Unconscious Knowing

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The voluptuous face of the Moon shines brightly impregnated with the radiant light of the Sun, and on Earth we see reflected back to us the fullness of our conscious awareness. This celestial event happens each month with the lunar phase of the Full Moon and each month we have the opportunity to face with conscious awareness some aspect of our unconscious knowing. I say “our unconscious knowing” because our unconscious has an intelligence which expresses itself indirectly in the same way that the radiance of the Sun’s harsh light is filtered through the softened glow of the Moon. On July 18 the Moon reaches fullness in Capricorn, and while a Capricorn Moon is traditionally not an easily expressed Moon because our emotions often feel as if they are being held hostage and shackled in a cold dank dungeon, the grace of a Capricorn full Moon is that the Sun is in Cancer, the sign under ruler ship of the Moon, offering us conscious illumination of a long ago hidden fear.

Capricorn has the astrological reputation for being tough and insensitive focusing our attention on self-discipline and hard work leading us toward leadership in our community and material achievement. These are not the first concerns of the Moon, that aspect in ourself which is seeking emotional containment within the cloistered walls of a protective womb. From the perspective of our Moon the external world can be cold, harsh, and indifferent to our vulnerability and because Capricorn forces our attention toward the harsher realities of life we could experience resistance to the gift being offered us from this full Moon.

When under the influence of Capricorn we are acutely aware of our personal contribution to creating the life that we are living which can be a very painful realization if we have disowned the nasty bits of ourselves and projected them onto the behavior of others. When this happens we feel that we are at the mercy of the decisions and actions of others. The gift of a Capricorn full Moon is helping us nourish our nasty bits so that we can integrate what we cut off long ago into a self- realized wholeness capable of accepting personal responsibility for our emotional needs without feeling abandoned. The feeling of emotional abandonment that many of us feel is the original abandoning of the nasty bits of ourselves that we felt for one reason or another were not lovable or worthy of care and today manifest as our fears of rejection, isolation, loneliness.

An insightful astrologer from Real Astrology pointed out this week that being a cardinal earth sign Capricorn is a receptive feminine energy sharing a common interest with the Moon; both giving form and substance to our lives. The only resistance we may have to walking arm and arm with this Capricorn Moon is our resistance to accepting responsibility for our emotional well being, which is not the same thing as rejecting our emotional well being, which is a familiar expression of a Capricorn Moon. What I am proposing is that if we work together with this Full Moon, and Capricorn loves work, then this month can bring us our much sought after emotional security and maturity knowing that we are responsible for our emotional well being and not our beloved. This Full Moon offers us a cycle of completion, both the Sun and Moon are void of course in the late degrees of Cancer and Capricorn, and it may feel that nothing is being accomplished on the outside purposefully forcing us to look at the inside.