Here’s a little journey through the zodiac with shout out to love and how you can love brighter and bigger with a little help from astrology. Do you know your sun sign? Your rising sign?

Read both. And then practice offering up your love….

 
ARIES: Love by being bold. Love by daring. Love by leading the way. Love by speaking up and speaking out and telling it like it is. Love by breaking through the ice to springtime. Love love love by coming forth with your brilliant new idea again and again. Love by seizing the moment and seizing the day. Love by starting afresh.

 
TAURUS: Love with your light. Love by seeing the beauty in all you meet. Love quietly, steadfastly. Love by making something beautiful and offering it to the world. Love by knowing your WILL and living true to it. Love in your stillness and appreciation of the natural world. Love with the bounty of your garden.

 
GEMINI: Love em up by connecting everyone and everything. Love with your curiosity. Love with your questions. Love through conversation. Love by feeling the unity under every duality. Love by seeing yourself in everyone you meet. Love by bridge building, networking, linking. Love with words that make a difference.

 
CANCER: Love with protection and a tending of those that need it. Love with your body that is your home that can welcome others in. Love with your sense of ONE humanity. Love with inclusivity. Love the world wide family. Love by rendering yourself vulnerable and available and raw. Love through your resourcefulness and your capacity to build.

 
LEO: Love Love Love. Just shine from your heart. Love by seeing all the good in others. Love by being generous with your light, with your warmth. Love by expressing your most authentic self. Love without apology, with whole-heartedness. Lead with your love. Lead through love. Lead only with love. Be courageous in your loving. Be courageous in standing forth and saying “I am.”

 
VIRGO: Love by refining the form. Love by purifying and healing. Love with your daily, rigorous work. Love by bringing health and vitality to all your meet. Love by creating sacred space for beauty to be born. Love with your discrimination. Love by making systems work. Love with a rigorous practicality that allows others to rest in your skill and care.

 
LIBRA: Love by relating, sharing, cooperating. Love by striving for peace. Love as you stand for what is just and fair and equitable. Love as you make choices that move you forward. Love as you strive for balance. Love the SOUL of each you meet recognizing the oneness between you. Love through truth and beauty.

 
SCORPIO: Love with intensity. Love with depth. Be a warrior of love. Fight for love. Love with loyalty. Love with conviction. Love to get to the heart of the matter. Love the truth so much you are willing to face the darkness for it. Love through your strength and tenacity. Love the process of death and rebirth and love through the letting go knowing the new will come. Love by daring to face the darkness.

 
SAGITTARIUS: Love as you journey. Love those on your journey. Love through risk and adventure. Love through optimism and encouragement. Love through buoyancy and inspiration. Love by dreaming big and pursuing those dreams.  Love through your aspiration and one-pointed determination. Love the vision. Envision LOVE. Be generous with your love and focused on your dream. Love with enthusiasm.

 
CAPRICORN: Love through your authority. Be a loving leader. Love by climbing with intention. Love by summiting the spiritual mountain top. Love by taking on responsibility. Love by parenting those that need your care. Love with your determination and fortitude. Love with your purposeful living. Love with your sobriety and careful approach. Love as you climb.

 
AQUARIUS: Love by carving your very authentic path. Love your community. Love in community. Build love in community. Give your gift worldwide. Distribute. Love by offering your gift to all who thirst. Love by living freedom. Love by freely being you. Love with your objectivity and clarity. Love with your quirkiness.

 
PISCES: Love boundlessly. Be an ocean of love. Love by connecting with source in your own sanctuary. Love with compassion. Save. Uplift. Redeem. Love through a willingness to end an old cycle. Love through your synthetic vision. Love with music, with poetry. Love by being a carrier of silence.

Welcoming Taurus: The Will to See the Light

(The Sun moves into Taurus at 9:12 am pacific time today).

“I see and when the eye is open, all is illumined.”

Let me ask you something. Have you ever met someone who uyou initially dismissed as odd or rude or not worth your time only to discover later what a jewel stood before you? Have you ever been humbled by looking more deeply into someone or something,  uncovering a wealth you never dreamed lay hidden within? In our arrogance, we often feel that what we SEE — at first sight– is all there is to see. We see that we are “not that.” We see the form and make judgments based on the form.

I don’t want to get too abstract here, but I think some of our greatest work in this life is to cultivate the WILL to look beyond the FORM of things and into the quality. Or — in other words — to see the light that is inherent in all things instead of what tends to block or obscure the light.

Simply put, I think we need to:

1. Look at something or someone.
2. Breathe. Deeply.
3. Feel our hearts. Access our intelligence.
4. Look deeper
5. Breathe again.
6. Be willing to SEE what we did not initially see.

The sign Taurus is connected to the Ajna Center. The Ajna Center is the seat of Intelligent Love. When we look through the ‘third eye’ or from the energy center seated at the brow, we regard the world through the eye of intuition and the eye of beauty. We see something more true than the initial presentation. When we cultivate the capacity to see with the mind and the heart, we see the world differently. Our minds may tell us about what we are viewing in a very concrete way, while the addition of the heart may allow us to feel our connection to what lies beneath.

When “the eye is open,” — or when we can perceive the physical world through the lens of intelligent love, the light in all things is apparent. And light is without boundary, so the one-ness of all things is apparent as well.

Taurus is a sign that rules BEAUTY and FORM and MANIFESTATION and WILL. It holds the capacity to firmly plant beauty on this earth. It is the sign of the garden and the bounty of the garden. It illumines the Path as we each proceed on our journey. And it has the endurance to walk the path steadfastly.

The less evolved aspects of Taurus lie hidden in its gift. It has the great gift of sight but often chooses to see only what is apparent. It loves the beauty of form and the beauty of the material world but can easily stop there without going deeper. It can get too comfortable and stuck in routine.

The invitation of Taurus is to see the light where others see darkness, to insist on the light where others turn their backs. Taurus has the WILL to see BEAUTY where others cannot and has the capacity to cultivate the LIGHT that lies hidden beneath. And Taurus is willing to move at a pace — a slower, more deliberate pace — where it becomes possible to stay with something or someone long enough to understand its essence.

This month, look again. Look deeper. Practice seeing. Don’t be fooled by appearance. Summon the will to experience VALUE in all you see. Magnetize beauty with your presence and attention. Grow still enough to hear the inner name and see the inner light of all things.

*****

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
– David Whyte

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgcwf70wwoM

Check out all the goodness HERE.

BIG LOVE.

(Here’s a little sweetness for your weekend. The following came out of writing prompt called ‘Sugar Child.’ Enjoy……)

I want to be sugar in the raw. Just as I am… and sweet enough to change the taste of things. I want to be sugar in the raw for my lover. Soft. A bowl full of me. Bountiful. Making every little thing sweeter.

I don’t want to be doors that shut or a grey, cold afternoon sky. I don’t want to be without oxygen, hiding out, sipping life.

I want to be as sweet as candy, as pretty, as wrapped in beauty. I want to enjoy being wanted, tasted, licked, held close until it’s time for the yum. I want to be innocent, available, unprotected, raw. Raw sugar. Sugar baby.

My lover treats me like I am. For him, I am the only sugar around. I may be hard as soft water taffy — needing to be chewed and kneaded and worked before the prize. I may be lemony and sour and sharp on his tongue before he works to the smooth sweetness. But still I’m his sugar and he’ll take me in any form.

But oh sugar child – oh sugar mama. Oh baby baby baby, I’m talking to myself now. I’m pleading that I full bodied KNOW the sweetness that I am and give into it just a little. That I soften like caramel and spread the richness for myself and anyone who wants a taste.

Too much? I hope so. It’s no vow broken.  It’s just warm and revealed and flush and available. It’s me –daring– to BE the deliciousness of life- not stand outside of it growing grey, not crumple in with the weight, not limit the freedom of the fullest juiciest offering.

Sugar sugar. I marvel at how life floods us at unexpected moments with a texture we are hungry for and asks us to bathe in it for a time — how life lets us place our hand in an old pocket only to find a much loved pebble to rub reminding our straying selves of something delectable we’ve forgotten.

Because baby. Because sugar. The sweetness of life is real. And I am tired of looking through the candy store window. I want to press my face against the glass and feel its cool hard smoothness. And I want to eye every sweet thing that I want to be mine– and I want to and I will baby sweet baby, walk through the door and roll in it. I will walk through the door shedding every bit of grey and color my body with sweetness, tootsie pop. I will dip my finger into every soft colored powder and suck. Because I am tired of a pinched, drawn face and the weight I carry.

Call me cotton candy. Call me sugar love. Call me raw. But call me. Because I want to be called and consumed and asked to give it all. And I want to give it all without flinching, without closure. I want to open like a candy wrapper with all the anticipation and willingness to be torn every which way so that all that sweetness just IS– just IS.

Sugar. Love. Know this, I’m good chocolate. I’m the best. I’m silky and I’m smooth and my taste lingers. I’ve just been a little shy and a pinch preoccupied. And it’s taken a life time of playing Candy Land to remember that every spot is sweet on the way and there’s nothing to do but give into it. Sugar. Sugar. Love.

And being all grown up is boring. Being all grown up doesn’t leave room for the daily trip to the Stop n’ Go with a quarter in your pocket. I’ve got a quarter in my pocket and I’m spending it NOW — and I’m choosing carefully– a wide wide variety of YUM because I’ve been hungry for too long. But guess what. Dreamsicle. I’m the candy too. And every bite I take of sweetness, I’m licked by love like a mama cat. And sugar. I want to be soft and willing and ready. And I am. Sugar love. I am.

It’s fair to say that anyone (and that anyone happens to be me) that creates a grass roots campaign called “Hello Love” must have a fair degree of innocent optimism or a refusal to look at the tough stuff. It’s fair to say that such using such a phrase — “hello love” — may be inviting trouble, horribly ignorant or imbued with PollyAnna. It’s fair to say these things. But it’s a little too easy. It’s a little too easy to dismiss.

Call me innocent. Call me naive. Call me foolish. But let me talk to you about something that cannot be named that threads its way through all living things, that unceasingly pours into and onto our planet benevolently, beneficently. Let me talk to you about something that instantaneously melts obstruction, that imbues a glance with the power to unfold something that is folded in on itself. Let me tell you about tears that flow because this palpable SOMETHING has found itself pulsing in a body opening all the doors and windows that have been closed for far too long. Let me tell you about a force that protects, enlivens, encourages, emboldens– for which there is no match. Let me touch you with this SUCHNESS, this balm that softens every rigid place, that makes room for the bloom, that calms the savageness that can reign within us.

Let me whisper that all our self hatred, all our hard edges, all our disgust is no match for this upstoppable radiance blasting through the darkest corners. Open a cellar door  when the sun is shining and see the darkest dark revealed. Sweep out the corners in the light of day. Marvel that what felt horrifying with all the doors closed now begins to look just a bit shriveled and sad.

Have you read a poem that pierced your heart?
Have you heard music that softened ever hard place inside you?
Has someone ever touched you in a way that healed years of pain?

I want to greet that, grow that, acknowledge that mystery moving in each of us. I want to  consider that we ARE that fundamentally, that we are composed of this essential force.

Look, everyday I struggle with my own form of darkness. Every day I witness that struggle in others. There are those who have suffered horrifying loss, who live in poverty, who have been perhaps irreparably wounded. But this force, this well spring, this ongoing flow is ever present and offers instantaneous healing when acknowledged, shared, exchanged.

Are we too cynical to embrace the purity of this ongoing downpour of grace?

Turn a corner.
Take a breath.
Listen to the subtle.
Choose to lean in.
Stay longer.
Offer more.
Greet what is good.

Every moment.
Every breath.
Every chance you get.

I’ve just returned from facilitating another Radiant Life Retreat in Ojai. We dove deep and broke through to some new ground. What moved me deeply was the moment each woman chose to bust through into into territory. Can you imagine what it takes for a seedling to burst through the soil after winter? These women summoned everything they had to get a glimpse of the light. Now  as the sun moves into Aries (it moved in at 10:15 pm pacific time Monday night), we all get a chance to enter new and stimulating territory in our lives.

We are welcoming Spring in our lives — as we do each year. And each year we get to leave a little something behind that no longer serves us so we can travel lighter and brighter. Both the shedding of winter and the embrace of Spring require DARING. We ask ourselves,”Can I live without that?” Or “If I really dare to launch, spring forth, break through, will it take hold? Will I thrive in the new land?”

Aries’ gift is daring. Sometimes it moves forward too impulsively or with too much effort, but when we ride the energy of Aries with grace, we have the capacity to summon on troupes, march forward, break through and be the pioneer of our own unexplored horizon. It’s inspiring to others. It’s inspiring for ourselves.

At its best, Aries seeds bold new ideas that will grow something worthwhile for all humanity. Aries comes forth with the power of the mind and says, “What about this, mankind? Have you considered THIS.” It offers THE NEW — served up (at times) with a little bravado, strut and a wink that says, ‘and I did it all by myself.”

Of course as an Aries grows and matures, he learns that nothing can be done alone and that while his part may be to plunge in with gusto, he’ll need a ton of support to see it through, to tend and grow his initial brilliant idea into a fully formed YES. Libras are great allies for Aries as they know how to choose wisely, work together and take the necessary time.

This month– daring ones–breathe in hope, innocence and chutzpah. If you have been hesitating, PLUNGE. If you have been sad, diligently search for a little spring in your heart and tend it lovingly. If you have an idea and have been brewing for a time, THE TIME IS NOW to ignite it, spark it, fire it up and send it out.

Come forth, my friends, with what you have to offer. Give your gift. You are, after all, the only one to give it.

Big love.

A POEM FOR ARIES

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O’Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

I’m the QUEEN of weighing things. And no– not apples, my body or gold pieces on a scale. I deliberate. I equivocate. I see-saw. I lean this way and then that. And I do it with gusto. I’m not a wishy-washy weigher. I am a warrior of indecision. I run like a wild thing into a fork in the road.

Take today. I have been on a solo retreat in Ojai– something I am wont to do as frequently as I am able. I am staying in the studio where I teach my retreats. I love staying here. I have been alone for about 48 hours with an occasional smile for a barista or a quick call home. It has been deliciously silent and I’ve been crazy productive. I’ve also been soft and receiving and organically letting each moment lead to the next. I am happy and remarkably PRESENT.

But tonight, a small group of my dear girlfriends are gathering for a slumber party. It’s an important gathering because one of the gatherers is from New York and just here for a quick visit. I am, of course, supposed to be there. I am very much supposed to be there.

But I am here.

How did this happen? Did I double book? Did I blur? Did I not quite think things through? All of these are true and irrelevant. Tonight, I am scheduled to be two places simultaneously. And thus my warrior of indecision has been quite active for the last number of hours.

Now. Let me fill you in on something else. This is not unusual. I’m often split. I’m never fully where I am, doing what I’m doing, because I’ve already moved on to what needs to be done next. Onward. Upward. Onward. Upward. It’s all exhale without replenishment.

I’m reading words on a page and simultaneously worrying about something at the house left unfinished. I’m driving and talking. I’m eating and making lists. I’m meeting a friend and worrying about another. I’m getting a massage and planning my retreat. I’m waking up on a Sunday when nothing need happen and I’m urgently–suddenly–urgently needing NOT to sit and eat pancakes with the kids but instead clean out and organize the basement. I’m moving 24-7. Relentlessly. AND, nothing is fully, deeply, happily absorbed.

But earlier today, while I was doing yoga via a tele class with Sofia Diaz, we were in a pose called ‘Chi Generation.’  I always have to come out of it several times before she wants us to — skittish about the intensity, certain I can’t make it.  But today, I stayed there. I stayed put. My legs were quivering. My heart was pounding. My arms were aching. I was miserable and ecstatic. And then I noticed that I happened to be standing just in the spot where I sit when I teach. And I thought, here I am seeing this through. Here I am staying put when I feel like my body can’t last another moment. Here I am radically, bodily facing my edge when I know I’ll be sitting in that very spot asking others to do the same in just a few weeks.  And I KNOW I looked awkward and ridiculous and in pain but I stayed.

And then I noticed that I stayed.
I noticed that I made the decision to stay.
I noticed that I stopped asking myself whether I should come out of the pose and just decided it was where I needed to be.
I noticed that I fully, deeply, happily absorbed that experience.

I love learning through the body. I love that staying in that pose awakened  strength and  clarity within me.

So for tonight, though I can feel the pull of gorgeous friendship and a giddy sleepover, I am staying put. I know my time here is not complete. If I left now, I would be running on to the next thing, trying to fit everything in without feeling the fullness of what I have been building in the stillness of these last two days and perhaps without confronting what comes up as I truly see this through.

There are remnants of fear and restlessness and really? really? really? in my head as my body is used to moving on. And there are whispers of doubt and worry that I’m letting loved ones down. But as I sit here and write with the sun setting over the mountains, my body knows it’s staying. My body knows it has to stay. I’ve left the fork in the road and have begun to listen to the bird calls and the whisper of the trees on the path I’ve chosen. My body is softening. My breathing is deep. I’ve arrived in a singular moment. Here. Now. Complete.

My yoga teacher, Sofia Diaz, recently described the difference between intensity and pain in our daily practice. She said intensity was like a low hum in the body, stretching us to our limits and asking us to let go into something greater than ourselves. Pain is sharp and sudden and an obvious indication we should stop what we are doing. Many of us mistake intensity for pain. We pull back when we should drop further in.

A heart ache is an opportunity to ride intensity, to drop in, to open still further. Our hearts ache when the radiance and potency of the heart meet something other than unbounded love. Our heart’s ache because the intensity of our love is met with something we perceive as other than that love. It is in the moment that the heart’s fierce gift meets obstruction that our greatest thresholds can be crossed.

How many of us give up on love because it’s embarrassing or raw or too revealing? How many of us pull back from an another’s eyes afraid to stay too long or afraid what another will think or how we ourselves will react? How many of us make our love ‘nice’ instead or letting it flow like the wild and powerful river it is?

We welcome the sign of Pisces today at 10:18 pm pacific time. This is the final sign of the zodiac. It is a sign of culmination and synthesis. It wraps up the zodiacal year and asks us to leave behind what we do not wish to carry into the next cycle. In many ways, it is a month of surrender — a surrender into a greater love.

Let us remember that the heart can ache as it witnesses exquisite beauty. It can ache as it registers a remarkable act of love or compassion. It can ache because it wants to learn to love ever more. And the month of Pisces is a month to learn to love bigger, deeper, wider, with less boundary, with less reserve. It’s a month to stand open and willing to be touched. It’s a month to choose intimacy rather than escape. And remember– intimacy can be felt as you order your coffee in the morning or as you thank someone for packing your groceries. It’s a choice about how you connect moment to moment.

This month, take the phrase “the eyes are a window to the soul” as a real and tangible truth — and meet the gaze of many. Look deeper. Love more. Let go of all (at least some?) of the emotional baggage or accounts you’ve been carrying. Put them down. Walk lighter. Uplift those you meet. Redeem what you can. Stand in a rain of grace and invite others in.

***

A poem for Pisces

by Samantha Reynolds of www.Bentlily.com

Love is Not Fragile

Who taught you
to be sparing
with your love

as though your heart was a bank
as though love could dry up

nonsense

it is as if the ocean complained
it was too
wet

love is not fragile
it is as common as breath

it is play money
it is a race
to give more

go first
say it with impunity

you think you will ache
with vulnerability
but the strangest thing will happen

you will nearly drown
with peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkePop5BU1Y

Can’t See the Video? Don’t worry. Click here…

http://youtu.be/pkePop5BU1Y

Let me tell you about strength. Let me sing a love song. Here at the center of my life I am falling in love with my body growing stronger. I punch, kick, push, run my way into a spaciousness I never knew existed. I am innocent in this land. I am IN love. I am curious. I am proud. I’m not holding anyone or anything. Instead I am reveling in the perfect jab-cross 1-2  that carries the whole of my strength out into space — impacting someone, impacting something. And I am unafraid. And I am present. And I am delighted.

So this freshness is a playing field for my careful little girl self– who by the way — loved to stand on her head for hours — and sometimes on the sidewalk just to prove how strong she was– perhaps indicating there was a quiet intuition of what was to flower much later. But this field. And this flowering. And this innocence.

And yesterday, I ran half a mile, hurled a kettle bell above my head 45 times, held that same weight and stretched forward into space lifting my leg as high as I was able — striking a balance — holding the weight and then from downward dog, dipped into push- ups that mostly found me flat on the floor unable to push through — but push through I did 30 times. And my arms were shaking. And I was good. I’m good. Good. And could I kick up to a hand stand. Yes. Yes. I can. I will. I’ll try.

And it was this moment — this moment of run and kick and lift off — when my little girl self leapt inside my woman, mother, lover self and together suspending for a moment in time –there was nothing but innocent abandon. And then together — as friends collapse on a couch, as lovers fall to one another after a long separation, as mother and daughter curl in on one another unable to distinguish where one begins and ends — we collapsed. My arms gave way and we smashed to earth.

But can I tell you how we were held with such love? We were witnessed in our collapse. Our arms had quite literally failed and it was okay. It was more than okay. It was an invitation NOT to get it right. And as I always laugh and cry at the same time, I did both, bathed in  innocence.  A little girl laughing. A little girl crying at last. My wise self breathing. Exhaling. My growing self recognizing that nothing and everything had changed. It was a divine failure ripping open the gates of possibility.

Today, my arms are still quivering. My heart is raw in the best way. I’m curious. I’m in love. I’m willing. I’m sloppy. I’m ready to let it rip.

Thank you all for your readership, encouragement and support on this Radiant Life Journey!
Big love!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXeH6rdd5g4