The Sun moves into Cancer today June 20th, 2016 at 3:34 pm. We need it. Cancer initiates compassion and asks us all to tend to our own ‘lighted house.’ Part of the challenge or opportunity of Cancer is learning to check our own reactivity and offer an authentic but less charged, intelligent response. The phrase for Cancer is “I build a lighted house and therein dwell.” That is the responsibility for each of us during this time. We are called to transform our own darkness or at least to put a candle in the middle of it all and tend to the flame. Our bodies, our homes cannot be packed with the past. We cannot store what has been outlived. We need to make the temples of our bodies, the temples of our homes and the temple of this planet a much, much lighter place.
Look, I know this is a tall order and may even seem abstract or overwhelming. Even as I write this I feel grumpy, hot and a tad resentful. My son just convinced me to buy him a Lego set I was determined not to buy so I feel like a pushover. We don’t have anything planned for today and that makes me feel agitated and like I’m wasting time. I put on shorts this morning and thought, “My God, what has happened to my once young legs?” I am not in a particularly evolved place as I am writing to you. But that’s the opportunity.
If Cancer is a sign that rules the ability to respond with compassion, it might be a good place to begin with ourselves. We have to be forgiving of our own imperfections. As long as we have the impulse to be kinder or tend to others in any way that uplifts, inspires or hands-on help them take another step, then it just doesn’t matter how imperfect we are. We use what we’ve got and we step out into the light of day (again and again) to make a difference.
Under Cancer, we cannot hide in our houses. We have to make the Earth our home and improve it. What is your particular flavor of nourishment? Cancer nourishes. Do you teach? Do you create? Do you strive to solve the problems of homelessness or hunger? Do you write? Do you research? Do you care for those who can’t care for themselves?
If that all feels to much, do you smile at strangers? Do you converse with someone who looks like they need connection? Do you take a breath before you flip someone off or scream at them in your car? Then, do you maybe choose not to? What do you do? How do you want to care for the world and the people in it?
I don’t need to tell you that the world is in crisis. Most mornings, it feels too much to hold. Watching or listening to the news feels painful. But it can’t be ignored. It may feel insignificant to choose to be kind to your very self — or to quiet the destructive voices. But it’s not. Every violent thought, word, act ripples out into the world and disturbs and wounds this struggling planet. Then too, every kind word, nourishing gesture, small act of goodness ripples out as well as a healing balm. Please trust that what you do and think does not stop with the contours of your body. We are transmitters of energy and our choices are not stopped by time or space. We can send healing across the globe. Gloom travels and hides in crevices and corners.This is not a metaphor.
The planet Neptune is the Esoteric Ruler of Cancer. Neptune rules unconditional love. It rules the ideal, the beautiful, the true, the good. It carries a profoundly sensitive, boundary-less, all encompassing love that can bring healing to our planet. In its other extreme, it rules confusion, illusion, disorientation and the desire to escape. It brings such sensitivity that it is easy to want to hide from anything harsh or painful, to hide even from our own gifts.
But this is a time for clarity, for staying put and standing strong. We cannot check out. We each have to build our lighted house. That begins with the paying attention to the brilliant light that is your heart. We must seat ourselves at the center of our strength and move forward— inclusive, compassionate— leaving something lighter, more beautiful, kinder in our wake.
Poem for the sign of Cancer
The Vintage Man by Hafiz (Translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
The Difference Between a good artist And a great one
Is:
The novice will often lay down his tool
or brush
Then pick up an invisible club On the mind’s table
And helplessly smash the easels and Jade.
Whereas the vintage man No longer hurts himself or anyone
And keeps on Sculpting Light.