Searching for home part 2

by with One Comment Astrology and meInner lifeTrip

I’m in Bristol now.

I arrived here yesterday to meet a potential house mate. The add seemed lovely, an older woman who is an energy worker as well as an astrologer looking for 2 more people to share a farm house. Big garden to grow vegetables and pretty spacious house.

One big let down though, too far away and difficult to get to Bristol City centre without a car. I didn’t even go to meet her once I realised the massive pain to get there by public transport.

It didn’t work out but I’m okay with that. It’s good to be here and allow myself time to feel the city, or perhaps to rather give me time to allow feeling myself in this city.

I’ve been officially homeless for a year now.

Exactly one year ago the last Uranus-Pluto square that was perfected in the sky happened at 15 degrees, same degree as my natal Moon. On 12th of March 2015, when Mars was also conjoining Uranus in the sky, I was packing up and selecting the stuff that potentially could still be part of my new life.

I was terrified and shattered at the same time. The intensity of emotions that I felt during that time was truly overwhelming. It sounds contradictory, but I remember to be feeling blind and numb by the powerful intensity.

I also remember the first few steps that I took once I left the house with my backpack. A brief moment of clarity, freedom and certainty. Yes, I was shortly thrown back into the darker feelings aroused by such changes in life. But those few minutes were somehow crucial to keep me on track. To help me build the courage needed in order to leave stagnant comfort zones behind.

One year has gone by and my sense of Self has increased tremendously. I’ve always knew that projecting my identity and safety into outer things, like relationships or material stuff, wouldn’t work for me. Consolidating your sense of security into yourself feels right and I’m already experiencing moments of solid balance as a reward.

(I’ve had more to write in this post but got interrupted by my friend and somehow feels like a pretense to continue without the feelings of that moment..)

Pluto-Mars dialogue

by with One Comment Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for home

I’ve been trying to avoid writing posts with too much information about my private life but damn it, that’s impossible really. I realised that for me is too hard to put my energy into something that I can’t relate to in a more personal level.

Couple of days ago I was thinking and wrote a post about the tightest interaspect between my natal chart and my current flat mate/friend. About how much I could already kind of sense that energy even if in a more subtle form.

Well, yesterday I think that there was already an episode related to the manifestation of that energy. After watching a movie together and getting sort of close but also repelling each other in a strange way, we started to chat. I’ve been aware of this feeling of attraction and repulsion already for a while, and used to feel the repulsion a lot since we’ve met around 3 years ago.

I’m the Pluto so I was trying to understand his view on what was happening but mostly through bringing it down to his past experiences. I think that the fact that both of us have our Moon in air signs sort of help keeping a little detachment and being able to talk about it. He was quite reserved and didn’t reveal much about his story but I could sense a huge degree of complexity under the surface.

This whole thing actually made me wonder, without pushing away my responsibility over my feelings, if the irritation and anger I’ve always felt towards him doesn’t have to do with the fact that my Pluto is in the 12th house and I can naturally tap into people’s darker side? Anger has a strong resonance with sexual frustration and I did sense that in the undercurrents while we were talking last night.

Today I felt a bit weird about the whole thing because unusually he woke up quite late and I had to constantly fight feelings of being on his way in the morning.

Then consequently I felt homeless again. Is hard not to have your own space when you get so easily enmeshed with other people’s stuff.

This got me a bit down during most of the day and going to Clapham Common didn’t help much also. I went to do some child minding with the boys (which I truly adore) I took care for couple of years. It was great to see them again, but hanging out in that area really brought me some painful memories from my Saturn return.

One day I’ll write about that.

I also found out that the boys family is coincidentally moving to Pangbourne, the small place where my ex lover is from. That too brought me painful memories.

Which reminds me to charge forward. Looking back doesn’t feel good now. And to not forget that I made a commitment with myself not to play the therapist/astrologer for a lover ever again.

We have to meet half way.

 

Libran refinement

by with 4 Comments Astrology and meInner life

I’m having a cup of tea on my own while evaluating my process of change.

I think that its good to be aware of all the pain and struggle during a Pluto transit, but keeping perspective is equally important. Being able to have at least a glimpse of who you are becoming and seeing the improvement is paramount for honestly managing the pain without suppressing it or feeling lost in depression.

Filling up your lungs with the fresh air available in the newly uncluttered parts of your psyche feels really good.

I think I’ve always had the tendency to seek relationships compulsively. Being in a partnership is nurturing for the Moon in Libra. We feel comfortable sharing. We feel stronger when mirrored by someone else’s eyes.

Obviously there is more to it, but nevertheless romantic relationships tend to be extremely important for the wellbeing of libran moon individuals.

And I spent most of my youth being in relationships. In a very unconscious manner I would always find a way to be in a partnership, even if I wasn’t in love or truly passionate about the other person. Somehow it felt better to “have” someone rather than to be on my own. I think that because the Moon has a resonance with our unconscious behaviour and mother (our sense of safety) it was easier for me to go along with the Libran shadow even though many other parts of my psyche were screaming for independency and self sufficiency.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in a serious relationship. I’ve had many flings (many) and fell in love a few times in the last five years. But it was only with Pluto/Uranus transiting my Moon in March last year that I got the real kick on my butt with the failure of what seemed to be a very important connection to me.

I felt desperately lost and sad. Well yeah, by that point I was already dealing with something much bigger than the blowing up of yet another one of my illusions (I’m also a Venus square Neptune). I was terrified to be leaving my comfort zone behind (when I was leaving my home in London). I was dealing with all of the infantile fears represented by that Pluto transit to my Moon. Nobody was going to take care of me. (even though I was already taking care of myself by myself very well) I was dealing with issues of emotional dependency.

I have been traveling and moving around quite a bit ever since and as a consequence, and by choice really, I’ve been alone most of this time.

For the first time in my life I consciously don’t want to have a relationship. And for the first time I feel very okay with my aloneness. I think that only by facing the challenges of not having any validation from someone else I am honestly becoming aware of my potentials as an individual, aware of my true values when it comes to partnerships and more conscious of who I really am. My sense of self is becoming stronger and sturdier.

I believe that is only by going through this process that equality in relationships is possible. And equality is one of the best manifestations of the Libra archetype.

But how can you give yourself to someone else when you don’t own yourself in first place?

 

Evolutionary boost

by with One Comment Astrology and meInner lifeTrip

Another five days have gone by and my energy has shifted.

These are my last two weeks around here and thanks to my my lunar node contact (the friend I wrote about in the last post, with the Gemini Moon tightly conjunct my North Node) I’ve decided to stay. Is quite interesting to see and experience in real life what we usually read in most websites about the relevance of Nodal contacts in synastry.

I have seen Nodal interaspects between my astrological chart and the chart of important people in my life. My brother’s North Node makes a tight conjunction to my MC and I have close and important friends in my life that shares this kind of astrological configuration with me. Apart from sharing a very special and significant place in my heart they also have another thing in common:  most of these connections were developed slowly and steadily. No sudden clicks or boosts. Yes, they’ve entered my life to stay and I’ve always thought that for the same reason there was no need for speeding anything up, there was always an intrinsic sense that that was meant to be.

This is the first time that the relevance of the Nodal connection is quickly revealed to me. A few casual encounters here and there and I already could sense the depth and emotional bond (even if not yet developed in full potential). I say emotional bond precisely because it’s his Moon, representing his emotional body, that makes the contact and color our interaction. I’ve noticed, very casually, his impulse to take care of me in quite a lunar way. It really feels nice. Specially because with this he keeps gently pushing me towards my purpose. There were a few places that he told me that I should definitely go to and I went (trusting the Nodal contact and strong potential for spiritual growth) without getting disappointed. I fought to overcome the unsociable life that I’ve been having here since I arrived. He somehow brought me out of my self absorbed healing process by being himself, without pushing me. Without even knowing what he was doing to be honest. Something about resonance, the resonance between who he naturally is and the point representing my direction towards growth.

I can really see the lunar and Gemini flavour in this situation. Since I decided to come out from my cocoon this big shift happened and I’ve been socialising and networking a lot. I’m getting quite a few clients for astrological readings and I even got a student that is paying for private lessons!

How truly amazing. Really. I cannot stretch how much we should all look out for interaspects between inner planets and the North Node in synastry. It feels like a real blessing. The inner planet person acts like some kind of “godmother” helping you out in your path towards evolution.  You can trust that there is a special kind of bond.

 

Strange days

by with No Comment Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for homeTrip

Since my course has finished I’ve had 2 days filled with anxious feelings about going back to the old patterns and 5 days of practicing yoga twice a day on my own. I am happy to see that somehow I’m keeping my discipline and serious attitude towards my practice. I’ve almost read a whole book (a good one) about yoga in two days which has been quite inspiring and enlightening also.

Now, after hanging out on the beach for couple of hours with a friend I notice mixed feelings about this island while looking at myself in the mirror.

My time around here has been quite intense and strange at the same time. I attributed the strangeness of my somehow lack of will to socialise to my plutonic moment. I knew from start that I came here on business and not for some frivolous time at the tantric tropical paradise.

But after today’s leisure time at the naked beach I got myself wondering if I’m not taking this place for granted. Everyone around seems to be having such a great time and at the same time so grateful to be here. I’ve been really looking forward to fly back to England (yes I’m going back as I feel that there might still be my home, even if in a different city) that sometimes I get removed from the present moment almost completely. Wrong attitude, I know. That’s why I’ve been thinking about going to a self sustainable farm in the north, get back on the road and into the present moment. I just couldn’t make up my mind yet, if I want to hitchhike on my own and go for an adventure as by now I’m running low on cash and is a long distance from here to there. I don’t know yet. I’m not sure if I just want to relax before going back or go for some rough adventurous time. We will see..

Anyways, this friend that I’ve spent some time with today has his Moon in Gemini making a tight conjunction to my North Node and I couldn’t help but watch him with some degree of admiration. His capacity for engaging with many people at the same time, the genuine curiosity. The socialising impulse that somehow I seem to have lost around here. I even thought this maybe could be explained by astrocartography and my relocated chart in Thailand that puts my social Libra Moon into the 7th house of other people. I was thinking about that and wondering how strongly a geographic place can affect you.

From Sao Paulo to London there was a noticeable increase on my sense of freedom which I very much appreciated. My ascendant changes from Scorpio to Sagittarius with my Mars/Uranus conjunction in Sag very close to the angle. It’s truly amazing the tremendous feeling of freedom and independence that I experience there. My North Node also gets pretty close to my relocated descendant and is also very noticeable the amount of fated encounters that I’ve had over there. And most of them initiated by me.

Very different from how I feel around here. With the relocated ascendant in Aries and Mars (the ruler of it) in the eighth house I can tell that most of my energy is put into deep transformation that obviously, in a very scorpionic/8th house like, includes a massive degree of intense purging and seriousness. Then somehow, perhaps by resonance, my Saturn in Scorpio gets highlighted because I totally feel the seriousness of my relationship with the emotional realm and that leaves me no time for frivolity. But then again, maybe that comes down to my plutonic time and the synchronicity of me picking a place that emphasise and is conducive to the process of change…

Out of sync

by with No Comment Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for homeTrip

I’ve been out of sync in the last month. Definitely too much going on around here and inside me.

Tomorrow I’m finally graduating from the first level yoga course that I’ve been doing since January here in Thailand. I was pretty busy with that and with the second exact hit of transiting Pluto square to my natal Moon also taking place in January.

The first one, in March 2015, was connected with me leaving my home in London and many realisations about my mother bringing a lot of old anger back to the surface. (Also with the break up of an important relationship)

The second one had me practicing yoga twice a day for six days a week and a physical breakdown for 5 days that they call “process of purification”. There is definitely something really powerful about yoga and practicing it with awareness. I got pretty sick for those 5 days and all that I wanted was, funny enough, my mother! For the first time in years I really wanted to be with her and truly missed her care and love. I can totally see the connection there, the healing taking place while a lot of toxic energy was making its way out of my body. We spoke on Skype, me and my mother, everyday during that week like we haven’t done it in a really long time.

I’m now feeling a lot better. My mind is much more clearer and lucid than when I arrived in the island. A lot less emotional clutter, even my body is lighter as I’ve lost some weight with the combination of yoga and the sickness.

I have no doubt that I’ve made the right decision about coming here to do this course during this Pluto transit. I highly recommend to everyone having a strong Pluto transit to go for some kind of powerful detox process, a course like this or some kind of retreat. Whatever catches your attention, go for it. You won’t regret. It really helps the purging process and makes you feel a lot lighter afterwards.

This transit still an ongoing process for me, with the last and longer hit on the second half of this year. I have no idea what’s going to happen. What I know is that I’ve quit smoking and feel much lighter at the moment. Almost like a little glimpse of what could be the feeling at the end of this whole process of death and rebirth. Its exciting as well as profound and demanding. What can make a great difference is the awareness that enable you to make wiser choices to facilitate the process of purification represented symbolically by Pluto. Resisting this process isn’t the best attitude and I believe it can only make things more painful. The amount of resistance equals the necessary violence applied to make a change..

Mouldy peaches

by with No Comment Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for home

I dreamt that I had missed my flight and woke up disturbed. The day started in a funny way but now it has gone from funny to frustrating at the very least. I’ve been spending most of my hours today trying to get rid of the mould that to my horror is growing everywhere in my room. It’s good that I just realised what was going on under my nose though, I think that I prevented myself from loosing most of my stuff. Man, everything had already a foul smell that somehow resembles the smell of mushrooms. Argh…

Well, with my Mercury in Virgo, this whole situation got me thinking about what Liz Greene said in one of her books (which one I can’t remember exactly now) about using daily life situations to be interpreted symbolically in the same way as with dream analysis. And suddenly I can totally see a symbolic relation between Pluto in Capricorn heading for the second square to my Moon in Libra and my mouldy room. Something that has grown in the darker corners of my (temporary) home must be dealt with! The feeling of powerlessness in the situation, the unpleasant surprise.

It also made me think about better ways of tackling the inevitable, or what could be my best conduct in this situation. For instance I could just have ignored the humidity and bad smell and in 2 months and a half I would have had the unhappy surprise of loosing everything for good, possibly including my passport that was inside my backpack. (Not considering my health also). How traumatic would that have been?

Another road is to not ignore and deal with the crap straight away. To be aware that there is no easy way out really, and the sooner I address the problem the better, for there is less mouldy material to get my hands dirty from at once. Now, considering that I’m in a shady and super humid place in Thailand I believe that the mould will keep coming out but my choice is to deal with it daily and slowly. I’m gonna take it as it comes for some things seems to be inevitable in life…

Wilderness

by with No Comment Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for home

I’ve been meaning to write another post for a little while and because I didn’t the result is a mix and match of different ideas in one text.

First, a tip for anyone that thinks about living at a tropical paradise: beware and be ready to share your space with creatures of every sort. My first week living in this Thai island and I’ve had a few encounters that reminded me about how much life thrives in tropical weather. Almost eight years of european home and somehow I had completely forgotten that.

I had a bunch of ants mercilessly invading the cereal pack that I left on the table overnight, another big spider’s delightful visit (that one was quite huge for my standards), a little lizard surprisingly jumping on me out of a clothes rack, and the big brown spider that still sharing my room with me. I understood that the table/chair area here is hers and it seems that we have an unspoken agreement on leaving each other alone. I think I might eventually grow fond of her and start a beautiful friendship.

Then I got myself thinking, are we, human beings born and raised on tropical places, also naturally wilder than the others?  Im not sure what the answer is but I have to say that from my experience living in cold and mild England this seems to be so. Like that daring little lizard, I think that I did jump out of clothes racks onto people as well. But that’s another story.

I think is just interesting that I’m settling in a tropical place now, regarding that my natal moon is the ruler of the 9th in my chart. 9th house has to do with travels and living abroad, the moon has to do with home as well. So many memories from Brazil has been brought back to me. Obviously this is also and especially being triggered by that Pluto transit to my moon.

Another tip, for you people navigating the turbulent waters of an outer planet transit to a personal one: keep track of when the fast moving planets get involved in the picture. That’s when is more likely that something might happen or when you might be strongly in touch with the painful process of change. These days Mars made a conjunction to my moon and jeez, for two days I lost much of my perspective and capacity for detachment. I found myself clinging to what I thought I had understood and let go already. I somehow became those childish feelings and fears for 2 days. As Mars moved away, it felt like I came back to my body again. I’m in charge again and with more perspective.

This isn’t an easy process (the outer planets kind of change), but it’s vital in order to become oneself.

Its definitely a helping hand with the task of meeting the wilderness within.

Jet legged

by with No Comment Inner lifeTrip

Is now 3:15 in the morning in Thailand and I’m super jet legged and having troubles to sleep. Is also hot as hell and I guess I’m not used to these temperatures anymore. It doesn’t feel necessarily bad, is just weird. I’m trying to feel my way, sort of trying to recognise how my energy works here so I can consciously align myself.

When I woke up around 11pm thinking that it was the day after already I decided to go to the backyard of the hostel to get some fresh air. Tired and confused I noticed that an anxious feeling was  growing inside my chest.

In the beginning of my travels I had a goal that was still much too far, or so it seemed. It was keeping me going, it was like the promised land or something like that. And so I caught myself feeling insecure now that I have almost arrived at my destination (I haven’t got to the island I wanna go to yet).

But then something happened, I saw this french guy curled up on his own with people talking to him and trying to help because he wasn’t feeling well.  I think he had thrown up and stuff like that. Anyways, I felt compelled to do something to help him so I offered  and gave him some Reiki.

At the end he was feeling much better and the situation, and I guess channeling Reiki as well, has also helped me to achieve yet another level of clarity about this trip and my path. My anxious feeling have dissolved into a certainty that this is the moment to take spirituality more seriously. Surrendering my ego to a much bigger process of becoming who I truly am is paramount now. Money, travel bureaucracy and etc are just details from now on. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

I think that this hot weather and the energies in this country are going to play a strong part in my alchemical process.

(And Pluto is approaching to make a second exact square to my natal moon in Libra! I really need to write a post only on this topic actually.) Next time.