By Amanda Painter

You’ll be happy to know that Mercury finally stations direct in Taurus Sunday at 9:20 am EDT. Before you breathe that sigh of relief and go buy the new car/grill/phone you’ve been eyeing, however, remember that the days around a Mercury station are often the most challenging part (they can also offer key pieces of missing information).

Even Mother Nature knows that being grounded doesn’t mean not changing. Photo by Amanda Painter.

So that’s a reminder to take things slowly and consciously, especially anytime you get behind the wheel this weekend.

Along with the usual advice to read the fine print (twice) and noticing whether you have your keys with you, the part about alert driving at legal speeds is especially important this weekend. See, we also have a Full Moon brewing. Mars is involved in that aspect directly, adding a need to stay aware of impulses based in anger, impatience or ego/resentment.

Even if you don’t have the urge to cut someone off on the highway to ‘make a point’, you’ll want to watch for that kind of behavior in others, and temper your reaction to them. I suspect that since Mars is still retrograde, how you handle your reactions and your beliefs about what constitutes ‘justified’ behavior are important for your own safety.

About that Full Moon: the Sun enters Gemini Friday at 10:36 am EDT. The very next day, the Moon enters Sagittarius (where it conjoins Mars).

A few hours later, the Moon opposes the Sun to make a Full Moon. This is the Sagittarius Full Moon, exact at 5:14 pm EDT Saturday.

Now, the question is, given the confrontational nature of a Full Moon, and given the potentially scattered or glitch-y tendencies of Mercury stationing direct, how do you go beyond basic mental housekeeping and safety precautions to actually use this energy creatively?

Yes, there is tension in the chart. But the solution to tension is not paralysis. The solution to tension is making a decision when faced with a choice — and noticing what you use to guide that decision.

You might find yourself guided by empathy as part of your natural tendencies. For most people, however, empathy must be a conscious choice. Look around at all the horrible things that people are doing to each other, including ‘casual’ cruelty online, and you’ll get a better sense of just how often empathy is not chosen. When faced by someone who needs some understanding and assistance, what do you do?

I suspect that for most of us, news reports about the inhumane treatment of Syrian refugees or yet another natural disaster are totally overwhelming. It can be hard to know what to do beyond making a donation.

One friend of mine, faced with a feeling of helplessness toward the Syrian situation, remembered Mister Rogers’ famous advice to “look for the helpers” in scary situations. She now blogs regularly on a widely read forum, featuring ‘the helpers’ who are doing what they can to assist the refugees, and points out ways that readers can get involved and know that their efforts, money or supplies will go to those who need it most.

That’s just one example. I’m sure you can think of others, some of which might be very direct and personal for you: the homeless person you see on the corner as you walk to work each day; the co-worker struggling with personal issues or an oversized workload; a friend who expresses that she is feeling cut off from friends lately and Facebook just is not cutting it.

Speaking of which: the very technology that lets us know about global suffering or a friend’s rough day also allows us to detach from it under the guise of ‘sharing awareness’ of an issue. Re-posting an article tells others about it, but what else can you do? Typing a heart emoticon lets someone know their pain has been seen, but it’s not a phone conversation or an actual, in-the-flesh hug.

Beyond the Sun moving into Gemini and the Moon into Sagittarius this weekend, we have a lot of planets in mutable signs right now (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces). That emphasis is going to continue for quite a while. In fact, Eric describes in his Planet Waves FM broadcast for this week how this Sagittarius Full Moon and the Gemini New Moon in two weeks are connected — and have an important message.

One of the key traits of the mutable signs is flexibility. That is, that ability to move from one state of being (or thought, or action) to another as necessary.

Have you ever thought about the difference between being grounded versus being resistant for its own sake? You could say that being grounded places you firmly in reality, whereas being resistant to change or to making a choice or taking action actually detaches you from reality.

You are being asked to make a decision. Are you resisting? Can you make the choice of empathy, and can you bring it from the ‘virtual’ into actual reality?

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