Aries (March 20-April 19)
In our society we don’t generally see the ambivalence we have around the concept of “friend.” We accept that friends might betray us, hold us down, con us out of our values and enforce the laws and expectations of our parents. The past year of your life has had, as a dominant theme, redefining the concept of friendship. Events this month invite you to look directly at the shadow side of that concept, and give it a name. Look at the says that codes of conduct are enforced; expectations are placed on people; and the harsh punishment for daring to exceed the limits that others place on themselves and try to enforce on everyone else. The thing you may fear the most, being an outcast, is at the moment your most potent ally. Before we can actually accept ourselves and be accepted, we have to confront this one. Think of the alternative: you spend your life, in ways direct, subtle or both, avoiding any possible situation where you might potentially face rejection. And rejection for what? For being who you are. The result of this would be a life of pretending to be someone else. It worked for a while, but it’s not going to work anymore.
TAURUS (April 19-May 20)
I don’t think we can ever question the theme of self-esteem carefully enough. First, a simple definition: Self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves that influences every other aspect of existence, what we do, how we feel, how we relate to others and how we judge our worth. Putting it mildly, this has been a theme for you lately: specifically, that you seem to have two entirely different opinions of yourself, that you try to maintain simultaneously. What tends to happen is that you alternate from one value system to the other; one judgment or evaluation to the other. Lately, the split grows worse if you aim your ambition upward; in a sense this inner division is revealed when you aspire to something better than you currently have. This does make sense; if you want something better you’re going to tend to evaluate whether you deserve it or not. I’m here to tell you that one side of the story is not inherently true. It was taught to you initially, and you continue to teach it to yourself: this, through any experience of guilt. If you experience guilt, you can be sure of one thing—you are responding to someone’s early conditioning. You are playing back an old tape that says you’re powerless; and it will help if you recognize this fact and see if you can determine who put it into you. Then, take it as a question rather than as a true statement.
GEMINI (May 20-June 21)
I’m sure things have gone weird more than once with Mars slowly working its way across your birth sign. Odd bouts of panic, conflict, doubt, guilt, and confusion are all potential developments. This is the necessary result of finally reaching for your will, your intention, your voice. If, every time you reach, you get psychic blowback, that’s not a very good advertisement for continuing the endeavor; I am here to offer you some encouragement. I won’t call the blowback a natural result, but it is a consequence of purging unnatural, self-defeating ideas. It is these concepts that exist at the core of your extremely restless inner dialog, which appears to be coming to a peak in these very days. You may rightly wonder how you can think in the much greater concepts that attract you if you cannot settle a simple score within yourself. This is the issue you need to put to your advantage. It’s not that you resolve this and then move onto a perfect life; it’s that you work with your conflict and your tendency, subtle or not, toward cruelty to yourself, and explore this with the full awareness of your mind and body. Asserting your will is not an option. If this has consequences, they must be dealt with directly, and in this case, directly means constructively. Here is a clue: You are much bigger than any conflict you perceive.
CANCER (June 21-July 22)
Part of how you measure your value is your value to your community. Perhaps you’ve never made this a conscious process; it may be lurking in a back room. It may be hiding behind other ideas about relationships, which tend to be dominated by the one-to-one special relationship; those arrangements rarely make room for a greater level of commitment or responsibility in life. Significant sharing is presumed to end with the significant other; if there is not a significant other, the search for one generally consumes any energy not required to acquire the means to cover food, rent, and getting around. The time has arrived to think bigger: to see yourself as part of something larger than you are, but as an essential part. This theme has been growing in intensity for many months. You’ve experimented with methods for going forward; now it’s time to investigate what is blocking your way. Consider your most intimate relationships carefully. Is the person you must be in those relationships a big enough person to contribute to the world around you? Is that value shared and supported as part of the culture of the relationship? And if it’s not, why not? Relationships are based on two things: shared values and trust, which in turn facilitate an honest exchange. Settle for nothing less.
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