Forecast for week of March 26-April 1, 2012

By Kathy Biehl

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What’s important this week may not make its nature known until much later. We’ll be pushing our personal agendas all right, but making progress on them is not the main point. We don’t have the cosmic support to force anything into being. Too, an element of the unforeseeable — even inexplicable — is very much at work. So go about your business and follow your impulses. Just drop attachment to any particular outcome just now.

The main reason for our obscured vision is Mercury having drifted back into Pisces for the final full week of his current retrograde. Mercury rules what goes through our minds, what and how we communicate, and how we get around. It’s hard to get a handle on anything when he is in his most vague and diffuse mode, in the all-connecting waters of Pisces.

It’s hard to get around, too. Commutes and travel are prone to the weirdest snarls, especially with Mars, the planet that rules our internal drive, also being retrograde and in the opposite sign, to boot. Anyone get caught in the epidemic of pre-rush hour traffic jams last week? Or getting lost? The weird wrong turns I’ve made since Mercury returned to Pisces have added an hour at least to my total drive time. One of them unspooled into the astrologically appropriate phenomenon of a GPS announcing turns a block past the intersection.

Hang on to that image, and learn from it. The tools that, logically, should guide you are not reliable in this atmosphere. That goes as well for rational thought, for memory and even for what you think is knowledge. I’ve been double-booking without any inkling that my usually-accurate mental picture of my calendar is missing the bottom half. Yes, these retrogrades are making direct contacts to my chart, but I’m not alone in being affected. Everyone is, in some way, and that includes you.

Mercury retrograding in Pisces is about as nonrational and nonlinear as it gets — and calls for exactly that kind of approach. Instead of scheming, planning, projecting, pushing and expecting, ask for help. Sit quietly every morning and empty yourself, even for only a minute or two. Call in whoever or whatever energies you trust and ask to be led in the most beneficial direction(s). Hand over the reins for your day. Trust that life is unfolding as it should when traffic makes you an hour late, or appointments cancel, or you can’t get online. The delays and snarls and breakdowns have benefits, even if not immediately apparent.

You are not in the position to see what is most important. You may think that having a certain meeting is the point of your day. It may be that asking for directions and smiling at the person who gave them was your true mission, and has more far-reaching consequences than arriving on time at that appointment.

This state of confusion has another benefit. “Out of chaos and confusion comes clarity,” a law professor of mine used to say, and that is exactly what’s on the way. We have every potential of stumbling on additional information about situations from when Mercury first covered this territory at the end of March and beginning of April. And whaddaya know, retrograde Mars is in the position to help us work with and fix the nuggets we encounter.

Two other factors are helpful to keep in mind this week. A dynamic configuration is in place involving Chiron, representing our abiding wound as well as the challenge to settle fully into physicality; Mars, the ruler of our drive and ambition; and the North Node of the Moon, which represents the collective as well as the direction in which we are heading. The North Node is the stress point, and the pressure on it is encouraging falling into old behaviors, particularly old ways of thinking and talking — part of the reason for racism, women’s issues and beliefs from decades past suddenly being so omnipresent in the news.

This is an uncomfortable mix of energies. It’s stirring up inadequacies, anxieties, control freak tendencies and ancient bad, bad feelings, especially about the self. If you have been suffering emotional meltdowns, please consider how you have been interpreting the events that triggered them. Listen to the words you are saying to yourself, and especially about yourself. Odds are off the charts that you have been reading situations in the worst possible light — not because the other person intended that (odds are also off the charts that person would be stunned and confused by your reaction, by the way), but because the situations have awakened primal feelings in you.

You can’t reason yourself out of this. Reason isn’t working, remember? The part of you where these feelings live isn’t susceptible to reason, anyway. These kinds of beliefs and responses come from a time when your brain had not fully formed; they are that ancient. You can’t talk sense to a four-year-old (or a baby). Instead, treat yourself firmly but kindly, lovingly and compassionately … and then radiate that back out.

Meanwhile, as ancient traumas are provoking ancient responses, the Sun is moving across the degrees that will come into prominence in June and September, when change agents Uranus and Pluto have the first two of the seven showdowns happening between now and 2015. The clash will unleash explosive, impulsive and unforeseeable events, internal and external.

The Sun’s travel across these points is another round of preparing. We won’t have the leisure required to think rationally then; we will simply act and react. Use this time to get ready. Look at the Mercury and Mars retrogrades as filling in information that will be necessary and useful and pointing out what to fix and what to make more efficient and effective. Look at sorrow, pain, weepiness or tears that crop up as signals of self-wounding patterns and thoughts. If you can’t shut down the inner criticism, ask for help. Here’s one request, to get you started: Show me another way to look at this.

I’m taking questions from callers on the Be The Light radio show Tuesday evening from 10 PM – midnight EDT — or, good news for you folks on the West Coast, 7-9 PM PDT. Listen online!

Tools for Navigating the New Energy
I’m presenting techniques for recognizing and clearing out all the energy you pick up that isn’t yours at The Goddess in Eden, Montclair, NJ, 7:30 PM Thursday, Mar. 29. $ 20. Read more…

My five-minute podcast offers another, shorter take on this week’s events. If you like it, please give it five stars on iTunes! (Don’t want to use iTunes? Visit my Podcast/Video page.)

Monday: Decisions, decisions. Your subconscious made a couple before dawn. One was between anger and assertiveness; the other involved issues of responsibility for or in communication in a relationship. Your psyche settled on one side of each choice, which molds your general state of mind as the week starts. Mercury-ruled issues dominate the day Those could play out as communicating or scurrying about or both. The earlier round pits an unexpected challenge against your perceptions or plans; in the afternoon, compulsion (possibly anxiety-driven) escalates talk and running about. Best approach for the day: Find the high ground and stay there. Ask for help if that feels necessary. This does not have to be a hard day, depending on what you decided overnight.

Tuesday: There might be an increase in fogginess and confusion, but you can get through it. The day has energizing, motivating aspects to get your mind and heart moving, if not your hands and feet as well. Grab the monkey wrench that flies into your day (you aren’t perceiving what’s most important, remember?) and wield it. If something/someone ticks you off, use your reaction as rocket fuel. Watch for the opening to turn situations to your liking — in ways that make you feel good about yourself, too. And if you’re up and around, call me when I’m on the Be the Light radio show from 10 PM – midnight EDT.

Wednesday: None of today’s aspects are major. The few contacts that are being made are subtle undercurrents. The morning’s wave invites bristling at limitations, restrictions, responsibilities or authority, then beckons you to dance within (or in spite of) them. An issue of desire vs. compulsive craving casts an unsettling tone on the afternoon. What’s steering your boat, your heart or primal impulses? As you twist hoping against hope that your wish of the moment will be granted (which, alas, is not likely today), the question is worth contemplating.

Thursday: The first half of the day is a flurry of getting somewhere. Attempts to connect click into place. Conversations happen. Doors open to helpful, friendly people and to positive developments in cash flow. If you have been wanting to get ahold of someone, ask for information or request a favor, make a move now, the earlier the better. Watch out for power ploys, though. You can use them as a pushing off point for your own growth and evolution. At minimum, be prepared to step outside of comfortable behavior. End your forward drives and resume “wait and see” mode by 2 or so EDT, when the Moon goes void of course until just after 7 PM EDT. Find time for nurturing in the evening, and use yourself as a starting point. If you can carve out moments for contemplating, meditating or even sitting quietly, all the better. Lines are open and operators are standing by.

Friday: Major processing is on the agenda. The overnight hours tilt a perspective and rev your engine, hardly a formula for sound and restful sleep. Take care that overtiredness does not lull you into reacting like a four-year-old. Keep this explanation in mind if regressive behavior comes at you. Emotion and logic are not operating on the same page today. Being kind to your own inner child might be the most beneficial way to get through this atmosphere. Safely satisfying interactions are more to be had in the evening. Open your heart and indulge.

Saturday: This is the most hopping day of the week astrologically, and the action begins long before dawn. Dreams chew on deep-rooted fears and patterns, distorted like the set for the classic silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. An inner gear shift keeps them from haunting you on awakening, though. The shift is powerful and sudden enough to jolt you out of sleep. Your psyche is hitting a wall and pushing through it. Not sure what it is? As you come to in the morning, notice what you feel all up in arms about or compelled to do. Ride the vibe to break through sluggishness or lethargy; take care not to bulldoze the people around you. Social graces are in short supply and not flowing naturally, so consider making an effort. You do have choices, even if you’re on a mission, and you can choose to act responsibly and sanely in relation to other people. Still, this is definitely a day to to lay lie and pursue your own course of action. Misunderstandings are likely to erupt out of nowhere. Instead, shake up your own thinking. Tilt your perspective to the side or on its head. Shoot holes into your certainty and ask for another way of viewing a situation. The brainstorming could be enlightening. An edginess alert is in effect until just past midnight. Proceed accordingly.

Sunday: April Fool’s Day! The biggest goof might be one you play on yourself. You are processing, processing, processing. It will be so easy to cast off inner chains, or open yourself to something you never thought you would do, that you might not even notice as this happens. Take risks. Leap into the unknown. Choose to trust yourself, your guidance and your connection to a force greater than your own consciousness. Face down a fear, or abolish it to insignificance. This is the day to take the road less traveled by you.

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