ONE OF the most courageous things a person can do in life is face their projections: seeing, for what they are, the thoughts in their mind that are reflected back as the human drama, supposedly outside themselves. That often means facing everything within, even on levels we don't know what's there. Taking responsibility as an important cause, if not the very cause, of our existence is one of the great lessons of life on Earth, and lately, of your life in particular.
It's difficult to overstate the extent to which the mind filters, colors, shapes and determines what we perceive, then hands it back to us as experience over which we allegedly have no control. But you're learning, and you're getting the results. Changing your mind indeed means changing the world.
To do anything differently than what is considered normal means taking on a lot of responsibility, and this definitely counts. For some, discovering the ability to take over one's experience of perception is a revelation so frightening that denial is the only answer; for others, knowing that they are responsible for what they see is the only sane path to true self-confidence. I would suspect that recently, you've gone through a number of unusual experiences that have prompted you to take just this kind of responsibility for your own awareness, and I am going to speculate that you feel stronger and more honest as a result.
Sorting out Relationships
The long process of Mars (one of your ruling planets) in Taurus (your opposite sign), moving retrograde, set the tone for this era in your life. This is the imagery involving sorting out projections and hence boundaries; of understanding who is who and what is what in your relationships; of understanding motives; and most of all, of getting clear about what you want now, as opposed to what you wanted a long time ago.
When an inner planet makes a retrograde in a sign, it becomes an agent of that sign's energy. Hence, Mars, one of your planets, possesses a tempered, mellowed out, attractive rather than assertive quality, and a deep sensitivity to the feelings and experiences of others. I would hazard a guess that there is a general fear that sensitivity to others will promote loss of identity, rather than strengthen identity.
I would propose that the opposite is true. In order for you to feel who you are, it helps for you to feel, literally to emotionally sense, who others are. Such clarity allows a relationship to happen on conscious terms and it is thus much easier to keep a grip on your own needs, responses and so on.
For a Scorpio, this territory may have another little reticent zone: you cannot really control how others feel. Therefore, actually noticing involves a measure of true surrender. But as you've seen, when all is done, and all is said, and all is worked through, and all is forgotten, you did not have a choice in the matter. How people feel is how they feel; how you feel is how you feel; the meeting point is the meeting point.
You may as well save yourself a lot of time and energy and start there. If there is some idea of intimacy or bonding that you must give up based on certain recognitions, I suggest you do so willingly, because you cannot really live in an idea of a relationship, only in an actual one. And the world seems long past the due date on when we can pretend that our needs are met when they are not, and when any person can pretend it's their right to prevent another person from getting their needs met for the sake of their own security.
Real Security
Meanwhile, there are many seemingly external factors that have been influencing you. The mighty Saturn transiting the top of your solar chart, the 10th house of achievement and reputation, is never a small matter, and for you, I would imagine this is a time of reaching into the world and making your mark.
If you have not quite felt this calling, I propose you'll be feeling it soon enough, as Saturn begins to make important aspects that will set the animation in motion. If you have already been on this wavelength, new developments begin around February and you will have the chance to bring into fruition some of what you have been pushing toward over the past six months or so.
But addressing the domestic side of things -- which is the same as the emotional -- we have a potential issue: how can you feel safe enough in this world, to do what you need to do? Often we strive for that safety through control, but I am proposing that it's entirely an internal matter.
So, do you feel safe? This is a really good question and more people need to ask it. Safety is one of the crucial issues on the planet, whether you live in a "good neighborhood" or down the block from the Green Zone. There is an rather pervasive, even overbearing sense of danger on the planet now, and it's not a mere hallucination.
Safety is a feeling, and there are factors that are testing yours. Chiron transiting Aquarius is a picture of hypersensitivity to your environment, as well as becoming familiar with all the flaws in the emotional container that you depend up on to keep you safe.
What you may be discovering is that there are some leaks, and that this accounts for why, no matter how much water you poured in, you could not quite keep the jar full. Please don't despair at these discoveries; just get to work making amends. There will be those days when you have to drain the whole pool and reach the dry bottom of how you feel in order to get any real work done; other times you will be able to make adjustments even as you walk, work and live.
While this does not directly involve other people, there are those in your life with whom history may be involved; and there are sure to be people in your environment whose support you need. I suggest you use your newfound empathic talents to make sure that some people around you really are in contact with your process; that you not make a big deal about having it be "purely internal," and that you get in the habit of reaching out promptly when you need it.
One last note on Chiron: you have Aquarius on our 4th house of emotional security. The suggestion is that you really feel safe when you are surrounded by community, working in a group context, or when your needs are met by many people rather than just one or two. The suggestion is that possessiveness does not, in fact, support your relationships; that diversity is a good and healthy thing for you; and that you really need to feel one among equals -- even though we know fully well that you are one of the leaders of any community you come in contact with.
A Sense of Calling, and Answering
With Saturn now going over the top of your solar chart -- transiting Leo, your 10th solar house -- you are rising to a new place of prominence in the world, and are receiving the benefits of a long, long process of becoming mature. This may be manifesting as opportunity, as a project coming to fruition, or as recognition for your accomplishments. If, however, you're not exactly experiencing this transit as high achievement at the moment, you can consider Saturn's presence a calling, and a gesture of cosmic permission to go beyond any worldly limit that may have held you back.
People have different reasons for feeling insecure about their ability to achieve things in the world, or make a difference, primary among them that they were told they could not. You must tell yourself that you can, and surround yourself with people who repeat this message.
First, let's consider the idea of a calling. This often-elusive idea is a vitally important concept for people who live in societies that bear the label "free"; indeed, if you ask me, the ability to respond to your inner drive for success or creative expression is a major factor making the between an individual actually being free or not. This gets tricky for many people: implicit in the gesture of hearing a calling is the need to embrace the freedom to respond.
This is exactly where most people get snagged. It is often an issue of confidence; or of fear; or of unconsciously carrying the beliefs (and therefore the limitations) of our parents.
This last a factor affects men and women, but because of how society is organized, and the different ways boys and girls are socialized and taught to feel about themselves, most women are more susceptible to the trap of not thinking they are free. Often this relates to their mother's example and their mother's statements about limitations; and the fact that to this day, in the 3rd millennium of the common era, many girls are still taught that they should aspire to being in a relationship first, and doing something exciting second (if at all).
Yet no matter who you are, male, female or something in between, as a Scorpio with Leo on your solar mid-heaven, you have no excuses whatsoever for buying into the lie that you're not actually free. Saturn will compel you to overcome your fears; Saturn will teach you that you are your own inner authority and none other makes a difference, in truth.
Success also would involve somehow accepting the fact that you can make a difference in the world; which would mean accepting on some level that the world is not too far-gone to bother with; which would imply that you care; which you do. Success is not just about yourself -- or not, anyway, when I'm writing on the subject. The message of Saturn in Leo is not to be ambitious, but rather to aspire to your true calling, and to go past the fear that may be involved.
Yet it's true that World Earth is in a pretty mad state; and we have very little in the way of truly useful definitions of success to guide ourselves by. Here is where some of your skill of owning your perceptions, and realizing you see the world you think you live in, will come in handy. Remember that the source of your power is the awareness that above all else, you're subject to the ideas that you hold in your own mind.
To put it as simply as possible, you need to tell yourself that you're free as many times and as many ways as possible. But then there is the matter of action, which is the best teacher, and which I would propose at this point for you is subtle and humble rather than bold or grand. Freedom tends to be found in the small choices more than the large ones. Yes, it's possible to say, "I'm going to do this with my life." And it's also vitally important to make a long string of seemingly minor decisions that get you there -- ranging from what you might do with a free hour, to what you do with a little free cash.
Most of the time, we give away our most precious possession: an authentic sense of our own existence. We do this by seeing others and the world around us as the cause of all that happens to us. Now, as someone who knows, it's your responsibility to teach that projection leads to wars and chaos. It utterly consumes love in its deceptive abyss. In the whole process, we quite literally forget who we are and thus have no way of knowing the other. This really has been a process of getting to know another through getting to know yourself; and getting to know yourself by acting in the world; and behold, it's been a pretty amazing journey so far. And it's just begun.
