Cancer Full Moon Newsletter
How do you relate to the weight of expectations?
It’s important to start any discussion on today’s Full Moon in Cancer with the following caveat: The way our culture structures this time of year is unnatural.
Our physical systems want to go totally offline with the darkest days of the year upon us, and yet, we frantically try to do all of the things, in the name of tradition, giving, and capitalistic conditioning.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t do these things. It’s a reminder. It’s natural to feel totally depleted after a couple of days with family, as our collective nervous system has been stress-tested and needs some rest.
I love this Cancer energy as a reminder of Home. It’s a reminder of what holidays with our families can be when we are real, authentic, and generous.
When I think of home, and what the feeling of home represents, it should be a place where we can completely relax and be ourselves. At home, we shouldn’t have to hide. We should be able to do what we need to do for ourselves.
And where we should be accepting of how other people relax and meet their needs. You shouldn’t have to pretend you’re someone you’re not at home.
But we’re often met with tensions on holidays.
We have age-old traditions that may not feel authentic to us any longer. We have expectations that aren’t quite clear. We feel the effects of the unconscious pressure of those expectations. That pressure causes us to confuse what is right for us. Our standards of communication regress to the common family denominator.
It’s confusing. Interactions can leave us feeling dissatisfied, even disappointed. And yet we have pockets of deeply meaningful connections amongst somewhat chaotic social swirls of energy.
The way things have been
Families change. What feels like an embedded, sacred tradition may no longer meet the needs of the family, and because families kind of just happen, we often do no
t revisit these traditions and ask, “If we were starting from scratch tomorrow, would we include this?”
“It’s the way we’ve always done things,” is an easy planning tool, but it often means that parts of the experience leave us wanting more.
It’s an interesting part of being in a family. We often don’t revisit the conditioning patterns that we ride to the present moment. And the simple mention of wanting to reconsider parts of the traditions can bring up a lot of emotions.
“If I’m asking to change something, they’ll think I’m unhappy or they’ve done something wrong”
And then, we’re rushed back to a family dynamic. We’re the ones who are always needy. We’re the black sheep. We’re…being difficult.
How do we bake in mechanisms to review and change things while holding our family time sacred?
How can we say, “This family time is hugely important to me and to all of us, and I see opportunities to make it feel more like home, for all of us? I wonder if you feel the same way, or if you’re open to a conversation for us to explore this.”
Cancer, Mercury, and Neptune
I had a bit of an emotional experience over Christmas. I’ll reserve sharing most of the details. It had to do with me, my son, lapses in communication, and the pressure of expectations.
It reminded me just how hard it can be to really be authentic with family. To say, “Hey, I’m having an experience right now, and it is important that I be able to share this with you so that you can better understand what’s going on for me.”
I had no intention to blame anyone, but I wanted to share that I was feeling quite a bit of pressure. My wife and I processed it together.
The pressure was real. There was an expectation. In response to this pressure, I acted in a way that did not honor myself or my son. We pivoted and managed it, and it was mostly fine.
And, it would have been significant to me to process that with the whole family.
To do that, though, would have required quite a bit of my own bandwidth. I had a need for understanding and I did not trust that there was capacity to meet that need from the people around me. I would have had to get my facilitator hat on and seek mostly to understand or state my needs very very clearly.
Here’s what that might have sounded like.
“I’m feeling a lot of pressure to do (blank), and I don’t think it’s in my or my son’s best interest actually. It seems like there’s an expectation for (blank). I think that because I heard this person say (blank), and I also heard this person say (blank). Right now, I’m not asking for us to have a whole talk about this, because I want to enjoy time together as a family. Instead of (blank), I’m wondering if it’s okay if we (blank) for now. Could one of you please repeat what you’re hearing me say? It would really help meet my need for understanding and I can clarify if something didn’t quite come across right.”
This situation, to me, encapsulates what’s happening at this Full Moon between Mercury and Neptune. We’re not communicating what is emerging from our unconscious. It’s not clear if it even makes sense to do it. Should I just put on a happy face and pretend the thing didn’t happen because this family time is important or do I risk conflict?
And again, because Mercury is Retrograde, the words are tough to find, and we’re not sure what we’re hearing.
The Nodes
The Nodes, as you may be aware, are transiting Aries and Libra currently. They’re approaching a conjunction with Chiron that will continue to call us into leadership and initiative. North Node in Aries has a reluctant leadership quality to it.
This is partly because of South Node in Libra. We keep hoping that the initiative that is needed will be taken by someone else. We wish that someone else would just do it for us.
I hate to break it to you (and myself): No one else is going to do it. That initiative is yours to take, and yours alone. And the problem isn’t going away.
And North Node in Aries gets frustrated by this.
Aries’ style of Leadership is innocent and immature in some ways. Aries says, “If no one else will do it, fine! I’ll do it.”
Aries is held back by a lack of trust. South Node in Libra is afraid of upsetting the delicate balance, and Aries is not diplomatic. Aries is disruptive.
Libra tries desperately to keep all the plates spinning, without wondering if it’s wise to. Aries will certainly break some plates.
The Gene Keys
The North Node sits in the 42nd Gene Key at the moment. The 42nd has the Shadow of Expectation, the Gift of Detachment, and the Siddhi of Celebration. This Gene key also occupies The Pearl in my Profile, the final landing place after the Activation, Venus, and Pearl sequences.
It is my current contemplation, as I fumble with the archetypal Rubik’s Cube that is The Pearl Sequence.
One of the things I notice about the Pearl is that I often don’t notice the shadows in myself as much right away. The universe has been serving me the shadows from the people in my life, and I’m almost more reactive to that than anything else.
No one should have expectations. Ha!
I expect that no one should have expectations, or that everyone should at least detach from them.
Which is still Expectation. It’s the same shadow! How dare anyone have any expectations of me?! I expect no expectations.
So I wrestle constantly with Expectations. Of course, I’ve got an abundance of them. And I see it in others, and I judge.
And I get insights in unexpected places. I was listening to an excellent podcast about productivity and creativity the other day, and one nugget emerged:
“It’s not about the pursuit of happiness, it’s about the happiness of pursuit.”
That’s Detachment.
And even further, Detachment accepts Expectation. It’s all the same to Detachment. Detachment sees that it stands upon the shoulders of Expectation.
It’s about earnestness and sincerity, not seriousness and scorn.
This is the path of Karma Yoga, which Krishna explained to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita.
Do your work honestly. Give yourself fully to what is in front of you, without attachment to the outcome.
It’s about caring deeply about the world without attaching to an image of how it should be.
It’s about being alive, being human, and giving yourself fully to the experience of what that is like.
That same podcast brought a question up, and I’ll leave it for you to ponder, on the theme of detachment, meaning, and caring.
“How much of your life would you fast-forward through if given the opportunity?”
Authentic Relating Games Night coming up on Saturday January 13th! Get your tickets now
Last chance to get an Astrology Reading booked with me! Respond to this email and we’ll get it booked