New Moon in Virgo: Perfectionism, Slightly Imbalanced

"Balance is the point I cross
on my way to the other extreme."
~ A Mentor of Mine

Baltic Sea (Ost See), Northeast Germany

It’s been several months since I’ve written a post. And do you know why? It’s a 6-letter word called SUMMER. Yes, in and among meeting with you, my beloved clients worldwide, I’ve been traveling in foreign cities, camping in wildernesses, exploring forests, swimming in streams. In the past, I’ve pushed myself to write articles while traveling. But this summer, I decided to tune in, drop out, listen to the flow of rivers, oceans of consciousness in which I’ve had the luxury of swimming. I’ve been online less, resting more.

Even with the unplugging intention this summer, it’s still difficult to live without distraction. So often, I desire to run away, to flee back to my semi-monastic years in India. But the dharma of my life has me here, in the world, doing that imperfect dance of the ever-elusive state known as balance.

Ah, yes, balance. This is where imperfection does its thing, perfectly. Think of a tightrope walker high above the circus. She is never completely in balance. The muscles in her feet, the tiniest bones, are constantly moving, shifting, keeping her aligned. It is never perfect.

I love the analogy of being permanently off-course, and still finding our way to a goal. Think of an airplane at 30,000 feet, en route to Hawaii. The airplane is always just slightly off-course. The auto-pilot technology continuously adjusts, adjusts, adjusts. It appears to be a straight shot all the way to Maui. But the truth is, the plane has been off-course the entire time.

I’ve been practicing yoga asana for 25 years, taking my first course in the UC Davis Experimental College before studios appeared on every corner. My body has changed over the years. Some poses that were mentally scary or seemingly impossible in my early 20’s are now easy – like headstand. I have noticed less flexibility in backbends. And I have far more strength in my 40’s, especially as I’ve taken up trail running in the East Bay Hills. And, with increasing strength has come better balance.

Virgin Mary Chapel, Andechs Monastery, Munich

The Imperfect Art of Health

Today is the New Moon in Virgo, sign of the Virgin - meaning, a woman whole unto Herself. Virgo is often critiqued as the “picky, perfectionist” sign. But I see it more as refinement. Whatever is needed, less or more…that is refinement.

New Shoes in Lisse, Holland

The sixth house of the astrology chart, traditionally ruled by Virgo, is the house of hygiene. And hygiene does not just pertain to physical health. It is also spiritual, mental, and emotional. The word “hygiene” comes from the from Greek hugieinē, meaning the ‘(art) of health.’ Like all forms of art, healthy living is individual, unique, original, and above all, authentic.

What is healthy living for me, may be entirely different for you. What I eat may not nourish you. What you smoke may not support me. Who you sleep with may perplex me. Who I love may confuse you. But the ultimate decider of what is HEALTHY is… YOU. Your own inner authority. You, and your own Higher Self. You decide. Hence, the falsity, the illusion, the LIE of perfectionism when it comes to health, to anything really.

Where are you lying to yourself? Where are you consciously or unconsciously living by the lies imposed upon you by others, by society, by culture? Are the beliefs that you have around what constitutes a healthy lifestyle surreptitiously sneaking in to harm you? Maybe you have a non-binary, non-right/wrong approach to gender, to food, to intoxicants. Maybe your struggle to attain the perfect amount of money, power, prestige, beauty, youth, creative expression, relationship, even mental health or spiritual serenity is driving you insane… even, paradoxically, the desire to attain inner peace – the subtle striving to be a super human. Can you see that sneaking in?

Typisch Deutsches Essen, Brandenburg

What happens if we let go of all that sh*t, no pun intended, and simply practice the art of health, of hygiene, that works for us, today? What happens if we listen to what we authentically need in the moment? What happens if we have faith that we will make the best choice for ourselves? When we say f* off to those rules and belief systems that purportedly protect and help us, but actually strangle our spirits and true selves? What if we trust that we will, like that airplane en route to Hawaii, get exactly where we need to go, all the while being ever-so-slightly off balance, imperfect all the time?

Yes, what if?

Trust that your body-mind-spirit know exactly what they need. Uniquely you. So, take an end of summer holiday, and drop the stress-monger super ego perfect voice, just for today.

Erin Reese is an author, spiritual guide, astrologer, and modern psychic reader based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with clients all over the world. For readings and spiritual counseling by Skype, phone or email, contact her directly. She can be reached at erin@erinreese.com.

Summer Holiday Scrapbook

Practicing headstand - imperfectly - on Mother Earth - German countryside

Running in Former East Berlin

Rolling Stones, Olympiastadion, Berlin

South Lake Tahoe Bear Friend

Desolation Wilderness, Lake Tahoe Basin

Reichstag Dome, Berlin

Backpacking, Lake Aloha, Desolation Wilderness

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"We are free 'here and now.'
It is only the mind that imagines bondage.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Erin Reese is an author, spiritual guide, astrologer, and modern psychic reader based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with clients all over the world. For readings and spiritual counseling by Skype, phone or email, contact her directly. She can be reached at erin@erinreese.com.💥

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Erin Reese is an author, spiritual guide, astrologer, and modern psychic reader based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with clients all over the world. For readings and spiritual counseling by Skype, phone or email, contact her directly. She can be reached at erin@erinreese.com.

Uranus enters Taurus: Money and the Security Revolution

Today, May 15, 2018, we have a New Moon in Taurus alongside a major astrological event: Uranus, the Great Awakener, enters Taurus, fixed sign of the Bull. Uranus as evolutionary force is often associated with Kundalini and earthquakes, spiritual enlightenment and technological discoveries, psychic flashes and lightning-fast intuition aka ‘direct knowing.’ When it comes to Uranus, think revolutionary, rebellious, radical. Most importantly, think overnight, unpredictable CHANGE.

Uranus will be in earthy, stubborn, sensual, determined, comfort- and security-loving Taurus for eight years, until April 2026. There is one retrograde exception: November 2018 until March 2019, when he storms back to fiery Aries just to make sure we’ve thoroughly learned our lessons about reclaiming our independence, our self-determination, our personal rights. Most of us have learned plenty about speaking up and individuating for the time being, and are ready for a new theme. Well, here it is:

With Uranus in Taurus, our relationship to the material world enters the change crucible. This includes our relationships to Mama Earth, to our bodies, to our sensuality, and to money. The latter will be the focus of this article - our personal relationship to money.

The word money comes from the Latin monēta, (“money, a place for coining money, coin, mint”), from the name of the temple of the goddess Juno Moneta in Rome, where a mint was located.

Money is a manifestation of the divine feminine, the Goddess, in our lives. It is a blessing if we allow it, if we work with it, if we listen to it and coax it and understand it. We give and receive. We partner with money. We do not squander, beat it up, demand it, or neglect it.

“Money… It’s a Gas”

~ Roger Waters

•     Here are some of the fiscal life lessons and questions that Uranus in Taurus’ security revolution might bring up:
  
  
  -          Where do you “leak” money via spending, over-gifting, vagueness, unclear priorities?
  
  
  -          Do you stand up for yourself regarding billing by professionals (doctors, lawyers, business partners, etc.)?
  
  
  -          Are you giving money or things away unnecessarily to people, places, situations that you don’t really value in your heart, or where you are not being fully appreciated?
  
  
  -         How long has money been an “issue” for you? (If you’re over it, there is help available! Coming out of denial is the first step.)
  
  
  
  
  -          Are you lost in ‘magical thinking,’ that someday your ship will come in, you’ll hit the big time, the future will bail you out?
  
  
  -          How much money do you actually need to live a right-sized, prioritized lifestyle? Have you done a realistic spending plan? It could be much less, or more!, than you currently think.
  
  
  
  -          Are you open to spontaneous transformations of your resource bank (money, goods, services, gifts) – either giving or spending spontaneously in alignment with your spirit, or receiving and manifesting out of the blue.
  
  
  -          Watch for business opportunities and collapses occurring in a heartbeat. Follow your instinct and trust your gut in money, investments, gifting – but without being naïve or in denial (see above).
  
  
  -          Have you come to understand that you don't have to be in debt with credit cards? There is always another way, whether waiting, asking for help, negotiating, bringing in more funds, and right-sizing your lifestyle.
  
  
  -    Read up on Gift Economy. I might suggest Lewis Hyde’s classic The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (1983) as a classic primer. Burning Man (RIP founder Larry Harvey who passed April 28, 2018) has done wonders for bringing this once-radical concept to the mainstream, transforming into Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and other crowd-sourcing campaigns.
  
  
   

As Uranus now revolutionizes our relationship to the material world through its Taurus travels, we wake up to the honest value of things, to true worth. And that includes our partnering with the goddess Juno Moneta - also known as Money.

Remember:

There is enough TIME.

There is enough LOVE.

There is enough MONEY.

There is ENOUGH.

Erin Reese is an author, spiritual guide, astrologer, and modern psychic reader based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with clients all over the world. For readings and spiritual counseling by Skype, phone or email, contact her directly. She can be reached at erin@erinreese.com.

Full Moon in Scorpio: Revisiting Death

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

 - Kahlil Gibran

A note to readers:
This is a reprint piece from 3 years ago, written from Berlin when I had just discovered my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In recent days, I've come to know of many significant deaths in my community - a few relatively unknown, yet no less meaningful, individuals have left the planet to return to stardust. These include animal friends as well. And some important figures, like the great coyote trickster visionary, Larry Harvey, whose founding of the Burning Man project was one of the great wonders of my world.

For the past two years, I have worked as a grief and bereavement counselor for a hospice organization. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to assist these individuals in Facing Death. In honoring the Great Transformation, I offer a deep bow to my late father, Uwe Wolf Reese (1934-2016). And a eternal thanks to all my teachers, my elders, and to the visionaries who have left this physical plane yet continue to guide, support, inspire each of us. Aho Mitakuye Oyasin.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.

A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

 - Mark Twain

This week and beyond, we are under the impact of the recent Full Moon in Scorpio, fixed water sign of transformation and rebirth. Scorpio is always intense; this sign implores us to go deeper, and then plunge even further, down to the bone. The springtime Sun is happily chirping and singing in the opposite sign of Taurus. And we are confronted with the paradox of living life to its fullest while experiencing a part of ourselves that is passing away.

It is appropriate that I write this from Berlin, a Scorpio metropolis with its city charter signed on October 28, 1237. Anyone with a smidgen of history under their belt knows that Berlin has faced its share of darker days over the years, especially during the 20th century.

But it hasn’t always been horrific Walls, Reichstags and Kristallnachts. Seductive Berlin is comfortable in its own skin, embraces counter-culture, art, sex, grit, and brings us closer to the marrow of existence. That’s its appeal. Like Scorpio, the city transforms herself over the centuries. The Wall went up, the Wall came down, and Berlin keeps on turning poison into nectar by facing the shadow head-on.

Psyche, Berlin Alte Nationalgallerie

This is the tone of the Full Moon in Scorpio, when Luna pushes our experience to the quick. We can’t ignore our most intense emotions – they’re rising like flood waters. We feel the pain, and investigate. Find out what is underneath. Eventually, it will give way, and therein lies pure energy – light and dark and truth and awe and agape.  Ashes to ashes, we see the life that shines through in death. Only by staring death in the face, and not turning away, can we truly live. We are transformed through Scorpio, a phoenix emerging from the ruins. It is thorough. There are no half measures here. Scorpio redoes the whole kit and caboodle.

Death – the point of no return – is what truly plunges us into the Now. We undertake an entire renovation project of our house, from the ground up. A friend commits suicide and we are shocked into the Present. Extreme moments of life occur side by side. A relative has a beautiful new baby boy at the same time you discover another family member has cancer. At that moment, these people become more real to you – hyper-real. Your lover is moving abroad – they have a job they can’t pass up. Until then, you must have more physical contact, more sex, more touch. Every moment spent together becomes critical. Life and death.

If we want to be fully free, truly alive, we face the fact that it won’t last. Nothing does. We have only the Now to love, to laugh, to dance, to cry. To hold our beloved’s face in our hands, gazing at them, really seeing them. How long has it been since you’ve looked – really looked – into each other’s eyes? Are you seeing a projection of who you want them to be? If you see them for who they are, as they are, you’re bound to fall in love with them even more.

In order to truly live, we must know Death. Scorpio teaches through the realization of impermanence and the profundity of irreversible transformation. We exist in the space between. In this breath, we are here. In this moment, we are alive.

Erin Reese is an author, spiritual guide, astrologer, and modern psychic reader based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with clients all over the world. For readings and spiritual counseling by Skype, phone or email, contact her directly. She can be reached at erin@erinreese.com.