Horoscopes: August 2010

Your life has been in transition from one moment to the next, one day to the next, week after week. At times it’s been so much you haven’t been sure how to handle it, and you still may not be—despite the sense of excitement and potential. Let’s consider that potential and how it’s going to manifest. You go through spurts of bursting with energy, then encounter limits and frustration. At the same time you’re confronted by changes in your environment, your relationships, your workplace, and lately, considerable pressure from family or home-related matters. It’s difficult to see where the two processes fit in: that is, your experience of growth and emergence, and the tectonic changes in the world around you. The next six months or so will be an experiment in seeing the many connection points between who you are becoming and what the world is becoming. What you may have lacked recently—a commitment to flexibility—is what you’re being offered now. Think of that flexibility as your mind responding creatively to your experience. By creatively, I mean self-creatively. Though the changes in your world seem to be the result of powerful forces, there must be nothing forced about your response. When in doubt, retreat and assess your situation, and observe your options, and more to the point, your desires. What you want not only matters, it’s the only thing that does. You have tried every other option; give this one a go.

TAURUS (April 19-May 20)
Suddenly you may have a lot more work than you think you can handle, or want to do—particularly for August. Given how many people right now are searching for direction and (think they) have absolutely nothing to keep them busy, I suggest counting yourself as fortunate, and responding with motivation, drive, and a sense of purpose. The chances are that your employment-related activities will be a bit stressful, even intense, yet at the same time entirely productive and meaningful. For you, much of the stress seems to be coming from the necessity to do things differently every day, and to make decisions faster than usual—indeed, what seems like immediately. However, if you’ve ever lamented that your life moves too slowly, or that you can never make a choice that you stick to and that works for you, you now have an occasion to live differently. One special place to focus your attention is on the relationship between your mental and physical health. The two are translating back and forth, and you will need to take extra efforts to maintain both. Proceed from the inside out. You don’t need to improve your appearance or your image but rather focus on rest, nutrition, movement, and learning how to make choices without damaging yourself in the process. By damage, I mean from needless stress, unnecessary delays, or pointless frustration. Get over yourself, get moving, and you will love the way your life unfolds.

GEMINI (May 20-June 21)
Despite your sense that you can “think things through,” that’s not really the case when it comes to feelings; you simply need to feel, and make the appropriate decisions. We’re inclined, indeed trained, to obsess over how we feel, and most of this involves guilt about how we feel. So let’s consider guilt, which is always rooted in childhood. It always has connections to the remnants of our family of origin, and we underestimate the power that these people, and their ideas, have on us as adults. Make no mistake: What you’re going through right now has something to do with that influence. Guilt is resentment directed against itself. We blame ourselves for our parents’ shortcomings, believing they are flawless, and get in the habit of attacking ourselves. When we take this into adulthood, it can cause significant emotional and relational problems. You may think you can work this out with them, but at this point there is no such thing. Your mission is to work out your life, your feelings, your needs, and your sense of safety with yourself. Be aware of when you are blaming yourself for the problems and shortcomings of your early caregivers, and be aware of when you’re dramatizing this with the people who currently surround you. You know it’s time to push out of your mental anguish and step forth into your full adult creative power. Don’t let the past hold you back.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)
Your tropism for reaching high places has been healthy and strong lately. Your perspective is widening and your sense of time is starting to encompass the future. You may even feel the authentic confidence that you can handle anything—and if you don’t feel it, you sense the potential. I suggest you focus on two priorities. One is learning how to focus on a single goal. It doesn’t have to be a big goal, or even an important one; the idea is to get the feeling of setting an objective, meeting that objective, and moving on to the next. The second project is feeling safe. You have a little stampede of planets running through the security angle of your chart over the next few weeks and that might stir up some of your famous insecurities. Feeling safe is an art. It’s related to the craft of recognizing an actual situation that you have to respond to and responding well. One way to summarize your astrology is that the numerous situations and conditioning forces that surround you are designed to bring out the best in who you are; to cultivate your maturity and to encourage you to handle your affairs in a way that’s a marked improvement over your parents’ less than effective leadership style. To do that you have to be standing on a strong foundation, and while you have a short break from reaching for the top, I suggest you get to work,