This Sunday's Full Moon in Taurus concludes the energy surrounding the very intense season of eclipses that we have just gone through since October 4. This cycle of eclipses, as with the last several (Last April/May and Last November/December), was very profound. For me, personally, this set of eclipses took on a particularly strong INTERNAL quality of transformation and change. As always, an important thing to always realize when eclipses occur is that eclipses always bring events, realizations, culminations, endings, new beginnings, and other sorts of big changes and "Aha!" moments -- in particular when they aspect our natal planets. Reviewing the charts of the past several moons, there seem to be a few main themes, with the major emphasis on Saturnine (e.g. Karmic) decisions or disappointments. Saturn in Scorpio is working our issues with commitment and the charts also suggest, to me, a deep desire to become more in tune with our true inner SOUL yearnings (a theme that seems to have taken prominence in this past year.) In this process of trying to understand our karmic work -- the real project of our lifetime -- many things from our past need to be relinquished and finding a place of surrender within ourselves seems at once tenuous and tantamount. Do we accept the responsibility and hardship of our Saturn work? Can we face the bare bones, no frills truth of what we truly dream to be, and how we may or may not be currently in line?
This eclipses have also had a strong Neptune vibe, as always lending an additional shroud of confusion to the overall picture. Saturn may have shattered our illusions about ourselves, others, or situations around us in a jarring way. Or it's required us to make realistic adjustments to our expectations or plans based off of the new insight. A tendency to avoid the situation and indulge or escape could have been very powerful -- it is so much easier to stay within the confines of our habits, our safety zone, and comfort, but Saturn seems to want to pull us away from these behaviors and remind us that if we really want to play out our higher Neptune (Do good for the world, for example) we need to pull it together, see it clearer, and do the work.
This past month has really been a time of looking more deeply into our lives, facing and healing painful issues originating deep in our ancestry, trying to understand what it is we really want, and, of course, with Saturn and the North Node in Scorpio -- learning to let go of attachments which block our growth and transformation. SURRENDER is the key word, but surrender in these circumstances is also immensely challenging. We have to have the courage to let go of parts of ourselves and things in our lives we perhaps once loved -- but even those we don't. We have to have trust that events in our lives beyond our control also serve some kind of purpose, that there is a lesson to be gleaned that may help us better understand our karmic work. Finally, we have to have faith in the decisions we make every day -- especially when choosing the path of our intuition, following what comes to us -- that stepping into unknown territories and committing to the vision is not something to be afraid of, that we will be taken care of, and end up where we're supposed to.
So much of this year has been about THE DREAM. So much of this year has also been about immense and deeply challenging internal transformation (As can be expected during the Chinese year of the Water Snake!). It's one thing simply to dream... but now we must ask ourselves, seriously, are we willing to work for it? Live it. Be it. That, to me, is the central core of this year's transformational energies. How do we shape ourselves to reflect the reality of the dream? -- And what does it really mean to walk the path as who we really are?
Without going outside, one may know the whole world!