Mars, Venus & the Morning-Sky Dancers

I’ve remained uncharacteristically silent during the recent and ongoing Aries in-rush of planets. Now that the Sun and Mars are each in Taurus, it seems time to share some glimpses of what’s up from behind the Sacred Mars and Venus lens. Read more…

Adam on About.com

About.com’s astrology expert, Molly Hall, contacted us a few weeks ago to learn more about Soulsign Astrology and the other spheres of the Soulsign work because, she said, she was really intrigued by our combining of astrology with sound in theory and practice.

This then led to a first conversation, not really a Q & A, in which I quickly dove into topics at a depth it usually takes several talks to get to. She’s since used excerpts from what I talked on in a number of her daily blog posts. We both left the conversation knowing there would be more to come. It’s a wonderful gift when we meet with others who appreciate our own strange brand of life purpose.

Here’s the listing of short blogs by Molly that include excerpts from our discussion >

Birth of Mars

April 15, 2011. Today is the Birth of Mars.

For Mars to ‘birth’ means quite a number of things Mars’ Birth Phase:

….visually means that today is potentially the first time you can place your eyes on him after his conjunction with the Sun on February 4 (Mars’ Self-Conception Phase), so long as your local horizon and weather conditions grant their permission. You’ll catch him just before sunrise if you look low over your eastern horizon. For most of us, it will take longer to see him. You can thank light pollution, high horizons or your own latitude for the delay.

…orbitally means that Mars is significantly distant in his orbit from the Sun for us on Earth to see him. He’s separated enough from the Sun after conjunction to return as the symbol of our masculine drive;

…collectively means that our current masculinity is just beginning – and I mean barely out of the gate – to get our head on straight enough to know what in the worlds he/we are supposed to be doing now.

…sexually means it’s time to come out of the closet and get on with being the BEST lover and receiver of love you can possibly be. It’s time to unsheath yourself from fear, shame and stereotypes so that you can give and be given to in ways ecstatic, gorgeous and leave you wuntin’ for nuthin’.

…astrologically means that it’s time for us to act in the direction of our Desire (notice the capital ‘D’). I’m talking here about the larger Desire at the heart of your Life, not the next craving from your tummy or genitals. Desire = that portion of Universal Purpose which you are wired to be the one and only translator and activator for something tangible, something real, something personal, accomplish-able and meaningfully juicy…to you. This guarantees that the right people – the ones served by your particular brand of genius – will take notice.

Collective Crock Pot

Since 4 February, we’ve been collectively stewing in our own doingness juices. Between then and now, Mars has passaged through his Gestation Phase, still invisible to our eyes and aptly through the sign of invisibility, Pisces. This has positioned our current, cellular relationship with confusion and transcendence within a context of “hurry up and do it!” Not fun for most of us. It’s forced us to deal with not knowing, being thoroughly confounded by our own inability to clarify, and/or to puts lots of energy into non-material efforts (ie, meditation or spiritual adventures). Be not surprised if the fruits of your recent labor turn into nothing or something radically different or over-delayed. Oh, you’ll see results for sure, but they will align with your hopes if they serve something bigger (Pisces) then you are imagining.

Add to this picture a host of more popular transits – Mercury retrograding into conjunction with Mars opposite Saturn in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn, as well as the Jupiter Saturn opposition – and the lesser knowns – Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Chiron in the relative beginning of each of their own new Journeys, Mars contraparallel Saturn and soon Chiron – and the outlook becomes anything but organized. Every bit of your material life – each parcel of which is a holo-extrapolation of every bit of your inner life – is being put through multiple sieves simultaneously.

So one aspect of your shadow – your hidden, repressed self – may believe it got away again undetected from you and everyone else, while one facet of your light – your conscious, expressed self – may feel secure yet again in its familiar accomplishments, but what’s really happening now is that your shadow is being dragged closer to your aware self while your light self may be standing on the abyss of a terrifyingly foreign version of who you are.

As well there is so much new now, so much that we can’t put our fingers on that we simply cannot know for sure what’s “new”, what’s to “know” and what else is a flat-out “no more and not ever again.” It’s like our bodies – our gross physiologies – are in a perpetual state of catch-up with the latest upgrades to our changing lives and hurry-up-and-integrate from the most recent fall-0ut from our healing process. If we ever thought we knew what was happening, it’s time to cut the b.s. to ourselves. A full Venus cycle ago (8 years), I taught a series of workshops I called “Becoming Best Friends With Your Personal I Don’t Know”. Was that ahead of it’s time or what?

The Sky of it All

Right around the time the Birth Phase becomes the Explorations Phase (29 April – 1 May), Mars will meet up with Jupiter just inside the huge, celestial cords of the Fish constellation (Pisces).

This is like the over-serious actionaholic and the loopy “it’s all good” partier at loose at an open bar…not enough structure, contrasted styles and a beyond ability to access higher states of consciousness with little interest or no ability at remembering anything the next morning. And yet, there they, and we, are.

So begins this Journey of Mars, 4 February 2011 into 17 April 2013. This is the ARIES JOURNEY FOR OUR COLLECTIVE MASCULINE where Aries is the domain of complete consciousness through which humanity moves closer to embodying our Sacred or Divine Masculine. We will do this Journey together through Mars’ 13 Phases over the next 24 months (2 are already complete). With Mars birthing into our view now, set your intentions for how your own Sacred Masculine wants to be made more alive, more powerful, more here through you. Look at your your own masculine self and qualities; examine your relationship to ‘him’. What’s he saying or screaming or crying about? What’s he feeling? What’s he needing? What does he want to do now?

To track with the current Journeys of Mars (Aries) and Venus (Scorpio), go here >

For an article on the Journeys of Mars and Venus, go here >

For a whole lot of juicy Mars Venus resources, go here >

To get in with your own Mars and Venus phases and journeys with Adam, go here >

For the next Mars Venus Live Meditation, go here >

Mars & Venus Dancing Journeys

The Ordinary is the Extraordinary

Uranus into Aries

 The planet Uranus is now in Aries. For good. Permanently for the next 7 years. Done deal.

So what can we expect from this permanent and irrefutable fact, the likes of which we haven’t lived through since 1927-8. But that’s just it: Uranus is the unexpected, unpredictable outcome that blows your mind. It’s thoroughly anti-expectable. “There’s no way anyone could have ever known that would happen!” is heard more often from the mouths of the Uranus-affected than any other. While Aries is the sign of explosions, speed and personal freedom. As the first sign, it signals beginnings.

Uranus’ move into Aries =
1. new, unexpected beginnings and forced start-overs – even if we don’t understand why;
2. fighting (Aries) for freedoms (Uranus);
3. breaking the norms; exploding the past (if the past is inhibiting betterment).

I make it a point to teach students that in order to get a sense of what Uranus might bring, we need to first understand what the norm really is. This becomes the baseline. It can be gleaned from talking with our clients about that area of life or looking at how a country, company or state has faired within the house Uranus is moving through. But you have to start with a baseline, even if the best you can do is WAG (wild ass guess)!

There was recently an extraordinarily ordinary miracle that happened under the radar of the media. You won’t hear about this because, well, it’s flat-out ordinary. And in today’s world, the ordinary is the extraordinary. It is Uranus in action.

What Happened

A good friend of mine is an accomplished surgeon – he’s got skilled hands, a real desire to help people get better from injury or disease and an inviting, friendly demeanor with his patients. Makes for a pretty great combo, as his patients would agree.

Last Thursday – within 2 hours of Uranus entering the sign of Aries – my friend got a call from a smaller, nearby hospital who had just admitted a 2½-year-old boy who’d fallen out of a shopping cart onto his head. There was a large blood clot pressing on the little boy’s brain from below the skull. Brain stem compression was imminent. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Thursday night was too foggy for helicopters to fly and the smaller hospital didn’t have sufficiently skilled staff to handle this very special need (pediatric trauma and neurosurgery). This is just the way it is, I’m told. Hospitals come in various sizes. The further from big cities you go, the less likely you’ll find specialists for every need. Well, this night Uranus was in full effect….

What happened next proves it. The boy was super-fast ambulanced to my friend’s hospital and in that 3 hours, his surgical team, two anesthesiology teams, a full op nursing team and a few more angels and elves somehow all became available so that everyone would know what the boy’s situation was. When the little one arrived, this small army of dedicated medical souls were ready. At least two of these teams shouldn’t have been there; they were already past normal hours when the call came in. Most of the assemblage also had insufficient experience with pediatric surgery. And with the sheer number of bodies in the operating room, the need for everyone’s complete focus was imperative. I’m told that human error in these types of situations often increase because of added pressure. But the most mind-blowing and heart-opening fact about the whole event was that the hospital in which the surgery occurred had no pediatric ICU department! In other words, the hospital would never otherwise accept a pediatric trauma case – they’re simply not staffed for them. It “just so happened” that the doctors who were there happened to have prior pediatric experience and could lead their teams appropriately.

On that Thursday, the hospital’s rule against accepting pediatric trauma cases was ignored. Actual people – not rules – came together to save a life.

Here’s my friend’s description of the boy’s outcome and his observations:

“After surgery, arrangements had been made to transport the child postoperatively to the Pediatric ICU at a large teaching center about 3 hrs away, and the team consisting of a Pediatrician and pediatric nurses arrived at our hospital some 20 minutes after surgery completion….The boy improved rapidly, noted immediately after surgery, and calls to the teaching center PICU over the next 3 days confirmed continuing improvement with the expectation of an eventual full recovery.”

“What was remarkable was that virtually everyone involved in his care not only knew exactly what to do, but actually did what was necessary, from the ER staff at the original hospital, to the two ambulance crews, to the 12 or so people in the operating room each with a different function, to the PICU staff at the teaching hospital.  Too often, system failures ie, lack of hospital planning and readiness, individual errors by staff, and sometimes just bad luck, conspire to reduce patient outcomes sometimes critically.   This time everything proceeded “as it should have.”

Back to Uranus back in Aries

 In our lives, start to get used to the unexpected. Watch your reactions to things out of your control. Increase how much positivity you can hold and for how long – even and especially in the most trying of times. This is the way to “handle” Uranus-related events – to say Yes to whatever’s happening both inside and out. If a traumatic event happens, Saying Yes may look like immediately accepting what has happened so that you can get on with the business of grieving. Saying Yes can also look like an act of defiance in some cases – you’re saying yes to what you know inside to be true, despite what the outside reality is commanding you to believe….accepting the truth and acting from that place. We are going to find others we want to team with for a common purpose. This isn’t just a social club, it will be for big purposes. And they will almost always have to do with changing the status quo, creating something new and better and/or personalizing something that fits your group’s needs.

Having no knowledge of astrology, my friend surprised me with this summary of the extraordinary confluence last Thursday evening in the hospital operating room:

“Maybe what we accomplished this time was a sublime piece of music we all played together, written and directed somewhere in a different reality.”

Your Heart-Now Menu (The Center of Gravitas)

One unfortunate result of a life without Heart as one’s center-of-gravitas is an over-dependence or, worse, mental addiction to squishing life into little, made-up boxes. These tiny cells only exist of course in our minds. They don’t actually reside anywhere on our soul’s Top 1,000,000 Things to Be, Do, Try, Sing, Speak, Taste, Feel, Smell, See and Breathe Before This Go-Round Goes Round. And personally, I don’t think they actually reside anywhere at all. They seem to be the result of something earlier, more hidden.

Take a look, if you’d like, the next time you find – er, catch – yourself in the midst of dissecting what’s actually happening…..now. Inside you, inside them, between us. It doesn’t matter.

Because What’s Actually Happening will always, in every case without exception, amaze, thrill, astound, and maybe terrify you. IT is so rich as to be bottomless in its experiential capacity. It    doesn’t end…..ever   .    And YOU are its lover. Yes, you and the Ecstatic Now are unboundedly bound in yab yum, from the pov of your creative potential. Not the world’s creative potential, not even the potential your mind can think up, but YOURS. All 100% of your gorgeous, stinky, sublime, outspoken, ugly, awesome, and mammothly priceless CREATIVE WHAT-IFness.  And if you were to catch in mid-slice your mental scalpel that dissects the present moment into a replay of some forgotten scenario of  a forgotten time, you’d begin to learn to breathe.

That’s my guess anyway. Maybe you’re a fast-tracker and just that little break would serve up a morning satori for you with that paper. For me, it’s about breath. Breath’s my way in to the Wow of Now. And out of my mind’s mindlessly, mental rig-amoral. It’s my choice of course. And it’s yours. Be uncompromisingly forgiving. Intensely open. Engaged with that moment’s Creative What-If .

And we can become more of Who We Are Actually and less of Who We’ve Never Been. Together. <breathe>

There, I, you and we will be entered into the realm of Heart. Of resonance patterns and gently bouncing gravity. Together <breathe>  Of profound mutual honoring of one another as common as air.

There, a shared inner smile, an outer glow, and sudden, joyful tears are just appetizers on your very own Heart-Now menu.

Tags: center-of-gravitas, creative what-if, life with heart, life without heart, wow of now, yab yum

A Break in Broken-ness

There’s been some great astrological writing on this Galactic Center-Sun-Earth-Moon-Solstice  by that rare combination of great astrologer and great writer (Allison Rae and Lyn Dalebout come to mind). No need to reiterate the generally informative picture out there in the astro-net.

I would though like to communicate some brief suggestions about how astrological transits are changing….well, sort of. Simply, more people are living in more alignment with more aspects of their full selves than ever before. What this means is there are a whole lot more of us able to respond not react, embrace not reject and discern the right choice rather than delude ourselves with stale beliefs from the past. And THIS means that personal transits – the astrological techniques of applying current planetary positions to an individual, couple, group, business or nation – will either need to get better (read: more mature) or fade away. I believe the market for them – the astrological consumer of information – will drive this change. I see and have seen for the last year plus, the general movement away from seeking astrology to show us what’s ahead. It’s being replaced by the trending toward the use of astrology – by more carefully-chosen astrologers – to help us understand why what’s happening is happening and how to understand the opportunities therein. In other words, astrology to affirm what we already are sensing/knowing.

Maybe it’s just my clients. Maybe other astrologers aren’t finding this to be so in their clients. But I don’t sense that that’s so.

It’s as if we’re more whole, less broken, even before we realize we’re about to enter some pretty challenging circumstances to begin with. And that a priori wholeness of course can only beget less fear reactions, more awareness, and more self-responsibility.

This Solstice Eclipse lands on my own Ascendent, to the degree and minute of arc. If it had occurred earlier in my life, it would have caused great disruption to the layered concrete wall of self-beliefs and -images I’d constructed earlier on. But now, it’s not that. It’s an opening. Sounds simple, I know. But it isn’t…and it is. Every eclipse’s nature is part gateway opening – not bound by linear time/space – and part self-challenge. A gateway or special window into other areas of our consciousness – other times both past and future, and other spaces. The challenge factor is entirely proportional to the degree of ego-clenching happening in our bodies (because your body is your mind). Find out the tightnesses in your body and you’ll be staring at the precise stubbornnesses of your ego. The opening that each eclipse is requires – no, demands – that we know how to be and remain open even in the swirl of emotions, excitement, mental a-ha’s or mini-samadhis which would otherwise pull us away from the simple, powerful, masterful and child-like Openness we already, always are.

So if you’re reading this well after the eclipse occurs, I’m inviting YOU to OPEN to the possibility that you can IN THIS MOMENT close your eyes, center in your heart and place yourself back in time right at THIS MOMENT of the eclipse, in order to re-script your eclipse experience for your maximum benefit. Which, I’m suggesting, is simply to learn what true Openness is – openness to your own mystery, possibility, imag-i-nation, and the reality of consciously creating the rest of Your Precious Life.

Try it…i think you’ll like the You you find there.

With Love & Blessings of Your Authentic & Complete Open-Hearted Self, 
Adam

August Astroview

 This round of the cardinal T-square will include Mars, Venus and the asteroid Vesta by the time of the New Moon in the wee morning hours of August 10. The astrology of this event strongly suggests personal effects of the more global T-square event. Mars and Venus are conjuncting for the 3rd of 4 meet-ups during this Venus Journey and, with Vesta and Saturn in the mix, this is a prime window for those devoted to both inner and outer evolution. In this potent astro-symbolism, we have the fires of our passion fueling deep change to our former social roles and responsibilities which we realize are in fact now dried-out and stale. The kind of change this complex event describes will not be taken up by many, as it would require too much release of seemingly “perfectly useful beliefs.” Yet, we do know better. If it feels that jumping ship will only land you in the terrifying unknown, look closer. That dark place is merely yourself, playing hide and seek for perhaps the last time.

Adam with the Goddess Guy

Just completed a really rich conversation with Gary Caton, astrologer extraordinaire and host of Goddess Astrology Podcast (Facebook or Gary’s page). We talked about the upcoming Mars Venus conjunctions (8/20, 10/3), Saturn and Venus’ conjunction, and the possible astrological meanings of brightness, velocity and sky appearance. Gary’s also a good friend, so I always feel at home chattin up my Mars Venus work with him.

The piece will be posted early-mid August on the podcast page and we’ll announce it here on our calendar page. Hear from us about it >

Artfully Synchronous

Synchronicities are no longer counted by their single occurrences, but by the size of the wave they form when they happen. Another idea: we no longer need to limit ourselves into an exclusive association of a synchronicity with a positive experience or result. Many times – I’d guess far more than we’ve realized or can recall – a synchronous event washes onto our shores bearing reflections of imbalances or fear. In this light, the synchronistic moment may be one of the most under-utilized gifts to our development and healing.

By “synchronicity” I mean a non-linear link of events or inner experiences for which there isn’t any rational understanding. Synchronicities are wonderfully irrational.

A wonderful example of this crossed my desk this week. A young woman had attended a lecture I’d given on Chiron last year at an astrology conference. The lecture was scheduled late, 8:45p start time. I had decided early on that I’d utilize the lateness of the hour to offer attendees a version of a meditation I facilitate, called the Deep Heart Meditation. It goes wonderfully well with the Chiron work – more specifically, with the neurological and emotional effects of opening to one’s own natal Chiron. Fourteen months later, this week I receive this mixed media piece from her which she had been working on for a full month before attending the lecture and meditation: If you haven’t experienced the Deep Heart Meditation, I think it’s fair to say it brings us deeper into ourselves more quickly and with greater ease than we might imagine is possible. How? By first becoming somatically intimate with the spaces around us. For more on the DHM, read here. In Jen’s piece, we see lots of the outer enviornment our left brains can recognize: trees, birds, etc. Centered in the figure’s chest is a heart, and a glowing or radiating heart at that. It is a strikingly accurate depiction of what we feel inside when engaged in this practice. Since that first lecture/meditation, Jen has become a dear friend and student of Soulsign Astrology. She’s using our unique approach to evolutionary consciousness in astrology to assist her main practice which is based on flower essence therapy. Find Jen here: EngagedHeart.com

Tags: Astrology, Breath of the Soul, deep heart meditation, jen gouvea, meditation, soulsign astrology

The Big Blink

by Adam
In about 33 hours, the much heralded partial lunar eclipse (Full Moon in the path of the Nodal axis) will occur. Here’s my attempt to characterize what it may hold for us in light of our spiritual evolution:

This eclipse occurs amidst a crescendo’ing series of individually impactful transits. As such, it will trigger things. As I’ve chosen not to dip too deeply into mundane astrology (events, predictions, etc.), my focus has instead been on the evolutionary playing field which includes the human spiritual experience but is not limited to it. So, from that lens, I’ve been telling students and clients that this eclipse is occurring in the planetary/race’s soul as an ‘invisible beginning’ or a silent coagulation of mass intentionality. For most of us incarnateds on the planet, the eclipse will remain hidden deep in our unconscious. But for those awakened ones, which definitively does not mean Buddhas, saviors and avatars but anyone who has awoken to the deeper dimension of their creative spiritual potential, this eclipse in Capricorn/Cancer involving Pluto, Mercury, Uranus and Jupiter most prominently, is an opening, a holy blink in the Eye of God newly awakening to itself as us. It/We have the capacity, now finally, to consciously transition this bardo as seemlessly as an eye blinks. The planets involved and their sign positions speak directly to this interpretation of the eclipse event.

It might also be imaged as a collective Blinking – both as our individual selves and as a merged Oneness – of the Eye of God (or Aphatheta/Ka’tiim Sphere) on a scale not yet reached. We’re not only waking up and embodying and being our evolutionary Desire, we’re doing it holographically and holonically with large amounts of others. In all the awe of the Times!

Others who have referred to this post: Zacciah Blackburn