By Rob Moore

I was recently at the optometrist’s office for new glasses. I could hardly focus on the glasses and frames for something else I noticed more clearly in those horrid mirrors: that the next appointment in my iPhone should be for Botox.

“Masks and a Mirror” by Rob Moore.

That won’t be happening. Among the factors weighing in is I don’t have the funds to throw in that direction. Nor do I have some fancy insurance policy I can manipulate. Besides, the very name of the drug has always sounded like a dreadful thing to have injected anywhere. And it is. It’s basically rat poison.

There is, though, a compelling and grounded case I can make for having such a procedure. I have inherited evil-looking ‘anger lines’ between my eyebrows that are so embedded I look like a Disney villain even while I’m sleeping. I already bowl people over with my Sagittarius energy. The Captain Hook look can’t be helping.

The last couple of weeks Planet Waves has been delving deeply into effects of the Uranus-Eris conjunction. In the latest Planet Waves TV Eric outlines how this conjunction influences the entire New Moon cycle just underway. He goes on to explain that over the next couple of days the Sun conjoins Uranus-Eris. With the Sun-Eris conjunction alone, there is much to consider about how we perceive ourselves. Even more when we add Uranus-rooted technology to the mix. In terms of our sex appeal, that ranges from cosmetic surgery to lap bands to iPhones.

Matter of fact, Eric reported last week that the iPhone has a very direct relationship to Eris: “…at the moment the iPhone was announced, at the Macworld convention on Jan. 9, 2007 (reasonably, the beginning of the ‘smart phone revolution’), both the Sun and Mercury in Capricorn were in a close square to Eris in Aries.”

I can vouch for the iPhone influencing my self-perception, specifically via the magical camera of delusion found in the iPhone 6/6S. After a short time snapping selfies in a variety of settings, it became quite clear how great I look through the eye of this phone time and again. Once terrified to discover what truths would be revealed whenever someone grabbed a camera, I now feel confident with my iPhone every single time.

I know those creamy, delicious photos are going to lift my spirits and my belief in myself again and again. So creamy and dreamy and delicious are these images that ABC’s Modern Family created an entire episode using only Apple devices equipped with this camera. Indeed, every actor looked flawlessly beautiful, as if works of art.

But then all of a sudden someone like my optometrist sits us down in front of some dreaded mirror of truth. The warm, soft lighting in my home coupled with the yummy magic lies of the iPhone made that stark mirror reality something of a traumatic experience for me. No colorful colloquialism here. If I didn’t have a solid connection with my non-physical self, those rough-hewn crevices I saw reflecting back would’ve moved me to take drastic action. More drastic than Botox. It’s simply how I operated before I attained a higher-vibe connection.

I must say, though, as a photographer with a professional digital camera, it is often I who is the bearer of harsh truths. I can’t tell you how many times a subject has been hurt or angry after seeing results that anyone else would’ve considered beautiful. In one such incident, the public went enthusiastically nuts over what was indeed a very hot-looking collection of pics, while the model was so disgusted he didn’t even take delivery of his copies.

This particular incident began to open my eyes to the perceptions people carry about themselves. The model being a rather beefy guy, I shot the photos as I would with anyone, displaying his true physique in the most appealing light possible. After it became clear he was dissatisfied, I did some research and found that in many of the ads in which he appeared, his face and body had been Photoshopped to look chiseled and more defined.

This is what the model had come to believe he looked like. But the real truth — which I had portrayed — is what people out in the world actually adored about him. Any perceptions to the contrary were irrelevant and not at all helpful to his feeling good about himself.

Whatever delusions — or disillusionments — any of us may be experiencing with our phones or cameras is but a glimpse of the dynamics going on for those in the public spotlight. Among the things that moved me to delve into this topic was witnessing the latest of several women whose magnetic self-expression has been severely stifled by the decision to glamorize herself.

In an effort to keep the focus on situations and dynamics, I’m choosing to use names sparingly today. The young lady in question, though, is on a fairly new sitcom that has been critically acclaimed and has a rapidly growing viewership. The cast includes some women who are rather classically beautiful. Among them, however, has been this very lively but humanly flawed chick whose off-center body language and antics have been the main reason I ever tuned in at all.

Now in its second season, this uniquely charming woman has streamlined her crooked smile with veneers; turned her strangely intoxicating googly eyes to the still, seductive, fake-lashed variety; and she now seems afraid to move her head lest her perfect hair extensions get messed up. I adored the girl that was so lively and carefree before. She is now such a stoic shell of herself that I simply do not care to watch the show anymore.

One name I will mention because she is a pioneer of this exact genre of glamorization is Roseanne. When Roseanne came onto the scene, she was the sloppy, irreverent-yet-irresistible plus-size housewife from Salt Lake City. After her sitcom reached the height of popularity, she spent a summer getting tummy-tucked, re-boobed, weaved and spray-tanned.

For sure, Roseanne got the physical attention she was after and, in the process, reshaped ideas of what is possible by humans (including surgeons). The popularity of the sitcom suffered, however, and never bounced back. She just wasn’t that simple, jolly comedian anymore. She’d become something else. And laughter was not so much a part of it.

So often in these situations, it seems to me like the life essence has been squished out of a person. Sometimes that is exactly what has happened because this was nothing more than trying to fit a dictated stereotype of beauty. In Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda refers to the idea of physical girth as part of one’s life expression. He found the heavier end of the spectrum to be his most natural physical embodiment and he wholeheartedly embraced it.

Which brings up an important distinction: cosmetic surgery or taking personal steps to transform certain physical aesthetics is not inherently ‘bad’. Like anything — from buying a pair of shoes to booking a massage — whether or not it’s a gratifying experience depends on where we’re coming from when we make the decision. When we have a vision and are genuinely inspired to shed a few pounds — or even to create a work of art — the entire process is a joy. It’s when things are motivated by fear that the process as well as the results are overshadowed by that condition.

A male actor riding a fairly recent wave of success goes to my gym. When I first started seeing him work out there, he was a stocky guy with a solid presence. I didn’t even know he was on TV. I just thought he was yet another great-looking guy in L.A. with yet another great-looking physique.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. You may pre-order all 12 signs here for less than $40. Includes video readings!

Before long, he inexplicably upped his routine and started hemorrhaging off the pounds. Around that same time, I noticed he began to acquire a slumped posture like a couple of concrete blocks were tied around his neck. I could not help but perceive this weight-loss regimen to be part of some unpleasant burden.

Then I discovered him on TV. It was a rerun from a year prior. I saw the ’10 pounds’ that the camera adds. I saw what he — or producers — had possibly blown out of proportion. Like my beefy model subject, whatever this actor had always looked like on TV, viewers had clearly fallen in love with exactly that.

More than ever, that is a truth we can all take to heart. Whatever we see reflecting back in that department store window or that surveillance camera or even in our own bathroom mirror, that is what those who see us, converse with us, know us and love us already embrace about us. It’s who we are. It’s how we look. Whatever we’re finding to obsess about is seen through the equivalent of a microscope device with running commentary that no one else can even access.

Whenever a swirl of self-eroding doubt clouds the truth in me, the discomfort eventually makes me stop these days and consider ‘what is’. What is that one thing I can get on board with about myself right now? Maybe there’s a second thing. And maybe a third. There usually is. And by that time I’m on board an entire wave of things ‘that are’ just great with me.

Some while back that actor guy at the gym sat down on a bench right next to me. I took the opportunity to tell him I’d noticed his transformation. He thanked me. As I got up to walk away, I added, “Just so you know, you look good both ways.” I’m not sure he got where I was coming from. But maybe that’ll be in the back of his mind if one day he does.

In spite of second-guessing by speculators, Albert Einstein’s work has stood up pretty well since his general and special theories of relativity were published more than a century ago. For instance, matter and energy are proven to be different forms of the same thing. Nor does anybody of repute now question the equivalence of space and time.

As a matter of fact, scientific literature now reflects the unities illuminated by Einstein in the conjoined phrases (with or without hyphens) “matter-energy” and “space-time.” Of course, astrologers and some others knew all that a long time ago — along with some other conjoined words that will be used further on in this piece.

Now, and only in this century, science is building on what Einstein revealed, thereby demonstrating some things he wasn’t sure of. This is especially true of the concept known as “entanglement” (what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”).

Basically, entanglement tells us that there is in fact no separation. Compartmentalization is out. Oneness is in. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, all of space-time is in fact present. As any astrologer (or quantum physicist) would tell you, however, reality is not a spectator sport. The observer (you) is-are the party who determines what’s what (“is-are”? Think oneness). In other words, perception is reality for all practical purposes even if it flies in the face of fact.

Hence, as astrologers have long told those they serve, neither astrology nor demonstrably correlated tangible realities simply happen. Both astrology and reality are made to happen. Furthermore, both are the result of collaboration. Not only are we all in this (whatever it is) together, we in fact have made it together — for better or worse, just as in often-said marriage vows. For in a very real sense we are all already married, by choice no less — and divorce may not even be an option. It is, however, an option to distinguish yourself as you see fit.

Each human being (at least) has that highest form of instinct called conscience. Deep down inside, you know the difference between what’s wrong and what’s right for you-me, us-them, here-there and then-now. While conscience can (as with many other realities) be denied, it will never go away completely. It will keep nagging at you, either consciously or unconsciously.

Indeed, the nagging of your conscience could well be at the root of a great deal more than any of us realize. For that reason alone you might as well go ahead and ‘have’ (as in admit and integrate) a conscience, and use it.

Among other purposes, conscience may be used to distinguish yourself even as all about you have lost their heads and all reality contained within them. That’s an important consideration now. Perhaps as never before in human history it is now vital to heed your individual conscience for the sake of our collective reality now being symbolically demonstrated in astrology.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. You may pre-order all 12 signs here for less than $40. Includes video readings!

Mars, for instance, is practically stationary from our perspective on Earth as its retrograde on April 17 waxes nigh.

As astrologer Steven Forrest recently put it, any planet at station is liable to be especially strong in its worldly correlations. As Robert Hand stated in his book Planets In Transit, the earthy expression of Mars is that it “is an energy planet.”

Of course, Mars is not the only energy planet. Uranus, which is being conjoined by the Sun (consciousness) this weekend, represents an energy on the collective level in a manner equivalent to what Mars is on the more personal level. Additionally, Pluto (which stations retrograde on April 18 for most of you reading this) has its own “spooky action” correspondence to energy in your life.

That’s how this moment can be defined as an energetic one. It’s also how you can be distinguished by what you do with your energy, for better or worse, on behalf of us all.

So when you feel energy coming on, remember it is the equivalent of matter in that it matters what you do with it. There is no separation. Just as surely as your energy (however your conscience tells you to express it) can serve to injure us all, it can also serve to heal us all. It’s your choice. It’s your conscience, because (not in spite of) how connected we all are.

Offered In Service

By Amanda Painter

This morning is the Aries New Moon at 7:24 am EDT (11:24 UTC). As the first New Moon after last month’s eclipses, it marks a threshold into a new phase or beginning. But a beginning of what?

Wheat-paste mural of children painting a building in downtown Dewey, Isla de Culebra, Puerto Rico. Photo by Amanda Painter.

On a personal level, only you can say what kind of initiative you’re feeling called to enact — perhaps an exploration, reinvention or expression of identity; maybe a tangible project (artistic, domestic, political, work-related or other).

It could be some other kind of step you feel compelled to take in your life. Chances are it won’t take much thought for you to identify something, and you might already be making it happen. Whatever it is, it’s likely something only you can get going, at least in the way that you imagine or desire it.

Yet our current astrology is also emphasizing global-scale, collective or generational activity — despite the fact that Aries, the sign of ‘I am’, is the locus of the heat we’re feeling. You see, this morning as the Sun and Moon conjoin in Aries (the New Moon), they’re square Pluto in Capricorn (the push to change). At the same time, the Sun and Moon are nearly conjunct Uranus and Eris in Aries (two revolutionary, unpredictable planets).

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Sometimes I feel like I wander between worlds. I’m sensitive to and in some ways a part of many different subcultures, and yet feel like an outsider in some ways with all of them. Maybe that’s a typical human experience. Or just an Aquarian one.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

This tendency to be a part of so many networks while at the same time on the outskirts has given me the opportunity to give myself permission to just be weird, have fun, and embrace how I learn how to use my ‘woo’ tools — or perhaps more respectfully, my consciousness-raising tools — in whatever way I want.

This means I’m often doing different practices on the train and the bus or over whiskey and with crayons and flash cards. I have a hearty respect for lineage and rules, but if I were to wait for the right structured learning mechanism to come along I’d never get anywhere. I figure a lot of things out myself, through studying and listening but also just through diving in and experiencing — and giving myself permission to play.

I was recently meeting with a group of lovely beings, all of whom are licensed therapists (myself being the exception to that rule), who use some kind of spiritual practices in our work with clients — whether that’s astrology or hypnotherapy or shamanic practices or art therapy. We meet to support each other, consult about clients, and often do some kind of experiential exercise.

This past week, we did an exercise one of the group members called word salad. She would read of an open-ended sentence, and then we spent three minutes letting words flow onto paper, with the only rule being that we couldn’t let our pens stop.

Three minutes is not a lot of time, but by the third round I was pretty well into the groove. The sentence was: “A part of my shadow that is coming into the light now is…” I immediately tapped into an image that I could see quite clearly in my mind’s eye, and feel pulsating in my abdomen. It was not pleasant, and after three minutes I was aware that I had tapped into my shadow, or a component of it, in a strong way.

My background is steeped in the Jungian tradition, and so when I refer to “shadow” I am very much referring to it in the Jungian sense. My little Jung for Beginners comic strip book defines ‘shadow’ as:

An unconscious part of the personality characterized by traits and attitudes, whether negative or positive, which the conscious ego tends to reject or ignore; the inferior part of the personality; sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life and therefore coalesce into a relatively autonomous “splinter personality” with contrary tendencies in the unconscious. The shadow behaves compensatorily to consciousness; hence its effects can be positive as well as negative. In dreams, the shadow figure is always of the same sex as the dreamer.

It’s important for me to note that my understanding also runs parallel to Jung’s discussions in that I believe that the shadow can never be removed, nor does it ever go away; there is, instead, an ethical imperative to acknowledge it and take creative responsibility for it. This means that a large part of my own shadow work has to do with becoming familiar with how my shadow or my shadow parts feel when they’re being triggered or constellated, so that I can recognize what is happening and use that energy constructively rather than flinging it out as projection.

Now, I’ll be honest: when it came to the part of the group activity when we were going to make some kind of art representing a portion of our word salad, I wanted to just breeze by the shadow stuff and go for the easier part — the image of an eagle soaring high up in the sky that had come earlier in the exercise. Partially because I was running out of time and partially because…well, I am a bit out of practice with the shadow work thing and also a bit weary. I began looking for images to make a quick collage, as I only had 20 minutes to get the project done.

Nothing was popping out at me, however, and my eye kept going to a box of nice, thick, multi-colored pieces of really good chalk. After a bit of back-and-forthing, I knew that I needed to use one of the dark grey pieces to put the shadow image onto paper. I went with the urge, smudging and smearing and externalizing the sensations the image conveyed onto the paper.

I then realized what a powerful image it was for me, and recognized that I didn’t really want to just leave it at that. But was also hesitant to just drop my long list of plans for the day to do some shadow work.

So I compromised with myself.

I wrote a line of three prayers that I made up on the spot around the border of the image, setting my intention for the work I plan to do with that part of myself; the last of which led up to the top of the page where I pasted magazine images of glowing hot air balloons and other balls of light to symbolize the merging of light and dark. Finally, I used deep blue, teal, purple and a little bit of orange to shade in the remaining white parts of the page, ensuring the shadow image was fully surrounded with a rainbow of solid, loving color.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. You may pre-order all 12 signs here for less than $40. Includes video readings!

I giggled at myself as I wrapped up the process, because of the silliness, the simplicity, and also the knowledge of what a big chunk of really heavy work had just emerged.

I forgot about the image for a spell until two days later when I awoke from a series of intensely disturbing dreams in which a sociopathic-feeling, cold, calculating female was enacting horrible things on the other residents of the dream. As I walked to the train that morning, I was reflecting on the dream and the fact that I had felt like a zombie for the previous two days, when all of a sudden the image came back into my mind.

Suddenly my dull, exhausted affect and pretty horrendous dreams made more sense. I also recognized that regardless of the causes for my exhausted state, I’d made a plan to do further work with what had emerged and needed to stick to it.

The shadow work thing is not for everyone. I’m fascinated by it, however, and have regularly gained a wealth of benefits from diving in when and as I’m able — or sometimes because I am thrown in head first by life and seem to have no choice. This work is part of my own spiritual path. And during those times when I’m able to incorporate play and a sense of whimsy, I feel fortunate; because that is not always the case.

One thing is for sure, however: I will be investing in a nice set of chalk pastels. That stuff gets the job done.

“It’s the promise of life. It’s the joy in your heart.”
— Antonio Carlos Jobim

As if washed downstream by Jobim’s fanciful “Waters of March,” Venus departs Pisces and enters Aries shortly after 12:50 pm EDT (16:50:25 UTC) today. Less than seven hours later Mercury leaves Aries behind and enters Taurus, where it will remain until June 12 because of its upcoming retrograde.

With its ingress to Aries, Venus will emulate the Sun at last month’s vernal equinox. This renewal of the zodiac cycle of signs will carry extra poignancy for Venus this year because, during Thursday’s Aries New Moon, it will return to within a degree of its first 2015 conjunction with Mars.

For some of you, the merger of Venus with Mars in the second degree of Aries on Feb. 22 of last year may feel like only yesterday. Others of you will feel that a lot of water has gone under your life’s bridge since that time.

Regardless of your perception of the time elapsed, it is now true that Venus has returned to start over. Since Aries is ruled by Mars (which is currently lagging behind in Sagittarius), Venus is not exactly in its element there. Nonetheless, given the fact that Venus and Mars complement (as in “complete”) each other, it’s a meaningful place for Venus to be. On several levels, you might say it’s a starting over for how Venus works in your life.

In many ways, Venus really is the promise of life and the joy in your heart. That’s why the idea of starting over after a weekend initiated by April Fools’ Day has so much appeal. You can begin again by reconstructing yourself as consciously compassionate rather than reflexively compassionate. You can endeavor to evolve from being merely gracious to being truly graceful. If you need an example of the potential upside held by the traversal beginning today, you need look no farther than Abraham Lincoln, who was born with Venus in Aries.

Mercury’s subsequent ingress to Taurus shortly after 7:09 pm EDT (23:09:11 UTC) today is at least as significant as Venus starting over. Taurus is a fixed earth sign ruled by Venus. The combination of its element, quality and ruler confers upon Taurus an intimate association with the miracle of biological life.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. You may pre-order all 12 signs here for less than $40. Includes video readings!

What could be more of a wonder than the stuff of mud become animate? Of all the improbabilities in the universe, what could be more astounding than the promise that every day of living brings?

Where else but in a living heart can joy even be known?

That’s the upside of a long and winding tenure for intellectual yet versatile Mercury in Taurus. It’s the potential to know in your mind — and express with your mind — what your body simply yet profoundly understands.

It’s a chance to reach a beach downstream from March and ground yourself in the fact that reality as a living biological being can indeed (in deed?) with all its challenges be the single thing most envied by even the Divine.

While you may have had a misadventure or two rolling downstream during the last month (or even the last year), there is no denying the fact that you have arrived here now. Based on the premise that what’s above corresponds to what’s below, that’s good news — but not conferred. It’s good news to be made. It’s good news to be found. If ever there were a good day to get started with the making and finding, Mercury and Venus say it’s today.

Offered In Service