Hello, beautiful souls and happy February! Where did January go? Oh, well, here we are, already in the second month of the year, and I want to talk about love. The topic of love is not random, as the February patterns and insights emphasize Venus, Goddess of Love, Peace, and Beauty.
Venus is moving direct, now, having done a great deal of soul-searching into the realities of past and present relationships during her retrograde cycle. There is new clarity in the relationship department, and perhaps some decisions have been made. With her newfound perspective, she meets up with Mars, God of Passion and War and will be talking intimately with him for most of the month. With Mars in the picture, relationship tangos are even more highlighted. Venus’ relating energies and gifts are given a boost of assertiveness and passion. This combo makes for a tender yet spicey chemistry for all relating this month.
Valentine’s Day
Also, Valentine’s Day will soon be upon us, and I know this holiday can stir-up all kinds of stormy thoughts and feelings for those of us who may not be “living our dreams” in the love and relationship department. But I want to go deeper into understanding the phenomenon of love. Let’s go deeper than the Hallmark card cliches, the heart shaped boxes of chocolates, the syrupy romantic comedies.
Astrological Venus
Let’s look at the planet that symbolizes one of our most personal and intimate ways of knowing and experiencing love through relationships and intimacy with others. The Venus part of you is the part of you that relates. She is the part of you that desires to find common ground and to feel unity with someone or some thing outside of yourself. It is the part of you that is receptive and empathetic towards others, the part of you that wants to cooperate and experience mutual benefit through relating. Whatever sign and house Venus occupies in your natal astrological chart (as well as the aspects she makes to other planets) gives great insight into what you love, who you love, and how you love. Venus in your natal chart tells an epic tale about your journey of seeking and finding love.
What, who, and how you love
For example, if your natal Venus is in Scorpio, you would tend to love depth and intensity, as well as exploring what might be considered taboo. Who might you love? Those who are courageous enough to be real and authentic with you. And how might you love? You would tend to love passionately, (with psychological and sexual intensity) and truthfully (with courageous self-revelation).
Another example would be Venus in Gemini. If you have Venus in Gemini, you might love endlessly learning new things, keeping your mind stimulated, and keeping life interesting and fun. You want to keep it moving, so to speak. The people you might be attracted to for intimacy would tend to be people who are good communicators, people that can keep up with you and keep you “on your toes” in a dialogue or debate. How you love would tend to be curiously, flirtatiously, light-heartedly, and always verbally.
All of the astrological planets hold hands with love
Even though Venus tells us a lot about what, who, and how we love, there is much more to love than the love that Venus symbolizes. All of the planets in your chart have something to do with our understanding and experience of love. The Sun represents radical self-love and a love of being and expressing one’s unique self. The Moon represents a “quieter” form of love that is nurturing and healing. It represents the love of happiness itself.
Briefly, I’ll list the rest of the planets and the part they play in giving us a fuller picture and experience of love.
Mercury allows us to perceive love through our six senses and to communicate it. Mars is the active, courageous, adventurous and passionate side of love. Jupiter is the buoyant, philosophical, and big-hearted aspect of love. Saturn is the facet of love that is at peace with solitude and aloneness and that wants to accomplish “great works”. Uranus is the part of love that allows us to rebel against harmful status quos and to stand up for progress, individuality and originality. We experience the Neptune side of love whenever we temporarily transcend our egos; this is the deeply healing unconditional love from the Source that we can feel and know. And Pluto is the aspect of love that is forever evolving toward greater consciousness and wholeness. Pluto love embraces the process of continuously being born, maturing, and dying.
Anything we can say about love is just a “finger pointing at the moon”
Love encompasses everything we experience in our lives. There is nothing that does not relate to love. So, then, what is love, exactly? There are many ways we can try to describe and define love, but no matter how hard we try, we will miss the whole truth of it because love is not a word or a concept. It is a phenomenon, a great mystery. Anything we say is but a “finger pointing at the moon” but not the moon itself.
The ultimate safety
So, let’s “point at the moon” a bit and invite inner intuitive knowing of what love is. Since I was a little boy, I have always known that love is a unique feeling of safety. It’s that feeling of ultimate safety and security that transcends logic, the kind of safety and security that inspires me to live fully and help others to feel that same sense of safety. When we feel safe, we are experiencing love.
Non-attachment
At one time, the Michael Entity (channeled by Troy Tolley of Truth, Love, Energy) defined love as non-attachment. Wait, what? That doesn’t sound pleasant, does it? Michael has also said that our biggest and deepest fear is non-attachment. So, following this logic, that would mean that our biggest fear is love! How can that be? What is there to fear in love? If love is a feeling of utter safety, then what is there to be afraid of?
Only the soul can love
Now, let’s wade into deeper waters in our exploration of love. Michael has also said (again, through Troy Tolley as the channel) that “the personality cannot love; only the soul can love.” I take this to mean that our egos, which are the parts of us that think we are separate from everything else, cannot love. Well, why not? It sure seems like we are all running around loving this and that. But are we loving or are we attaching?
And this is the critical insight: love and attachment are not the same. All the ego knows is attachment, fear, insecurity. All love knows is non-attachment, courage, and safety (actually, love knows attachment, fear, and security, too, but it responds to them rather than reacting to them). Much of the time, when we think we are loving, we are merely in attachment. Ego (separation and fear) holds on for dear life while love let’s go.
The physical vehicle cannot love
We are more than our egos, so much more. Our egos, personalities and bodies, are merely vehicles that our souls (or consciousness) use in order to have this physical experience of evolution. The vehicle is physical. It strives to survive, to live. It can be hurt. It can die. But the soul that powers the vehicle is non-physical. It desires to evolve, mature, and get a different perspective. Specifically, it desires to evolve in its understanding of, maturity in, and perspective on love. So, the soul, our “larger self,” is what loves. It can let go and trust when the ego and the personality cannot.
Rumi
One of my favorite Rumi quotes about God, about spirit, about consciousness, about love is: “Love is the whole thing. We are only the pieces”. For me, this quote gets right at the heart of the matter that we are not separate from everything else; we are a part of something much bigger than the ego and personality self with which we know and identify. We belong to it, whatever it is. We are a part of this larger body, this larger whole, and only by surrendering to this truth can we know love and feel that sense of ultimate safety.
The tie that binds
Another finger pointing at the moon: love is the consciousness, the gravity that holds everything in this universe together. It is the power, the “glue” that binds us all to each other and to everything else, including our own “fragments of self” that we collect and re-unite with as we experience more and more of life.
All we can hold on to…
Life is impermanence on the one hand and eternity on the other. Ego is terrified of non-attachment because without attaching to and identifying with something, how can it continue to exist? Love has created a very clever way on ensuring that we eventually identify with our larger, eternal self, our loving self that is non-attached, free, and completely safe. It created impermanence so that we would always find ourselves holding on and then having to let go as the forms of life, the circumstances of life, and even our own bodies, are born, mature, and then die. So, what exactly is there to hold on to, if the forms of life are always changing?
Humility
Love itself is the only thing we can hold on to, along with truth and beauty. Love is our home, our safety, our security, our inspiration, our prosperity, our joy, our purpose. When we invite our souls to come forward and show us how to love, we stand in humility at the truth that we are parts of a larger whole, and then we can open to learning more about love and existence. We open to Great Mystery revealing her secrets to us in her own time and in her own way.
Whose your Mommy?
We are in freefall, just like the planets, moons, and stars in the heavens. We orbit within and around a mysterious being. We all belong to this Great Mystery. We did not create ourselves. Our origins begin with her. We are her children-running, splashing, making waves, and ultimately returning to her healing embrace once we have had enough of “going it alone”. Her way is impermanence and non-attachment. This is her gift to us: a gift of infinite and eternal creativity and adventure. This is how she love us.
I hope this exploration of love has touched the truth of love and ultimate safety within you. I will always circle back around to love because it is such a vast and mysterious truth that I feel is woven into the very fabric of our existence.
February patterns and insights from the Michael Entity
Now, I will give the keyboard to the Michael Entity and ask them to give us some insight into where we are this month and how we can best navigate this month from a place of growing love and safety.
“We think there is a “pause” this month from the weight of the previous two years. It is always a good time to ask about the nature of love and how to know and “apply” love to your experience of evolution. But this month may be a good month in particular because of this “pause” that we are seeing for our students and for pockets of the larger collective.
In any prolonged and challenging experience, there will always be moments where you are invited to pause, rest, heal, and “regroup”. These moments are as necessary as the sustained focus and work that is done in order to move through the challenge.
You have all been focused and working, whether it has been working on your own personal paths forward or in helping the collective to create paths forward. Ultimately, they both overlap, feed into and affect each other. Now, there is an invitation to gain perspective. It is time to remember what you are “fighting” for and to remember that you continue to have A RIGHT TO ENJOY THIS LIFE. No matter what may be broken or falling apart, no matter the urgency of what must be fixed and healed, this life is yours to enjoy.
Love is perhaps the easiest way to enjoy it. Another word for love is PERMISSION. Give yourself permission to have fun, to enjoy life, to experience PLEASURE. Pleasure is also another word for love. Pleasure is love as long as the pleasure you experience is not at the expense of another (and this includes animals, plants, and other non-sentient beings). Otherwise, it is STIMULATION you are experiencing, not love.
You are still in an exhausting birthing process that will result in Mature Soul values being more fully anchored in your reality across the board, values of COMMUNITY, SHARING, CHOICE, and HEALING. Your efforts to anchor this “new” consciousness into the structures of your civilization are not coming to an end. You can pick back up the focus and effort anytime you choose.
Love, pleasure, permission, and enjoyment will always be invitations that leave you with the choice to surrender to them or not. But if you choose to surrender to them, you will find that you are revitalized, reinspired, re-enthused for the rest of the work when you return to it. And surrendering to love can open “your channel” to receive more effective solutions to the problems that are in front of you.
We will end our communication by encouraging you to remember that you can dance with life, dance with challenges, dance with each other, and this is a much easier path than most to experiencing your love, your presence, and your power.
If you find yourself dismissing this invitation this month or find yourself worrying and fretting rather than dancing with life this month, allow moments to close your eyes, place one hand on your solar plexus and one on your heart, and then say quietly to yourself: “I am here, now, and I am safe.” Say it a few times and relax into whatever gifts of peace essence may be transmitting through you in that moment. From that place of presence and safety, let it launch you into permission to enjoy the rest of your day in whatever way you choose.
This is all for now. Good day to each of you.“
February patterns and insights from an astrological perspective
Here are the astrological patterns I selected that I think help to illuminate the February patterns and insights:
Feb 1 ~ New Moon in Aquarius ~ New cycle begins in relation to the creative dance of individuality and “tribe,” vision for the future humanity, breakdown/breakthrough, creativity and innovation
Feb 3 ~ Mercury goes direct in Capricorn ~ Insight and wisdom can now be applied, plans can move forward, activity, communication, and interactions of all kinds, continuing the Great Work
Feb 4 ~ Sun meets Saturn in Aquarius ~ The Great Work of being our authentic selves, focus, effort, discipline, commitment towards sharing our genius, breaking the rules for a loving cause, mature choices
Feb 14 ~ Mercury enters Aquarius ~ communication accelerates, mental buzzing and brilliance, intuition, insight, breakthrough, thinking outside the box, creativity, and/or stubbornness and rigid thinking
Feb 16 ~ Mars meets Venus in Capricorn (near each other all month) ~ love in action, passion, chemistry, desire, the joys of relating, beauty, art, romance, give and take, giving and receiving, commitment and work on relationships
Feb 16 ~ Full Moon in Leo ~ Culmination and completion related to creative self-expression and “shining” (being appreciated for the unique gifts you bring as your unique self), joy, play, innocence, warmth, quiet dignity
Feb 17 ~ Jupiter in Pisces sextiles Uranus in Taurus ~ Creativity, genius, innovation, breakthrough, unexpected and rapid expansion, exuberance, free-spirit vibes
Feb 18 ~ Sun enters Pisces ~ Season of the Mystic-Poet-Dreamer, imagination, visions, inspiration, soul-healing, getting the cosmic joke (we are eternal beings pretending to be finite), trance, meditation and/or illusion, delusion, and escapism
Feb 26 ~ Moon begins to meet Mars/Venus/Pluto in Capricorn (active for a couple of days) ~ Charged feelings in relationships, trigger warning, old wounds rise to the surface for healing, passion, intimacy, radical honesty, clearing the air
Oracle card reflections for February patterns and insights
And finally, I’ll end this blog with some oracle card guidance from Tosha Silver’s Divine Abundance deck:
Aquarius and individuality
I love the synchronicity of “Individuality” showing up for this month’s guidance, as we began the month with the new moon, the Sun and Saturn in Aquarius. Aquarius is the sign of individuality (and the process of individuation) and of transcending the programming from the “the herd”. Also, later in the month, Mercury joins in on the Aquarius revolution.
Being true to ourselves = non-attachment
The patterns and insights for the past few months have emphasized being true to ourselves, being authentic so that our individual genius can work its way into the world and contribute to making this world a better place (see previous months’ blogs). Being ourselves can be even harder when we are trying to love another and our egos are attached to whatever has become a symbol of our security and safety that the other person provides: money, acceptance, companionship, care, help, validation, appreciation, sexual pleasure, physical comfort, etc., you name it!
Love yourself while loving others
Love doesn’t ask us to be anything other than who we truly are, and being ourselves is exactly how we can experience true pleasure, permission, and safety. Loving ourselves while loving others allows us to trust the safety and pleasure of our own paths and helps us to let go of whatever wants to leave us, including people who may not be supporting and loving us for who we truly are. Standing in our own truth helps us to embrace non-attachment, to enjoy the freefall into the arms of our beloved Great Mystery. She is what catches us every time.
Just like the birds on the card, we are all unique. We are all uniquely beautiful. We all have something to contribute to the whole, and no other person can play our unique part in the whole. Isn’t that amazing?!
What are you learning about love?
In closing, we all have our own unique paths to understanding love and sharing what we have learned with others. What are you learning about loving yourself this month? What are you learning about loving others? What are you learning about loving life? May we all create and allow a deeper understanding and experience of love this month. May we all fall more deeply in love with ourselves, each other, and Great Mystery.
“Close your eyes. Fall in love. Stay there.” ~ Rumi