Between that Rock and Hard Place: Astrology 9/30/2010

9/30/2010 If you’re up and about in the early morning, get your eyes wide so that hot beverages don’t get spilled or fenders get bumped.

The morning has the Moon VOC* from 6:36 am to 9:46 am ET. This is a good time to clear your desk, chuck junk mail and organize your files. Once the moon enter Cancer, you may feel in the throes of an emotional roller coaster, but there is potential for great understanding and revelation at this time.

I love Thich Nhat Hahn’s quote:
“An emotion is like a storm, it comes, stays for awhile and goes…

“When you look out through the window in the time of a storm you can see the trees out there suffer, bending back and forth before the force of the wind.

You may have the feeling that the tree is going to break, to be blown away every time a strong emotion comes to us. We may have the impression that we are about to crack.

But if we know how to look deep down to the level of the trunk of the body–if we know that the tree is deeply rooted in the soil–then that feeling of fragility and vulnerability will not be there.

We are like the tree; we have the top of the tree which is on the level of our brain and our heart when the storm of the emotion comes, and if it stays on the level of thinking and feeling we might feel vulnerable, fragile. But if we know how to bring our attention down to the level of our abdomen, navel–if we know how to practice mindful breathing and pay attention to the rise and fall of our abdomen–then we’ll be safe. We are with the trunk of the tree and not the top of the tree.”

You might want to leave some books of your favorite teachers around your desk right now. I like to open a book arbitralily to a page and gain my center. I wonder how this synchronicity will happen for people in the Age of Kindle?

Pluto in Capricorn reminds us we are part of the Earth. I remember when I was a kid, one of my favorite rituals (I have a lot of Scorpio) was Ash Wednesday. Roman Catholics get their foreheads marked with ashes. Once the rites went into English, the priest would say: “Remember man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return”.

After a twenty-seven years absence, I went to confession to explore as an adult my feelings about the religion I’d rejected as a teenager. Later, when I went to get my ashes, I was disappointed at what the priest said: “repent, and hear the good news”.

I recently found out that some churches still say the phrase from my childhood, but I was in NYC at the time of my return. I guess a reminder of the return to dust didn’t suit the Times Square church. But everything happens for a reason, and my foray back into Catholicism didn’t supply what I sought.

I did realize that the phrase from Genesis did strike a cord that is with me still. At this time, Pluto in Capricorn reminds us how the human form is of the Earth and will return to the Earth.

What lacks in the phrase, or perhaps is hidden within it, is that your soul is bigger than your body, and it is the piece that continues and has an intelligence beyond the human form and possibly beyond time.

So we are always returning.