Key words for the year: trust, forgiveness, clarity, consequence, decisions, personal power, freedom, shadow

Trust your power.
This is the year to move closer in alignment with your highest self. But you can’t achieve — truly — by proving you’re the best, or knowing the most, or succeeding over others. You win by becoming and embodying your true, authentic self.

Trust the process.
The journey isn’t always supposed to be easy. We didn’t come here for easy. Many people will experience a layer of transformation, like shedding a layer of skin or clothing. As this new layer sheds, you’ll begin to feel lighter, perhaps freer. You’ll see and experience things in new ways. But don’t rush the process. Move through the lessons with patience and learn from them.

Forgive.
2019 may have felt heavy and immovable at times, but this was a catalyst year that ushered in many situations, people, and experiences to shift your reality. Some are mirrors — reflections of what’s possible, or reflecting where there are opportunities for change. Some are lessons here to teach you how to love, in ways beyond your previous layers of understanding. Remember, love doesn’t seek to gain from anyone or anything. Love seeks to lift the other.

There may be a number of opportunities and decisions that could alter the course of your life. The key to remaining steady for these decisions and changes is regulation. Regulate emotional responses, habits, behavior. Bring more awareness to the every day, rather than staying in autopilot. But don’t worry too much about what’s right/wrong and please don’t look backwards with regret. Things will move along no matter what. The sun will continue to rise in the east and set in the west.

Can you love yourself
Exactly as you are?
Can you wipe away the tears of pain
When you were not enough
Or too much?
Can you see your beauty
As clearly as the imperfections?
Can you see yourself
As I see you?

Will you allow the fear of rejection
To keep you from true intimacy?
Will you allow the past to shame you
Into complacency?
Will you tear down the barriers
To vulnerability?

Can you surrender control
And let the mother in
To hold you
The father
To guide you?
Can you love yourself
As I love you?

Capricorn. Cardinal Earth. This is the earth of creation, formed from the energy of awakening. This is how our landscapes are created. These are the wonders of the world, birthed from the ground to be a witness and to be witnessed.

And how does earth form? How do the mountains burst from within the core? How does the surface crack open? How do the canyons mold and deepen, creating portals into rock?

First, the earth must experience the discomfort of movement and change. The fire underneath the surface creates heat and turmoil. Energy and pressure from stagnancy create a breaking away of attachment. Emotions like water form deep grooves and patterns of character.

In order to birth something so beautiful, to surge from the ground, to create something where there was nothing, we begin with discomfort. And the discomfort turns into pressure, and the pressure becomes action, and the action becomes creation.

A Capricorn stellium in our current cosmic blueprint is indeed uncomfortable. We are being asked to follow the path of discomfort to creation. What needs to change? What fires are burning within? What patterns keep grinding, and where is evolution possible?

Every mountain once had to rise to meet the air. It may not be predictable above the surface, but it’s the only way to grow.

There is a difference between pushing something away and letting something go.

Pushing something away may provide a temporary relief from discomfort, but that energy doesn’t go away. Instead, it gets pushed unto the subtle layers of your subconscious or even the physical layers of your body. Pushing something away doesn’t leave space for processing or healing. Energy comes into your field like a magnet. Running from a magnet allows it to keep following you. Similarly, pushing a magnet away is just inviting it to come back, and with force. Avoiding it... well that does absolutely nothing.

Letting something go happens when you are ready. It happens when you create the space for processing, acknowledging, seeing, and healing. It happens when you realize something no longer serves or has run its course. It happens when you sit with the discomfort, as a teacher, and allow it to move through you without trying to run, change, or push it away. Discomfort can be a great teacher. Discomfort can be a powerful motivator. Discomfort can be love.

What happens when we look at the very thing that makes us uncomfortable and thank it for showing up to teach us and/or invite meaningful change?

It opens the doorway to transformation.

A jolt of awareness awakens Shiva from his cosmic throne,
Surges of lightening, a glimpse of union
Arising from the temple Maya.
When the sensations fade, he seeks outwardly,
Grasping for any experience that brings him closer to his beloved.
A taste of nectar,
The forbidden fruit.
Shielded by the tapestries of human experience,
Until he remembers the light within.

The serpent Shakti awakens to the creative internal force,
Singing her song for her beloved to hear.
How long have I allowed myself to be seduced by the glimmer of Maya?
How long have I sought comfort in my own illusions,
By the light of Venus rising,
Waiting to be validated by a web of my creation?

As Shiva turns his expansive gaze within,
Shakti feels herself begin to uncoil.
Time’s wounds untangling from the web, often painful to witness.
She ascends, he descends.
And a new web begins to form,
Connecting the temple within to the universe without.
They dance, they retract.
They experience divinity, then find the familiar.
They know, yet they are blind.
They are love, yet can only desire what they know of the self,
An experience unfolding with every breath and act of devotion.
An experience that could take many incarnations across dimensions of time.

It began from one thread of creation, a spark, a flash,
And weaved into a complex and ecstatic dance of polarities.
The spark that was one, became two,
Only to become one again.
A journey of experience, involution to evolution,
Illusion to awakening,
Duality to union,
Divine inspiration.

“A man following the pravritti (outward) path looks away from the bindu towards the outside world. He is almost entirely motivated by external events. The other path, the nivritti (reversed) path, is the spiritual path, the path of wisdom. On this path the individual begins to face the bindu, turning in toward the source of his being. This path leads to freedom. The path of evolution is the pravritti path of manifestation and extroversion. The path of involution leads back along the path that produced your individual being. The purpose of yoga practice is to help direct your awareness along the involutionary path.” — Swami Satyananda Saraswati

Today (12/2/19) the expansive planet Jupiter moves into the sign of Capricorn. Jupiter transits last for about a year, and I personally love the idea of Jupiter hanging out in Cap for a while. This happens to be my natal Jupiter placement (the only significant earth I have in my chart), and if you were born in 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, or 2007, then you most likely have this placement also.

Pluto and Saturn have been hanging out in Capricorn for quite a while, highlighting areas of responsibility and power struggles — so Jupiter making his fiery and combustible entrance feels like much-needed energy in these heavy times. The reason I love Jupiter in Capricorn is because it helps us do the work, stay focused, and devote to a higher purpose. It can provide sustained success and achievement in just about anything, as long as it’s aligned with your true essence. Jupiter in Capricorn natives generally have a strong sense of self and aren’t easily swayed off course.

I wouldn’t normally associate the fiery King of Wands with Capricorn, but he is Jupiter’s entrance — the potent combination of fire and earth — driven, purposeful, successful, and a master of creative expression. I’m happy he jumped out of my deck this morning so that we can reflect on and embody his energy.

What are you hoping to master in 2020?

Freedom may be my passion
and changing my mind is easy.
But my heart,
my heart
seeks only devotion.

Devotion
is what fuels my desire,
the willingness to stand in stability,
to prioritize Love over all.

Devotion
is what keeps me up at night with longing.
I will forever follow its call,
like moth to flame,
ready to be consumed.

(Except I am the wind created by wings
dissolving into a gust of breeze.)

When devotion is present,
when dedication and commitment are the offering,
it’s all I can see.

When Love is the promise,
it’s all I can feel.
Everything else is just a game.

You have to be willing to offer everything you have
to receive everything you want.
Hands out, heart open,
focused only on that which is Love.

Imagine how profound the subtle can feel without distraction, numbing, substances, or escapism. Something as simple as a sip of mountain air or the aura of a ray of sun can take your breath away.

Imagine the possibilities — the messages and insights available to you — when the mind is open, aware, attuned, and free to communicate with the heart.

How magical, this simple experience of a sunset, the senses alive and awakened, heart full, the channel clear and open to experience every second of beauty.

This is life expressing itself through your awareness.

You don’t have to eat, dress, or act a certain way to be “spiritual.”

You don’t have to know everything about meditation to experience a meditative mind.

You don’t have to do handstands or arm balances to experience the transformational mind/body effects of yoga.

You don’t have to take hundreds of pictures of yourself in yoga poses to be considered a yogi.

You don’t have to go to big yoga festivals to find enlightenment — especially if you’re an internal seeker.

You don’t need a guru to tell you how to connect with Source energy.

You don’t need to collect trainings, certificates, or approval to channel the magic that flows freely through you.

Teachers and teachings are wonderful tools on the path, but you get to decide whether they resonate with you.

No one can tell you or dictate whether your energy is pure or worthy. Your energy is your energy... and it’s beautiful.

No matter where you are on the journey, you are in the right place for your unique path.

No one owns or has the right to manage or suppress any part or practice of the spiritual path. Any attempts to shame people into boxes, rules, or limitations are tools of the Matrix to separate you from your own divinity.

Remember, rules are a man-made construct.

If you want to experience something divine, enlightening, and beautifully transcendent, start by connecting with YOU, exactly as you are, without the stories, masks, expectations, rules, or programming. You are already a beautiful and divine being in its purest form, and however you choose to express your divinity is perfect.

As I write this, Mars is in the last degree of Libra, getting ready to ingress into Scorpio where it will be until early January. Now, I love Libra, but Mars has been in its detriment here. Libra is all about the other, and the warrior planet doesn’t always know how to play nice in Libra without sacrificing self-care. The energy becomes unfocused and quickly burns out.

Scorpio, however, has no problem focusing on the self. And Mars is at home here: determined, passionate, intense, and not willing to unnecessarily compromise. This transit will help you see all of the obstacles that have been standing in the way of your personal power and self-worth.

Some things simply aren’t worth your time and energy. And sometimes the greatest act of self-love is knowing when something isn’t serving you and letting it go. Mars in Scorpio gives you the energy to walk away. And by doing so, you can transform unaligned circumstances into aligned embodiment.

Look deep into the energetic eyes of any karmic entanglement keeping you in the dark, and release your responsibility to keep this weight in your life.