New years always offer the excitement of potential and beginnings. This year is no different. There is certainly the promise of possibility and newness—more than in the last few years. But, with the Full Moon in Cancer, the flavor of change moves from the external to the internal. There is a need to heal. There is a need to find some restorative and remedial change.
Maybe you are feeling that too. The last few years have been a roller coaster ride of hope, disillusionment, optimism, disappointment, innovation, tradition, community, polarity, appreciation, and deep grief. And the ride isn’t over. Maybe your heart is a bit worn out, its pieces scattered. Cancer reminds us that while healing is necessary and possible, we must first get really real about what requires healing.
So, as you set your intentions for the new year, go inward to find the roots of whatever external habits or patterns require change. Get to the heart of the matter. Because that is where real and lasting change resides.
This Full Moon in Cancer reminds us of that. No doubt we will feel some things. Cancer moves in the arena of the heart, after all. So, expect some ramped-up emotional energy with this Moon, some sensitivity, and some increased perceptivity. How else do we know what to heal? Those feelings are a requirement when setting soul goals versus ego ones .
Additionally, retrograde Mercury in Capricorn opposes the Moon, further revealing just what needs innovation. In fact, the whole of last year has shown exactly where our work is. We have literally been living the consequences of outdated patterns and habits.
Because the great asteroid goddess Pallas Athene stands with this Moon offering some heart-centered reality checks, flexing our empathy muscles. Mythology tells us Pallas was born from the head (intellect) of her father, Jupiter (aka Zeus). She was known as the goddess of wisdom, strategy, skill, reason, and justice. Thus, Pallas times mean those skills are being summoned.
If Cancer helps us feel our way to what needs changing, Pallas helps us DO it. It is the part of us that is realistic, strategic, reasonable, and disciplined. Pallas’s skill is her ability to speak FOR her emotions, not from them. In other words, it is our ability to control emotional reactivity for the sake of understanding and finding actual solutions. This skill will be needed in the upcoming year. So, I highly suggest setting a soul goal in that regard. Indeed, the highest form of intelligence is the ability to respond, not simply react.
So, if feelings arise- and they will. Stop and assess if their intensity is about now or some past experiences. Is your emotional filter able to discern the past from the present? Because we can’t solve problems if we are still reacting in the same ways.
Indeed, there is a fierceness to this Full Moon, centered in the power of empathy and compassion, where boundaries are made from our most wise of selves. Taking a stand for what is most loving creates goals and intentions of the highest caliber. They are also the most challenging because they require us to find the best parts of ourselves by first weeding through our habits of comfort and control. Love often asks us to do hard things. Show up new ways. Rethink what we think we know. Because the healing of change doesn’t happen in the anticipating, it happens in the DOing. It happens in every moment decisions when we face the gravity of habit pulling us into the familiar, and we choose to go another way. Change happens in the repetition of the discipline of details. That is why it is hard.
But hard is not the same as impossible. On the contrary, great things happen when we commit to doing hard things.
In fact, the Sabian Symbol for this Full Moon is “The unfoldment of multilevel potentialities issuing from and original germ.” (Rudhyar)
What does it mean? In a word -growth. In more words, the human experience of life is endlessly cracked open over and over, like a seed reaching for the sky. Physically, spiritually, and psychologically, the pattern of life is to evolve. It is about finding the acorn seeds of our most self-led potential within each of us and letting them grow. It is about being more real, not attempting to evolve out of ourselves, but being more fully into ourselves. Perhaps wisdom is not to realize some lofty external potential but our commitment to never stop doing the hard work of growing. Like a sprout reaching for the light, we commit to growing to it. Over and over again.
Even-especially- when it’s hard.
“We get more compassionate as we evolve. More humble. More subtle. More aware of how little we know. We don’t get superior. We don’t form cults of personality. We don’t think we have it all worked out. If we imagine ourselves ‘all that’, then we have actually devolved. I trust the ones who know a little something but don’t know a whole lot, more than the ones who ‘know it all’. I trust the ones who realize how far they have yet to travel. We have so much more to learn. All of us. Let’s walk together, side by side.”
― Jeff Brown
~This Full Moon occurs at 16° Cancer
~Want to know what this time is revealing for you? Contact me, for more information.
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