Forecast for week of August 13-19, 2012

It’s practicum time in the relationship lab that Saturn has been hosting since the fall of 2011. The task is not a practice exercise (or three), but putting everything we’ve been developing to practical use. That means realizations, decisions, negotiations, renegotiations, revised ground rules and new models of connection and reciprocity.

You know what happens when you start putting reconditioned or unfamiliar tools and concepts to use. They don’t always fly right off the bat. Sometimes you have to learn how to work them (or work with them). Sometimes you uncover other parts of the job that need attention. Sometimes you discover that you need to learn something or hone a skill to make the best use of them. And then a corny joke comes to mind: “Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice.”

That’s where we are. Major healing, cleaning up, finishing and implementing dominate the week. When your mind wanders off into what-ifs about later in the year, bring it back to the practicum.

The working metaphor for the week (as well as the next six) is a school calendar. It’s near the end of a semester and you are in the final weeks of all your courses, with finals still a bit ahead. You know what courses you’re going to be taking next semester, but are you worrying about them and wondering whether that intriguing person you’ve been flirting with in the dining hall is going to be in any of them, or going into a panic over what grade you might get? No. You are paying attention to this semester. You have to get through this one before the next one is a live issue.

Remind yourself of that. Maybe even write it down. And, yes, I know this does not come automatically or naturally for us monkey-mind folks. But flying off into the next stage is a distraction from the real and necessary work of finishing this stage.

And really good results are likely if we buckle down and work now. Even though it’s summer. Four big influences are helping with it. Three of them involve Chiron, who challenges us to embrace the gift in an abiding wound and settle fully into the physicality of existence. He’s opening pathways to healing that could make us more comfortable with ourselves and with all the folks we have to live with on this planet.

Chiron is in an opportunity aspect to Pluto, lord of our deepest darkest secrets and impulses and one of the instigators of the rampant and relentless disruption and change that we have been experiencing. Even if for only a moment, we can glimpse the illusion of separateness as just that: an illusion, one that both grows out of and feeds irrational fears and baseline terrors. Everyone — without exception — has been confronting, encountering and undergoing unprecedented instability inside and out, often with damage to metaphoric structures that previously provided a secure foundation. Even if for only a moment, we can experience a softening of the experience of instability. Maybe understand how it benefits us. Maybe experience a sensation of triumphing in it. Maybe transmute long-standing wounds because of it. Maybe experience genuine compassion for what everyone else is going through — even the people who are driving us nuts.

Chiron is also dancing with Venus, ruler of our heart. The flow between them opens and unleashes emotions, throws arguing people into each other’s arms, places balm (initially I typed “calm;” that works, too) and comfort on aching, lonely hearts and pours sustenance into the emotionally malnourished.

Chiron is the bridge in this week’s big standoff, between the two planets of desire and money, Venus (worldly) and Pluto (big, dirty, primal). You see something you want and you can’t have, or shouldn’t have, or crave so badly that it would throw your life into utter, utter disarray. It’s the apple just out of reach, the beloved food that triggers allergies, the obsession that’s just not good and healthy for you, someone else’s spouse.

Whatever form this takes for you, view it through the eyes of love — the eyes of love for yourself. Relate it to your core wound, the one that resurfaces again and again no matter how much therapy or inner work or growing up you do. There is a connection. Let yourself off the hook. Let yourself be human. Forgive yourself.

And then get to work. We’ve got all the incentive in the world (heck, the universe) to buckle down with Mars, the ruler of our drive and actions, meeting with Saturn in Libra, the sign of our social contracts. Our experiences since April have brought us to a more conscious understanding of what our hearts want and need. Now we have the motivation and the follow-through to tackle relationships and agreements of all kinds.

The stakes are high; the ramifications are long-lasting. I’ve been saying since June that this summer is not for flings and trifles; it’s a summer of serious love. Now we see just how much so. Now begins the serious dismantling or collapsing of relationships that can’t support us, while the ones that are going with us begin maturing into solidity and commitment.

The first part doesn’t have to be nasty. We can do this with love. Chiron’s healing contacts with Pluto and Venus infuse everything we undertake now. Ease up on yourself. Forgive yourself. Put healthy focus on yourself, your emotional needs, your own nurturing. And stop worrying about what’s going to happen; the fall will be here soon enough.

It’ll be amazing, actually, how outer situations fall into place as a result.

Oh, and there’s a New Moon in Leo on Friday. Inner children get validation and big-girl/big-boy privileges. More in my mooncast.

For another take on this week’s events, listen to my quickie podcast. If you like it, please give it five stars on iTunes! NEW: You can now get my podcast as an app for Android and Kindle Fire at Amazon and as an app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod! iProduct info under this week’s podcast.

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Monday: The heart rules the day. Give yourself over to it. That’s not merely safe, but also part of the push into this week. The Moon’s super-conjunction to Venus (meeting both by degree and by declination) is aligning our desires and the situations we value with our hearts. Watch for social interactions to reflect this back to you. You can easily access a higher perspective (on anything), not to mention compassion, inspired artistic vision and the sense of being in the flow of all creation. Stay in that brilliant shaft of light and you’ll have an awe-inspiring vantage point for viewing scurrying and squirming demons (yours, perhaps?). You’ll know when to make a break and run.

Tuesday: You know how sometimes you feel something vaguely uncomfortable in your shoe and the sensation won’t go away no matter how many times you take off your shoe and shake it out? That’s today’s process. Keep shaking. It doesn’t matter whether you ever consciously determine the cause of the discomfort. By the evening the right thoughts will fall into your mind, the right words will fall out of your mouth and the right message will come your way.

Wednesday: Prepare to step out of your routine and plans. The first part of the day may feel as if someone has pressed a pause button. The Moon is void of course into the middle of the day (from 4:22 AM to 2:06 PM EDT), but this is no garden variety quiet time-out. The week’s major planetary alignments move into place now, bringing gear shifts at a deep level for all. We’re coming to grips with — making peace with — no, making friends with — deep emotional wounds. This has the power to affect your vision as the two planets of love and money stare each other down. Contemplate that tantalizing object of desire, as if it were art on display in a museum, rather than attempting to take it home. (Odds are it won’t stay, or won’t play according to the rules you expect.) Our will and drive are committing to what our hearts have chosen, though the time to act may not yet have arrived. Yes, it’s a little unnerving. It’s threatening your status quo and promising to disrupt familiar patterns and routines. Accustom yourself to the idea. You know there’s no going back. Once the Moon clears the void and enters look-at-me Leo, words and messages will abound, playfully, exuberantly, dramatically. Put writing materials at your bedside; you’ll be processing a lot.

Thursday: Mid-sixties sitcoms depicted computers as room-dominating machines that blinked lights while processing and loudly spit out the results on punch cards. Your psyche is doing the equivalent overnight. What’s on your punch card is a key to a door in your heart, a door that you must open and walk through. Notice your sensations on awakening. How have you been freed? What are you viewing differently? What must you leave? No fair projecting anxieties into these questions as you read this forecast in advance. The answers do not lead to loss and lack, but the opposite. They increase your sense of wholeness, well-being and comfort with yourself. Make it possible for you to make the day’s emotional choices from a base of personal power and honesty, rather than fear. And prime you for the next big key that’s arriving late tonight. (Possibly in your sleep; where are those writing materials?)

Friday: The predawn hours are less than restful, but energetic grounding and stability come early in the day all the same. Likely all that tossing and turning primes you somehow for focusing and tackling what needs to be handled. (You’ll have an outlet into which to funnel all the agitation and churning.) The Sun and the Moon both make a handshake aspect to stabilizing Saturn before they meet each other in the New Moon. Confidence, self-esteem and self-assurance are all over this Moon — but with controlled use of our firepower. Read more in my New Moon forecast. Check your writing materials.

Saturday: The information processing that is part of sleeping and dreaming puts you to a definite this-or-that choice. You may drop a line of thinking, clarify a position or face (and embrace) a raw and powerful truth. As always, noting down dream fragments can help you identify what’s happened, if you are not immediately aware of this shift when you awaken. Allow yourself to throttle back any list of errands you might have drawn and simply enjoy the day. There will be pleasant company aplenty and admit it: You’ll like to have some fun. In fact, you feel entitled to have some fun. Lots of it, actually. With “more” resounding in the skies, the Moon sets off on a rare super long void at 7:27 PM, which will last all day tomorrow, until 12:46 AM EDT Monday. Keep your knees loose. With trickster Mercury trining lightning-thrower Uranus, anything could happen tonight: changes of plans, changes of mind, detours that land you in unexpected and wacky places, missing pieces of information that put quite the different spin on a situation…Have fun!

Sunday: The Moon is void of course until 12:46 AM tomorrow. The day’s aspects, all of them minor, do not start until after noon. Most of them involve an evolved experience, approaching an obligation, yourself and your agenda in a way that you wouldn’t have a few weeks ago. Look at the day as information gathering.

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