By Amanda Painter

Increasingly in our highly polarized political landscape, we are called upon to reconcile vastly differing viewpoints. Often it seems impossible. Yet this week’s main astrology offers a useful reminder: reconciliation begins with your own inner contradictions, and then extends into your most immediate, intimate one-on-one relationships.

Live sand dollar; photo by Amanda Painter.

The two major aspects at play are both exact today: the Gemini New Moon (which is the Sun and Moon conjunct in Gemini), and a square between Venus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn.

I’m actually going to begin with the Venus-Pluto square, for a very specific reason: it speaks of relationship dynamics. And for many people, it’s easier to focus on a relationship than it is to look within.

The Venus-Pluto square is exact at 12:22 pm EDT today (16:22 UTC). With Venus in fiery, assertive Aries, it’s possible you’re experiencing this as some kind of intensely emotional or sexual experience that is completely altering your awareness in a relationship. It might feel very compelling, and could be genuinely positive.

However, it’s more likely that you’re noticing certain changes in a relationship that need to be more fully acknowledged. This can be a source of tension: people tend to crave stability in their relationships above all else. The (often painful) irony is, of course, that the more one clings out of insecurity and tries to control a partner or a relationship dynamic, the less stable a relationship becomes.

Relationships, like people, need the flexibility to morph, to move through cycles, to deepen or broaden. Like people, relationships require room to change and grow in order to be healthy and active. Blocking that process or pretending it’s not happening does not preserve the relationship; it merely fosters frustration, resentment and a tendency to get hung up on what is not working (or on fear).

Once you’re in that frame of mind, it’s much harder to see the other person clearly. It’s harder to see your common ground, to act from a place of love, to keep your heart open, to allow that the unknown could actually be better than the known.

Moreover, getting stuck in the fear of a relationship changing makes it difficult to see the ways that you yourself are changing — or need to change. It becomes challenging to notice your own inner contradictions; for example, that even as you crave stability, some part of you is also feeling pulled to try something new. Or that you want the same freedoms you are denying a partner.

Which brings me to the Gemini New Moon. This is the conjunction of the Sun and Moon in the last sign of this season, a sign qualified by being ‘mutable’ (which means ‘changeable’) and by the element air (perhaps the least tangible and most changeable of the astrological elements). This New Moon is exact at 3:44 pm EDT today (19:44 UTC).

Everybody has Gemini somewhere in their chart. For those born with a Gemini Sun or Gemini rising, the duality represented by this sign may be more obvious, or feel quite natural. Although, Eric Francis recently noted that there are two types of Gemini: the kind where the inner twins get along, and the kind where they don’t.

For many people, it can seem easier to pretend this quality of duality does not exist. But when you don’t acknowledge your inner contradictions, you don’t get the opportunity to reconcile them, integrate them and get them working in cooperation with each other. You ignore an opportunity for growth. Kind of like when you refuse to notice how a relationship is changing.

As I wrote earlier this week on Planet Waves, human beings are great at ignoring facts and intuition and even our own behaviors in favor of what we want to believe. It’s common practice to say one thing and then do another. Sometimes we’re aware that we’re contradicting ourselves; often we’re willfully oblivious.

With the Sun (conscious awareness) meeting the Moon (the veil over consciousness) in the sign of duality and quick changes, we get a unique opportunity. New Moons signal a moment of introspection and beginning anew. What would happen if you let yourself look within and see some element of your own hypocrisy, or some double standard that’s ready to be reevaluated?

What would happen if you let yourself see your own need to grow in a new direction — a direction that might seem contrary to what you think is the foundation of a relationship you’re in? It’s entirely possible under the current astrology that you might actually discover a second approach (or even a third) to that dilemma. It’s seeing the option that had been hiding in the shadows that could help you notice the ways that the foundation has, itself, been evolving.

Today offers an excellent reminder that where there is growth and healing, new possibilities emerge — possibilities that couldn’t exist before. Where love, compassion, courage and generosity light the way, the shadow of fear, pain and stuck-ness can be reconciled and transformed.

Remember, you can’t have a coin with only one side; it’s two sides, present as one fully acknowledged whole. Recognizing and reconciling your own two sides is equally valuable.

You may pre-order all 12 signs of INVOLUTION here. What we’re living through today is not written about in any book. We’re its pioneers in consciousness. For us, in our time, the revolution must be within. INVOLUTION will be your guide.