Image: Jacob Riis Beach in Brooklyn, the beach where I have spent the most time resetting my relationship to my life
What I care about is your relationship to your life.
Astrology is a tool that you can use to relate to your life, particularly the big parts that you can’t really control. And like any tool, how well it works depends on how you use it. Reading astrology content is a great way to freak yourself out about whatever big transit is around the corner. It’s also a great way to focus on this pervasive illusion that you are an individual self and that whatever is happening to you is the most important thing. Astrology is often used to evade responsibility for making good decisions about the hand you’re dealt. And it can even be used to attempt to sit out the most important moments of your life—the times when your participation is most important. All of that is unfortunate, because astrology is also a great way to feel that sense of connection, oneness, and awe that you can tap into when, for example, you sit on the beach and stare quietly at the ocean and feel the way the waves rolling up onto the shore harmonize so perfectly with the rhythm of your breath and the beating of your heart.
So few of us get enough time at the beach, and even the best, beachiest lives have a lot of mundane parts that it can be hard to look up from our phones and truly participate in. As Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck points out so plainly, “our interest in reality is very low.” The problem with that is that real, sustainable joy is not a tip, trick, or a hack. It’s not even something you attain! Joy lies in our ability to be truly present with whatever is happening in the moment, whether what you are doing is relaxing and beautiful or not. Astrology can’t help you cultivate the ability to be present when you’re washing the dishes. But it can help you cultivate a different way of looking at the world. I love the feeling of finding myself in a bland, difficult, or vexing moment and realizing that it fits the astrology of the moment perfectly, and that I am therefore participating in something so much larger than myself. Not gonna lie… these experiences really help me do the work of just washing the dishes when I am washing the dishes.
This is what I want for you, and I honestly don’t think you need to live and breathe astrology to find it. I actually think it’s easier to cultivate this shift in your perspective with just a little bit of information. Astrology is truly awe-inspiring! It beautifully mirrors, or maybe describes, you and me and all the rest of us, living our lives together in a vast interconnected web, day in and day out. That is a big, beautiful thing. And I want to put the idea in your head that it’s better to just experience it than try to use it, especially right now.
The little piece of information I have for you about September is that the entire month will be
eclipse season! And eclipse season is an especially good time to put aside our understandable desire to use astrology to do something or get somewhere. Eclipses are a regular weirding-slash-supercharging of the lunation cycle—one of the most regular cycles that we live with. So you can think of them as a regular intensification of the drumbeat of our shared, interconnected existence. Eclipse season begins early September, and the eclipses this fall are coming September 17 and October 2nd. The astrological weather will feel big! Both eclipses will be ruled by planets that signify things we like, in signs that they feel constrained and uncomfortable in. This emphasis on finding the joy wherever you are will come in handy! And we are in luck, because the first eclipse will be particularly good for the devotional work of just being open to the divine in your real life. “Sitting on the beach” moments while standing in line at Staples or waiting around at the DMV; getting choked up while canvassing to protect our democracy if you live here in the United States; and other subtle cues from the Universe, or god, or whatever you want to call this larger thing we are all participating in, could come to you! But they will not be bracketed by paid time off, nor will they telegraph themselves by happening in a picturesque setting like a beach. They will come when you least expect them, when you may be bored or sweaty or tired, and the challenge will be to really let yourself experience that, even though for some of us this may mean opening ourselves to parts of our lives that we can barely tolerate. If you can do this, you just might let a small experience of wonder show you that your life is not about you—that you are about your life. And then you can carry that experience around like a treasure in your pocket until mid-October.
Eclipse season is a time for prayer, and this time the prayer is about your focus and attention.
May you shift your focus away from the small “you” that is always wanting and striving.
May you turn toward your already-perfect participation in this big beautiful unfolding that is all around you.
May you find ease in the flow of this unfolding, and trust it, because it is you, and you are it.
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