How to Avoid Astrological Burnout: Don’t Be Afraid of Neptune

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today, we are going to continue our series on how to avoid astrological burnout by talking about the fears and anxieties that people tend to have around the outer planets.

In this episode, we'll be looking at Neptune. What we fear that Neptune does, and what Neptune actually does, and looking at the differences between the anxieties that we tend to project on Neptune and what Neptune is actually doing from the standpoint of psychological growth, personal transformation, and healing.

Making these distinctions are important because one of the reasons that people end up getting stressed out by astrology, rather than experiencing astrology as an uplifting part of your spiritual life, is that we carry all sorts of misconceptions about the planets, tend to be really negative and heavy, or at the very least, they're sort of ominous feelings that we have surrounding the transits of certain planets. I've noticed this to be particularly true from Pluto down to Saturn.

You know, we don't tend to worry too much. I mean, maybe Mars a little bit, you know, but for the most part, people don't stress out about the planets up to Jupiter, in my experience. But once you get from Saturn to Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, those planets, understandably, they're very powerful planets and agents of change and transformation.

But people tend to project all sorts of things out of these planets, and that can contribute to the overall feeling that, you know, hey, I think I think astrology is actually stressing me out, and we don't want that.

So this series is dedicated to learning more about astrology and, hopefully, clarifying various misconceptions that could lead people to get stressed out by astrology. So anyway, that's the goal for today.

Don't forget to like and subscribe before we get going, and I'd love to hear your own insights in the comment section. What do you guys think about Neptune in particular? What have you learned about Neptune? What kind of placements do you have? That kind of stuff is really interesting and creates a nice community around the post. So please feel free to share.

You can find a transcript of today's talk on the website nightlightastrology.com, Where I'm also going to send you to check out the new program coming up starting November 18. My one-year course in ancient Hellenistic astrology begins; go to the Courses tab and click first-year course. This is a one-year immersion into ancient astrology; it is ideal for people who either want to take their love of astrology to the next level or people who want to practice professionally.

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So, the whole program is devoted to giving you foundational access to what ancient mystics were thinking when they developed this language, and from there, we then integrate with a lot of modern archetypal psychological concepts. So it's a little bit of a syncretic program.

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So today, we continue. We started with Pluto, and I said, look, I think one of the major reasons that people sometimes feel like astrology is actually stressing them out where they take they're like, you know, I need like astrology like you know, they have like sober October I think it's called. It's like you need a sober December or something from astrology content, and I get it because I do it every day, and there are ways that you have to turn off from anything, no matter how much you love it; you just gotta go do something else. You can't think about one subject all the time.

But even if you're someone who casually takes in something like my podcast, or you have a few favorite astrologers that you listen to, it's important to be able to identify the signs of astrological anxiety and to be able to, you know, kind of counter those voices in our heads with constructive, encouraging, helpful and uplifting voices that can remind us that this astrology ultimately suggests that we live in a meaningful, beautiful, well-arranged cosmos.

The meaning of the word cosmos is at its roots, a well-arranged whole that is artful and beautiful and that has a sense of truth built into it, and that doesn't mean that life doesn't include difficulties; it doesn't mean that there isn't the interplay of light and dark. Of course, there is.

But it's almost like you think of the yin and yang as the light and dark interplay; they're still held within one circle, and astrology should help us to trust that everything has a place, and it should help us to trust the presence of difficult things and know kind of where to put them in our own psychic house, you know, like, where do things go? Where can I place them within myself so that all of the different archetypes are present, accounted for, and understood.

When we do that, kind of getting to know the archetypes and knowing how we can best relate with them, we're going to avoid the overwhelm that can come when we hit some difficult transits and even transits that can signify traumatizing things, and we have to then go forward and make sense of it and sometimes we don't, instead of making sense of it, we just say, oh, yeah, sometimes Neptune sucks or we say Pluto, man, Pluto will wreck you or something like that.

I mean, you know, as for we all need a sense of humor. So I'm not suggesting we can't laugh about these things and have some fun, but I think we need to be really careful because, especially with those planets, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, people have a lot of anxiety about those planets, when they get to start studying astrology for a little bit, lived through some transits.

So here's what I think we fear that Neptune will do to us, and again, there's a kernel of truth in all of these, just like we talked about Pluto and, you know, I said, look, it's not like any of these things are wrong. They're fair descriptions on a certain level. I'm just not sure they're the healthiest or most helpful descriptions, and if we stay stuck in those descriptions, in a sense, we also stay stuck, and probably we prevent ourselves from growing in some ways.

So what do we fear that Neptune will do? This is what I hear the most from students from clients or someone who comes in for an astrology reading; they go oh my god, I have a Neptune transit. I'm so worried it will do this. Even myself. When I look at Neptune transits, What do I think? Oh, God, Jesus, buckle up for this, you know, where does my mind go? When I get into kind of an ominous, dreadful, anxious space.

Okay, so number one, we worry that Neptune will make us feel lost, overwhelmed, ungrounded, hopeless, and adrift. Sort of like we think of Neptune as like a dark stormy sea at night, you know, tempestuous oceanic weather, that's just tossing your vessel to and fro. You can't see the stars to navigate by the cloud cover doesn't allow you to orient yourself. So there's just the sense that Neptune comes in and overwhelms us, takes us off from solid ground, takes away our sense of clarity or direction, and can make us feel sort of lost, hopeless, adrift.

Okay, so clearly, these descriptions don't come out of nowhere. It's not like they're just patently false. There is definitely a sense in which Neptune transits could be described in these ways. However, I will say this as we go along and if we live an astrological lifestyle, which by that I mean that if we use astrology as a kind of spiritual GPS system, it's in our cosmic car, and we're bringing it along with us for this lifetime, and it's a companion, and its intelligence is reliable, and it's there to help orient us.

Then, over time, we will not relate to the planets through the most depressing, anxiety-provoking, and sort of, you know, sort of negative prescriptive adjectives. We won't give those kinds of descriptions anymore, and the reason for that is that the more we live through transits, the more we tend to mature in our relationship to the experiences of the planets themselves, and that's what we're shooting for.

It doesn't help to hear an astrologer be like Neptunes so spiritual, you know, I'm not here to just give you some kind of stupid answers that fill you with positivity and then make you sort of whitewash the troubling or more difficult sides of the experience. What I am here to say is that if you stick with it, and you watch, and you learn, and you reflect, and you start with a basic assumption, which is that the planets and the events that they bring or depict, or as omens, as are oracular signifiers, if I trust that they have my best interest in mind, that they are here in service to the life of the soul, and to the soul of the cosmos itself, and that they are part of a divine intelligence that permeates everything, and that my life is in good hands.

That's a kind of astrological faith, and you don't even have to believe in God; you could just say that I believe that I live in an intelligent universe, and the planets reflect that well-ordered intelligence. There are not mistakes here in an absolute sense. The mistake in other words, relatively speaking, of course, we experienced mistakes, but in the sort of ontology of the universe, it's all good. It's like that, you know, like that, that kind of mantra of creation, it is good.

So I think that I don't know, maybe some people are like, look, I just can't go that far with astrology, well, that's fine. I can't argue. I can't tell people what to think or believe. But I will tell you that it becomes a lot more difficult not to develop pretty serious astrological anxiety at times without that core faith statement.

There are many different religious orientations on this planet that have picked up this system, this language of horoscopic astrology, and used it alongside all sorts of different doctrines, beliefs, rituals, and customs.

It is so flexible, and to my mind, the reason that it's flexible is that it is ultimately a kind of symbolic language that is pointing us into communication with the divine intelligence that so many different traditions and cultures have recognized and have had ways of relating to and this language is an archetypal kind of universally accessible language that helps us tap into relationship with that divine presence.

Now, if you have that as your statement of faith, then it's possible that over time because even if you have that statement of faith, trust me when you hit hard Neptune transits, or you have hard Neptune aspects in your chart, there are going to be times when you may feel this way.

But the point is that if you stick with it over time, you won't describe Neptune that way any longer. Your relationship with Neptune will change to reflect the kind of integration of wisdom and experience and appreciation for the archetype and all of its multivalent, multifaceted, multi-dimensional expressions; you'll just be like, it's Neptune.

Yeah, it can sometimes make me feel lost or overwhelmed. But also, you know, and like I said, I have another little section of this presentation where I'll say what I think Neptune is actually doing. You'll be able to, at the very least, hold the light and dark of Neptune simultaneously for most people, even that will alleviate the stress. But it's just not true. Neptune isn't here to make you feel lost to make you feel overwhelmed. To unground you, to make you feel hopeless or adrift. It's not here to confuse you. It's not like just a cloud of cosmic shit dust that's trying to fuck up your life. That was a great one. I'm gonna keep that one.

Okay, so it's not here to do that. Although, now someone needs to make a meme out of that because that would be a pretty funny looking meme if we came up with something. But I want to say again, you may at certain times feel that this is what Neptune is doing, and so I don't think that these adjectives should be like, I don't know, you shouldn't fine people for using them. You know, and I don't want to invalidate their experience, right?

But the more that you live with Neptune, knowing that Neptune is one of your friends, Neptune is an astrological homie. When that happens in astrology, it rarely happens for people that a planet becomes, you know, a buddy without having, like, rolled around and wrestled with one another, you know, let me read you guys something, and I've read you guys this before, but it's been a long time.

So, there was a hymn that was written; this is from the Christian tradition. There's a hymn that was written called, Come Oh, thou Traveller Unknown, and it's really a story about Jacob wrestling with an angel all night from the Bible, and I don't know if that would have been in one of the books of the Torah or what place that would appear in the Jewish literature, but I know, you know, obviously, it's Old Testament from the Christian standpoint of the Bible.

Anyway, Jacob wrestles with an angel, and I feel like this is a good thing to read right now. This is a hymn that was written by Charles Wesley; John Wesley was his brother who was the founder of The United Methodist Church, so I know that because I grew up in the United Methodist.

Come, O Thou Traveler unknown
whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
and I am left alone with thee.
With thee all night, I mean to stay
and wrestle till the break of day.

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell,
to know it now resolved I am.
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath thy weighty hand,
faint to revive and fall to rise.
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.

Yield to me now—for I am weak
but confident in self-despair!
Speak to my heart, in blessing speak,
be conquered by my instant prayer.
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
and tell me if thy name is Love.

'Tis Love! 'tis Love that wrestled me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
pure, universal Love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move—
thy nature, and thy name is Love.

So here's Jacob wrestling with an angel to discover that it's of this divine nature; he thinks it's a person on the road he's met in the night, and he wrestles, trying to discover who this mysterious person is and I think he gets his hip broken, if I remember correctly in the process, he was probably a Sagittarius.

But at any rate, what I want to say about that is just that getting to know any planet is like that. You don't become buddies with the planet until you've wrestled with it and you've sort of insisted that it reveal that it is an angel, and you that is so it's so hard to get to that space when the only way that we ever consume astrology is in terms of what it's going to do, what it's going to be like, what kind of energy it is, how to handle it, how to manage it, what you can get from it, what to avoid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Living an astrological lifestyle means embodying, living with, relating to, and wrestling with the archetypal nature of ourselves, of each other, of our relationship dynamics, and of experience itself, and when you wrestle with it, living a reflective lifestyle is what I would consider to be a wrestling.

Eventually, it reveals itself to you as an aspect of the Divine, and then you can't ever describe it in these sort of terrible ways. Just to do so would be it's a shame, you know, you don't describe an angel that way. Even if in the darkness when wrestling with that angel, that's how you initially felt. You come to understand what was really going on after wrestling with these angels, and then they forever are changed.

I don't know how we get there without some wrestling. So, there might be something about astrology that people want to be easier than it is on that level. I just have to say, stick with it. You can do it, you know, wrestle with your own soul and with the archetypes, and I promise you, in my experience, it leads to nothing but wisdom and blessings. Just feeling more illumined within and feeling like your life is enriched by what you're experiencing. But you can't get there without a little bit of wrestling in the dark. So that's what I want to say about that.

Number two, we fear that Neptune will make us addicted, depressed, arranged delusional, and or all of the above and escapist. It'll make us into addicted, depressed, deranged, delusional escapists? Yeah, that's pretty bleak. You know, like, who wants that?

That is probably because, through certain Neptune transits, you can and will see things like drug addiction, escapism delusions, and even things real dark things, you know, suicide or genocide; some of these things are associated with Neptune. We're not trying to whitewash archetypes; right there is; there are dark sides to the light in the dark, are wrestling, and they're a part of every archetype, the light and the dark.

If you've wrestled with Neptune, you're not going to describe Neptune in these ways, and you won't fear that that's what Neptune is out to do. You could say, sometimes Neptune shows up in these really tough situations where people are addicted, or they're going through a period of time in which they're delusional, or, you know, their mental or emotional health is really suffering. But you don't; you don't make the mistake of thinking that Neptune just does that to people. It goes back to the very simple idea that ancient astrologers started with, which is that the planets are omens; no one would think, for example, that the seven of cups, which I believe is the one that depicts all of the fantasmic things coming out of the cups in the cloud.

The guy looking up into the clouds all of the, you know, it's like, but no one would pull this card, and even if it did indicate it had some kind of symbolic, indicating power that said, you know, so and so is suffering from delusions right now, you know, that's an association you can make with this card, no one would make the mistake of thinking that the card is causing that to happen that when this card shows up, that it's going to do these things to you.

Rather, people look at the card and say, Ah, this card represents reflects or as an indicator of something that is happening. Now, I'm not trying to tell you that someone who's in the middle of addiction should just, you know, like, how abstract and unhelpful is it to be like, just wrestle with an archetype, and you know, you'll be fine.

I hate that kind of stuff because it's just not helpful. The person probably needs a lot of serious help, and it may not be, you know, ever really appropriate with some traumas and really difficult things we face to tell someone; just think about it differently. So that's not I don't think that's what we're trying to say.

But if you live an astrological lifestyle, and you keep relating to Neptune, and you have had really difficult experiences with addiction, depression, troubled emotional dynamics, mental and emotional health challenges, escapism, if you have faced those things, and you keep living an astrological life, and you keep relating to Neptune, and you wrestle with that archetype, for a long period of time, especially if you read charts for other people, and you observe it in other people's lives, there will come a moment where the angel in the dark like dawn breaks, and the angel reveals its face, it just does happen.

I wish that I could say that in a way that didn't sound sort of like self-righteous, or like, I'm just so confident that is the case because I've seen it time and time and time again, and right now, although I know that any of the archetypes that come into my life at any moment in time and put me into a state, that would be really difficult.

So, I don't think that by trusting the nature of the planets, I couldn't be spun out really easily by life or experiences. Right. So it's not like knowing that the planets having like some higher understanding of the planets doesn't take away the potential to get really humbled or leveled by life, you know.

But if you just keep going in time, I think what happens is, even if you go through something really rocky, you come out the other side. You don't say, Oh yeah, well, Neptune causes addiction depression, or it was like, Oh, God, that was Neptune.

Instead, you'll at the very least have a way of thinking that goes, Wow, that was a truly Neptunian experience, and you'll probably be able to see both the light and dark of that Neptunian experience and you won't add to the anxiety of what you're already going through, amplifying the anxiety by thinking to yourself, God Neptune's out to get me you just won't think that way, the longer you go along and keep relating to Neptune.

Number three, Neptune will poison us with illusions, unrealistic fantasies, or an inability to see the truth. Of course, these things can happen. There are illusions and fantasies, and maybe deception on a certain level. But what purpose do these things serve? What do we learn from these experiences? And is that what Neptune is out to do? Or is that something we project onto Neptune from the standpoint of something that we're going through?

In other words, it's never anyone but us that has an illusion or an unrealistic fantasy, or we deceive someone or are deceived, and that's not to say that's not to make us feel like we should be somewhere that we aren't. Or, you know, it's not like pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

It's just the truth that it's not a planet that's causing us to have an illusion or an unrealistic fantasy or deception. It's us, the planet, just like the card just says, it reflects this is what's happening. It's like the hand on a clock saying it's three o'clock doesn't cause it to be three o'clock.

So we have to be really careful because one of the weirdest things about Neptune is that what you project onto Neptune has this weird echo manifestation chamber effect, where it's like Neptune is a very peculiar planet insofar as what you project on the Neptune seems to amplify mirror back and get a lot stronger, it's sort of like this, I can, I can relate a lot of things to psychedelic experiences because I had a lot of them.

But if you, you know, if you start going down a trail of getting anxious or paranoid, it's almost like every little thing you see will start to confirm your anxiety, your suspicion, your paranoia, and it grows, and it grows, and it grows. Neptune is very receptive to our projections. It's sort of like a fluid magical wishing pool mirror, and what you put into Neptune will often come back and amplify your experience.

So it's a planet that you have to be very careful with in terms of just don't project things onto Neptune. It's a planet that is, again, like I would describe it as, kind of like a magic mirror, and so you'll see, you'll have to see in yourself what you're projecting back to Neptune in some very bizarre ways.

It's one of the things that makes Neptune very magical. It's also one of the inherent warnings that I have for people about Neptune is like don't put any anxiety on the planet Neptune. It's sort of like psychosomatic; that's the word I'm looking for. It has a kind of psychosomatic quality.

Anyway, we fear that Neptune will poison us with illusions, unrealistic fantasies, or an inability to see the truth. This may describe a certain level of our experience, but ultimately, I don't see that as what Neptune is doing or what Neptune is actually doing.

Now, I say this not because it's like, let's just focus on the positive guys but because, like I said, over time wrestling with the archetype, this is how I would now describe Neptune after many Neptune experiences, seeing it in the lives of my clients, etc.

What Neptune actually does number one is it reorients us reorientation with a Neptune experience takes us from going in one direction to going in a different direction and the process that leads us from one direction to another in any given area of life, relationships, love, life, purpose, career, etc. That reorientation process seems to naturally include a period of wandering, you know, there's a period between doing one thing and doing it's like a sea change, and when Neptune is coming through our lives, there's almost always a very significant long, slow process of reorienting some element of our psyches.

By reorientation, I mean a different image, a different fantasy, a different need, a different calling, and a different vision is going to start leading our lives in a direction. As one vision goes, there's this kind of gap that appears between one vision and the next. The gap feels like a low, a limbo, a waiting and uncertainty, a cloud over us where we can't quite see what's coming next. But that is a very natural and very temporary part of what I would now describe as a reorientation process.

I don't think this is a positive way of looking at it. I just think that this is what happens. That Neptune, through its reorientation, will include a period of feeling sometimes a little bit of drift or overwhelmed because it's very overwhelming to feel suddenly like you don't know where you're going or you don't know why certain things are happening, or things are happening in a way that's reorienting you, but you're not sure where things are going next, and so it's overwhelming. But what we learn, year after year after year of dealing with Neptune, is not out to just befuddle you; it's not going to throw what did we call it, cosmic shit mist. It's not just here to, you know, make you feel lost.

But feeling lost archetypally goes along with feeling found. It's like amazing grace. You know, Neptune is often a planet that is described as a planet that brings grace and redemption. I once was lost, but now I'm found. I couldn't see, and now I see. So that's, like, Neptune involves this kind of divine blindness. I mean, I wish I could just reach, you know, just put my arms around people who get really freaked out by Neptune. Just like, don't worry, you're, it's totally great, you're fine because that reorientation process and everything included is sacred and trustworthy, so that's what I want to say about that.

Number two, Neptune actually puts us in touch with the need for transcendence. So when we oftentimes we seek for different, we seek different ways of medicating ourselves, or we seek different ways of escaping, or we seek different ways of getting high, we seek different forms of bliss. We seek emotional catharsis, all of the most complicated things involving drugs and addiction and escapism, that sort of delusional aspects. Although let me tell you that, you know, when Neptune is signified in like very serious health crises, it's not like you can just easily shift perspectives, right, that sometimes Neptune shows up in, you know, in birth charts, in other words, or even in transits as the onset of like, you know, really serious things that people are dealing with.

So I don't mean to just, again, I'm not trying to say that, Neptunes, you know, for example, let's say someone in older age is having a Neptune transit as the onset of dementia is coming out; what am I going to tell them just, you know, think unicorn, happy thoughts, you know what I mean?

However, the other thing that's really important to remember is that Neptune Neptune is often described as immense and sublime, and one of the things that Neptune points toward Richard Tarnas mentions in his book Cosmos and Psyche is the ineffable and the infinite, the ineffable and the infinite.

So, you know, I had two grandparents that went through dementia on different levels, and I would never tell anyone what they're experiencing. So I only had my perception right, and one of my grandparents, in particular, had a Neptune transit going on major one as he got dementia and then ended up passing out of his body. But it was really interesting because the way that I perceived it as an astrologer with this particular grandparent was that the reorientation was literally taking him from one body to the next.

That's a reflection of my beliefs about the transmigration of the soul. Right? And you know, if you don't believe that, that's totally cool, but that's how I was perceiving it, and Neptune wants to put us in touch with that which is transcendent, ineffable, and infinite, which is also the very nature of our souls and so sometimes there's this way in which Neptune transits people, as they're working with the archetype will naturally try to reach for things that resemble the infinite, the ineffable, the vast, the sublime and sometimes we reach for the wrong things and we have to learn the difference between, you know, something of a truly transcendent nature, and something that is very temporary and can't possibly live up to something that's actually transcendent.

For example, people may dream of the perfect lover during a Venus, Neptune transit, and Neptune to Venus will fill them with a sense of romantic longing for the ideal perfect partner, and so then someone comes along who is incredibly ungrounded, but romantically compelling and they will dismiss all of the most rational level of details about the person in terms of what could actually provide for long term connection, of a real intense, spiritual nature. Like I want a deep, meaningful spiritual relationship. It's filled with passion and love, and that's what I want.

So they'll meet someone who has who somehow meet some of them, maybe they're physically attracted, maybe the person is very compelling and emotionally compulsive or something, and they'll go like, Oh, it doesn't matter, that they're not even into spirituality that they don't even have a job, or that they seem to be seeing lots of people at the same time and it's almost like, you know, it's like amnesia that comes over, and you'll go, like, I'll just dismiss all of it because I just want that, you know, that ideal, perfect love?

Well, okay, so, you know, someone could hear that and say, well, Neptune brings delusion, or Neptune brings illusion. But what do I see my clients going through when they make that choice? Well, the relationship doesn't last, and then afterward, they start to temper the vision of what they want; they start to say, okay, there was something, the picture of what I thought was transcendent, of transcendent value romantically. I had to learn a lesson about human frailties and about, you know, that somehow the desire for perfection can cloud or prohibit my ability to receive something of a divine nature of a divine gift in flesh, where there are imperfections.

It's amazing how Neptune will actually reconcile us to, you know, the way that things are, and the earthly, flawed, but beautiful nature of the way things are, and so you want something of transcendent value, you got to make sure that it's also something that can be that something that's embodied something that can be real and lasting.

So you know, in that way, Neptune is healing us of dichotomies that we have made between heaven and earth. Notice, there are many teachers who have said, even I think I can't remember if it was in the gospels, or a Gnostic gospel of Jesus is saying, like, you know, heaven is like a mustard seed. It's right here; you can't see it. It's a kind of smallness and humble quality to being able to perceive and experience heaven right here.

So, you'll see someone coming from really lofty, aggrandized views of romance to something that is able to perceive the heavenly and the transcendent here in the imminent those are Neptune; that's a Neptune process, and so Neptune will help us get in touch with the transcendent, but sometimes as a part of that process, just like reorienting us, takes us through a period of feeling adrift.

Neptune, in order to help us access the heavenly within the terrestrial sphere, Neptune will sometimes take us through a process of, you know, tasting and reaching for things that represent the way that we've cut Heaven and Earth apart from one another and so we have to put them back together. Neptune is a planet of unities. So it's beautiful in that way, and I just totally trust Neptune, and it could do that to me in a really difficult way tomorrow if it wanted to.

But I know in my heart, even if I forget it, In the process of being totally grabbed by, you know, reaching for things in a state of delusion in the hopes that they'll, you know, help me taste heaven. Even if I totally lose myself and forget everything I'm saying, I know that on the other side of wherever I land, this realization will be there. You know, that which is transcendent and heavenly is also humble and right before you, and like, Neptune helps us. It helps us bring the transcendent into our embodied lives.

Number three is that Neptune deepens our relationship with imagination and the romantic spirit. Last but not least, my favorite thing that Neptune does is it says in order to feel alive, you need to recognize that the soul itself is an aesthetic being, which means that the soul is not just like a particle of energy. You know, the soul is a very unique character shaped by experience by likes, and dislikes.

The soul is its own aesthetic, and aesthetic can't be lived into perpetuated, developed, or changed; it has to relate aesthetic is something art and beauty as feminine in, in sort of archetypal language as Venusian or as lunar, or relating principles, the soul is a relational being, and so Neptune comes along and just says, If your life is lacking, soulful, related, imaginal romantic, poetic, artistic dimensions, we're going to bring that in, we're going to amplify the need for it and sometimes along the way in order to get there, we may have to address how bored or, dissatisfied or empty or discontent you feel because the amplification of those feelings naturally leads us to reach for an instrument. Music, sensuality, romance.

So that's just part of it. You know, so you end up describing Neptune as something that, you know, makes you feel numb, numbed out; that's the way that people will describe Neptune, and then they'll say it was related to the period of time in which anesthesia was discovered. So it's an anesthetic. Oh, it just hurts my soul.

So the other thing that happens is, in order to get in touch with this romantic and imaginative dimension, sometimes the degree to which we've been cut off from it will be the degree to which we go to a real extreme degree to try to get back there. We want something imaginative, romantic, and adventurous; we seek to feel connected to something of a divine nature.

So it's like, well, let me join the cult, or, let me get caught up, you know, first attempts to connect with imagination may be extreme in some way, in other words, or we may fundamentally, we may seek it in a way that is intolerant. So Neptune transit can coincide with people joining religious communities that they feel provide that sense of meaning and connection to something transcendent, but then they'll go on and tell anyone who's not a part of it that they're going to hell.

So, ultimately, if people keep going along, all I would say is that such people eventually, you know, the energy, the momentum behind those attempts. You know, it's like, they don't work, and you know, and then there's, there's sometimes there's pain involved, but where does it bring people?

Eventually, there's a way in which Neptune transits bring us in touch with something that is romantic and imaginative and somehow true to our soul. There's no substitute for what is actually part of your souls code; you know, your soul has design preferences; it has colors that it likes, it likes certain textures and clothing and smells, and if we've been out of touch with that part of ourselves, there may be some false starts and some things that we get deluded by, but eventually, when those things fall away, what usually comes when they fall away is a sense of Oh, that wasn't me but this is.

I can say that as someone who recently went through a Neptune transit, that very gently led me out of a religious tradition that along the same lines of everything I'm just describing, for me, anyway. Just like, you know, if you don't know now, you know.

So, I hope that this has been useful for you guys, a spirited talk on Neptune. What we fear about it, what I think it actually does, at its best. We're going to continue this series, and we're going to go through Uranus and then Saturn, I think, maybe we'll throw Mars in there. People don't tend to get too worried about Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, the moon, and the sun. I've just never seen it. I've just never seen people like, oh my god, it's a Venus transit, you know? So. All right, more soon. Thanks, everybody. See you again soon. Bye.