Losing one's grip: the potential for Authority leads to Valor
NEW Moon in Aries + Chiron: Gate 21
“The best fighter is never angry.” “Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.
Lao Zi
03.29.2022. AM
Aries the spark
Initiating, the anxiety of separation, desires, freedom, the warrior, the narcissist, the destroyer, paranoia, violence, the self, instinct, primal instinct, independence, anger, rage… It’s primal energy; what it wants is to separate and start initiating a new experience. It is quite subjective and has no mind. It also has no sense of construction, there’s nothing built-in this raw energy, it just wants to go out and be. It is constantly becoming.
There is a desire to live, to start, to be, and to explore. When there is conflict, there could be rage. Emotions are very important to understand what the body and the mind and the self need at this moment– so emotions are like the GPS. There is an emotional paradox between I am and you are. Too much isolation vs. too much interaction socially will give a sense of loss to the sense of self. Keeping that instinct very close to the desire is what Aries and Mars, 1st house energy, is all about. The point about anger is that it is something that is projected upon others, the environment, or a situation or a thing. It is the source of a personal limitation that typically creates a negative and destructive outcome or even personal degeneration because the person doesn’t understand that the limitations or restrictions are actually a reflection of the need to move forward in life. There could be fear about moving; it could feel like a lack of courage– and this inner limitation is creating a restriction towards something that could potentially be growing.
When the anger is channeled in a constructive or positive way, the person could respond to this energy by looking at the limitation or block as a way toward creating a relationship and putting into motion a new desire, a new evolutionary cycle. It is very important to understand how the energy of anger relates physically and emotionally within the body. It is sometimes triggered when we encounter a ‘no’ or when our personal freedoms or independence is limited. It’s important to see this situation as something where one can pause, and take some time, and a deep breath or a couple of deep breaths, to see what it is that is stopping the energy from flowing so we don’t start projecting this anger, blaming the circumstance or person for something that actually needs to be redirected. It’s a question of channeling the energy, in a specific way toward a specific outcome, whether it’s a creative endeavor or a physical action. You can go out and run or swim, or prepare something, or sit down and write about what you’re feeling. This anger needs an outlet, and when it doesn’t have an outlet, it can become rage and it can become very destructive.
The feeling of anger is a great fuel for initiating something new; it is exactly the amount of the element of fire that is needed to warm something up, to propel it towards creation.
Shadow work
Triggers are very important when doing shadow work; the trigger, the thing that is making me feel upset, and angry, is the entry point. Let’s say you have a sensation that is a very big frustration because something or someone is doing something that is not making you feel happy, or wholesome. Instead of looking at the thing or the person and blaming this thing or this person that is making you feel uncomfortable, then you pause, stop, take deep breaths, hum–basically you take some space to look at that trigger in yourself, and first of all name it. You name the emotion, and say, “Oh, this is the way that it feels to be angry.” Then you kind of give space to that and you can actually start describing the emotion– what color it is, where is it located in the body, does it have a direction, a taste, texture… Describe as though you were you’re on the phone and someone can’t see you, and you’re trying to relay how this anger is inside of the body. This is the right moment to observe how the anger is either constrained or able to find a channel. And so the energy is going to arise whether there’s a channel or not - and without a channel it’s going to be detonated, inflicting more danger in the situation. Then you can start understanding that probably when you are projecting onto the other, then you can change the pronoun into I and you can say the same things that you were saying about how this anger made you feel and make them yours.
Then you probably realize that what you’re doing is projecting something onto others something that is actually missing in you, or that you need to integrate. Because what you see is making you feel frustrated, it’s something that you have not yet been able to integrate, allow, embrace, or synthesize within you.
Anger is very important in shadow work because, in order to really understand what is happening to me in shadow work, I need to be aware of what is in front of me, [Mars - Aries - 1st House] and that’s the archetype that is opposing, [Libra - Venus, 7th house]. It is through the reflection, the projection, that I can actually be aware of the surface and in shadow work, it’s about noticing the triggers and noticing not why they’re happening, or what’s causing them, it’s actually allowing that emotion to be felt within my own experience, my body, and then when space is given, some insights can start emerging. It’s like almost like a bellow–you start breathing out, so you have more space inside, and then you breathe in, it squeezes air back in, and then you’re allowing air out, and in that movement of the bellow, it’s almost like what emerges from that space and time, and the frequency, is something new that is allowing space for it to be, in a different light, in a different sensation. So when we’re doing shadow work, it is always perceived from the I, from Aries, like I am, ego eimai, εγω ειμαι in Greek means ‘I am. This perception of the ‘I’ needs the perception of the ‘you are’ - you are at the other side. I can see myself through you. I can relate to you. So it is in that relationship that shadow work needs to emerge to be synthesized, it is how it emerges and I’ll go about this further in other posts.
03.29.2022. PM
How I know anger
I’m going to talk about rage, anger, and frustration that can lead to resentment if it’s contained and not expressed. I know this emotion well. If I were to say that there’s an emotion always underneath my core, it’s anger. I started having a very wholesome relationship to it because it’s not about suppressing it, but learning to tame it, to pet it, instruct it, not to behave, but to be channeled in ways that make it meaningful and supportive.
Now, it’s kind of interesting to tame or to pet an instinct, especially when this instinct, this energy, just wants to be out there, it’s the most primal energy and it wants to rise up and shoot up to the sky. It is the energy that if it finds any kind of constraint, it’s not going to be fun for anybody. If it’s a wall, it’s going to try to break it; if there’s fire around, it’s going to try to burn; if there are words, it’s going to try to express it in a mean way. So it’s important to understand what this energy wants, what it is trying to initiate, to open up, to find what is new, and interesting, and to follow, investigate, and explore.
It’s very exploring energy. But if there are other issues, situations, or persons, that have not been taken care of, this energy can be very destructive. It is extremely creative, but it can be extremely destructive–especially if we pair it with other emotions that have been suppressed. And when the inner work has not been done, then it can lead to sometimes lethal situations. No wonder this is the emotion that rules conflict or Πόλεμος Pólemos; ‘polemic’, a Greek daemon; a divine personification or embodiment of war. When things are not clear and we cannot speak, or find a middle ground, then there is war. Then there is a strategy to try to destroy the other, first by warning, and then by just surviving.
So how is that reflected in my life? Well, obviously, in relationships… and I said obviously because I tend to have a relationship towards anger that is expressed outwards. I do not self-harm, and I don’t inflict pain on myself, so I tend to just shoot out. It’s very instinctive– my natal Mars it’s in its own sign, Aries, in my 3rd house, so a lot of the anger comes from the inability to express something that I consider important. It has a supportive aspect in my chart, a sextile, 60 degrees with Venus that is in Gemini in the 5th house. So basically it allows me constantly initiate any creative endeavor to actually communicate something that is important to me.
I have always had that support, not only within myself, but within my family or wherever I was surrounded, I always felt that I had the support to be able to communicate creatively what is important to me, and because of that, I have learned to have a wonderful relationship with that anger. I’m not saying that I have succeeded all the time, no, especially if I find that that anger is being constrained by other things that I did not pay attention to, like attachments or codependencies, but that’s another subject matter, right now we talk about the raw energy of anger.
Current transits:
This week we’re going to have a new moon in Aries, and that energy is very potent because the Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Chiron are going to be all together, willing to express this raw primal energy of initiating. The Sun shines a light while the moon dimmed Persona supports Mercury asking Chiron if the wounded part of us, is acting on the triggers that come from our most vulnerable, and still unintegrated, parts, that do not feel like our true light can be seen.
We have potent energy right now that is saying, “Hey, I am here! These desires that I have are important for me to express!” And by the way, I’m not going to think about them, I’m just going to initiate them, and hopefully, I won’t find any energy that is going to be restrictive of that, because if I do, then there are two ways this can go (also because Mars the ruler of the new moon is going to be very close to Saturn, in Aquarius, squaring the lunar nodes and that Chiron near the Sun in Aries will make it feel like if I don’t do my way, there’s gonna be war.
One is that it will be too much for me, and I’m gonna retreat, I’m gonna fade off, without the courage to state my needs, to do what I want to do. The other is a clash for control. It’s very important that you choose where your energies are coming from – are they coming towards you, because you’re not acting, or are you initiating them because it is a way to break free from other situations that you did not know how to deal with?
The potential of the energies spells a trauma response as the “slap” we take or give when anger finds the “courage” to be expressed with violence after a long period of repression or abuse.
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