A Brief Meditation on Mars-Jupiter: Why Personal Power is Overrated

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology and today we are going to start talking about the fact that Mars and Jupiter are now co present. It is a very powerful thing when Mars and Jupiter come together in a conjunction, you will see a variety of martial and joopa terian archetypes sort of amplifying one another and becoming really big and powerful. And I want to explore that word today.

Powerful, we're going to spend some time with it as a way of preparing ourselves for this lengthy Mars-Jupiter transit; I think it's a good day to do it because the sun and Mars are also sextile today. So it feels like a nice time to sort of pause and reflect on this idea of power, which is one of the main keywords you can use when Mars and Jupiter come together, which they're about to do. So that is our agenda for today.

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Today, I want to jump right into it. And I'm going to put up the transit by wheel. And let's move it one day forward here. So we are on Thursday, July 25, today. The big circle appeared perfect for a talk about Jupiter and Mars. Here, we see the sextile forming between Mars and the Sun. So, I'm using that as a little touchstone for the topic of today's talk, which is really about the fact that Mars and Jupiter are now together in the sign of Gemini. And let's just draw this out a little bit. So we're going to see Mars and Jupiter; you can see them coming together; they're in Gemini. This stretches on their exact conjunction, which comes about the middle of August, and then they start separating. And Mars will finally leave Gemini at the beginning of September.

So the remainder of the summer, if you're in the northern hemisphere, is going to be spent with Mars in Gemini co-present with Jupiter. And one of the great archetypal signatures of this combination is a growing sense of power. And I want to explore that word today. I have a theory that sometimes, in order to get the best or the most out of an astrological transit, you have to practice mediating the extreme of the transit from the get-go.

So, for example, Mars-Jupiter, together in Gemini, may bring a brilliant and empowered sense of intellect and empowered uses of technology and ideas, strength, determination, and forwardness of speech or mind, a great stimulating energy on the level of social and intellectual currents and exchanges.

So we're going to talk about Mars-Jupiter at length in August; I don't want to go too far into the Mars-Jupiter combination today, but aside from saying that one of the great shadows of Mars-Jupiter that we can start watching for now, we can start working on this now is the shadow of power. Now, I want to issue a qualifier. First of all, there is a need when we are hurt, injured, marginalized, bullied, ostracized, beat down to regain a sense of power. So, we call that empowerment.

I want to before I go into today's talk because, hearing today's talk, someone might imagine that I am saying that there is something wrong with needing to seek empowerment, and I'm not. What I want to talk about is the shadow of power. And what we might broadly call some kind of narcissistic, New Age empowerment, like toxic empowerment culture, that that word toxic, it feels toxic to just say the word toxic among us.

So anyway, um, but there is a place for needing to experience empowerment or to be empowered or to empower other people, especially when disempowerment has been a legitimate real theme where there's been injury and harm, so let's get that out of the way we're not at all saying there isn't a place for such things, but the shadow of Mars-Jupiter if I had to put it simply, is an out of control need for power and equating our self worth with constant enhancements of power, the constant seeking of empowerment and the overuse of words like sovereignty and personal empowerment and stuff like that what we might start working on right now as the two planets gradually start coming together is the exact opposite. This is always the way it works in astrology; when one planet presents the possibility of an extreme in one direction, you can work the opposite and hold the tension between the two.

So this is not about one way being right or wrong; it's about being aware of opposites and making sure we hold the tension between them. So what I want to talk about today is just fun, a fun meditation on how to protect our smallness. So ride with me on this evocative little journey.

I've prepared five points that I have to share. And just consider them there for your consideration. And they don't need to cancel out the very valid ways in which sometimes we actually do need to feel strong, powerful, big, whatever. But let's press on in the opposite direction for a moment. The number one way that we protect our smallness is to remember the most basic and simple fact. We're just not that powerful. That hurts, right? On a certain level, it is painful and difficult to reconcile with the fact that we are not the controllers. In most situations, we are not always it's ideal.

Of course, if we feel like we're in control, and we've got this, but time and time again, we learned that we're not, I think, for example, how important the 12 steps have been in my life and in the lives of many people that I've known. First, of the 12 steps, we admitted we were powerless, that our lives had become unmanageable. Now, it says powerless over alcohol if you are a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it could be overeating or could be drugs, or it could be codependency or sex addiction.

The point is that the 12-step program is a universal series of steps that you will find like mirror images of all of the world's great spiritual traditions. The first step is to admit that we are powerless in a sense, in the sense of not having total control and not being able to manage various aspects of life, whether that's our emotions, our mind, our relationships, or our job, or our hunger, our appetites, our desires, our fears, our worries, there is a level at which we are just powerless to control or manage everything. In my humble opinion, one of the great things we can do to counterbalance the extreme tendency of Jupiter and Mars to feel like the best way to feel good about yourself is to feel victorious and mighty. And on top of everything, like you're the captain of the universe, which is really the shadow of Mars-Jupiter.

In order to not get sucked into it, we might right now start remembering that there is a good amount of our lives that we are powerless, where we are powerless and where we simply can't manage or be in control of everything. The second step in the 12-step program says we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and the two are intimately connected because insanity is the foolish belief that we are in control of everything. And that anything that's going wrong is due to our inability, or our lack of power, or our lack of being able to do things right or, Well, the insane way of living is to think that we can manage everything and that we aren't in need of the aid or grace of a higher power, whether you want to call that and so many times in 12 Step programs, you call it the God of our understanding.

Or you might say whatever the height, whatever higher power means to you, could be a goddess. It could be a numinous presence, it could be the one it could be, you know, the Christian God, whatever. Maybe it's not; maybe don't even call it God. But the idea is that we recognize we can't control everything; we can always be on top of everything. The word sin. By the way, one of the interesting meanings of that word that I always remember is literally just to miss the mark.

There is a way in which I think without getting into doctrines and dogmas, the reality of sin in the Christian worldview is as simple as record agonizing that we will, we will miss the mark reality, we'll miss the mark, not every situation you'll be able to manage won't be able to be in control of everything, things will fall apart, there will be chaos, things will become unmanageable.

And the only way to get through it is to admit, on some level, that you can't do it, that you can't do it all, that you can't be in control of everything, that you can't be all-powerful, that you can't control. As a result, you can't be victorious 24/7, and failure and weakness are part of life. And it's okay that we accept that somehow there's a level of surrender involved in that. And to say, despite the fact that I can't control everything, I'm not all-powerful. I trust I trust in some larger way, the Tao God's Spirit.

So, an easy thing to forget when Mars and Jupiter are together for a long period of time is you're not all-powerful. And that's okay. It doesn't mean you have no power. It doesn't mean that you're irrelevant. It doesn't mean that you're not important; it doesn't mean that you're not special or beautiful. You're just not as powerful as you probably think at times, right? It's an important thing that we have to come back to over and over again; the measure of our worth really has nothing to do with the amount of power we have.

Sacred smallness is underrated. There's a teaching in the bhakti tradition that I absolutely love. There was a teacher who was in our lives for a while. Her name is Ruth Kamini. And she would talk about sacred smallness. And I think about it like this: the way that I would communicate this concept. If I had to guess a number over 10 years or 14 years, and you know, I don't know, 12-13,000 clients have seen 50% come in saying some version of this, and I don't judge people for this, by the way, I'm not sitting on some high horse because I deal with this myself, I don't feel important enough, I don't feel powerful enough. I want to feel my power. People say that. I want to feel more empowered; I want to feel more important. And when I've many, many, many times probed and asked what does that look like to you?

The images that we tend to hold up, and I do this too, again, our images of really just being on top of everything, being successful, being powerful, being wealthy, being masterful, being famous, being beautiful, we tend to think of empowerment, as feeling like I'm riding strong on a big horse, you know. The truth is that it's a sort of an impossible burden that we place on ourselves, thinking that our happiness will come only when we achieve this level of empowerment.

Now, again, that's different than trying to develop a sense of empowerment after being severely disempowered. I think that it's a different thing that I'm talking about right now. Sacred smallness has to do with relieving yourself of the burden like that ideal is actually crushing us. That idea of being so powerful. It's actually crushing us; it's weighing us down. And to be sacred in our smallness does not mean to push ourselves down to be less than we are; it simply means not trying to stretch ourselves to be something that we aren't, that the small measure of who I am a grain of sand on the cosmic beach is enough. We just have a place in the grand scheme of things being a part of the whole, and we take some comfort in the marginal status of being itself. You know, it's a fragile, vulnerable place that we're in. And then we can just get a little bit more comfortable. It's never totally comfortable.

There's always a kind of fear and trembling involved. But if we can just step into that rather than I think it's ironic, I have to be honest about this. I think it's ironic that we talked so much about, you know, the problems with the patriarchy is a phrase I hear people talking about all the time, and I understand where it's coming from. But I think it's; I think it's ironic that the very next thing that you'll see the many of the same, like channels, so to speak of an idea sharing that same one that will say down with the patriarchy will turn around and say, I'm sovereign, and I need to be powerful and important that this gospel of empowerment should come so closely to.

A kind of a sense of being tired or worn out or beaten down by the patriarchy is interesting to me because, well, let's turn our attention to the etymologies of the word power and importance; the word power is especially associated etymologically with control, Dominion, Lordship, the ability or right to command or control people or armies, vigor, might, sovereignty over other people or over possessions.

The word power is closely related to the sense of possessiveness. To possess something is to be in power and to have control over situations and people, to be victorious, and to be a conquering hero. So, to me, like, I don't have any, like, again, like, the word, and I'm not a word police type of person. I feel like words should be explored and unpacked.

I think it's interesting that in sort of, in a general sort of modern New Age, spiritual environment, that the gospel of empowerment, sort of toxic sense of, you know, power empowerment, should be preached so loudly next to ideas about, you know, eliminating patriarchy because if there's any word that is patriarchal, its power etymologically speaking. Anyway, it's just something to think about.

The other thing that's interesting is the etymology of the word importance. Portero is from Latin, and the root is also about Portero. A, which means to carry, and in Medieval Latin, there's a sense of the word being about the ability to carry weighty or consequential things or, literally, heavy things. I mean, there's so much there.

Do we really think that our worth as a human being is tantamount to an image of someone carrying a heavy load on their back? Yes, you know why you're important, or you know why I'm important because we're doing things that are serious because we're carrying things that are heavy and burdensome. And that makes you special, as well as how strong and mighty and conquering you are, how much dominion you have, how much control you have, and what a conquering Lord you are. That's what's, those are like little atomic bombs buried in those words that we're not even thinking about.

So, power and importance, are those really the things that we ought to be striving for? I mean, honestly, like, whether it's, I wish I could go back at certain times, you know, for myself, and also for clients. I've seen, you know, what when that voice comes up that says, How do I find more of my power? How do I find out more about my importance? What makes my life important? It's like, oh, you know, brothers and sisters, like, you know, let's relieve ourselves of this heavy load, let us relieve ourselves of the images of power that we are like, we're beaten, we're ironically being dominated by. And one of the words associated with power is dominion. The words we idolize have power over us.

And empowerment might be one of the subtly most vicious things to aspire to, even if we imagine power to be some kind of glorious, you know, spiritual thing. It's usually not. I don't, like, here's what I often do for myself when I'm finding myself going in some spiral. That's, and I'm like, I think this is my ego, you know, I'll be like, do I think that like Thich Nhat Hanh, who I consider to be like, a very saintly is like an example of a saint would tick not Han have like, sat around, posting on social media being like, I just need to be more empowered. I just need to feel more sovereign. I don't think so. I think he would have been, like, gently suspicious. Those words, but I don't know because I'm not ticking.

So anyway, these are just things to consider: do we, you know, and why? Why am I bringing these things up? When Mars is with Jupiter all the way through September, one of the things that can suddenly start sneaking up on us is this feeling that you are as worthy as you are powerful. Mars-Jupiter is associated with ranking military leaders with victory in battle with might and with the sense that you are worth as much as you have accomplished or as you are famous or mighty.

And there may be ways in which we experience really important victories; we develop more strength where we need to develop it, we can do that modestly, we can do that humbly and in proportion with our own abilities, without tipping over into this sort of toxic infatuation with power, that is also the shadow of this transit.

So, I'm trying to push in that direction right now. So we can be aware of it. How about relevancy? Here's the thing is that I, when I speak to clients, and I, like, you know, they say, I just want to know how it can be more powerful or important, there's a part of me that just wants to go. Let go of those things; you don't need them.

Let's talk about what makes you unique through your chart, where the transits are heading, or whatever. But let's get let's just let go of the whole thing about needing to be. Most of the people I see already have a fair amount of power and importance in their lives. Like, honestly, most people have jobs, they have duties, they have skills, they're earning a living, they're taking care of other people like it's enough. So sometimes I just wish I could tell people like, you're gonna crush yourself under the expectations that you are placing on yourself, that are inherently about you thinking you're not good enough as you are.

But I don't sit. I really don't sit in judgment of where people are and reading. So I'll often just be like, Okay, let's look, let's talk, you know, let's just unpack things. And it's not my job to judge or offer some kind of, you know, pointed advice or whatever. So I do a lot more listening. And I think that's, it's important, because we all have to, we all have to go through the process of being disillusioned with some of those ideals that are crushing us in our own way like you can't get there without getting there.

I would say That's my ongoing experience, not something that I've already mastered. But people do need to feel like it is completely understandable, in my opinion, that people would need to feel, including myself, a sense of belonging in the cosmic hole and that I have relevance; in other words, that I'm not just a meaningless blip on the radar, that I have a place in the sacred order of things that I have a role to play.

That is understandable. And you know what I like about the word relevance? I'm relevant because the fear is that I'm irrelevant. And then, when we fear that we're irrelevant, then we think that we need to be very, very powerful to prove that we're not irrelevant when actually all we need is the very simple connection to our relevance.

Feeling relevant is very different than feeling super powerful. The etymology of the word relevant input has the meaning of being important within a local context, within an immediately applicable matter at hand. It also comes from the French, which, in its meaning, meant helpful in Medieval Latin. It comes from to lighten, to help, assist to comfort, or to console. I think we need to feel relevant as a matter of consolation. Please offer me the comfort of knowing that I have a place here and that my place is a special one. And yes, it is. And yes, you are, but no more or less than anyone or anything else. And so be careful of seeking power. Relevance also says that you are here to assist and that you are here as a servant, one of the many.

That is part of the great orchestration of life in the cosmos, that you serve that process, and that every hand that helps every servant, that serves in the divine wholeness of things, is equally valid and important. So be careful about seeking power. But yes, you are relevant. And then, finally, there's always a conflict between House One and House 10. To put it in Astro speak, House One was called Dharma by Indian astrologers House Ten Arta.

Dharma has to do with that innate sense of who we are. Arta has to do with the sense that there is a social or societal realm in which we participate in which we will have a role to play in the world marketplace in the city and the government in the community, that we might have a job or a vocation and some reputation attached with it.

In that world, it is a higher there are clearly established hierarchies within the realm of arta that have mostly to do with power; it is inevitable that we will participate in a world where power is real, which is why we cannot simply dismiss the need to seek out empowerment, especially when we've been stomped on in a world that includes hierarchies where people stomp on other people. So we have to play on that playground. But we have to do it while connecting with dharma. So Arta 10th House Dharma first house, dharma is that innate sense that you play a relevant role in the divine whole. And that's all it needs to be relevant, not powerful, not lacking in power, not more power, just irrelevant.

So anyway, I hope that this has been a useful meditation again; why do this? It's not really to pick on anyone or anything; it's to gently push in the intellectual opposite direction that this transit of Mars and Jupiter will tend to take us in, which will often be about great displays of power. Victory and triumph and climbing upwards along various hierarchies, Mars and Jupiter together are very arta. So, we need to remind ourselves of dharma. Right? Or not that powerful; sacred smallness is underrated. Remember, power and importance are what those words are loaded with.

Think about the word relevance and think about the fact that there's always going to be a tension between the world of higher hierarchies that we play around with and where power is this thing that we have to just deal with. We have to know how to do that without losing touch with the fact that on the spirit and soul level, everyone and everything is irrelevant, not more or less powerful than one another. Okay, that is it. I hope you guys are having a good day, and we will see you again tomorrow. Bye.