Grand Place, Brussels. Photo by Eric Francis.

Carried over from November 10, 2006, #636 - By ERIC FRANCIS

HOW far are you willing to go, and what are you willing to risk? When do you know a risk is really worth it, and when are you taking an unnecessary chance? This is a time in your life to make sure you keep a balanced perspective on reality. Indeed, you will need to mediate between two realities, your own, and everyone else's.

There may be significant differences, and for a long time you may be sold on your own sense of the world and yourself, and certain that others are getting too hung up on the details or have too high an opinion of themselves. I suggest guarding against this line of thinking. There are better ways to look at the circumstances of your own life; more productive ways.

But the first thing you want to establish, factually and as a matter of opinion solicited from others, is the extent to which your actions impact others. Then you will see the need for ensuring that your choices go only so far to actually affect others -- which will afford you freedom within your own boundaries. You need this freedom, particularly the freedom to indulge your emotions and your imagination. Indeed, you need to arrange space to be as off-the-beam, deep inside yourself, unreasonable, creative, self-indulgent or whatever -- but to do so in a way that does not harm anyone else.

You could say this year is an extended phase of being irresponsible in a very responsible way. This will help you experience the inner journeying that will feed your soul, and which no other person can provide for you. Indeed, relationships in many ways are contrary to the exploration that you need to do, and you might want to make sure that your agreement with partners includes the right or privilege of going into yourself as deeply as you need to -- and denying nothing, no idea, feeling or need.

This will have a distinct benefit of keeping the psychic pressure down, so that you can function better and more creatively. This is a crucial time in your life to be authentic, even if that authenticity involves being somewhat unstable. This is really about loosening up your perceptions and emotional flow so that you can accelerate your maturity process, deepen your self-knowledge, and free yourself from the bonds of the past.

Being open in this way will open you to enormous benefit from one particular relationship. This situation is so rich with potential that the only thing that could possibly hold it back is your own perception or choice -- so strive to see honestly and choose wisely, and to relate to others from the clarity that is born of your new and daring phase of self-exploration.

The theme of money has an important role in your life this year: probably the most important spiritual theme you will encounter. To some extent this will be true for all Scorpios, but the later in the sign you are born the more substantial a role the theme will play. It is not generally considered sound spiritual advice to think about making more cash, but exploring the relationship between money and how you feel about yourself will be the heart of the matter.

It does not make a difference which side of the equation you begin with; whether you strive to improve your financial fortunes, or whether you commit to seeing yourself in the best possible light, as a person with a great deal to offer your profession, your community and your closest friends. What you are likely to discover is that as you recognize your value, that value will manifest in some tangible financial form, at once freeing you from your current struggle to a great extent, and at the same time opening up the possibilities for you to make a new and truly unusual contribution to the world.

But there is no question about which is the chicken and which is the egg: your opinion of yourself, based on true self-understanding, is the genesis point. And before you get to that point, you will need to embrace a measure of chaos, open yourself to inspiration, and allow yourself the freedom to make startling discoveries about yourself and your world.