PERFECTION is not a value. Indeed, it is most often a trap, a temptation, and the worst kind at that. Because it's the kind of trap that feels virtuous, it can be a particularly difficult one to escape. And why would you want to escape? Unlike most other forms of escapism, so you can be free. Free is clearly what you are trying to be. Free is making itself known to you. Free is calling your name. Free is showing up in your life, your dreams, and rattling your planet.

Free has been showing up as very intense people who are setting an example, or summoning you personally, or perhaps offending you with what seems like their complete disregard for what anyone else thinks.

The opposite of free is perfect.

You are picking up the vibes of liberation despite their being a little unsettling sometimes. After all, one of the first things that the calling to be free does is remind you that...you're not quite there yet. This can have two effects: it can be comforting, in that if you try to stay stuck, you don't have to take any risks; and it can be a source of enormous pressure, because it's a compelling force and on some level you know you need to listen. Or you may doubt whether you're fantasizing the whole thing or even whether you have any right to claim any additional space around you, be it physically or in the realm of ideas.

At other times, the allure is profound; you know there is another life waiting for you just beyond what feels like a veil in your mind: a life where passion is natural and provides you with something vital, which is liberation from yourself, or rather, an idea about yourself that at times seems to have taken over for the real thing.


Progress and Intensity

You've made progress toward reaching this state of mind, and you know it. Your life has been so emotionally intense for so long, it may be worth cautioning you about getting hooked on such potent feelings, the nearly constant sense of emotional overdrive and the extent to which inner crises may have a way of boiling over on a fairly regular basis. And in your own unique way, you've learned to center yourself in the midst of whatever else may have been going on, which has helped you cultivate a measure of real stability.

I wonder if you've considered the whole story in the context of a long process of becoming emotionally independent; of developing a sense of security that is based on faith in yourself rather than on another person; and in linking your emotional life to your spiritual life, seeking what may be the deepest level of safety there is -- trust in the Divine.

My personal hunch is that I don't think you've got as far as you want or need in this process (but who has?), partly based on the assessment of certain long-term processes that will finally be reaching their peak during the next four seasons and beyond. What I am saying here is that if you can conceive of how far you've come developing this sense of safety and independence, imagine you'll come twice as far in the next four or five seasons, at the very least.

With these developments, some of which are described by events in your opposite sign, Pisces, and others in your house of roots and safety, Sagittarius, there is most assuredly a shift in how you feel about yourself. And while this shift may be intense, I don't see the intensity as usual but rather a sense of turning, deepening, and a great adventure that comes as you begin to let go of the need to be "certain" and gently embrace the greater need to be who you are today, whatever that may be.

The world and your journey through it seem determined to teach you that there are many shades of gray, an astonishing variety of hues of every color, and vast ambiguity possible within your world of feeling.


Mercury in the Water Signs

With Mercury spending most of its time in water signs during the next four seasons, you have an opportunity to get to know yourself in a whole new way. You're taking a step back from the sharp lines of perception and the tangibility of ideas to which you're more accustomed, into a space where you will know things by sensing them, and understand them by feeling them.

The bright lights and dark shadows of recent years are gradually being replaced by deep water that is illuminated more or less evenly. Feeling, moving and particularly breathing in water are a different kind of emotional experience than you're normally accustomed to. As you reach spaces where there are no words to describe the sensation and where you see things you could never explain, draw or photograph, you'll have a sense of where you have arrived. I imagine this will come with a real sense of relief.

Much of what you get is relief from your own mind, and also, from the intensity with which you've experienced others for so long. You don't lose perception under water, and in some ways it becomes more acute (sound moves faster in water than in air, for example). The vibration is different; your response time may be slower; and there is more of a feeling of "what is, is; what will be, will be."

The message, or gift: there is so much to notice and experience that there's no point judging yourself for what you perceive, no matter where it is, or what you fear the implications may be. If you're trying to imagine this state of mind, you may predict it would feel a lot like anarchy, but I assure you that you're a long way from there. Awareness is the twin soul of diversity. And awareness is the new organizing principle of your life: not (for example) control, order or analysis. And surely not the judgment which, at times, has been so harsh.


Notice How You Respond

You have no obligation to be consistent from day to day and thus can free yourself from the heavy burden of expecting precisely that. This makes room for the ever-important direct experience of what is so, and leaves you freedom to notice whatever that might be.

The more you devote yourself to noticing, the more freedom you will feel, because that's where choice exists. And as you gradually come to identify yourself with the awareness aspect of the mind rather than the judgmental one, you will see that the aspects of yourself that you judge are the ones that are not you , but rather the ones you took on from others.

Psychic absorbency is one of the most helpful Virgo characteristics to understand, and one that you can put to work for you once you've noticed how, early on in your life, it was used to turn yourself against you.

Another way to characterize the current time in your life is as a process of learning to regulate the influence that others have on you, even as they seem to have more and more. Depending on how you are responding, this could represent a struggle to maintain your identity, or a calling to express that identity at full strength in your relationships. But between these two choices, notice how you respond; notice when you feel insecure; notice when you feel inspired.

You will learn a lot from yourself.


Three Dreams

As I'm sitting here writing, someone named Mundey -- a Very Virgo -- is working in my office taping receipts to pieces of paper. Out of the blue, she has started telling me her recent dreams. She related three. They illustrate your astrology pretty magnificently, so with her permission I am sharing them with you.

In the first one, she found herself between a forest and an ocean. In the forest, there were cougars. In the ocean, there were sharks. "There was always something trying to eat me," she said. "I don't know how I stayed safe. I was running. I went to swim, but there were sharks, so I had to get out, and somehow I stayed safe trying to dodge the two."

In the next dream, a different day, she went to visit an old friend, not really a boyfriend, but a guy friend where aggressive sex was the theme of the relationship.

The friend was there, but then he morphed into a yellow leprechaun. The leprechaun had a set of keys, and was jumping out the window; and as he was jumping, her friend (back in his original form) took the keys away from him.

Then, some "shadow people" arrived; they were dark, like the dark riders in Lord of the Rings. And they wanted the keys. So, her friend gave them the set of keys but before doing so, took off one key and then handed the rest to the shadow people.

In the last scene, some kind of light spirit arrived, and asked, "Where are the keys?" The friend replied, "I gave all the keys except this one to the shadow people." And the light spirit said, "Good, that's the key that we need. That's the key. The other keys were useless." Meanwhile, the dark spirits figured out they had been tricked, because they took the keys and didn't notice that they didn't have the one they really wanted. But they could not do anything about this.

The thread between these two dreams is that in both, primal forces are making themselves known. The cougars, the sharks and the boyfriend she liked having aggressive sex with are on the same wavelength: animal, instinctual, and powerful natural forces. There is a relationship implied to these forces within herself, which are becoming fully conscious.

In the second dream, there is a complex interplay between good and evil; dark and light; and a negotiation process involved. The lead character in the dream (an aspect of herself) is being selective about where she's giving her power; in particular, to the light side rather than the dark side.

Both are primal forces, but she is determining who she relates to, and how.

The third dream develops this theme.

She was walking down the street and a black cat walked up to her.

"I am the sacred cat," it said to her.

She could see that it had what she called the "sacred eye" -- the third eye.

"There's a sacred cat?" she said, surprised. She had never heard of one. The cat led her to a boy, who tells her his name is Olive. He is from India. She commented (to me) that she doesn't really like kids, but she liked this kid a lot because he was interesting. Olive took her back home to his family.

"Why is his name Olive, when he's Indian?" she asked his parents.

"Because people wouldn't understand his real name." They revealed the real name, showing it to her telepathically. She did not understand it and understood why nobody can understand it.

Then, with this information, she was personally transformed into being a male soccer star, playing in a game like the World Cup. In this game, she scores the goals that win the game. After the game, s/he was talking to reporters, and dedicated the win to "my new friend Olive."

Once again in the third dream, the instinctual or primal force shows up, this time in the form of a black cat, who announces that he or she is the sacred cat.

So now the primal force is arriving with the feeling and imagery of the divine.

This leads to a series of initiations -- things that happen for the first time, and in the process, which change her. She meets the boy, who seems to be an inner being; the boy leads her to the parents, spiritually powerful figures who reveal his sacred name. The implication is that it's one of the names of God, or god within. She "doesn't understand" it but transforms into a star athlete who triumphs and dedicates the victory to this sacred companion within herself.

And no matter who you get to know, whoever inspires or challenges you -- this sacred companion within is who it truly is. Meanwhile, you're free to enjoy the experience of "otherness" with all surrender and compassion.