Hello friends,

Today is the FULL MOON in Aries, forming a salacious t-square with Saturn in Capricorn and Sun in Libra. Cardinality at its best. Taking lead, stepping up, showing the way.

I'm going to split this discussion into 2 sections today - the human/real world and the soul/esteric. I don't know if this will work, but I'm giving it a try!! Here we go.

On the human/real world level, today's energy is about the relationship between the the 'ME, MYSELF AND I'... the part of us that loves to be alone, independent and free. The willful courageous warrior with no time to slow down for anything... or anyone. And the part that longs to partner. Is willing to compromise. That lives to merge and barely knows itself without the reflection it finds in the eyes of its soul mate.

Warrior stands upright, stares across at the OTHER... elegantly graceful cocktail party hostess...  wrapped in repartee, sweet whimsy, sacrifice, partnership, and the dance of peaceful company that holds us on the exquisitely lonely journey called life.

Warrior stares a little too intensely. Eyes blaze fire jets of focused intent. Elegant Dancer looks from under long lashes, flirts with teasing longing - surely you can't resist me?? 

And then Saturn.

Standing sentinel, in between.

Glaring darkly.

'Who's responsible here? What about that sink full of rank dishes? Libra, your friends made a huge mess this weekend. I expect that you'll be cleaning up after them. Excuse me, Aries - the children need picking up today at 3pm sharp. I expect that your activity will take second stage to your offspring. And which one of you is going to bring home enough money this month to keep the lights on?? Hey! I'm talking to you! Get out of the clouds and back to earth. Pronto.'

I wonder if you've been feeling this conversation within, these past few days? I sure have.

This newsletter is going to be sadly un-edited, as I've had 3 children to myself this weekend - no time to write, ponder, or journey into the land of Arian freedom. Just a single mom, keeping people alive.

(Excruciating to a freedom-eating gal with both Mars AND Jupiter in the Arian Sign of the Ram.)

Yet lovely, as well. There is calm in falling back on responsibility and duty to others. Oddly, it allows rest. And surely time alone is sweeter when balanced by MORE THAN the self. 

So the energetic of our Full Moon today has to do with this - this sacred dance of the SELF and the OTHER, and our obligation to ensure that BOTH have voice. BOTH provided for. BOTH allowed to shine.

Today, is not an 'EITHER, OR'

It is a 'YES, AND'

Now let's go deeper into Aries.

Aries, as a personality archetype, loves to be its own boss, make its own decisions, follow the beat of its own drum. It is a fighter and an athlete, a warrior with (or without) cause. Aggressive, self-centered, instinctual, courageously assertive - Aries' default is to ACT DEFIANTLY from its own WILL, rather than consider the other and how they might receive the action.

Until suddenly Aries realizes she has run so far ahead of everyone that no one could keep up!! She is alone.

Then she will take a moment to slow and turn around.  Wait. Listen. Apologize. Oh, how the feathers have been ruffled, how many toes she has stepped on!

And so she relents to compensatory action. Saying 'I'm sorry' is Aries' LEAST favorite thing. For the secret is that Aries hates to be alone. She just wants to be in the LEAD.

And to LEAD, there must be someone following.

Now let's take this a little higher... into energetic principle. The Esoteric.

(As my Jupiter and Mars in Aries both say, 'Please try and follow me!!')

Esoterically, Aries is the expression of DIVINE WILL on Earth. DIVINE WILL is the beginning of everything. It is what starts the whole process of creation!!  Every thought, feeling, and thing we have manifested in our life... if we follow it back to source, there lies an instinctual WILLING for it to be. We are creators, after all.

I WANT SECURITY. I WANT FOOD. I WANT CONTACT. I WANT FREEDOM. I WANT TOUCH. I WANT PURPOSE.

Will force.

Roberto Assagioli, the founder of Psychosynthesis, describes the center of our being as a place of 'CONTENTLESS  AWARENESS AND WILL'.

I love that word - 'CONTENT-LESS'. Because at an essential level, WILL is so primal that it really has no storyline! It is PURE FORCE. Driving everything into being. WILL into ACTION. Aries.

So at the very center of who we are is this WILL TO BE. And though this sounds a little whacky, I wonder if everything we have right now in our experience was created by that Will, one way or another. Perhaps there really are no chances, no victims and no mistakes. Maybe would agree with this... it depends on how you're looking at it.

And it brings us to the question:

WITH WHAT CONTENT SHALL WE FILL OUR WILL? OR... From WHERE shall our Will be sourced?

Here it gets a little complicated.

For a personality-centered Aries, the WILL is filled with the personal story. Primal survival urge. Reflecting conditioning of early childhood, or society. You were told you were unworthy? The will is re-creating this belief. You learned that you were powerful beyond measure and had the right to have whatever you wanted? Your will is playing this out. You were programed to see yourself as ugly and unworthy? Your will... it's supporting this into manifestation. These are beliefs from the lower self. The pre-cognitive self. The self that just ate what it was given and then became it. It happens to us all. No shame. And also... no control. No autonomy. No choice. Aries, at this stage of evolution, follows the will of the physical/animal self. It's just INSTINCT.

Not intuition.

For the Soul-centered Aries, WILL becomes aligned NOT with the belly button and the personal-subjective desire nature, but with the higher self. The INTUITION. Love.

For a highly evolved Aries energy is indicated by a DIRECT and IMMEDIATE CONNECTION between HIGHER MIND and the ability to ACT on the information received from it.

That is why Aries is called 'The Spiritual Warrior'.

When its Will is aligned on UPWARDS and is coming from the heart (rather than outwards from the naval), Aries has the COURAGE to ACT on higher promptings.

To STAND UP and HELP HUMANITY evolve forward.

Now.

When we are on the spiritual path, we are learning to listen to the promptings of our soul, or INTUITION. Learning to align with this 'intuitive' part of ourselves - and ACT FROM IT - takes a long time and requires gentleness, as the journey is peppered by back-and-forth motion.

Falling BACK into ego, moving FORWARD into soul. Again and again... relentless tests and lessons.

That's why COURAGE (an Aries specialty) is an important ingredient along the path. Courage to face the information revealed - about why you are the way you are, why your WILL FORCE is driving you toward certain things that may not be good for you. How you are recreating limited beliefs, based on conditioning that you received before you were even capable of choosing! It takes COURAGE to face the truth of your conditioning, courage to stand up and look into the eyes of love, COURAGE to make different choices. To trust that there are even different choices to be made!! Waking up is hard to do.

And eventually we start to recognize when our Will is aligned with the 'lower self' of conditioning from upbringing, society, marketing, culture, peer group, family... and when it is aligned with the 'higher' self of liberation, freedom, compassion, love and unity.

(Please note: Essentially the 'lower' and 'higher' selves are both love. Neither is 'better' or 'worse'. But in the 3-d or even 4-d reality we are living in today, 'higher' vibrational referencing feels like love and levity and joy, while lower vibrational referencing feels like contraction and pain and fear... even pride and desire. In any case, it is denser and of a less pleasant and expansive quality.)

So at this point in our evolution, life becomes a Choice of energetic alignment.

And the ability to CHOOSE where our will is aligned, and which actions arise from it, is called SOVEREIGNTY.

And that is Aries domain. All the way.  The power to choose. To power to be free.

To courageously. Be. Me.

Now that sounds mighty good. (But I sure have a lot of Aries in my chart.)

How does it sound to you??

The Meditation

So aside from making sure you are CELEBRATING THE SHIT OUT OF YOURSELF TODAY! Taking ownership for how amazing you are, how much you love to be alive, and how aggressively you love your people.... (the human story, the earthly realm)...

Today (and for the next few) I invite you to pay attention to YOUR WILL (the esoteric challenge, the spiritual realm).

1. Whenever you WANT something, yourself this:

   • 'What is it that I am wanting? And WHY? From what part of myself is this DESIRE arising?

2. Track the desire, the want, the WILL. Track it in your body.

   • Where does it live in you - is it your left knee? Your right hip? Your chest? Your stomach? Your mind? Your heart?

3. Then stop in that physical place... and linger.

   • Open to it, ask it questions. Like 'how do you feel right now?' or 'what are you really searching for?' 'How can your need be met?'. And be honest. Be clear. Be courageous.

4. Then try to find a place HIGHER THAN that desire, that can help you come to the RESOLUTION of the need that you have un-earthed. A higher part of you. A wisdom within. Offer up the 'desire' to that higher part - that inner guide. That light within. Offer that desire liberation. See what happens!!

Here is a personal example, to help bring this to life.

One of my karmic complexes this lifetime has to do with finding 'home'.  Feeling ROOTED and SAFE emotionally. It has chased me all my life and is a primal soul-need for me (I have Pluto in the 4th house...).

One way this 'need' presents, I have noticed, is a tendency to longingly gaze at houses I am walking by - feeling a pull of strong desire that 'wants' a home just like that one! It really doesn't matter what the home I am looking at looks like... the DESIRE is coming from somewhere deep within myself and is expressing through this longing... this feeling of lacking something that it needs. It wants to be safe. Secure. It wants to feel in control and held. But it is projecting the fact that it DOES NOT FEEL THESE THINGS onto literal physical HOUSES that it can fantasize about! Very weird, but all of our inner complexes are weird. I've come to terms with that.

Once able to ISOLATE the underlying desire and NOTICE how it was presenting through my WILL, I was able to TAKE HOLD of it and REDIRECT it toward resolution... to my higher self.

So whenever I 'catch' myself falling into this pattern, which feels definately centered in my 2nd and 3rd chakral area, I now say lovingly to this desire 'it's okay... you are home. You are home right now, and you are safe. And you can trust and have faith that it is always so.' I 'lift' the need up, and connect it to love/wisdom. And a feeling of peace, calm and fulfillment generally follows.

So by identifying the DESIRE, its source and true nature, and the way it is extending into physical reality, I use my conscious mind to re-weave it into the column of light energy that is ME, and realign it with the TRUTH. Which is that when I feel safe RIGHT NOW, I am actually creating that reality right now. When I feel homeless and bereft, I am actually creating that.

THIS IS HOW POWERFUL OUR WILL FORCE IS. This is how we create our reality.

Does that make sense? It's not like the DESIRE IS WRONG - it's just a little bit lost. Stuck in a story line. And as long as we play our desires out unconsciously, we will rarely meet them. As long as they are rooted in the lower self vs. the higher (pre-programed tapes, fears and insecurities vs. wisdom, mastery and strength), we will never be free of the racket. 

Perhaps the 'resolution' to a lower desire, is teaching it that it already has what it is seeking?? I'm playing with that one.

So for today - just pay attention, okay? Pay attention to what you want. To how often your will is coming from a place of lack, fear or longing. And when your Will is coming from a place of love, compassion and joyful freedom. I hope you'll find this exploration interesting and not too 'esoteric'. Please write me and let me know if I have left you utterly confused!! (I have had so little time to edit this down...)

With Love and Stardust,
Sara