Capricorn / Cancer Full Moon – time to grow up…

The full moon, by nature is a quest for balance. In astrology it represents a literal 180 degree opposition in the wheel, In the heavens we know it by its brilliance in the sky. The light of the sun reflecting fully off the surface of this innately dark sphere, creating a balance between light and dark.

If your Sun is in Cancer or it is prominent in your chart emotional independance is one your major lessons. Family ties can remain entangled long after childhood. Becoming independent is usually a life long pursuit.

Capricorn’s steadfast mature persona is a reflection of our collective quest to be the grown up. To be responsible and serious. To be willing to work hard and to have success. To give of our value and make a difference in the world.

We all grow from the planetary shifts and changes. Or at least, we all have the same opportunity to grow. This moon has our inner children resolving the conflicts of being a grown up in an often challenging world. . Safety, love and approval are all part of those conflicts.

For me I awoke to a feeling of uneasiness. I had felt it coming up for days as I found myself plagued by emotions I can relate to as my inner child and there was an awful lot of chaos going on around me. Feelings were escalating. The morning of the full moon (it was full at 3 a.m. here in the East) the inner conflict was agonizingly persistant. Much like a child can incessantly nag to get your attention. I found myself feeling sad, thinking of my dead father, crying for unexplained reasons. I don’t usually feel sad about him or his death.

Because I had to “be in the world” and “be a grown up” going to work I knew I had to do something to help this poor kid. I asked for help from my spiritual resources and asked that this aspect of me be given love and support. I gave this child over to a higher level within me and instantly felt better. This helps me understand how much is happening on those levels all the time. This time I remembered to ask for help.

A few hours later I discovered my mother had fallen the night before and broke her hip while away on vacation. She’s 74. She would be having surgery and need rehab and of course support when she gets home.

For me, I look back to the new moon. It was my “birth moon” and it brought up a chance for me to heal some core issues I was born with. So, here we are culminating the lessons.

The transitions of Sun and Moon are themselves a dance. They are energies that bring about the lessons we need to grow. For me, a whole new way of being a child is becoming more evident every day. For now my mother no longer comforts me, she looks to me for care and support. Time to grow up a little bit more.

This full moon is certainly bringing me the challenge of how to love myself through this transition of life. Things are changing…

Fueling your life from your soul.

The second half of life comes with many changes. It’s important to move with those changes and through those changes to discover what you are really made of and why you are here. It is something I think about often and seek to find ways to be more in touch with what my soul yearns for.. I ask in meditation for the messages to be clear and I try to keep my eyes and ears alert to the whispers in my life.

When I was younger I knew there was a deep longing inside of me to express something. I didn’t know what and I really didn’t know how. I chose many avenues trying to find “it”, some were actually damaging to myself and to others. It seems during my younger years my soul could only find me through my pain. Painful relationships and difficult love issues continued to follow me around. I knew I wanted something more, something deep and soulful and I knew it was in me….somewhere… I also tried the opposite approach. I tried to search where I’d been taught, looking for god where I’d been told to find “him.” I searched for a place where I could feel the touch of light and somehow resolve this deep ache. I attempted several times to sit in churches and feel a connection to something more than me. I did. But I also walked away with some other things. Shame, despair, hopelessness…it seemed that this god that they spoke of wouldn’t approve of me or my life and certainly not my choices. The pain of life and the losses I had experienced were somehow my lot for something. Some evil wrong doing that I had done and was now being punished for.

I can tell you. My soul never ceased to show up for me in my pain. It was a knowing prescence that came to comfort me when things were bleak and dark. I danced around in that darkness and gave alot of power to the pain. Perhaps as a way to touch my soul the only way I knew how. As life would have it I did grow through the pain. I took those moments of soul growth and made the effort to find a better way.

The title of this post comes from a comment made by Dr. Christiana Northrup. She suggests that at this time of life it’s important to put to rest the past and to embrace a new Self. To prioritize what is really important. To, as she put it…fuel your life from your soul and less from the expectations of those around you.

What an exceptional way to see the process of maturity and wisdom. I share my “old” way because I know I’m not alone. Many of us spend a great deal of our life learning through pain. Through grief and suffering we make attempts to get to know this mysterious part of our being. I know that path well.

Several years ago I began to listen more carefully to that still quiet voice. At first I couldn’t hear it. There was nothing in there but static and some crazy voices telling me all the things i should be doing or chastising the things I hadn’t done. But eventually through persistence I separated the yama-yama of my lifetime psychosis from something that was much more supportive and loving. I found when I listened and responded to this voice I created a lot more love in my life. Things became more clear and sometimes I actually found myself responding to life from a much more soulful place. It produced a sense of peace and purpose.

Fueling your life from your soul requires the willingness to listen for that voice. To quite the chatter of the “choir” as I like to call it. Those inner voices that we’ve placed there as a means of survival. You know, the voice that sounds like your mother appropriately chiming in to remind you how you SHOULD handle something, or that task master cracking the whip to drive and motivate, the shaming voice that is somehow suppose to help us make the right choices…the many voices that make up the ego’s perspective on life. The voice of the soul is a softer, quieter voice. It doesn’t blame, or put down or load you down with shoulda’s and coulda’s and why haven’t you….. it’s the voice that nudges you towards light and love when you let it. It will come sit with you in the darkness, but my experience has taught me… there’s so much more to learn from it when you meet it in the light.

Finding grace when you can’t even find clean underwear.

Lisa McLeod is a bright and funny woman. She speaks with a voice for the american woman and shares that voice in newspaper colums, books and even an insightful blog as the voice of Women for Obama.

Her newest book is “Finding Grace when you can’t even find clean underwear.” We need to laugh at ourselves in unison to this. Yes, what a challenge it is to be present with our zen-ness, our one-ness and maintain peace with all of creation when there’s the reality of life.

Our congratulations and good wishes go to Lisa, we honor your spirit. We appreciate that you are reaching women with your beautiful sense of humor. It inspires the voice in the rest of us.

Gemini Moon calling up the demons.

Lately I’ve been cycling along with the New Moon. This month I learn that I am in alignment with my birth moon. On a physical level its been torcher. Let’s see, sum up this week. It began when I wrecked my car and ended with two days of what I call a hormonal meltdown and the re-entering into my cycle.

As I looked at my astrology chart I noticed the other things that were happening and it all became very clear. With the Sun in Cancer this month and being partnered with Venus in Cancer as well we are in some very emotional energy.

I imagined back to what was happening at the time of my birth, I entered into the world 50 years ago into a sea of emotion. My mother and father were having their first child together. A secret my father would take to his grave and my mother would keep for 50 years. Me, with a chart full of Gemini, yeah I can feel the very hesitation in my soul as I push back from this life. Please….I’m sure I pleaded to all that would listen…don’t make me go…. and yet…I did.Yes, I imagine that sea of emotions, the secret, the joy, the promise to never tell…all those emotions shoved deep into secret places tucked safely away inside of me. Love and lies. And so, I begin a life of separating my feelings and my thoughts.

I make these associations of moon and cycles as I come to understand much greater all the time of how we as woman are affected by this monthly transition, by our lifetime cycles as well as the smaller ones. Astrology has always helped me to understand the whys of my life, but this is a new level I’ve just begun to explore.

As I consider my body and it’s current level of cyclic pain I reflect on the many great women like Christiana Northrup and Louise Hays and Candice Pert that suggest we are able to influence our hormonal conditions and the health of our bodies through our thoughts and our feelings. Oh, feelings. thank goodness I’ve been working on that. By nature I have been an intellectual person. Thinking through my feelings always trusting the information of my left brain over my right brain emoting. I’ve felt a disconnect between my heart and my mind much of my life. These last few years I’ve been consciously bringing together these two parts, my intellect and my emotions. They don’t feel so separate now.

I’ve noticed my cycles as I crawl through this stage the world likes to call menopause, I seem to be revisiting this past, it comes with physical pain I sometimes don’t understand. I experience that past not so much through my mind but through my body. All those emotions that were stored from birth and the consequential dramas that ensued, storing all along the way the emotions that naturally went with the thoughts I gave so much power to.

So now, Gemini Moon and my Lunar cycles collide stirring the pot. I take a look at the chart of todays astrology and I see that I am once again…as it was at birth….challenged to be in an emoting world with a perpensity towards staying in my head. I’ve counseled many to feel their way through whatever comes up. I council myself in the same way, with the encouragement to face what feels painful until I bring myself back into balance one again. I attempt to focus less on the effect of the pain and search instead for that part of me that understands the true cause. I forgive the past, give myself permission to heal and more than anything permission to feel.

I’m looking for a better way. $7000 later I’ll have a new car and I might have puked up enough toxins to rid myself of my emotional carnage. Surely, there is a better way. I trust I’ll find it, I wouldn’t mind some suggestions, I’ve considered self medicating and cathartically emoting…got anything else?