While the Sun shines in Cancer (June 22 – July 22) is the perfect time to explore the many dynamics of personal boundaries.
Everyone born in July (the seventh month) has the karma (challenge) number seven, which corresponds with the Aura in the Ten Body Tantric Numerology system. Our aura is very subtle, delicate, and easily influenced. We can feel attacked by energies and activities in our environment. Our instinctual response is to protect ourselves by putting up boundaries because we feel threatened.
Have you ever touched the shell of a Crab. I tried to carry an abandoned crab shell home from the beach. Even with careful handling, it broke into pieces. The Crab’s innate protective shield is very delicate. Being a water sign, Cancer’s sense of protection is based on its emotional state. Emotions are stable only when frozen. Suppressing our emotions is not a good solution.
Cancer energy is highly sensitive and subject to emotional volatility. Yet we need our emotional intelligence to guide us through life. When we ignore and repress our feelings, we disconnect from our inner wisdom, reduce our connection with our bodies, and seed ground for illness.
Feeling, not thinking, illuminates what is right for us. We have to learn to trust our gut feelings because they are a critical part of our inner guidance system. And they don’t always come up with a logical reason in the moment. We often have to wait to understand.
The Cancer/Capricorn Polarity Pair
Water needs earth energy for grounding and stability. The Capricorn/Cancer polarity creates a great partnership between Earth and water, form and feelings. Cancer learns about emotional self-nurturing, while Capricorn masters self-sufficiency. Cancer asks us – Where do we feel at home? What nourishes us? Capricorn asks us Where are we going? What are our goals and priorities? The more we find emotional comfort and safety within, the more we get in touch with our own sovereignty and sense of direction in life. This empowering synergy propels us and our longer-term projects forward.
Full Moons require integration of opposing energies. The Cancer/Capricorn full moon July 3 at 11° invited us to shift from working harder to appreciating how far we have come. We are in the game of life for the long-term. Wherever we are going and where we have been comes one step at a time. When we wisely use the resources we have, we can make things happen and our hard work pays off. When we pause and celebrate all our wins along the way, we have the energy to continue and the morale to appreciate our journey and ourselves.
Cancer/Capricorn Harmonic Integration
There is an inevitable tension in opposites, but there is also a harmonic integration when the two energies learn from and support each other.
The Cancer archetype represents our personal world, our inner space, and the familiar. The Capricorn archetype represents the world outside, our interaction with it, and the unfamiliar. Cancer is our comfort zone. Capricorn is new territory outside our comfort zone. Cancer’s role is to protect and preserve what we have. Capricorn’s role is to work with what we have to create more.
Without being challenged, Cancer never grows up. If we focus on being comfortable, we end up doing the same thing and never explore the amazing world. If we try to find success to fill up and compensate for our inner void, we miss out on the discovering the richness of our own being.
Capricorn challenges us to see what we’re capable of and motivates us to create goals and a vision for our future. Capricorn is about what we can become, how we can grow into a mature adult, the contribution that we can make in the world. To climb our Capricorn mountain we have be active in the world.
There are no easy mountains to climb. We have to develop skills. We have to face many challenges and deal with them. We have to be responsible, accountable, and face reality head on. We can succeed and be rewarded, but there are no free meals. We earn what we work for.
Pluto Digs Deep
Pluto retrograde at 29° Capricorn squares (challenges) the Lunar Nodes for most of July, urging us to break and heal generational behavioral patterns that have been inflicted on us, just as they have been inflicted on our parents, grandparents, and our ancestors. Although these wounds are not our fault, we can break the cycle and claim our individual identity and freedom by taking responsibility for our personal healing. In the process we heal our lineage both past and future. Working with nurturing Cancer energy, we can heal what we believed was unhealable. Cancer’s polarity pair Capricorn offers us the support and resources we need.
Saturn in Pisces
Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, transits through Pisces (March 7, 2023 to May 24, 2025). Saturn’s territory is physical reality, but in Pisces it teaches in get in touch with the subtle intangible forces that animate our being and the physical world. We do so by refining our five senses to their inner sensory perception. With meditative “soul time,” we turn our attention inwards so we can awaken to our essence. Spiritual nourishment is necessary and magical.
The water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces) teach us to relax to receive. Capricorn teaches us to focus and prioritize to manifest.
Neptune retrograde in Pisces (July 1 – December 6) turns our attention inward, further awakening our intuition, subtle sensitivity, and longing for cosmic connection and unity within ourselves and with others. Worldly goals are no longer top of our priority list. External, mundane experiences are no longer satisfying. We search beyond physical satisfaction for something deeper, which we can awaken when we pay close attention with awareness.
July 17 – the Lunar Nodes Switch to Aries and Libra
When the Lunar Nodes change signs, something fundamental about our priorities and focus shifts. This is important because it happens only every 1.5 years. For the last 1.5 years the Lunar Nodes were in Taurus and Scorpio. July 17, the North Node leaves Taurus and moves into Aries. The South Node leaves Scorpio and moves into Libra. (The Lunar Nodes are not physical entities, but points in the sky where the orbits of the Moon and the Sun intersect.)
The signs of the Lunar Nodes guide both our personal and collective priorities and direction in life. The North Node points us towards the future. The South Node reveals our past, the gifts that we can claim from what we have learned, and what we need to heal to move forward. There is continuous interaction between our past and our future.
Our attention is drawn to a different area of our life, where we need to integrate the lessons of the opposing signs – in this case, Aries – personal identity and power, “Me” and Libra – “The other” and relationships. Auspiciously, the day before my July 16 workshop is the day that the nodes change signs. The next 18-months are about showing up for ourselves and creating healthy boundaries (Aries) that make mutually-supportive relationships possible (Libra).
The Lunar Nodes will highlight a certain pair of houses in your natal chart where you have Aries and Libra) that need re-balancing and supportive integration.
July 17th, 2023 – New Moon In Cancer at 24°
The New Moon in Cancer is opposite Pluto, uncovering themes related to power struggles in relationships and the role we play with our own emotional immaturity and by not owing inner authority.
Change Your Story
Our primary enemy, which keeps from exploring and achieving our potential, is the stories that we tell ourselves. Our beliefs, stories, and thinking patterns can keep us glued to our comfort zone, when we convince ourselves that we are not capable, the world is against us, and there is no hope. There are many gradations of this gloomy state, but we all need to identify what we need to change in our own psyche, not what needs to change in the world or how others need to accommodate to what we think we want and need.
We tell ourselves stories that aren’t true. Actually we grow up being told things that aren’t true, and we believe them. Advertising is based on selling lies to make a profit. For me, 95% of what is passed off as ‘food.’ should not be consumed. Refined sugar destabilizes our emotional state. Read the labels and educate yourself on how the food industry supports sugar addictions.
Do we really exercise our free will? Or do we default to what we are told? Our attitude, what we believe, and how we view ourselves colors all pieces of our puzzle. We can break the loop in our self-negating obsessive thinking patterns by cultivating self-respect and self-love.
Stories keep us artificially warm, cozy and safe. Stories are convenient excuses that help us justify what we know is not good for us. Just because something is familiar, or the way it has ‘always been done’ doesn’t make it right. Stories prevent us from learning, listening to our intuition, searching for our own truth, and following our heart.
It may seem hard to change our stories. But living a lie takes the same amount of energy. We have to have a physical experience that awakens us to a new sensation that we have never felt before. This is why we practice Kundalini Yoga and take cold showers. Life just isn’t the same.
Each individual human being is absolutely extraordinary. That means YOU! Yet in so many ways we keep ourselves small. It is such a pity and such a waste of our precious human life.
What We Think of Ourselves
What matters most is not what others think of us, but what we think of ourselves and how we treat ourselves. As we learn to love and respect ourselves, we will no longer need to argue or defend ourselves from an adversarial position.
We can choose to nurture and take care of our bodies. We can respect our soul by listening and following our heart. We can choose to elevate ourselves, no matter what is going on around us and in the world. We can set ourselves free by ceasing to expect anything or anyone to conform to our standards or to give us what we want. The more we claim our own truth, the more we create authentic boundaries and relationships that are mutually enriching.
Sign Up for July 16 Workshop
Looking for ways to transform your relationships? And yourself? This LEVEL DEEP workshop is for you!
Boundaries — a Self-Love Approach
Sunday July 16 – 10:00 – 12:00 PM DT (utc-7) (followed by sharing and Q and A)
Can’t attend live? All those who enroll will have unlimited access to the professionally edited video, available about one week after the event.
In this workshop I share my unique heart-centered approach for soul to soul relationships. You will learn non-defensive techniques for creating respectful and liberating boundaries and personal freedom.
The issue of boundaries is a common theme in relationships. Our defensive, antagonistic, and protective approach is counter-productive to building the loving, intimate, and supportive relationships that we desire and deserve.
You will learn how to build bridges instead of walls. Enter a new world of relationships!
Sign up now! https://gururattana.ticketleap.com/boundaries—-a-self-love-approach/
And be sure to share with your students and friends. They will thank you!
