Power Plays and Blow Ups? I'd Rather Go Surfing....

Welcome to the Jupiter-Pluto square - coming to a family dining room near you just in time to talk politics with relatives, and kicking off nine months of growth and transformation!

Oh, you thought the swirling energies would ease up just for a bit?  Well, as Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor."

Life would be pretty dull if everything was easy, now wouldn't it?  Who would we be without "the struggle"?  What would we do with ourselves?  What would we do with ourselves if we weren't putting so much energy into people pleasing, or being offended, or being afraid, or being angry, or being righteous, or being critical, or devaluing ourselves, or being hurt, or being resentful, or defending ourselves against ever imminent betrayal and abandonment?  What would we do without our projection and blame and victimhood and martyrdom and prostitution?  What would we do if we weren't so busy making everything and everyone around us wrong?

Or maybe it really could be easy.  It could be as easy as just letting all of that go and not going down that same old worn out tired neural pathway. It could be as easy as letting go of that painful story that has really overstayed its welcome, that has slowly siphoned your life force and pulled you out of your personal power.  Maybe you can actually catch those waves and surf them, using them to your advantage, capitalizing on their astounding power and wild beauty, and not take each wave as the ocean's malicious attack on you. Because after all, we know the ocean's waves will do what they do, and we are the ones who are responsible for learning how to navigate those waters.  A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.

Pluto is at work again.  Actually he hasn't stopped.  Planets don't just take vacations, but we are now setting up for another period of specific energetic intensity.  Pluto is about halfway through his transit of Capricorn, which began in 2008.  Pluto, who destroys in order to transform.  Pluto, who will expose the ugliest truth to get us to wake up and make changes.  Pluto, who will go to any length and present the most hellish circumstances of power trips, greed, abuse, and loss in order to bring us to a point where we must dig deep within and find our truth and strength and power and rise up.  Pluto knows that in the darkest depths can shine the brightest light.  

In Capricorn, Pluto is at work exposing rotten foundations and the ugly truth in...you may have already guessed...the areas of large systems and structures, like politics, financial systems, governments and large corporations.  This began in 2008 and we are just about halfway through it now. 

Just recently, Jupiter moved out of its year long transit of Virgo and into Libra for a year long tour of the sign of love, peace, justice, harmony, diplomacy and cooperation.  Jupiter's influence is to expand, exaggerate, magnify, and grow whatever it touches.  So Jupiter in Libra will hopefully, ultimately, be about growing our ability to be cooperative, harmonious, fair, and diplomatic. But this is a year-long transit and many times we have to grow into things. Sometimes it takes us a few lessons and some hands-on experience to integrate a new skill.

Pluto is digging into the very heart of Capricorn at the moment.  He is churning up the underbelly of the beast and exposing nasty things, much like when you rip up the ancient wall-to-wall carpeting you thought you were keeping so clean and finally see what's been lurking beneath it.  How is it that this piece of your home and foundation - something you literally touch every day - is this disgusting when you peek beneath its soft surface?

Meanwhile Jupiter is bounding through harmony-loving Libra.  Libra, in its desire to create peace and harmony and be liked, can tend to over give and gloss things over.  Sometimes Libra loses its boundaries and loses integrity in order to avoid conflict.  Unchecked, Jupiter's emphasis on exaggeration could see us sacrificing integrity and truth for cooperation and compromise to our detriment.  The idea of justice may be the higher octave here. How to achieve peace and harmony and justice through cooperation and compromise without losing integrity?  

Because Jupiter is about to hit a four-way stop with Pluto, and it could be one of those frustrating scenarios where no one goes and then everyone tries to go at the same time and it takes a little more effort to work out.  

Pluto can be subversive power plays.  Jupiter is exaggeration.  In the end (this won't be ending until August 4th, 2017), it would be lovely to see justice and harmony achieved through us stepping into our own personal power, and using that power appropriately.  But while we are learning, we may see both ends of the spectrum before finding the middle path.

Pluto was discovered in 1930, as the popularity of depth psychology was on the rise and also this was when the atomic bomb was developed.  Pluto can stir that kind of dark energy.  The ultimate power play.  Skip the discussion, the negotiation; you're going to end this right here right now, because you have the weaponry and you're just crazy enough to do it. Jupiter can take whatever we get caught up in and blow it way out of proportion.  Jupiter says ya, well, I have bigger better weaponry - dare me to do it first.  And then you're both left holding your bombs and if either of you actually do what you are threatening then no one will win, because everything will be destroyed.

And thinking back, how did this all begin in the first place?  Something was said or done, and then out of being hurt, or angry, or afraid, or whatever it was, someone made a power play, that may or may not have been a bluff, but now where are we at? Is this what either party ever actually wanted?

So it really could be a struggle.

Or it actually could be easy.  Because you could let go of it all and surf that wave and not get caught in Pluto's undertow.  And that means digging within yourself and knowing when you are reacting and you're starting to get pulled down into that whirlpool.  It means gaining awareness of yourself.  It means minding your own business.  It means stepping out of the fray.  It means releasing the need to win or be right or attachment to any specific personal outcome, because it doesn't actually mean anything about you.  They are just waves in the ocean, and you could probably have a pretty good time surfing them. 

​Time to go pro.