Mars, planet of action and passion, went retrograde 6/26 and won’t go direct until 8/27. Mercury, planet of thoughts, communication, and travel, will be retrograde 7/25-8/18 (which means we’re already in the foreshadow). We’re all pretty familiar with the frustration we can potentially experience during a Mercury retrograde; understand that’s going to be compounded by Mars.
Mars is strongly tied to anger, because anger is a call to action. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with anger, we have just been trained poorly in what to do with it. That’s actually why I started my Shifting Anger workshop, so we could retrain ourselves and turn anger back into a useful tool, rather than a hindrance.
In any retrograde period, we are offered the opportunity to get introspective, to repair any of our aspects of that planet that have gotten off balance, and to adjust our course. These opportunities are often painful, because we’re not very good at recognizing subtler offers. If we could get more conscious, present, and attentive, we would save ourselves a lot of discomfort. I’m not there yet, personally.
If we haven’t been following through on any calls to action we might have been presented with this year, the Mars retrograde may be provoking anxiety, frustration, or overwhelm, all of which can be expressed as anger. Considering the state of the world, there have been many calls to action. Your current explosions may not even have anything to do with your original call(s) to action; there’s just such a build up of pressure that it vents at the smallest opportunity.
When we add Mercury retrograde into the equation, frustration can become exponential. The slowing down of everything we’ve come to expect to be zippy (travel, electronics, communication) tends to go over poorly. Your best first step is to sync up with the energies, and consciously s-l-o-w down.
The best next step is to get into acceptance. If you want to be in action, if you want to effect change, you have to work with what is real, or you’re trying to change illusion, and it’s a waste of energy. Make a bullet point list (on paper) (says the woman typing a blog post) of all of the verifiable information about anything bothering you – what can you see, hear, smell, taste, or touch? Remove opinion and conjecture from it. For the line items which you find especially frustrating, start writing down potential solutions. Continue to keep conjecture, opinion, and judgment out of it. By taking this step, you stop giving your power away, and you start to become a conscious actor (one who takes action, not one who pretends) in your life.
Happy retrograding!