Full Moon in Capricorn - The Sacred Pause
An exploration of the mountains we climb and reflections on my relationship with my father
Since this is a longer post coming out before a holiday weekend, I’ll share my notes on the front end.
Today is my birthday! The Full Moon comes direct Monday, so I’m doing the Full Moon Yoga Nidra Sound Bath tomorrow (Saturday) at 7 pm. I am also adding a New Moon one too, but at Greenway Yoga! You can find all those details here.
Capricorn is here to bring structure and discipline and rules over power-seeking behavior. Capricorn has a vision of truth that it intends to codify into the structures that influence the world. Capricorn uses leverage to catapult itself up the mountain in addition to slow, methodical climbing.
There are two really important pieces here.
First, Capricorn has a mountain to climb and will use anything in its power to climb it. Enlightened Capricorn still holds to a code of conduct and does not compromise its sacred values to get there. Neurotic Capricorn says that “the ends justify the means” and often loses its way. It forgets why it is climbing the mountain in the first place. Its focus becomes too narrow and it loses sight of the big picture.
It forgets that it is just one mountain within a whole mountain range. When our focus becomes too narrow, it is easy to optimize for one goal to the detriment of all other goals.
For example, enlightened Capricorn looks at a goal like “financial stability” and remembers, during its ascent, WHY that is important - provide for the family, a foundation to act from, and freedom to think about other things.
It’s this last piece I want to double-click on - if we are still climbing the same old mountain, we can’t focus on others. Even if you are 90% of the way up, that last 10% is still taking up too much space in your life, especially if it is a prerequisite for the other goals in your life.
So if you’re still contending with the same mountain you were climbing for the last 15 years, ask yourself this question:
What aren’t you doing because of this? How is this influencing the impact you want to have on the world?
Capricorn is all about impact. The reason Capricorn wants to climb is so that it can amplify and bolster its cause. You see, Capricorn comes after Sagittarius. Sagittarius explores and discovers what is good, true, and beautiful. These beliefs about what is then become the foundation of what should be.
The progression and relationship between Sagittarius and Capricorn is important to remember. If you are fundamentally mistaken about the nature of reality, you are certain to climb the wrong mountains or allow a narrow focus to ignore or, even worse, demonize climbing other mountains.
You don’t just go soul-searching once. In fact, Capricorn would be likely to automate or design soul-searching practices into their structure. Capricorn would be wise to have regular intervals where it takes a break from climbing the mountain and questions its trajectory.
Is this still where I want to be going? Were the premises I began with sound? What assumptions did I make? Do I still hold them to be as true as I did when I began? What conclusions did I draw from those assumptions?
By creating consistent space to take a step back and examine our perspective, we can see the ways that our view is distorted.
As John Vervaeke points out in his lecture series, Awakening From the Meaning Crisis, we have to remove our glasses at times and examine if we have smudges. We have to examine the way that we look at the world, not just stay locked into our worldview.
Now is the time to ask these hard questions. Are you sure? Are you sure you’re sure? Ask someone you might disagree with to ask you hard questions and pretend that they know nothing.
What if you had to sell your cause to a 5-year-old? (Think, “Why? Why? Why?)
When we are questioned in this way, we often realize that we have been working with some incomplete assumptions. Those assumptions might be propping up other conclusions.
Now is a good time to remember that each sign is an archetypal aspect of the Self. You’re climbing some mountain, even if it is the mountain of avoiding mountain climbing. Pretending that you have no interest in having an impact on the world and taking life seriously is how we repress this desire.
The Gene Keys and Human Design
The Full Moon occurs in the 38th Gene Key. Here we have the Shadow of Struggle, the Gift of Perseverance, and the Siddhi of Honor. Richard really nails this one:
“What will we do with each precious day of our life? The 38th Gift tells us: find a fight worth fighting, and pour ourself into that. The human spirit is indomitable. It loves to reach and stretch and break new ground. We won’t be happy in life unless we too reach and stretch and break new ground. No matter who we are.” – Richard Rudd, 64 Ways
This is a reminder that why you fight is more important than any individual battle. Remember to pause, take a step back, and ask yourself: is this still the fight for me?
The Sun is, by nature of a full moon, opposite the moon, occupying the 39th Gene Key (or gate in Human Design). It is known as the gate of Provocation in Human Design, and this provides the material for the shadow in the Gene Keys - Provocation - Dynamism - Liberation.
When we look at Human Design, we get a very simple gate keynote that pretty much says it all:
The value of obstruction in provoking analysis, assessment, and reevaluation.
Sometimes, when it seems like something stands in your way, you’ve actually been going the wrong way.
Oftentimes.
This Time, It’s Personal
Last week, I slipped a disc in my Lumbar spine while lifting weights. I had been pushing myself very hard physically and had recently upped my game. I was in a flow of work and working out, pushing myself to be productive and setting new goals for myself every week.
I was highly Capricornian. Narrow focus, hell-bent on goal actualization.
The injury forced me to sit my ass down and think. Furthermore, I had run out of listening material for my morning walks and was at a loss: what am I supposed to do if I can’t even sit?
The nature of a slipped disc in your lower back is that you have to stay a tiny bit active. Walking is good because it massages the disc back into place. Backbending is useful, as are gentle spinal strengthening exercises and stretches.
Sitting is awful. Doing nothing is the worst thing you can do. Heating pads are great, ice isn’t. Advil helps a bit. Sneezing hurts. Waking up in the morning is brutal, because, apparently, our discs expand overnight and absorb water, so they are larger.
I spent a lot of time walking for 20-30 minute intervals and doing sphinx pose.
I couldn’t write, work, or workout. I was useless around the house and couldn’t really help with my son. I felt helpless as I depended on my wife to take care of pretty much everything.
I had been given a pause and was rethinking everything in my life. Everything. I started a TikTok and watched YouTube Videos while lying under my pyramid with a heating pad on my lower back.
And while walking in relative silence, it hit me.
We’re burying my dad this week.
Holy shit. This is big, and it wasn’t even part of my newly organized project dashboard. (Which has been a legit game changer FYI)
My dad passed nearly two years ago now. You may remember that his funeral was the week of my wedding. We elected not to bury him right away. None of us had the emotional capacity at the time, and since we had him cremated, we didn’t feel a huge rush to bury him. Life happened after that, and now, we are going to be laying him to rest for good, in the cemetery where his parents are buried.
Just One More Time
My dad had back problems that rendered him immobile at times. Whether it was caused by his weight problems is sort of a moot point now. What we know is that his back problems began shortly after his dad passed.
At my grandfather’s funeral, my older cousin read a poem written by my dad, for his dad, entitled, “Just One More Time, Dad”. It was heartfelt and moving. My dad couldn’t have possibly read it live, feeling so emotional - he was a double Scorpio with a Cancer Moon. I suspect my dad had an equally complex relationship with his Dad as I did.
Between the genuine desire for love and connection and the resentment he understandably felt for feeling neglected and unsupported, there was a lot of emotional and somatic distress that was never adequately processed.
It’s no coincidence that his back issues began shortly after.
Within a year, my dad was bedridden for half a year at least. I was about 10 years old at the time. As the youngest child of three, I became my dad’s primary caregiver while my mom worked her hardest to maintain her physical and mental health and keep our family afloat financially since my dad couldn't work.
My dad’s unresolved issues with his dad crippled him. I know he didn’t want this. He was helpless. He couldn’t even sit upright for months. Eventually, his doctor wrote a special request to our insurance for my dad to get gastric bypass surgery, saying that if he didn’t get the surgery, he was basically sentenced to death.
He got the surgery and went to intensive, inpatient rehab and physical therapy for months, lost over 200 pounds, and walked again.
And, eventually, he gained all that weight back.
His back problems returned. Other health problems emerged.
The Waiting is the Hardest Part
One time, we held an intervention for my dad. His good friend Louie Anderson masterminded it. The whole family - and Louie - gathered in our living room, and we told him how much we loved him and how much we needed him to take the problem of his health and weight seriously.
We shared the impact his health problems have had on us and how we couldn’t bear to go through it all again. I wrote all my words down - I was probably 17 years old at the time - and gave him the letter afterward.
Things got better for a while. He did enough to allay our fears and concerns for a bit.
Inevitably, his health began to deteriorate. Every so often he would have heart issues or other problems and spend some time in the hospital, and I would wonder - is this it? Part of me even hoped that was it.
I faced my dad’s mortality dozens of times. I had mentally rehearsed his eulogy so many times that, when the day came to write it for real, it flowed effortlessly.
The day he finally left felt like a relief. The last few years of his life felt hopeless. We knew he would never change. He had built up so many mental and emotional defenses by this point in his life that addressing the root cause of his woes felt like an insurmountable mountain.
The pain of change somehow seemed to outweigh the pain of staying the same - and my dad lived in excruciating physical pain for most of his life at this point.
As a family, it felt like we were just waiting for him to die. This is still one of the most confusing aspects of my relationship with him. I felt guilty. I felt insensitive. Part of me wanted him to die so that my mom could be free of the burden of caring for him, day in and day out. So that I could be free of the guilt associated with that.
Because I knew how hopeless it all was, I hoped, shamefully, that he would get worse, faster. I suspect we all did.
Unfinished Business
I know that my recent back injuries are connected to some aspect of my Father wound. Every time that I struggled to put my shoe on, I saw my father struggling to do the same. Every time I had to rely upon my wife to take care of me, I saw my father doing the same. It feels emasculating. How am I supposed to take care of others if I can’t take care of myself?
There is an ancestral feeling to all of this, and I know that this pause I am given now is for the purpose of healing and integrating it.
SQ - Physical Wounds
I’m currently contemplating the Sphere of SQ in my work with the Gene Keys. The SQ has to do with our physical bodies and the ages of 0-7. Richard, over and over, tells us to stop trying to make sense of it and just feel it, surrender to the wound and the trauma stored in our bodies. It is the 2nd to last sphere in the Venus Sequence, a true hero’s journey
I’ve got Gene Key 55 here, Line 4. The keynote of the 4th line SQ is Belonging. The journey of the 55th moves from Victimization to Freedom. The 4th Line SQ needs a vast network of connections, more than just the nuclear family. It needs a community. It needs sweetness. It shuts down when threatened. The 4th line pretends that everything is okay, and kids itself into believing it too.
And that’s as far as my mind can take me here. Richard says even our emotions have no where to go here. It’s about the wisdom of the body.
The memory that keeps coming up for me as I scan my life for context is a confusing one: I remember feeling totally overwhelmed, but I don’t know why, or how it happened.
I have a series of memories where I am laying in my bed alone at a young age, praying that it would end. It felt like the walls were caving in on me, and it was a totally physical sensation. I remember seeing huge, rectangular stones in my mind’s eye crashing to the earth. Each crash thundered through my being.
I remember thinking, pleading, “make it stop, make it stop”.
And that’s it. I have no other context, but I know this happened more than once. I remember where my bed was in my room. I remember the curtains hanging over my windows.
I don’t remember how it ended. Maybe I fell asleep, maybe I dissociated. Maybe I shut down. I don’t remember if it was in reaction to any particular inputs.
I think about this sometimes when my son cries. Sometimes, his whole being cries. His body tenses as he screams. I wonder if these memories are flashbacks from my infancy, even echoes from my father’s childhood.
And I remember how far I’ve come. I remember where I was when I began my self-work, and I remember how far up this mountain I have climbed.
I remember why I do this work.
I remember that even though the mountain I currently climb feels like “the mountain”, it’s one of many interconnected mountains.
If I lose sight of the bigger picture, if I forget what got me this far up the mountain, I get reminders from…someone.
Thank goodness for my slipped disc. Without it, I might not have remembered.