- Image: “I Dreamt a Skewed Landscape” by Gary Rosenberg
Beginning Again
by
Sarah Varcas
Mercury stations retrograde at 4:57 pm GMT on 4th October. Forget all the bad press you hear about Mercury retrograde being nothing but a pain. This Mercury is an ally of the best kind as it alerts us to duff decisions made in the past and provides an opportunity to correct them in the coming weeks. It always pains me when Mercury retrograde gets so much dumped at its door. After all, generally speaking it is we who mess things up, not some disembodied external force! And even when it seems, to all intents and purposes, that there’s really nothing we could have done to save the day, we still have the option of what we make of life’s calamities and disruptions: how we turn the proverbial lemons into sparkling lemonade.
When Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio we have an immediate helping-hand because Mercury in this sign of deep water is already exploring, diving deep and asking the difficult questions. These are all things done best when Mercury is retrograde so we really should be celebrating right now! Hurrah!!! Time to work out where we went wrong and put it right. What’s not to love about that?! Okay, I know it’s not that straight forward. What’s not to love is the fact that we may see some pretty big errors come to light or whopping great misjudgements exposed. And if we’ve deliberately tried to pull the wool over someone else’s eyes for our own gain then quite frankly best own up now and take the rap because Mercury retrograde in Scorpio is not going to let us off that one lightly!!
One of the challenges with this particular cycle is facing up to our own flaws, weaknesses and general flakeyness! It can be tough to do and squirmingly uncomfortable at times. No one enjoys holding their hand up to being wrong, misguided, unreliable or just plain naïve. This is something of a problem in our world because it encourages us to cover up or gloss over our mistakes, pretend they didn’t happen or desperately try to keep them hidden. All of these behaviours lead to stress, inauthenticity, fear of exposure, deception… nothing here of much use when it comes to peace of mind!! If only we could just collectively accept that sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong, because that’s what people do! We’re not perfect and we can’t always make the best decisions, but what we can do, if we choose, is admit when we’ve messed up and then resolve to begin again, without the burden of shame, self-criticism or feelings of humiliation. The heavens now ask us, nay implore, to simply face up to the fact that mistakes and accidents happen, sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail and that, in itself, is the very nature of life, not some deeply shameful personal secret which no one else shares!
In the coming weeks, with the intensity of eclipses around and about, careful attention to the consequences of past actions and decisions is important to capitalise on this opportunity for revision and readjustment. Being wrong is not a weakness to be ashamed of but a sign that we’re humans evolving on all levels, discovering what works and what doesn’t, how we can best live this life and fulfil our potential whilst experiencing a multi-layered existence. If we realise things aren’t going so well right now we have an opportunity to look at past decisions and find the root of our current dilemma. Doing so is not an act of self-blame but a process of self-awakening, during which we can begin to recognise in greater detail how we make mistakes, what bits of information we ignore or deny in order to do so. What or who we trust (or not) to reach the conclusions we do. How well does our decision-making protocol work?! Such enquiry may well reveal exactly where we didn’t listen, to an inner or outer message, the voice of reason or the nudge of intuition. Whatever we discover during this time it’s not the end of the world, simply a chance to regroup and rebuild, to learn some more about ourselves and to sign up to the commitment to accept our flaws and failings, along with those of others, in a spirit of compassion. After all, the person who never makes a mistake is the one who does nothing at all. And who would want to be them?!
Sarah Varcas
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