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Virgo (August 23 - September 22)
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If you have been feeling like life is one long haul with no end in sight I will give you an old saying from recovery circles that worked for me in the beginning days of living my life sober: life is a bus ride, not a destination. Saturn is making you better every single day that you live. If there is one sign that can live life on life’s terms it is you Virgos. Chant “it’s the glass half-full, not half-empty”; “my life is none of my business” and “God built the world one day at a time”. You are still getting that majestic trine from Jupiter—relish in it and thank God for a big favor. |
Libra (September 23 - October 22)
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When you wake up every morning during this Virgo Sun Cycle say to yourself, “I am not responsible for my wife or husband or lover or my friends and I am not who my enemies think I am.” There are so many challenges for you even-keeled Scales of Justice that your primary concern right now should be tending to what’s on your plate and letting the rest of the world go by. This is a new ballgame and there are ever-changing rules, and the one you should adopt as a mantra for getting through the day is “I am doing the best I can with what I have left.” |
Scorpio (October 23 - November 21)
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The worm finally turns for you deep and profound thinkers, now that you have learned that you can’t think your way into right living but you can live your way into right thinking. Your ship is finally pulling into dock and you will know exactly what to do with what’s onboard. You have learned how to keep your eyes on the prize and have laid good solid floors beneath your ideas, so strike up the band and get on with the show—your audiences await your best performance ever. (Don’t forget to thank your HP for your good fortune!) |
Sagittarius (November 22 - December 20)
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You should have seen some tried and true benefits from all the eclipses this year. ‘The best things in life’ could have been your high school cheer, but now that you are older and hopefully have learned from your easy street days, you can move forward with those new job plans; an exciting career strategy lies just ahead of you. Known as one of the few signs who amazingly and effectively reinvents himself or herself, the sound you hear are the roars of approval as you make your next life change at work. We’d like to remind you that not all of us have the Sag’s sense of humor, so save the repartee for friends at the barbeque or TGIF get-together. |
Capricorn (December 21 - January 19)
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With the Full Moon in Virgo September 15th you should be finishing one phase of your master plan, ready to move to the next stage. You have a long run-of-show—at least until 2023—to finish up what you’ve started—but there are a lot of short-term pay-outs for you this month. As the cosmos designates you as one who can be emotionally detached and impervious to what others think of you or your politics or religion, motor on as scheduled. And always remember with the best-laid plans there may be a wrinkle or two that have to be amended. You have everything in your bag of tricks to do so. |
Aquarius (January 20 - February 17)
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Now that you are done with six months full of solar and lunar eclipses, you can go about rearranging the furniture and see what damage you need to repair. Truth-be-told, as long as you can live outside the nine dots of mediocrity and walk to the zip-a-dee-do-dah of your own band you can live and work anywhere that values personal imprints and ingenuity. Eclipses either derail you or give you momentum for what you are doing and how you are doing it. The real fly in your ointment is that dastardly and deceptive planet, Neptune in Aquarius—the Lunar Eclipse hit that aspect bull’s eye on August 15th. Move cautiously for awhile longer. |
Pisces (February 18 - March 20)
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When the Harvest Full Moon in Pisces on September 15th conjuncts Uranus get ready for some real shake, rattle and roll in your life. I would think that those of us who resemble this astrological caveat have learned how to live on and survive the San Andreas fault- line we’ve been living on for umpteen years now. I know my leaner, dreamer, and schemer has been rehabbed to death. Saturn is still opposing us for another year, but we Neptunian types still have the sextile in Jupiter for another few months. If you still need to lose pounds and gain financially, stick to an austere program in both health and wealth. |
Aries (March 21 - April 20)
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Having gotten a powerful jolt from the Solar and Lunar Eclipses don’t act like it’s business as usual. No, it is now time to go slower, give fuller disclosures on your business plans and see how what you’re up to can benefit all of those involved. The days of self-interest, enlightened or in the dark, are kaput—done, over with. You fire-breathing Daredevils need to have a longer end game. It would help matters to run your ideas by someone saner and perhaps soberer than you are. With Pluto in Capricorn reigning for many years to come, it is the firm foundations that will win in the end. |
Taurus (April 21 - May 20)
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The two Solar Eclipses and two Lunar Eclipses—two in February and two in August—could have derailed some of your plans, like emotional and financial security but your Bulls are tougher than nails. There are still a lot of power pulls at work for you, like Saturn in Virgo and Jupiter in Capricorn—soon to be rejoined by Pluto in the Sign of the Goat—and Uranus in Pisces is also adding momentum to your asset side of the ledger. Neptune in Aquarius is still spewing too much over-optimism, so pick your lovers as carefully as you do your stocks. All of us are having to reevaluate where we stand in the dollars and cent world—you do the same. |
Gemini (May 21 - June 20)
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Saturn in Virgo has already retooled and reconstructed you early degree Twins (May 22 – 30) but you had still better pay close attention to the New Moon in Virgo conjunct Saturn on August 30th. This configuration could make you wonder if that proverbial black cloud is restricted to you Geminis—it ain’t—we are all having to deal with the fall out of bad money decisions we made years ago. You caught a breather from the four eclipses this year and you innately have the ability to bounce back and change directions faster than most signs. Stay the course. October is your month to feel freer. |
Cancer (June 21 - July 22)
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With Saturn blessing you for another plus year—although it is playing havoc with Virgos and Pisces—the sextile to the Moon Child is delicious. The opposition from Jupiter in Capricorn is a draw—the opposition only makes you more aware when others are leaning too strongly on you or your pocketbook. When Pluto moves back into Capricorn in late November to stay until 2023, you will have major adjustments to make. The opposition is easier to take than the conjunction because when a heavyweight planet like Pluto is directly in front of you, you can see the need to change quicker and easier. For now, be picky about who you nurture and who needs to make do without help from you.
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Leo (July 22 - August 22)
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Now that the Solar Eclipse in Leo has blessed you and the Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius has mirrored what to let go of, take stock to see what to do with your good fortune. There is an old truism that when eclipses come along, those who deserve good fortune will reap it many times over. But those who have been lying to their employers or spouses or cheating their way to get ahead or stealing what does not belong to them, it will be ‘pay day some day.’ The piper will knock on your door and say, “It’s payday!” The piper could be the repo guy, or a Federal Marshall with a warrant or it could be a real estate broker with a full price offer. You Leos are about to get what you deserve. |
From The Head To The Heart
By Bill Sharon
 My first exposure to the media was the Army/McCarthy hearings in 1954; I remember because the gavel to gavel coverage interrupted my seeing the Hopalong Cassidy and Lash LaRue cowboy serials that I watched every day after school. I was seven. Senator Joe McCarthy, the virulent anti-communist who ruined scores of careers and lives, was being investigated by his own committee for attempting to get the army to provide preferential treatment for a former aide. My recollection of Joseph Welsh, the Special Counsel to the committee, shaming McCarthy for his demagoguery is probably colored by seeing film of the hearings when I was older but my memory of my father’s reaction is still very clear. A staunch Republican, he was upset in a way that I had not seen before. It was my first experience of how information communicated through a television could have a profound impact.
Over the next decade, television increasingly became the source for news in my life. Through it I witnessed the aftermaths of the assassinations of the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King and I saw a man walking on the moon. But the report that changed me in the way that my father was changed was Cronkite’s February 1968 report following the Tet offensive in which he told us that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Something had changed; some sense of our own righteousness had been challenged in the establishment media, not just on the college campus. Later, the Watergate scandal convinced many that the corruption was deeper than a flawed world view; that it was contained in the cynicism of our leaders toward their own people.
As many of us moved into the business world and some to Wall Street, the news almost became a caricature of itself. Every administration had a new “gate” scandal and outrage gave way to posturing. These events became a confirmation of a view that government had become irrelevant and venal and a servant of a constituency that was clearly not aligned with the needs of its citizens. But no event, no matter how outrageous, seemed capable of galvanizing the population to demand real change. It was as though we were so jaded that we no longer cared. As Pogo would say “we have seen the enemy and he is us.”
The advent of cable news in 1980 expanded coverage and presented the opportunity for more in-depth reporting, but over the past two decades it has degenerated into a series of white Bronco chases and contentious so-called experts talking past each other. Recently it has taken on the air of the World Wide Wresting Federation - anchors from different networks ridicule each other to the point where the only thing that is missing are the ring card girls. There is precious little information in any of these outlets to inform us about what is really going on in the world.
And then came the Internet. The major media outlets have adapted and we can read, listen and watch the same content there that we find on television and radio and in the press. But more importantly, all of us have come to the Internet. Millions of people are creating audio and video content every day. The amount is staggering, the information ranges from nonsensical to profound. It seems an overwhelming task to separate the wheat from the chaff. How can we know where to look to find what we need to know?
Something I saw on a short video clip the other day may give us a hint. It was Bruce Lipton, a biologist and an extraordinarily brilliant man discussing how the 50 trillion cells in our body function cooperatively without any higher authority to direct them. These cells know exactly what to do. They keep the heart pumping and the lungs expanding and contracting and they ensure that we can put one foot in front of the other. How they do this comes from an adaptive ability, a knowing what to do that is on a scale unlike anything we can imagine.
We are in a time where we are learning to live from the heart, not the head. I can’t tell you what a long road a middle aged white man who saw himself as the master of his own destiny had to travel to make that statement. If you are one and reading this then perhaps you know; if not, you’ll have to take my word for it. It seems clear to me that more and more of us are traveling the same road - moving in concert, acting without anticipating an outcome, understanding something we can’t quite put into words.
We are all still stuck with the language of the head - our five senses and our emotions. We have no language yet to describe where we are going. Logic fails us; we only have our intuition. It is intuition that caused you to read this, it is intuition that will propel you to the next validation you need to experience, it is intuition that will remind you of what you already know.
Sarah McLean
 Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods. ~Emerson
I got up early and went outside. The wilderness in my backyard was mostly still. There was no breeze and the delicate leaves of the mesquite tree stood as silent and unmoving as the red rocks. I could hear the silence, it was palpable and refreshing. I love this early morning before the pink jeeps start to crawl through the forests, or the helicopters hover above. The birds are chirping loudly this morning, and as I walk back into the house, I can hear my breath and my feet touching the ground.
Silence has become endangered. It is easy to avoid it, and sometimes hard to find. I am a big advocate of silence.
Our culture, and perhaps most cultures in the modern world, values getting things done quickly and filling every moment with sensual stimuli: whether it is music from your iPod, or a friend’s voice or text message on the other end of the cell phone, or the videos, audios and written word on the internet, or the programs you play back on your Tivo, or the music from the radio in your car, or the words from the newspaper, or the images in the magazines in your dentist’s office. There is a wide variety of stimuli and there is no end. What is underlying all of this noise?
Because we are taught that multitasking is efficient, when we're doing one thing, we're focused on something else. We can be talking on the phone and scanning our email, or eating lunch and reading a memo, or exercising in the gym and listening to music. Even when a coworker or family member is talking to us, we don't listen fully. Instead, we think about what we're going to say next or what we'll have for lunch. We can miss much of our lives in the process.
Our lives are made up of one moment following another, and if we are not present for each moment, we ultimately aren’t present for our lives. So multitasking makes us actually miss the moment, and ultimately the true experience of our lives.
As a remedy to the constant noise and distraction, some people have come to practice mindfulness, a discipline of being fully present while doing just one thing. For example, try eating a piece of fruit without conversation, radio, television or reading. Choose a piece of fruit, and sit down. Experience the fruit. Smell it, look at it, feel it, see the light reflect on its shape. Then begin to eat it with your full attention on peeling, breaking open, chewing and tasting the fruit. Take your time. Later, try the same process with typing a memo driving, or walking, or dialing the phone or even listening to another person. Or, schedule a family meal or a meal with friends in silence.
Another practice that I have done in my years in the monastery is to spend a day in silence; we would sometimes spend ten days at a time in silence. Silence enables us to actually experience what we are experiencing, and begins to quiet the mind. After thoughts of agonizing over the past, worrying about the future, or the running commentary about our lives and surrounds, we can eventually hear the voice of our soul, our intuition.
Here’s how you can spend a day or part of a day in silence. Decide when to take the time off, let your loved ones know, and make a vow of silence. Turn off your TV, cell phone and home phone, take a day off from the computer and electronics, don’t listen to music or read. Don’t speak or write to anyone; don’t make wild gestures to communicate with your family. Instead, be with your self, turn your attention inward with the intention to get to know yourself.
Experience your self as you walk, cook, eat, shower, and meditate. Spend time in nature and experience its silence. Pay attention to what you see, touch, taste, smell and hear. Be the witness to your internal and external. This practice will help you to be fully present to your life, one moment after another.
Where the river is deepest it makes the least sound. ~Italian Proverb
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Cutting back
As I sit here and write on this 11th anniversary of my sobriety date, and what I consider the onset of my path to clarity, I am awed by all the changes that have taken place. Today I feel like a man, when for so long I felt like a boy trapped in a man’s body. I have grown over the years to take on responsibilities both personally and professionally that once scared me to death. This growth has blessed me with the enjoyment of a loving, committed relationship and engagement, and the courage to face the challenges this brings. I am fortunate to travel, meet and interact with people from all walks of life.
Andrew Bell 
With the Lunar Eclipse Full Moon on August 16th at 24 degrees of Aquarius we are done with these phenomena until next year. It is interesting to note that the Lunar Eclipse conjuncted the Moon Sign of the United States Natal Chart and we know where we are as a nation, particularly with our dire overspending habits as individuals and as a country. Every time I think of the cost of the Iraq War I could set myself on fire in protest, but instead I think I will vote for someone who can get us out of the war pdq.
