posted March 21, 2007 11:49 PM         

I WANT to be less the cynic and more the hopeful optimist, but it is so darn difficult!

posted March 22, 2007 12:00 AM         

"Beware of the fury of the patient man."

-- John Dryden

Our minds perceive and give relative value - positive and negative - to the different sides of a duality. We usually shun the negative.

It’s important to know that you cannot eliminate the negative by focusing exclusively on the positive. Energetically, both opposites must remain in balance. Increase one and its opposite will also increase. Try to be only positive and the negative within you will raise its ugly head.

We work with dualities by remembering that each is part of the whole. We must acknowledge and accept all aspects of life, because they all exist within us. And so, if we seek to be honest, we do so by acknowledging our potential to be dishonest. We can also bring in love and compassion when we catch ourselves acting out the negative.

Power arises out of integrating the positive and negatives within us. From the tension that exists between the two, we develop awareness and become more conscious and compassionate.

"Any fool can run towards the light. It takes a master with courage to turn and face the darkness and shine his own light there."

-- Leslie Fieger - author of the Delfin Knowledge System

posted March 22, 2007 12:37 AM         

I am a cap, and i knw only too well about those blues.

what i do is listen to some sad songs. watch a heartbreaking movie. in short, make myself cry!! once i have cried, i feel like a weight lifts off my heart. and then very soon i am back to normal. if i dont do this, the mood can last for very long.

this works in the case of those 'unexplained' blues. where the sadness accumulates bit by bit, and i dont even realize it. so i can't say exactly wht tipped the scales, it happens so slowly.

but if it is something big, then it helps to talk it out with friends/family.

does tht help ?

posted March 22, 2007 12:52 AM         

"If you had a friend who talked to you like you sometimes talk to yourself, would you continue to hang around with that person?"

-- Rob Bremer

Thanks to the power of our inner critics, most of us have a very poor opinion of ourselves. Yet self-contempt merely keeps us miserable and stuck in our mediocrity.

If we were to make only one change to transform the quality of our lives, we might try sending a little love our own way.

"A critic is a legless man who teaches running."

-- Channing Pollock

"Unkind criticism is never part of a meaningful critique of you. Its purpose is not to teach or to help, its purpose is to punish."

-- Barbara Sher

"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

-- Buddha

posted March 22, 2007 04:29 AM         

I hv a nagging suspicion that saturn transits feel much heavier to us saturn ppl

When things get rough, take a deep breath, and say to yourself...'This too shall pass.'

Ohhh one sec, don't u have a Leo asc too?!!! Is saturn hovering anywhr near your ASC ???? or even your first house ???

Lemme know and then i'll get out some coping strategies from my repertoire....

posted March 22, 2007 09:58 AM         

I thought perhaps I needed to boost my self-esteem and I went around online taking all kinds of self-esteem quizes...turns out, my self-esteem isn't too bad at all! I don't have much problem liking myself, but I doubt everything! That's where my negativity stems from. I always seem to see the worst case scenario. "What if," is my life motto I think. You've given me some great suggestions and I have tried some of those...but I just can't find the right fix to lift my spirits.

ILWL, I think you're right about Saturn effecting us Caps possibly worse than others. I'm not in my return yet...that will happen this fall (looking sooo forward to it). But Saturn has been squaring my Venus for a while now. I don't think that has made things too rosy and pretty for me. My ascendant is in 1 deg. Leo...so I don't think it's conjunct at the moment...

posted March 22, 2007 10:38 AM         

I used to have a very low self esteem, though judging from my actions, not many people would have guessed that. It is this thing for perfection that we cappies have. we are never satisfied with ourselves in the truest sense of the word. we always want to 'improve'. and while that is a noble aspiration, it has the accompanying risks of us feeling worthless from time to time.

Another big thing is guilt, and i so identify with that. guilt is a big issue with me. there is always something i cud have done better. and it is so deeply ingrained, that sometimes i don't even realize it is happening.

Saturn squaring your venus, eh? doesn't sound too good to me. esp since it is in your 1st house too right now. trust me, saturn transits to the asc are hard. when mine happened, i had two at almost the same time, since my sun is conj my DC. the effects of both r so similar, that now i don't know for sure what was due to sat conj Asc, and what was due to saturn opp Sun. But i do know, that i crashed. i totally lost my confidence in myself, and had to rebuild it from scratch on a different basis. this time not based on what i had accomplished, what i hoped to do, or even what i believed in.

i'll be back with more....

posted March 22, 2007 11:16 AM         

Yeah, to feel depressed, to feel lost, to feel sad all we need is a victim mentality. to be happy, to be successful, to be our SELF - we need to assume the RESPONSIBILITY and that means ACTIONS, taking action and taking right actions, which is more often than not,is not what lot many people want and hence we consider ourselves to be the fallen ones.

posted March 22, 2007 11:51 AM         

"It is always your next move."

-- Napoleon Hill

The great benefit of heightened awareness is that we have more choice in how we live our lives. At any moment, we can purposefully choose a new experience for ourselves. We can choose to pay attention, breathe more deeply, laugh, rest, play, appreciate, do something different - the possibilities are endless.

Whenever you remember, TAKE YOURSELF OFF AUTO-PILOT and really examine your situation. Take charge and make a choice that will enrich your experience. At the end of the day, reflect on what happened and how you felt when you chose a new line of thought, feeling or action.

"We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us -- how we can take it, what we do with it -- and that is what really counts in the end."

-- Joseph Fort Newton

"When a defining moment comes along, you can do one of two things. Define the moment, or let the moment define you."

-- Tin Cup (the movie)

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

-- Neil Peart

posted March 22, 2007 12:40 PM         

Rock on and keep smiling

posted March 22, 2007 01:20 PM         

-From Professional Life Coach, Kathy Gates:

Feeling good about your life involves just 2 parts. Really! One is to learn to think about yourself in healthy ways. This is a learned skill, ladies and gentlemen, not something that a lucky few were born with. The second involves "making things happen". Seeing yourself being successful - at anything! - builds the blocks of contentment.

Use these 10 ideas to help you feel good about your life, starting today.

1. Never stop questioning. Every time you feel frustrated with a task, ask yourself, "How does this task fit in with my ultimate goals?" "How can I do this better, faster, easier, simpler, and even more fun?"

2. Don't give up on life. Be interested and curious about yourself and about others. Don't assume that's "just the way it is". Look for the choices behind your results.

3. Accept your weakness. Don't deceive yourself by thinking you're the only one with difficulties in their life. Everybody has them (yes, everybody!). Instead of spending your time and energy trying to "overcome" your weakness, make friends with it and make it work for you. Where would NYPost Columnist Liz Smith be without her "weakness" for gossip?

4. Don't stop learning. The brain is a muscle just like any other, and it will stagnate if you let it. Make it your rule to learn something new every day. Then USE what you learn to make your life better.

5. Expect nothing; expect the best. Paradox? No. It just means that you don't want to miss out on what's wonderful in your life right now, while you spend all your time peeking around the next corner.

6. Don't lie to yourself.. Telling lies to yourself is the most harmful form of disrespect. Write out ways in which you are untruthful to yourself, and how to correct it. "I will no longer pretend that overspending my budget is ok".

7. Nurture what you want to grow. Many many people are (figuratively) wondering where the roses are in their life, yet they spend all their time planting and nourishing weeds. You reap what you sow. That's just the way it is.

8. Don't live in the past. Let go of things that are draining you. There's nothing in the past that you can change or correct -- that can only be done in the present. Use Today. Today, change what you need to change, and move on to feeling good about your life.

9. Swim with the current. Don't waste your time complaining about what you can't control (weather, other people, economy). Concentrate on what you CAN control, like who you hug, what you read, how much you laugh, where you go, what you do, what you think about.

posted March 22, 2007 01:39 PM         

You really give us so much.

I want to ask you,

What do you think about teachers of affirmations,
like Louise Hay,
when they say that,
As we first begin practicing to bring "positivity" up,
it is like cleaning a dirty pan,
and the water gets all brown,
and we seem to be doing more harm than good,
just bringing all the "negative" up.

She says that most people give up at this point,
and talk about everything encouraging its opposite.
But, if we persist, pretty soon,
the "negative" is released and the positive is liberated.

What are your thoughts on this?

How about this one:

"Mankind, more than is realized, is an expression of the part of the
earth upon which he subsists. A rose of the West should not aspire to
bloom like a lotus of the East."

--Gareth Knight (the Rose Cross and
the Goddess)

hsc

posted March 22, 2007 01:57 PM         

Some really good questions there, and I would be delighted to answer them as best I can, soon. I will get back to this later tonite when I have a little more time to spend with you. Have to go for now but, look forward to tonite!!!! Body, mind and spirit need a little rest. I keep funny hours, so need some balancing!!!(Recharge)

Refresh!!!! LOL!!!!

posted March 22, 2007 02:51 PM         

Saturn Square Natal Venus: A transit that increases a lack of motivation in pursuing enjoyment. Socially ~ your efforts and determination to enjoy life bring you no happiness and/or fun. Boring and stifling social obligations. Communications ~ shallow efforts of flattery from you and towards you. Emotionally ~ feelings and issues concerning social and/or physical inferiority complexes. Attitude ~ self imposed isolation and reclusiveness. Low on activity and individual expression. Financial ~ moods of there's not enough - love and money and life is hard. Art is luxury Work ~ interference and possibly difficult choices between love or business. Relationships ~ extra responsibilities in romantic relationships. Relationships with excessive jealousy. Love ~ restrained from expressing love. Sometimes indicates a very depressing time regarding love and may end some relationships. Note ~ Those relationships that do survive - finds a new appreciation of their partner and the relationship grows to a more trusted and mature state.

posted March 22, 2007 03:11 PM         

I'll try not to offer an easy answers here. I do feel moved to try to say something, however incomplete. Clearly, there are so many dimensions of your experience which I cannot, and would not pretend to, relate to. But, just from your words, I feel that it is something I am familiar with in some degree. (Maybe its my Cappy Ascendant?) I totally recognize that this is an ongoing struggle for you, and what comes easy to some in this area comes much more difficult to you, just as many things come so much easier to you than to others. I'm sorry to be parrotting off cliches. I can see you are troubled, and I want to help, and its times like these I become very aware of my own inadequacies to offer assistance. I'm sorry to hear about your relationship ending. I'm not going to spout the usual cliches about that, except to say that, I know that, for sensitive people, with deep hearts (and people often forget how sensitive Saturn/Capricorn is, in its own, very reserved, profound, and deeply meaningful way), it takes a long time to get over emotional disconnections. Sometimes the best thing is just to have your situation recognized by someone, without having advice pushed on you right away. I know that much. So, just know that I can see, from however far away, that you are going through something major. I know that suffering hardens some people's hearts, and softens others, and I've never been able to discover what makes the difference. To say one positive thing, if I can, I have noticed that, frequently, when a very rough transit is happening in my life, if I look, I find there is usually a positive one going on at the same time, so, I try to put my attention and energies on that. Of course, this isnt always the case. Sometimes its just sh!twork. I'm just slightly encouraged to find you still posting and reaching out at this time. I know it must be tempting to retreat, when so many of the responses you get will be inadequate at this time. Thank you for opening up to us, and having faith that we might be able to help in some way. You said so many kind and understanding and wonderful things to me in the other thread. I'm so glad to see that in you at this time. I know it requires tremendous effort sometimes. I am familiar with Saturn transits to Venus, and the isolation that one feels. I'm going to try and find an excerpt I copied out once from Emerson's essay "On Experience". I think you could relate to it now. Anyway, I wish there was more I could say or do. "This too shall pass", etc., etc., etc.

Love,
HSC (Stephen)

posted March 22, 2007 03:18 PM         

"People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here at least we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into reality, for contact with which we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls never touch their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the tihings we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, -- no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principle debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me, -- neither better nor worse. So it is with this calamity; it does not touch me; something which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, There at least is a reality that will not dodge us.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fool and playmates. We may have the sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy. Direct strokes she never gave us power to make; all our blows glance, all our hits are accidents. Our relations to each other are oblique and casual.

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in their focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? Who cares what sensibility or discrimination a man has at one time shown, if he falls asleep in his chair? or if he laugh or giggle? or if he apologize? or is infected with egotism? or thinks of his dollar? or cannot go buy food? or has gotten a child in his boyhood? Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life? Of what use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the man does not care enough for results to stimulate him to experiment, and hold him up in it? or if the web is too finely woven, too irritable by pleasure and pain, so that life stagnates from too much reception without due outlet? Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them? What cheer can the religious sentiment yeild, when that is suspected to be secretly dependent on the seasons of the year and the state of the blood? I knew a witty physician who found the creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian. Very mortifying is the reluctant experience that some unfriendly excess or imbecility neutralizes the promise of genius. We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the account; or if they live they lose themselves in the crowd.

Temperament also enters fully into the system of illusions and shuts us in a prison of glass which we cannot see. There is an optical illusion about every person we meet. In truth they are all creatures of a given temperament, which will appear in a given character, whose boundaries they will never pass; but we look at them, they seem alive, and we presume there is impulse in them. In the moment it seems impulse; in the year, in the lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the music-box must play. Men resist the conclusion in the morning, but adopt it as the evening wears on, that temper prevails over everything of time, place and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of religion. Some modifications the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the individual texture holds its dominion, if not to bias the moral judgements, yet to fix the measure of activity and enjoyment.... Temperament puts all divinity to rout."

posted March 22, 2007 03:47 PM         

not tht i am putting the blame on a planet. what i mean to say is saturn transits bring out all our insecurities and fears and expose our most vulnerable side. your feelings of isolation and stagnation are very real.

I think it must hv started with saturn squaring your venus. that description of the transit sounds about right. where does your return occur? in the 2nd house ? i see a continuing theme....first it is sq venus, then it transits the 2nd house. money and material security might seem elusive. i can totally understand about reducing your expenditures thing. me too, getting my ducks in a row!! (my asc is 27 degree's cancer....so it is pretty close to yours...)...even tho i have stopped all unneccesary expenditures, money is just running out of my hands. it was very bad in end of last yr for me. since it went retrograde, there is a 'halt'. but i know tht it is going to come back. so yes, it might pay to be prudent at this time.

saturn opp moon is hard too...tht too after saturn sq venus. i think your emotional attitudes might go a sea change after saturn has worked on you. saturn will put chains around u temporarily, but when its over u will really be free. It will rid u of your own mental shackles.

Life Altering....i think you are right about that. At the end of it u will find yourself stripped of all tht is unnecessary and superficial. all the extra baggage tht u may hv been carrying up to now.

Think of it like a skydiving experience. scary, intense, and once u hv taken the plunge, you will never be the same again.

Cranky try to go deep down inside....and bring up your fears. i know u have already been trying to do tht. i was here when your breakup happened. i think u showed a lot of courage through it. but now is the time to revisit it and search for the real reasons. don't suppress things. talk it out. vent. write a journal.

it will be ok. we r here for you. i am here for you.

posted March 22, 2007 04:17 PM         

Thank you both so much for your kind words and encouragement. It means an awful lot to me coming from both of you, as I hold each of you in high regard.

This is tough...kind of feels like drowning in a way. Can't seem to keep my head above water, and if it is Saturn...well, looks like I won't be getting a breather for a long time!

I'm feeling such a strong push to get things in order that that is where all of my focus is, and my focus is selfish. I'm concentrating so hard on making my life right that I have lost interest in socialization of any kind. At the same time I have lost the joy that comes from interacting. Something just tells me it will be worth it in the end, but sacrifices have had to be made, and emotionally I have become numb.

posted March 22, 2007 04:17 PM         

quote:

---

I'm just feeling generally misunderstood right now, and there isn't anyone in my life that I can lean on for emotional support.

---

tht sounds like saturn too. my sister is going through a similar phase. I am very worried about her, even though I know she has the strength to make it through. She has saturn square moon going on right now, and when saturn moves into virgo, it would be conjuncting her venus.

oops, i just realized something....where is your moon? (i mean wht degree of pisces). Mine is at 7 degree gemini. so i hv a saturn sq moon coming up

posted March 22, 2007 04:22 PM         

quote:

---

One of the reasons I love this place so much is that I do feel that there are/will be people here who can understand me, or at least those who will try. And I know that many of you can offer advice based on your own life experiences and help me to become a more enlightened person myself.

---

tht's the way i feel about this place too

quote:

---

I'm feeling such a strong push to get things in order that that is where all of my focus is, and my focus is selfish.

---