say that this eclipse comes with the idea ‘abandon hope’ and connect to something deeper.<\/p>\n

A Course in Miracles<\/em> points out that we don’t have the choice whether to have faith — only where we invest it. This is like saying everything that’s alive has to breathe; the question is how. One useful exercise is to question what you invest your faith in, and why. Faith is extremely powerful. It’s the result of connecting to a direct power source, whatever that connection might be to. If we connect faith to fear, we will get fearful outcomes. If we connect our faith to love, creativity or healing, that’s what we will get. The problem is not that faith doesn’t work; rather, we can struggle when we don’t recognize how we’re using faith.<\/p>\n

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The best way to size up what you have faith in is to look at your life. What results are you getting? Follow them as far back up the chain of cause and effect as you can go, and find a place where you can make a decision.<\/p>\n

There are many ways to experience faith. It can feel like a fire burning in your soul. It can feel like the calm certainty that you’re on the right path. It can feel like clear, easygoing confidence. You might feel connected to what some describe as the higher self, or a facet of your psyche that knows it’s connected to everything else. The more deeply you cultivate this connection the more obvious it will be when you encounter others who are working on the same frequency. You might experience this eclipse as an inner opening into this realm.<\/p>\n

Belief is another matter entirely. It’s more like a crust on the mind and on perception. It’s possible to believe things that are absolutely not true, and to even go a step further — thinking that believing what’s not true makes it true. If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you’re dealing with people who believe things in direct defiance of the available facts, you know how weird belief is. Today’s eclipse is an invitation to take that inward, and ask yourself what exactly you accept as true even when you have evidence to the contrary. You can go deeper and ask yourself how it feels to hold the contradiction, and why you’re doing so.<\/p>\n

Belief is also incredibly powerful — far more than we might think. It can turn day to night — in your own mind. And this can have an effect on others. We’ve all had the experience of being swayed by someone’s false belief. It’s the easiest way to set a limit on yourself: for example, not believing that anything else is possible, other than what you know (or think you know). One of the easiest ways to identify a mistaken belief, or two beliefs that conflict, is noticing when you’re struggling. Relatively few people are willing to question or analyze why they believe what they believe; in fact many people pretend they don’t actually know what they believe. The result is like having a filter in front of their perceptions. Think of this eclipse as the filter falling off for a little while, allowing us to see what we believe and reconcile it against the available facts.<\/p>\n

Vision is a theme bursting from Sagittarius. We all have a vision for our lives, but it’s rare enough that we connect to our vision consciously, much less cultivate it consciously. Many times that vision was set for us, then left unquestioned. What is your vision for yourself? How long have you had it, and what is it based on? This is a place a lot of us could do some excellent growth work. Our vision for self can be limited by faith and belief, or turned loose by them. It’s possible to work backwards, such as expressing your vision to yourself, noticing the parameters and looking for false beliefs and misdirected faith. Then you can make some decisions about what you think is possible and why. <\/p>\n

Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius will help with this whole process; we’re about to encounter a powerful tool for self-inquiry. More on that next week.<\/p>\n

Looking for insights on how this week’s astrology affects your<\/strong> personal Sun and rising signs? Try out Planet Waves Light<\/strong><\/a>, our streamlined horoscope service. For deeper cultural context and astrological investigation, the premium Planet Waves subscription<\/strong><\/a> includes the same horoscopes, plus extensively-researched articles on Fridays.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For nothing is so cherished and protected, as is a goal the mind accepts. This it will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith, and with the persistence that faith inevitably brings. — A Course in Miracles Today is Friday, November 25, 2011. An eclipse of the Sun took place overnight in Sagittarius. That … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1734],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}