July 9-10 – Cancer New Moon at 18°
6:16 pm PDT (1:16 am GMT)
Cancer new moons are special because Cancer is ruled by the Moon.
The Cancer archetype is about experiencing safety and finding our comfort zone by connecting to our earthly home, family, and our inner womb.
This new moon is supported by all the outer planets, which work at a subtle level to influence and orchestrate every step of our lives. The Cancer new moon is trine (easy and flowing) Neptune in Pisces, sextile (supportive) Uranus in Taurus, and opposite (confrontational) Pluto in Capricorn. Outer planets aspects come with a sense of destiny. We feel Divine forces guiding us. There is a sense of magic as things unfold and fall into place.
A New Cycle
Each new moon initiates a new cycle in that arena of our lives. Often we set intentions at a new moon. The Cancer new moon tunes us into a sense of direction. It is best not to set specific outer intentions. Our best intentions at a Cancer new moon are to stay tuned to our feelings and relax into their flow. And then to trust that our soul is guiding us.
Stay Tuned in Feeling Awareness
Cancer is a cardinal sign. The cardinal signs –Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn) initiate action. As a water sign, Cancer’s actions are instinctually guided. The Crab teaches us to feel what is right and to stayed tuned to the flow in divine alignment. Our inner feeling and resonance is what is most important. Nothing may actually happen right now, but it can, if we are able to hold a connected sacred space for our projects to be birthed at divine right timing.
In our culture, we have been trained to believe that we have to mentally figure everything out. But in Cancer territory intellectual strategies can pull us off course. We stay in the flow by doing what feels right. Feelings are the language of emotions, so only through feeling awareness, not thinking, can we find our way.
Our Cancer challenge is to actually feel, trust, and follow our feelings. The caveat is that we have to tune into feelings that offer us a sense of peace, rightness, and contentment. We have to process through hurt, angry, afraid, and sad emotions to dive deep enough to find our inner core of love and the truth of who we are.
The Womb of Creation and Sacred Space
Cancer is the sign of conception and how we conceive. Cancer is the very first emotional input that seeds the creative process. The Cancer archetype is about creating the sacred space from which we initiate our projects. Cancer teaches that we don’t just take action, we have to pay attention to how we act. Our inner environment must be available each step of the way to nurture and delicately form what we want to birth.
Cancer represents the source, the root energy, the creative cause of what desires to be birthed from our existence. New life can emerge only when there is the right environment to nurture and feed our baby.
Our womb and sacred space is not just empty space. It is sacred because it contains the infinite creative Source from which all is born. In fact the whole process of creation is sacred. We are not alone or empty. The infinite source of life lives within us. It makes things happen. But it requires certain conditions, and that part is our responsibility.
The Cancer path is about getting in touch with our emotional roots that form the foundation of our womb of creation, where we can go to feel safe and nurture ourselves. Our life, what we create in the world, the children (and projects) that we give birth to are all conceived, formed, and delivered from this womb of the mother. It is in our inner space that we awaken to the love of the Divine Mother.
Emotions Drive Our Life
The Cancer archetype is about getting in touch with our feelings and emotions, and experiencing how they are the drivers of our psyche. The Sun and new moon in Cancer invite us to feel deeply what is really in charge of our lives.
What inner force controls and directs your reality?
We can have great ideas, set goals, and devise action plans, but if what we ‘think’ we want to do and have is not supported by our inner emotional willingness to do or have what we dream of, nothing is going to happen the way we intended.
We use our instinctual feeling awareness to get in touch with what is actually making our decisions for us. What we feel deep within will get us in touch with the programs and emotions that pull our strings.
An important part of our inner work is about getting in touch with what exerts the greatest pull on our attention and energy. Where is the pull located in your body? What needs generate this powerful force that rules, whether you consciously believe that you want it to or not?
Internal and External Needs
Our deepest emotional needs relate to survival, to feel safe and secure. Once we have ensured our physical survival, we want to be accepted, validated, gain approval, and be loved. Ultimately we want to feel good, comfortable, and satisfied. We want to relax and flow with the currents of life.
All these emotional needs and desires are internal. The problem is that when we try to satisfy them externally, they never get satisfied. We only crave more. We never reach a satisfaction point. We never feel comfortable. We can never relax. We are always in a state of stress. And too often our chaotic and needy emotional state is a major factor is creating physical illness.
The solution is to cultivate another way to get our emotional needs met, which is not based on external factors, i.e. acquiring money and things, depending upon relationships, and achieving career goals. The solution to our anxiety requires cultivating an internal state that works with our physical and emotional bodies to develop feelings that create peace and satisfaction.
We must reverse the external pull to an internal pull that is more powerful and replaces the external focus with an internal focus. We must create an internal center that commands our will and is directed by our emotional willingness. Nothing else can solve the problem or relieve our suffering.
Notice When Fear Commands
External focus perpetuates our suffering, keeps us in a state of stress, and constantly creates existential pain. We are so drugged by all the things and activities that we are involved in that even the idea that something is the matter doesn’t arise.
Our first step is to stop long enough to feel how stressed and uncomfortable we feel. We can easily get in touch with the fact that something very fundamental is wrong.
Fear commands our inner reality because we have been trained to live in fear. We have been wounded, bullied, and unappreciated. We never really felt loved and accepted at a very deep level. We learned to compensate and take care of others to try to gain approval and to feel safe. Thus our attention has been turned outward to please others, instead of focusing on our own personal development of a confident and self-directed, honest, and authentic being.
Finding Our Internal Center
Our spiritual path is about shifting our attention from outside to inside and creating an internal center that commands our life. The Cancer new moon invites us on this journey to awaken the feeling faculty of our soul. This is a magical journey. We can’t figure it out with our minds. We must truly let our feelings and emotions guide us.
We may initially find this trek into the unexplored cave of our being scary. Many will never even dare to enter their cave. Many will turn back while they can still see the exit to the outside. A few will dare to turn the corner where the door to the outside is no longer visible. They will have to trust that there is another doorway that opens us up to what they are seeking.
The decisions to enter the cave and to not turn back are hard enough. The next defining moment comes when we are willing to face our fear of the unknown. We have to be willing to feel the fear and to identify why it is there. This is a very liberating experience. When we deeply feel and love our fear, it transmutes to love!
Meditation for Emotional Flow and Sacred Space
As you practice this simple moving meditation remember that feeling is a language that communicates without words. Feelings flow. If you are thinking, you miss the experience.
Spinal Rotations activate the circular flow and create a rhythmic movement for our emotional energy to relax into.
Once you activate your circular energy and witnesses that it is always moving in a spiral flow in your spine and around your body, you can consciously use this spiral energy to create and protect your sacred space. This experience is the foundation for being able to relax into your personal rhythm and flow within.
Spinal Rotation Exercise
To begin this exercise, pulse your navel with Breath of Fire or long deep breathing. Once you feel the pulse at your navel center, move your navel back toward your spine and then begin making very small circles inside your belly. Gradually allow this internal movement to include more and more of your body.
At first, the movement will be a conscious act of rotating the torso. At some point, you will experience that this spiral, vortex energy has a life and momentum of its own. Allow it to take over the movement in your body.
Once your circular energy is flowing, feel that it is creating a circle around you. It is defining energetic boundaries to protect and consolidate your being.
Allow the spiral movement to continue as long as you wish, maybe 5-10 minutes. To end, do not stop abruptly. Simply allow the movement to become internal. You will feel that it does not stop. Don’t stop it. It will continue to do its job to define and contain your sacred space.
From The Gift of Womanhood (p.241)
For the full lesson see Lesson 12: Activate your Sacred Shakti — the circular, spiral, vortex energy in your body and spine. in The Gift of Womanhood
All my books, along with many other Kundalini Yoga titles, are available from Yoga Technology – https://www.yogatech.com – in both printed and eBook formats.
