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Merry and Bright―Sun in Sagittarius–November 22nd to December 21st.

sag 2The Sun in exuberant Sagittarius this month escorts Merry into the days preceding the winter solstice, and the weeks before Christmas deliver an avalanche of excess and indulgence.

Our solar consciousness has been richly fed in the deep dark waters of self-scrutiny in Scorpio, and now, without a backward glance, we embrace the warming element of fire as winter closes in.

The Sun’s entrance into Sagittarius is closely followed by a Full Moon on November 23rd in Gemini (00 degrees) culminating in another lunar cycle. Symbolically, she shines her light on those things that have completed a cycle in our own lives since the New Moon on November 8th. This month’s Full Moon has a jumpy, nervous disposition, impassioned by her applying square to Mars in sensitive Pisces, so we could feel exquisitely attuned to subtle changes in psychic energy, or quick to regress into the Toddler brain. We could embrace the more positive symbolism of this lunation and respond to those intuitive “beams of light” that guide us through the darkness. The Moon opposes Jupiter and Mercury, ruler of Gemini. Mercury is moving Retrograde through Sagittarius (17th November—December 6th.) Mercury Retrograde invites introspection: a still-point of silence amidst the brouhaha. As friends and families gather together, we may feel unspeakably alone amidst the tinsel and the gaudy lights. Perhaps now is the time to acknowledge those uncomfortable emotions that pop like Christmas crackers at family gatherings and year end office parties.  This is the culmination of the calendar year. This is the time of endings that carry a tincture of sadness or relief. As Mercury Retrogrades through Sagittarius, we may have to revisit, or re-do an issue or relationship dynamic associated with justice.

Sun in Sag Always 1The year may be coming to a close now, but we may still be in the midst of a long winter cycle of intensely private grieving.  If this is the first, or one of many festive seasons that swirls around the carousel of loss, we may be reminded of the soft presence of the one we have loved. Our heart may ache as the old year ends with such finality. Nostalgia may curl cold fingers around this season of exuberance and joy. The lyrics of a song played in a department store may draw us back to a different time and another place, to a small unmarked grave where a piece of our heart lies buried. We may be gestating a new greening. Or we may heroically be at the zenith of our own personal summer where we resolve to bring our Best Self to the silent spaces in relationships that speak eloquently of pain and disappointment, loss, and longing.

Ancient traditions and spiritual wisdom are underpinned by the knowledge of the silent circuit of the great wheel of the year. As the seasonal energies realign with the solstice, our body rhythms realign with the seasonal shifts. Western medicine is largely ignorant of what shamans, Chinese and Indian healers have known for centuries: our minds, our bodies, our psyches have cycles.

In the cyclical nature of our own lives, let’s take time to pause in these weeks before the holidays. Let’s tenderly anoint the scars of loss, finally relinquish any hope or expectation that things will be different.30314d02d3166e2d941849d89fef7ebd

Mercury Retrograde is a time to acknowledge that if we were ready to make those changes in our life, taken that different road, we would have. We made the choices we made, we did the best we could at the time.

Jupiter is the astrological ruler of Sagittarius and also of Pisces, an archetype so often imbued with a tincture of loss and longing.  Despite our prayers, despite our positive affirmations, we don’t get the things we wish for. Jupiter is the roll of the dice, Lady Luck, the Wheel of Fortune, and the jovial Father Christmas who brings us a casserole dish when we wanted perfume.

4d91ba09816b970e507ad87f0aa4f1f2So, let’s go gently as the weeks gather momentum for the crescendo of the solstice on December 21st. Amidst the Christmas carols that loop repetitively from sound systems in shopping malls and supermarkets, the frenetic hurrying to buy what we think our loved ones want. The strenuous exertion, the anticipation, the planning, the doing. Let’s be tender and kind to our weary bodies. In the flurry to buy food, gifts, stocking fillers, ask yourself today what is it I truly need now? Amidst the bright babble of the office party, the fairy lights of the crowded malls, amidst the heated rush of hurry, re-claim a few moments of sumptuous silence in the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath.

Now is the time to trust our intuition. What do I truly need now?

The answer may come as one of those delicious surprises we find behind the tiny windows of the advent calendar. Our needs may be quite simple really. More sleep. This might mean loving ourselves enough to get into bed earlier. A sudden craving for rice pudding and custard that brings comfort reminiscent of a childhood when it snowed, and all the word was white? This might mean buying pearl rice and switching on the oven to pre-heat. The strength to let go, to forgive the one who has hurt us so deeply. The willingness to forgive ourselves for hurting them too. This will certainly require humility and Grace.0f95029b6f84481eed503e3977c92350

What we need may be priceless. The simplicity of being in the presence of those we love with all our human hearts. A pause in the busyness.  Time to think. The strength to say no. In a voice that speaks as authentically now as it did in the 12th Century, the mystic Hildegard of Bingen invites us to “glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of earth’s greenings…

Sagittarius is associated with the Quest for Vision, the Journey not the Destination, the Search for Meaning. We may never find any of the answers in this human life time, but we are ready to stretch and grow into all possibilities. The essence of Sagittarius contains an ember of optimism and good cheer. Sagittarius is associated with long distance travel where we may encounter tastes and smells and rich new experiences, where we meet people who challenge our conditioning, free our minds, break away from boring routine. In Sagittarius we look up. And we’re amazed.

As the gyre of this year comes full circle, cultivate gratitude and optimism. See the delight in a little child’s eyes. Embrace comfort and joy. To take someone’s hand and begin a new journey.c7fcac1ef7fef4575de8b5cf1f0dfbd2

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The Journey―Jupiter In Sagittarius―November 8th.

0786f805571c9310eee669fe8dfbb445And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars―Dale Wasserman. Man of La Mancha.
For those of us who tilt at windmills, for those of us who dream impossible dreams, the time has come to  reach the unreachable stars. The journey may mean leaving the tender touch of our loved ones as the urgency of the call to adventure takes us to foreign lands. For some of us, the journey may be  a painfully private struggle to slay  demons of addiction or despair. For some of us, this journey begins with a kiss and continues as we bravely hold  hands through these Dark Times of uncertainty.

 

68c4d24cf02d4c3af1d8fcf9b5e9925eToday is Thor’s Day. The Moon and Mercury accompany corpulent Jupiter into Sagittarius, his place of domicile and ease. The mood lightens as Jupiter rises gratefully, from the cool, still depths of watery Scorpio into the warm urgency of fire, igniting the possibility to reach the unreachable stars.  Jupiter  has returned Home,  triumphant, singing “What a Wonderful World”.

The motif of The Journey will be emphasised as Jupiter travels through Sagittarius until December 3rd, 2019. How we prepare for that journey, what we take with us, what we leave behind. Journeys require attentive preparation, stamina and resilience as we meet the inevitable challenges along the way. For the next year, we will explore new places and new encounters, even if this Journey means we never leave home.

Jupiter in Scorpio accompanied the #MeToo movement, exposing predators, opening uncomfortable conversations. Today, we enter the symbolic realm of social, religious and moral issues. Jupiter in Sagittarius confronts us with a quest for truth and meaning, with the possibility to expand our horizons.

Jupiter is a complex symbol in astrology. Jupiter’s domain is long-distance travel, intercultural encounters, international activities. Jupiter’s unbounded exuberance is also associated with risk-taking, the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that reaches for the sky, sets the stakes high in casinos and on racing tracks, merrily rolls the dice over a  lover’s tender heart. Jupiter sells aspirational dreams to the masses. Every day is Black Friday. Anything is possible. Bigger is always Better.

In the Norse, Greek and Roman pantheon, Thor/ Zeus/Jupiter were celestial sky gods. Supreme deities, elitist, autocratic. They dispensed moral and religious justice, yet from the earliest times these autocratic and self-indulgent gods were exempt from their own moral injunctions.  On a whim, they bestowed good fortune, dispensed justice, and claimed Droit du Seigneur with impunity. Relentless optimism, brash bravado, and the cheery refusal to sweat the small stuff cast a long shadow. Overblown, indulgent, excessive, Jupiter’s vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself is evident in the grandiosity and entitlement of those who wield power. The kind of hubris that spurs invincibility, races onwards and upwards, without a backward glance. Over this next year, the excesses of the plutocrats, puffed-up politicians, and those autocrats we encounter in our neighbourhoods and offices, will seem more extreme. We may have to plan circuitous routes to avoid their overbearing presence. We may have to vote with our feet.

Zeus was also the protector of those who  journeyed to far away lands, yet xenophobia is also part of this domain. For those hapless men, women and children, labelled “illegal aliens”, or migrant workers, or who simply don’t have the right-coloured passport, the right to remain will be emphasised by Jupiter’s journey through Sagittarius.

Moon in Sagittarius 1The Sun blazes confidently into
Sagittarius on November 22nd,  inspiring Jupiter with  optimism, perhaps the ability to find humour in those things that threaten to capsize our lives and roll us into the depths of despair. Sagittarius is the gypsy, the philosopher, the inspired visionary who sets off on a quest, perhaps impulsively, but with the kind of innocent faith in the kindness of strangers, certainly trust in a benevolent god. Jupiter in Sagittarius is the Pilgrim on life’s Camino. Jupiter’s journey has a single pointed vision, there is a sense of an arrow of certainty, a destination, a purpose, which differs from Mercury’s more fluid travels.

Ninety-one-year-old Dr Edith Eger’s new book, The Choice: Embrace the Possible, describes a journey of healing, of forgiveness and of faith. A journey that began in her family home, with her parents and sister, and ended at Auschwitz. Her mother’s words as they travelled have been an integral part of her healing and her work as a psychologist: “We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.”

Sun in Sag - Always 11Edith’s journey of healing and faith epitomises another aspect of Jupiter’s domain: “I believe in the power of positive thinking—but change and freedom also require positive action. Anything we practice, we become better at.”

As demagogues dismember nations with hollow talk and empty promises, Mars—the planet associated with war and aggression—changes sign on November 16th, moving into Jupiter-ruled Pisces, swirling through the miasma of politics, perhaps strengthening our resolve to continue our quest amidst the  noise of things falling apart, to practice becoming better at walking lightly on this earth.

On the same day, another eighteen-year cycle begins as the Nodes move into Cancer and Capricorn. These are harbingers of the eclipse season that begins on July 2nd, 2019. Cancer and Capricorn underscore motifs of security, home, safety and patriarchal power. Venus moves direct in Libra on November 17th, still in a tense opposition to Uranus which has slipped back into Aries for the very last time, offering opportunities to finalise what was begun in March 2011 when Uranus entered into Aries and squared Pluto.

Mars remains in sensitive Pisces until December 31st, and Mercury moves  Retrograde on November 18th, apparently moving backwards through the sign of Sagittarius until it re-enters Scorpio for a few weeks between December 1st and December 13th, a reminder to be attentive to our thoughts, to make this journey a sacred thing.

Every quest, every journey, requires preparation.  In these uncertain times, we may need to plot our journey with care.“To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim,” poet Mark Nepo writes.

Sun in Sag - Always xxxOver these next months, may we have the faith to dream the impossible dream, may we have the vision to accept those invitations that transform us, and may we walk with those fellow pilgrims on Life’s Camino, receptive and true to our own glorious Quest.

The boat is safer anchored at the port; but that’s not the aim of boats―Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage.

 

For more regular updates on astrological cycles See me on Facebook!

Private astrology readings and workshops: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

 

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Back to Black—Sun in Scorpio—24th October—23rd November.

30207d1bada3d57ac987789d413aefa3As brittle leaves blanket the black earth in copper and gold there is something poignantly reassuring in the contracting light of autumn. Yet as Nature responds to the ancient rhythm of life and death, some of us may sense a seam of blackness in a world advancing through a dark night of the soul. As the inevitable juddering, shuddering climax of climate change, habitat loss, micro-plastics and global warming is shrugged off by plutocrats and self-serving politicians, as thousands starve in Yemen, and “rogue killers” prowl through the Saudi Consulate, torture and gruesome death is the price paid for speaking out.

Fair is foul and foul is fair. This is the month of Halloween and the ancient festival of Samhain. A liminal time, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. A time to cull. A time  when the veil between the worlds shimmers, gossamer thin, in the cooling air. Juxtaposed with rows of golden pumpkins, the rich aroma of roasting chestnuts, a ghastly parade of ghoulish costumes send a frisson of recognition that winter is coming. On October 24th the Sun dips into the deep waters of Scorpio. That night a Full Taurus Moon illuminates the fallow fields. The very first aspect the Sun makes is an opposition to disruptive, radical Uranus and a square to the Nodes, a foreshadow of  unexpected, fated, events. Scorpio is an archetype associated with depth of feeling, with intensity, and let’s say it out loud: with death. d9b8f2254e916f0ee05098aa8c9b74dd

Pluto and Mars are invoked when we talk about the Scorpion.  We talk glibly of transformation, and yet, Pluto, and the essence of Scorpio, coils around that over-used cliché. For those of us who have witnessed the dying process of a beloved pet or a loved one, for those of us who have pared down to the bone after the dismemberment of a divorce, or the devastation of illness, know the pain of those irrevocable endings, those radical severances that bring us to our knees. Death and loss of all that we hold dear, distills what we value to quintessential heart-bonds, makes us count our blessings. We’re humbled, overwhelmed by the beauty of the little things. We’re brought to tears by an act of kindness, a soft word of sympathy.  When we enter the realm of Scorpio, snakes shed their skins and feathered phoenixes emerge from the flames. We draw deep on our human capacity for resilience and survival. We experience forces greater than ourselves which render us powerless, broken, yet also capable of acts of heroism and love, as told by Heather Morris in The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

a3d0fa6c1b9099d09cdc8cea4946636eVenus Rx, Mercury and Jupiter are the Sun’s travelling companions this month. Jupiter’s passage through Scorpio—October 11, 2017—November 8, 2018 has been the Pandora’s Jar from which all kinds of “great and unexpected troubles” have oozed—Jupiter magnifies and amplifies, and in Scorpio, this has been the sexual harassment and assault has exposed the sepsis in our society that has festered in silence, for years.  The renewal and trans-formative power of human sexuality, as well as the distorted perversions and abuse of sexuality are Scorpionic themes, trivilaised on TV in the titillating Bisexual and the toe-curlingly awful Wanderlust. Venus has vanished from the sky.  She’s dressed in black, withdrawn, reflective. These forty days and forty nights, we may encounter those things that arouse a visceral response.  We may recoil from encounters or sensory experiences that sting or  poison us. Venus is the arbiter of our values, the tempera on our creative canvas. She’s our detector, altering us to those circumstances, relationships, or more literally, to a sense that our tastes have changed. We not longer crave a certain food,  love a certain style of fashion. The art or music that evoked a strong reaction now seems banal. The person we thought we liked or loved with such fervor fails to engage our interest as Venus stirs within us an internal transfiguration.

Scorpio, in its true essence, asks us to dive deep into rivers dark and dredge up what lies beneath: sexual diversity and preference, obsession and compulsion, deep vulnerability and soul naked intimacy. We experience the sublime and the profane, the Life-Death-Rebirth cycle of relationship, the intensity of  being here, now.

This month the Sun, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus Retrograde in Scorpio amplify the sense of awakening from our cruise on autopilot, as we re-examine our values and embracing each moment with renewed intensity. As we prepare for the coming of winter.

Jeff Foster, author of Falling in Love with Where you Are distills the essence of this archetype: “This moment is not life waiting to happen, goals waiting to be achieved, words waiting to be spoken, connections waiting to be made, regrets waiting to evaporate, aliveness waiting to be felt, enlightenment waiting to be gained. No. Nothing is waiting. This is it. This moment is life.”8973168f0cbeae708dc17104c57be8b5

For astrology readings and more information about forthcoming workshops in the UK, please email me directly: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

 

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The One I Love—Venus Retrograde—October 5th—November 16th.

Venus Rx 4

Sometimes it’s only when we lose what has been comfortingly familiar, tenderly consistent, that we discover what we truly value.

Venus goes Retrograde on October 5th. As she moves apparently backwards in the skies through the deeply sensitive sign of Scorpio, she quickens our hearts and demands only the most honest and loyal bonds of attachment. Venus symbolises our inner values, and in Scorpio, superficiality and masks just won’t do. We may have reached a crossroad where we wonder, as author, Elizabeth Gilbert once did, “do we want our belly pressed against this person’s belly forever—or not?”  Whether we choose to go or to stay, to keep or to give away, Venus Retrograde periods distill the essence of what it is that we hold very dear to our hearts.

The ancients tracked the passage of Venus in a perfect pentagram across the skies, ascribing her disappearance in the skies to her descent into the Underworld. The pre-Colombian Mayans believed that kingdoms were unstable, regimes might topple, and so her emergence signified an auspicious time to begin a war. Retrograde cycles emphasise those areas in our lives where we unconsciously lead with our wound. Where we move through life like a somnambulist, unable to truly value what we have until it’s too late. Where we make Shadow choices drawn from unexamined cultural programming or adaptations to past trauma. In therapy, we may learn skills that help us leave behind the legacy of our old conditioning, surpass our constricted hurt lives, all by ourselves. And yet it is in relationship that we encounter our Shadow and our Light.

venus and the MoonIn myth, Innana (Venus) is stripped of all her valued regalia and exquisite clothing. She enters the Underworld vulnerable and exposed. In modern times, the Underworld is a symbol of our own unconscious where we may encounter a truth that reverberates viscerally. The trial of these 40 days and 40 nights are a cosmic reminder for us to dissolve, discard, out-worn values and beliefs. To re-organise, re-examine, re-prioritise those things we value around a more truthful, authentic place that rests in  the hearth of our heart.

In astrology, Venus is about relationship. As she travels through uncompromising Scorpio, she encounters her vulnerability in intense emotional encounter.

“It’s a tough, anti-relational world out there. Relationships between men and women have never been more difficult,” therapist Terry Real believes. “Close to half of couples getting married will divorce. And there are far too many couples who suffer in relationships that lack the passion and closeness we all deserve.”

The Archetype of Venus transcends gender and sexual preference. These 40 days and 40 nights bring an opportunity to transform vicious cycles into charmed circles as Venus magnifies and amplifies our most private and intimate relationships.

Blood-soaked centuries of patriarchal conditioning have programmed men and silenced women.Venus Rx 1

Writes Robert Bly, “many men numb themselves so they’re not expressive. If you’re too expressive in IBM, you get fired”.

Terry Real believes, “men are just doing what they have been programmed to do—work hard, try to be more involved in the family, try to be responsible and responsive—and feel that they will never get it right.”

Venus in her retrograde cycle invites us to slow down—our speech, our movements, our breath, the beat of our heart.

To be present with ourselves, with our lover, in a way that engages all the cells in our body and makes our heart expand like a Super Nova…

1ac16e4abe0d0efb860214925ee820a5In A Plea to Women,  John Wineland imagines that what all men want is—Less. “Our nervous systems can’t handle more. We love range. Especially in bed. We want the Divine Mother, the cock-worshipping whore. Find ways to playfully and lovingly bring that to us. Try to separate the tools that you use to succeed in business from the tools that you use in our relationship. We want more of your vulnerability, more of your fear, more of your pain, we don’t want to be told what book to read, what seminar to go to what therapist to see, we want to be told how painful it is for you when we don’t show up for you… we want you to find something in us every day that you trust implicitly…. because the thing we want the most is to feel that you trust us and that you would let us lead you anywhere and find some way to continually surrender.”

Transiting Venus moves apparently backwards in her dance across the skies once every nineteen months. Now, she’s pinned like a diamond on the coral swathe of the evening sky. Venus passed her superior conjunction with the Sun on January 9th, a mythic mating, a Venus “new Moon”, and since then, she has been moving further and further away from the glare of the Sun. She reached her greatest brilliancy on September 21st, reclining low on the western horizon. During the last week of September, she appeared as a large, elegant crescent, surrendering to the embrace of the darkness of each night, a fragile, vulnerable, a faded version of her former splendour. At Christmas time, she emerges from the Underworld, The Star of Bethlehem, the Angel of the Dawn, gifting us with a new revelation of our heart’s desire.

Philosopher, Lao Tzu once said, “being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” 

Venus Rx 9Venus in Scorpio demands that we love deeply and bravely. And when she emerges once more as the glittering Angel of the Morning, may she find us awake to new possibilities, fully aware of what we truly value, and extravagantly generous in our loving.

 I post regular astrology updates on FaceBook:

https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.hoffman.75

Please contact me directly for private readings in London and for more information about forthcoming UK workshops—ingrid@trueheartwork.com

 

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Keep Calm and Carry On—Mercury in Libra—September 22nd—October 10th.

21333ded62e57e17eb85441ff001e533So often we hit a wall. Collide with an immovable force that profoundly alters the trajectory of our life: the accident, the lawyer’s letter, the termination of our employment, the conversation with our doctor that leaves us hemorrhaging hope. Physicist Stephen Hawking who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in his twenties once told the New York Times, “my expectations were reduced to zero when I was twenty-one. Everything since then has been a bonus.”

 

Mercury races ahead of the Sun into Libra on September 22nd. On crossing the threshold, both planets square Saturn, honing our ability for practical, disciplined thinking about serious concerns. Saturn/Mercury transits can marry our minds to pessimism, steal the fleeting moments of joy that inhabit the silent spaces of our lives. As Mercury travels through Libra, we have an opportunity to cultivate a deeper awareness of our mental chatter and the worrisome thoughts that may stir our feelings. We have an opportunity to look for the bonuses.

The Moon is Full at 2 degrees Aries on September 24th. She’s conjunct Chiron, square Saturn, opposing Mercury and of course, the Libran Sun. The essence of Aries is our individual will. The signature of this lunation is the opportunity, the right moment to step over the threshold, release a thought, a habitual response, a behaviour, so that the river of our life may flow easily once more. Saturn is associated with time, (Chronos) and Chiron transits correspond with major turning points, opportunities to awaken, to re-balance, to align with our deepest, truest nature. Chiron will move back into Pisces on September 25th, and will remain there until February 18th. Chiron is also associated with an experience of deep woundedness, in our life situation, our physical body, in the way we perceive the world. This Full Moon may correspond with a new insight that accelerates our growth, fortifies our resilience.

Keep Calm and Carry On was the British Government’s attempt to console the public who faced invasion at the onset of WW II. As the epicenters of civilization shudder across the globe, as America and Britain face their “Darkest Hour”, it will be the small gestures of love and kindness, the careful harnessing of our untamed thoughts, that keep us calm, help us carry on amidst  the gathering storm  of collective angst.
Libra 1

“Be glad. Be good. Be brave,” wrote Eleanor Emily Hodgman Porter in her best-selling novel, Pollyanna. The year was 1913. This simple statement resonated in the matrix of the Collective Consciousness as the dark war clouds blotted the sun over the Balkans and thousands of young men were soon to drown in their own life-blood in the rat-infested trenches of World War I. One hundred and five years later, we continue to enlist in our private battles for survival—financially, emotionally, or spiritually. When everything around us seems to be falling apart, this steadfast statement bids us first and foremost, to be grateful. To conduct our lives with integrity and valour. The fortitude and unwavering optimism of eleven-year-old Pollyanna offered the comfort of hot-buttered toast and a cup of sweet tea at a point of impact in western civilization when there was no going back. When to be glad, good, and brave, was one constant beacon amidst cataclysmic change.

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Our evolutionary challenge this month is inner serenity and a selective, deliberate focus on those things that are right in the world and in our relationships. Lévy-Bruhl and, later, Jung, wrote of the Participation Mystique. That mystical participation that can manifest in situations and material things in our lives. That sense of wonder and magic that is inherent in small children and has been codified as The Law of Attraction. We are required to “always look on the bright side of life” as we bravely embrace the contradictions, the baffling complexity, and buckle up for those roller coaster rides that leave us whip-lashed, aching and bruised. Melody Beattie believes, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.”

 

Happiness, and her twin sister, Joy, dance in Gratitude, in the “little things that are the hinges of the universe” according to newspaper columnist and novelist, Fanny Fern. Gratitude is a spoonful of sugar to crankiness. Gratitude is like a garden. It requires careful tending if we want it to flourish. It may require gentle coaxing back into bloom after a storm or the cruel crush of frost. It certainly takes a good sprinkling of imagination and a stir of magic to feel it sometimes, and yet like the fairies that sit on our garden wall and fly about our heads as we water the rose bushes, it is always there if we look. If we believe.

Gratitude, like Love, is a choice. It’s an inside job. If we feel like Cinderella, no pumpkin carriage, no diamond tiara, glass slipper, or handsome Prince will make us authentically, radiantly happy. If we play the Glad Game, and cheat because we don’t truly believe, we can’t evoke the magic. We cannot fake it ’til we make it. We cannot buy, Botox, or bargain our way to Gratitude and contentment. We cannot pretend to be Little Miss Sunshine if we feel like The Snow Queen.

Gratitude must become habitual for the magic to work.

So, observe those wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings. Give thanks that the silver white winters will melt into springs … And hold steady in these challenging times. Encourage ourselves and each other to keep moving, keep focused, as new life emerges from the dead leaves of change.

I post regular astrology updates on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.hoffman.75

Please contact me directly for private readings and for more information about forthcoming workshops—ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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