Looking Forward…Looking Back

At one point this morning, it occurred to me to consider 2013 and 2014 from a broad perspective.

In the past few days, I’ve seen a few Facebook posts stating appreciation for 2013. Some were heartfelt while others felt like genuine attempts. If I had written one of my own, it would have been a feeble attempt at best. It’s hard to feel appreciation for loss, apparent failure, on-going challenge, and pain.

But then the gentle guidance to look with different eyes came, and with no effort what so ever, that’s precisely what I found myself doing moments later.

It went something like this:

• It is obvious to me that a number of people around me (including me) had a more challenging year in 2013 than is typical.
• I then found myself considering what we all have in common.
• I simultaneously considered the astrology we were, are, and will be experiencing.
• I then saw it.

Astrology contains layer upon layer, each of which flows at a different rate. Some of the Astrology of 2014 is simply the continuation of what started in 2012 (or earlier). We are far enough into that stuff now to begin to see what it is doing. Some of what we have in the first half of 2014 is very different than 2013. Although it has just started, it is easier to decipher because of the planets involved.

I see it like this:

• At the highest level, we have the background “beat” created by the outermost planets: Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune—the heart of which is the Pluto-Uranus square.
• The middle layer brings in Saturn and to some degree Jupiter. At this level we had the Grand Water Trine in 2013 and have the Grand Cardinal Cross in 2014.
• At the lowest level, we have the personal planets and luminaries. In 2014, this creates pretty much six continuous months of retrograde: Venus then Mercury then Mars.

Of course, if you really look at the details, there are connections layer-to-layer. The Grand Trine linked one to two and the Grand Cross links all three.

Mixing modalities, 2013 was a six year. Six is the number of harmony, flow, solution, and progress. It matches the vibration of the water trine that occurred within it. So why was 2013 so hard for so many of us?

Well, six is movement for sure, but it is not the creator of “ultimate” solution. The movement of six provides information through evidence (also called experience). In 2013, many of us moved quiet a bit from where we were, but we also figured out (or are still figuring out) what is working and what is not working. In other words, in 2013, we continued to follow some of our old patterns that are not serving us. We solved problems, but not in ways that could work for the long run giving the evolution dictated by the outermost planets. Pluto and Uranus are requiring us to evolve. So while 2013 presented many options to solve for “x”, only some of the solutions can get us to where we really want to go. The other solutions, we need to understand, were simply interim solutions. They were meant to get us out of the old and on to a journey toward the new. In 2013 we made choices, and in the first half of 2014, we get to review those choices…carefully and deeply.

2014 is a seven and seven is the number of soul searching. It matches the vibration of Pluto. It has depth…infinite depth. To achieve “ultimate” solutions (the eight), we need to dig, and dig, and dig. The higher the sky scraper, the deeper the foundation must go.

In a nutshell, I see patterns being broken so that new patterns can replace them. However, new patterns that are not really all that different than the old ones will fail, and quickly. The “apparent failures” in my life are prime examples. I tried a lot of “new” things in 2013, but in looking back, they really were not new at all. Underneath them, I held the same fear-based beliefs that kept me from getting to where I really want to be.

Something about this New Moon seems to have set up a pause. Maybe it is because Mercury, the moon, and the sun all sit on Pluto’s shoulders. And Venus, who met with him earlier, is heading back his way. Maybe it’s because all of these are separating aspects now with regard to Pluto—the exception being Uranus, which is an applying aspects once again.

I see it like this: Pluto is the patriarch of the family—the eldest man with the long white beard. For the holiday gathering, he prepared a story for us—a tale of our family history (Venus retrograde). Embedded within that tale are teachings for us to discern. So he gathered us up at the fire and told us his story.

Being the clever old man that he is, it is going to take us a while to decipher all of the wisdom in his parable. But thanks to Venus, Mercury, and Mars, we have the next six months to work on it.

However, just like with school, there will be some tests along the way. Mid-April is looking like the biggest of them. These tests can be stressful; they don’t call them “tests” coincidentally.

So look back on your holiday and the memories of years past that it conjured. Do you see any patterns in your history—patterns that you on some level have been asking to change?

In looking around, I see very clear desires for the future. Everyone around me knows what he or she wants…at least on a vibrational/feeling level. We know what doesn’t feel good now and we clearly want it to feel better…and soon.

Many of us have figured out what is clearly not working any longer. What we need to remind ourselves is that this is not new stuff, merely new information. In other words, what is not working now, has not been working for a long time. We are just figuring it out in broader and deeper terms (Uranus and Pluto).

Some of our fear is because we feel like it is all failing at once. The good news is this: everything that is failing has already failed. I don’t mean this literally in earth terms, but energetically—vibrationally. The collective unconscious has already figured it all out and the collective conscious is being fed the information bit by bit.

The image I see is this:

• We are beautiful little birds of varying colors.
• We’d been in a cage for a long, long time.
• The cage is now gone.
• We are terrified because there is no roost to sit upon.
• And we don’t know what to do or where to go.
• What we are beginning to figure out is that we are birds and birds are designed to be free and fly.
• Birds cannot see miles away, but they have internal guidance that tells them which way is north and which way is south.
• You think you don’t know how to get where you want to go, but you do.
• You just have to start moving out of the tiny space once held by that cage.
• You have to keep reminding yourself that the cage, which was once there, is not there any longer.
• You are free to go.
• You are strong enough to fly.
• And there is plenty of what you need along the way.

You want to see the warm, clear, tropical sea and experience the abundant sunshine. It’s out there! Start flying; follow your inner guidance; and you’ll get there.

And if you look around, you’ll see me. It’s time for me to stop flying is circles – or at least widening those circles more and more. I too think I don’t know where to go. I too am still afraid.

But I am figuring out that the cage I see is nothing more than my memory of a cage that is no longer there.