Love is wanting the other to BE

Venus transited the sun.  Like a double rainbow we can't help but ponder, what does it mean?!

Astronomically, it won't happen again in our lifetime.  That feels substantial.  Astrologically, it's a conjunction of the sun, the astral archetype that represents our essence, with Venus, the astral archetype of the lover.  This combination implores us to tune our minds and focus our awareness on creating with conviction what we love.

The union of these two in the sign of Gemini offers us a spectacular, albeit tricky, two-sided view of who you are in combination with what you love.  Basically, this magical union in the sky opens a window of remembering what you love is who you are.  Gemini shows us both sides of the relationship coin, so you must also remember that what you hate is also who you are.  It's all and everything right now... the light side of conscious love and the dark side of unconscious (egoic) love.

At the mere mention of love, it's nearly impossible for any of us not to default into the romantic notions championed in the lyrics of most songs playing on the radio air waves, and narrated in the majority of movies screening in your neighborhood multiplex.  "What society honors," wrote Aristotle, "will be cultivated."  Programmed to believe the magical other is lingering around the corner, waiting to complete us, we set out to catch the eye of one potential mate after another, holding in our mind a futile faith that someone out there will complete us.  The inconvenient truth that popular entertainment seldom shares, let alone prepares us for, is that this conditioned fantasy is built on a host of unconscious projections.  Adding insult to injury, our limbic attachment to romantic love is interwoven with the unique imprinting of mom and dad's ability (or inability as is often the case) to consciously love one another.  Our emotional fate, it seems, is therefore inextricably bound to the ability of our parents to love one another.

"And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, knowing the place for the first time."  ~ T.S. Elliot

Observing mother and father, the pivotal masculine and feminine archetypal relationship, our brains develope limbic patterns of what it feels like to be in a loving relationship.  As we enter adulthood, we unconsciously emanate and replicate the same vibratory field engrained from our childhood.  Fellas, how many of your girlfriends turned out to be curious clones of one or more aspects of your mother?  Ladies, how many of your boyfriends make you feel in some way like your father did?  And isn't it curious when the opposite sex doesn't have these familiar tones, something feels off? Chalk it up to yet another paradox of life in duality.  We yearn to extricate ourselves from the dysfunctions of our family history, seeking a taste of the unconditional love obscured by this complex structure of unconscious vibrations, yet we're inextricably bound to magnetize to us that which we long to extricate ourselves from.

And this, among other dualistic paradoxes, is what I see is ripe for reconciliation at this time.  These unconscious vibratory patterns are what Venus retrograde (along with Saturn retrograde in Libra, the sign of relationship and balance) reflects back at us, giving us a very real opportunity to identify, and subsequently dis-identify, or revise our unconscious limbic attractors.

This transit is best summarized by James Hollis, from The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other... "We are reminded by ancient counsel, that we should beware of getting what we want.  Depth psychology echoes this: we could be getting simply what the complex wants, what the unconscious history wants, what the unlived life wants.  And then, given this unholy origin, the relationship can only play out the tragic script to which it is covertly bound."

I realize it is a tall order to revise our unconscious limbic attractors.  This takes a lot more work than reading an astrology blog.  It requires us to pay close attention.  One guidepost is to recognize where the habitual masculine dominance of the left hemisphere of your brain inhibits the creative feminine freedom in the right hemisphere.  Are you willing to allow your intuition to rise above your rational mind when it comes to the choices in your life?  What if, instead of resisting and persisting with the boring narrative conjured up in your unconscious projections, you surrender your resistance and consciously create with the increasing intensity on this planet?  With Mars transiting powerfully through Virgo, our masculine aspiration is generating real friction in square aspect with our feminine inspiration.  With Venus weakened in her retrograde state, the sun's luminous support gives us all we need to recognize where and how our thinking mind distracts us from the intuitive knowing rising up in all of us.

Remaining objective in our awareness (as opposed to getting subjectively identified with the story unfolding in our lives) allows Mars in Virgo to share his strength in service to whatever we're consciously choosing to create.  One very real requirement, if we want to tap into Mar's creative fire, is to understand the warrior archetype's transit through Virgo.  Simply put, what we create must be in service to our fellow man, our global family, and the healing of our planet.  Instead of going for what you want, can you embrace the opportunity to architect your narrative with attention on where and how you can best be in service?  In the end, it seems to me, we are all in service to love.  To giving and receiving love, without attachment.  So what does it mean to love?

James Hollis writes..."Of every projection we must ask, 'What does this say about me?' And what we are asking of the Other, we are obliged then to ask of ourselves.  Since projections are unconscious in their origin, the need for such work usually arises only due to the suffering that follows the erosion of the projection. Yet it is through taking on the heroic task of lifting our projections off of the Other that we may best serve their interest, that is, love them. As Mahatma Gandhi once remarked, "A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave."  Projection, fusion, "going home," is easy; loving another's otherness is heroic.  If we really love the Other as Other, we have heroically taken on the responsibility for our own individuation, our own journey. This heroism may properly be called love.  St. Augustine put it this way: "Love is wanting the other to be." 

Can you do this?  Can you want the other, ALL OTHERS, to simply be?

If you find yourself judging another, for ANY reason, there's a part of you (as an embodiment of the Self) that you're denying.  Look at it!  Recognize yourself.  It's an expression of the shadow that lives in us all.  You don't have to identify with it, but you do have to honor it.  The end of the Saturn and Venus retrograde cycles give us a powerful opportunity to reconcile our collective shadow in the realm of our relationships.  Saturn goes direct on June 25.  Venus does the same two days later, on June 27.  There is no better time to take back your projections, and refuse (with compassion) to enable the projections put upon you by the Other.  For now, allow yourself to explore all aspects of your unconscious reactions, as they arise in the next couple of weeks.  Once you make them conscious, by definition they can no longer be unconscious.  When the planet of structure and discipline (Saturn), and the planet of the lover and what we're attracting into our lives (Venus) go direct, we can conscoiusly restructure how and what we attract.  If there's anything you wish to see in the world, now's the time to BE it.

Thank you for BEING in service to our collective awakening.

Stellar blessings,
Ryan

www.bodyworkastrology.com

namaste