Previewing Venus Retrograde in Leo: The Renewable Heart

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to take some time out to begin reflecting on Venus's upcoming retrograde in the sign of Leo. Venus is now in the sign of Leo and is going to be there for quite some time, the rest of the summer. Toward the late part of July, Venus will turn retrograde and will then move retrograde through the sign of Leo all the way until early September.

So we're going to take a look at this upcoming Venus retrograde cycle, and we're going to prepare for it today on a spiritual and psychological level. We'll do lots of other things too. As we get closer to Venus is retrograde. We'll do horoscopes. As we get closer to Venus retrograde, we'll do an archetypal exploration, and we'll talk about Venus retrograde cycles and previous Venus retrograde cycles and Leo and all of that good stuff.

But today, as Venus is already in the sign of Leo, I've been meditating on this placement; it's the one that I was born with, natally Venus my natal Venus is in Leo, and I've been thinking a lot about this as well because the planet transiting planet Uranus has been squaring my natal Venus. I can just say that because it's my ascendant ruler, and Venus and Leo is so personal to me. I've had the opportunity to meditate really deeply on that archetypal combination of Venus in the sign of the lion, Venus in the sign of the Sun.

So I've brought some thoughts today that I hope will help all of us to begin preparing for what is surely to be a pretty epic Venus retrograde later this summer. One that's work is already beginning in our hearts since Venus entered Leo recently and hit immediate opposition to Pluto last week.

So that's our agenda for today; we're going to talk about the heart as a renewable resource in this Venus retrograde as an opportunity for us to tap into the renewable resource that is the heart and how we can do that, and why Venus and Leo is a good opportunity to do that. So that is our agenda for today.

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All right, well, let's take a look at Venus's journey through the sign of Leo, for starters, and talk about this from the standpoint of the cycles length and the details of the cycle. So this is the entrance of Venus into Leo, which was June 5. So we've had Venus entering Leo just recently, and as it did, it immediately hid in opposition to Pluto. And then we work through the square to Jupiter. So some really big aspects that Venus made in the sign of Leo pretty immediately. Right now, Venus is also co-present with Mars in the sign of Leo, and that'll change a little bit later.

But let's take this forward; you can see that Venus is working its way through Leo. One of the biggest transits that we have early in the month of July is the square between Venus and Leo and Uranus in Taurus that's happening on July 2; that's a pretty exciting transit that will replay itself through the retrograde as well. We'll be talking about that one in depth. Venus then looks like it's going to conjoin Mars, but then what happens is Venus starts slowing down considerably, gets up to about the 28th-degree stations around July 23, and into the 24th, turns retrograde.

From that point forward, Venus is retrograde, takes it backward and through the square to Uranus, which happens around August. So it's about August 9, maybe the eighth, a little bit, and then Venus is going to go through the heart of the Sun around August 13. Then, as Venus is starting to rise into the Morning Star position and gaining that distance from the Sun, Venus will slow down and station around September 4, turning direct right around September 4 into the fifth.

Then from that point, Venus is going to go forward again backward went through the went backward through the square to Jupiter as well in August, and then it comes back through that square to Jupiter around September 17, and then it's going to make the square to Uranus again, right around September 29. It finally leaves the sign of Leo and enters Virgo right around October 9. So we have effectively from June to October. We have Venus in the sign of Leo.

So there's a lot of big opportunity long opportunity for us to reflect on the archetypal meaning of Venus and Leo, and although, like I said, we're going to take this on in a variety of different ways between now and, say, Venus turning retrograde we will do horoscopes we will take a few looks at the archetypal combination of Venus and Jupiter, Venus, and Uranus, and so on and we'll take a look at previous Retrogrades because we have had some previous Retrogrades to look back at with Venus and Leo. So we will do all of that.

Today, what I'd like to do is I want to talk about Venus in Leo, and sort of preparing ourselves for this big long retrograde period, or just even more broadly speaking, the long period of Venus and Leo from, you know, June to October. I want to talk about ten ways in which the heart is a renewable resource.

I say that because when Venus is in the sign of the Sun, so much of what Venus is connecting to is the symbolism of the heart. The heart can be something that connects us in love, in romance, in friendship, in the things that we're attracted to in art, all of which have an immediate connection to Venus and to the heart, which is ruled by Leo as a physical organ, but also is associated with the Sun. So there's just a heart and soul kind of vibe to Venus and Leo; there's a connection between what we love and the organ of the heart.

So I want to, I'm going to share a few things with you guys before I get into my list today. We're going to talk about ten ways that the heart is a renewable resource and what that even means. First, I want to read you something that I wrote. This is from my book, Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest, which I wrote and published in 2010. There is a section of this book that came; I literally wrote it in a notebook right after I finished an Ayahuasca ceremony, so it was pretty incredible.

So let me try to qualify that a little bit more. So for those of you who don't know what Ayahuasca is, this is something that I worked with for about ten years of my life pretty regularly and really was what formed my interest in astrology, yoga, and spirituality, that helped me do a lot of healing from the physical form of addiction to the mental psychological and ancestral demons connected to addiction in my family.

It's a very powerful psychedelic plant medicine that Shamans in South Central America have used for quite some time, ceremonially and medicinally, and, of course, it is not something that works for everyone, nor is it something that is appropriate for everyone. I'm not going to get into that because there's a whole as things become popular, you know, there can be a whole dark side to things as they become more popular, and there is that side of the Ayahuasca world as well.

But for me, during these years, Ayahuasca had an enormously positive and helpful impact on my life healing. So I wrote a book about my, you know, this was I wrote this in my late 20s, this book that came out in 2010, through Tarcher-Penguin. Anyway, at the end of one of the ceremonies, I just sat with a notebook in candlelight, and I wrote this, and these were I said if I had to make a list of my faith statements if I had no other door to nail them to but the door of my own heart, and I was referring to the Protestant reformation, no other place to write them down, but my own private journal, I would say, when we believe in our heart, we express ourselves from a place of unconditional acceptance, unconditional acceptance will make every hell into heaven. This message of salvation is always meant for the here and now. Belief in the heart does not make life eternal. It makes eternal life heavenly.

The more we contemplate the physical organ of the heart, the easier it is to understand what "believe in your heart" actually means. The human heart beats itself. We don't know what makes a heartbeat other than the fact that it beats itself. We don't know why it starts beating or when it will stop. The fact is that no matter what we do, good or bad, responsible or irresponsible, our heart nourishes us by continuing to beat itself. It is always sustaining us. Therefore the heart does not have a concept of judgment. It flows with whatever we choose and continues to support us.

All human darkness comes from feeling judged; even though we are never judged, the Sun is the heart of our solar system. No matter what happens on planet Earth, the Sun continues to shine upon us. Rising and setting at night, the moon waxes and wanes, and the moon's light is a reflection of the Sun's light. No matter what happens, the sustaining rhythm of the heart is present. The heart cannot pass judgment because its nature is its rhythm. That's all the heart does. It lives in beats. Believing in your heart means that you are your heart. Your heart is part of the one heart. Believing in your heart is not something you do because you feel you are wrong or bad or lost; you are never lost because you have always been here and experiencing every step of your journey.

There's nothing to accomplish for the sake of the heart. Heart is all there is behind every moment you think you are not peaceful or feel dissatisfied. The ability you have to feel that way in the first place is always enabled by your heart. You can learn to see this when you feel afraid or find yourself in any type of place; you don't want to be; connect to your heart.

When Jesus talked about believing in your heart, I don't think he was talking about belief in something. Jesus was not talking about believing really hard that a mountain would drop into the sea or believing really hard that he died for your sins. Anybody who stared hard enough at a cup and tried to believe it into floating has realized that this kind of believing doesn't work.

Instead, I think Jesus proclaimed that the larger our belief in the heart becomes, the more we extend our sense of who we are into the larger heart of reality, which is God. A miracle is a perception a person has while awakening to their own heart. Like many other miracles, miracle workers, Jesus always emphasize that miracles are meaningless because they extend from the exact same heart that sustains everything, whether it is a miracle, whether it is perceived as a miracle or not.

Miracles happen all the time when you believe in your heart because the heart is the miracle. So I look at this now, and I'm like, well, it's kind of corny. I don't know. I mean, those are deeply valuable statements to me because I look back on them, and I see my 26-year-old, 27-year-old self having gone through a harrowing experience of, you know, maybe vomiting and screaming that night, I don't remember exactly the details of that particular ceremony there. There were so so many of them.

But what I do know is I remember sitting there and writing those statements. At that time, it was the single biggest breakthrough I ever had when it came to what faith is all about and what belief in the heart, what is your heart believes to be true, really means. It was a moment where I remember thinking to myself, my physical heart is a metaphor for who I am and for what God is. It is this unconditional pulse of life that accepts, that allows for the premise of absolutely anything and everything by virtue of its 100% accepting, supporting, life-affirming rhythm, and by its very being, it beats it is alive, and it says yes, because of it.

Now, I know that a lot of that may sound sort of grandiose, you know, on a Wednesday, or whatever we're, we're, we're just sitting here, you know, trying to have a day and now we're talking about universal hearts and all this kind of stuff like, Well, where does that place us? There's a passage from one of my favorite books called The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World by James Hillman. He says a bunch of things about the heart in this book that are amazing, but he says this,

"When we fall in love, we begin to imagine, and when we begin to imagine, we fall in love. To this day, depth psychology is caught by the necessary connection of love and imagination, which it has not yet had the philosophy to place. When we fall in love, we begin to imagine, and when we begin to imagine, we fall in love. To this day depth, psychology is caught by the necessary connection of love and imagination, which it has not yet had the philosophy to place."

What I hear Hillman saying here is that the heart gives us the ability to imagine, and when we imagine, we fall in love, which is to say, we begin to feel the burning pleasure of the heart, which is not the same as an ordinary, mundane pleasure. It's a soul pleasure. It's a life-affirming pleasure. It's a kind of accepting, rhythmic, bloody beating, yes, that gives rise to an existential sense of rightness, or it's a joy; it's a pleasure, but it's one that it's more like a hallelujah, then it is a, you know, that the satisfaction you get from eating a really tasty burger or something. Although that's pretty good too.

When we fall in love, we begin to imagine, and when we begin to imagine, we fall in love, that the heart facilitates living a life living stories and that those stories all help us tap into the heart and that the heart helps us to continue telling stories. That's another way of reading what Hillman is saying here when he tells us that when we begin to imagine, we fall in love, and when we fall in love, we begin to imagine.

One of the reasons that I wanted to talk about this today is that I believe very firmly that when Venus is in Leo and a long stay in Leo, with a deep, long retrograde with some very powerful aspects throughout, that we are going to be just deep into the love stories of our life. Those that burn in the heart, and the burning is life-giving and life-affirming, and it is the kind of burning that will make a soul more soulful.

But we have to be prepared for the way that the heart likes to create stories, the way that the heart likes to imagine a life, and the way that imagining helps us tap into a different kind of love, a different kind of joy or a different kind of pleasure and existential heart throbbing bloody pleasure. It's different, and it can be very theatrical and sort of dramatic. So, on that note, here are ten ways that the heart is a renewable resource, and if we tap into these things while Venus is in Leo, especially during the retrograde, I think that not only will we survive, but whatever the retrograde dishes up, whatever heartbreaking heart-making stories start to unfold, but we will thrive we will actually find that our life is deeper, richer, more meaningful, we won't just survive, but will thrive.

So number one, the heart accepts what we say and believe about it. Because the heart's nature is accepting, accepting, accepting just as rhythmic as the physical beating of your heart. It says yes, it says yes, it affirms, it affirms, it is life, it is life, including all of it. That if you start saying to yourself, my heart is good, my heart is strong, my heart is capable, my heart is forgiving. My heart is beautiful. My heart is connected to other people.

Or if you say my heart is broken, my heart is torn apart. My heart is wounded, that the heart will just say yes, yes, yes, yes. That doesn't mean that there's anything inherently wrong with saying one thing versus the other or believing one thing versus the other about your heart. Isn't it amazing that the heart doesn't judge and the heart just says yes, yes, yes, yes.

But that can help us too if we reflect on that, then we can feed our hearts the stories that we want to live with regard to the nature of the heart itself. My heart is strong. My heart is capable. Right? My heart can recover. My heart can learn; my heart can grow. My heart is forgiving. My heart is wise. The heart, in the meantime, just says yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Listen, this summer, to the story that you are telling yourself about your heart if you want to call it your soul, heart, and soul; they go together in the way that we talk about the heart; we often talk about the soul. I don't think it's super important to get out some kind of psychological scalpel and be super finicky and picky about the way we differentiate these things. Sometimes, I guess it is but not all the time. If you say the heart is like the soul, the heart just goes Yes, yes, yes.

So the heart accepts what we say and believe about it, and that's a really beautiful thing that can come in during a long period of Venus in Leo. We can say I accept myself because my heart is beautiful, and the heart will affirm that.

Number two is that the heart grows stronger when we tear off small pieces of it and leave them in special places and people. Sometimes there's, don't get me wrong, I have no problem with this idea, but there is an idea out there that our soul gets fragmented into all these different pieces, and then you have to pay a shaman right to go fly around like an eagle in the ether spaces and collect them and bring them back, the fragmented pieces have to come back together.

I actually believe that's true. So I don't mean to ridicule that. But there's something else that's also true. It's not that there's only one true paradigm. It's like, well, souls are like, you know, I don't know, they're like glass, and if they break, then you have to go collect the pieces and then somehow glue them back together something. There are many different paradigms. Remember, what we tell our heart about its nature is in the heart will simply affirm that.

So if we have experienced fragmentation, and we have an experience of fragmentation and collecting those pieces, and putting them back together, the heart just goes, yes, yes, yes. There's a different way of thinking about the heart too, which is that the heart is an infinitely renewable resource that you can peel a huge piece of your heart off, and you can leave it in Havana, Cuba.

I was listening to a song. I don't remember who did it. But I think the name of the song was Havana, which came on my suggested song list on Pandora or something, and I was like, Oh, I really liked this song. I think there was a line or something, but I left my heart in Havana. You leave a piece of your heart in Havana; you leave some of it in India; you leave it in the girlfriend or boyfriend you had when you were 22; you leave it in your high school best friend and the road trip you took.

You tear off pieces of your part piece, you tear off parts of your heart, you tear off pieces of it, and you place them in things and people and experiences. The heart gets stronger when we do that, when we literally tear off a little piece and give it to someone or something, place it somewhere. Because what happens is, rather than there being like a finite amount of heart that is reduced and then scattered and has to be all collected in some kind of finite manner.

There's also a sense in which the heart is infinite, and if you tear off a piece, it grows a new one; you can't actually reduce the size or amount of the heart by tearing a piece off and leaving it in people in places.

There's also a truth about the heart, which is that when you tear it off, it's just like tearing a little piece of medicine off from a plant that will continue to grow new leaves and sprout, new flowers, and so forth. So you can harvest little pieces of the plant, and it doesn't threaten the integrity of the life of the plant. It just keeps growing. So that's also true about our hearts.

One of the things we can do during this Venus retrograde is to be intentional and deliberate, almost ceremonial, and say how do I get more conscious about giving pieces of my heart to things and people and moments, the way that I do something, the way that I cook a meal, I can tear off a little, little piece of my heart like it's you know, a little bit of parsley or something you're putting on a dish.

So believe that not only is it okay, but it's good for your heart to find meaningful, deliberate ways of tearing off small pieces of it and planting them in people and environments and actions and so forth so that your heart will grow stronger and not only that but then it's like your heart starts developing an ecosystem. My heart lives in many places in many images, and many people in many experiences and many memories. My heart is not just a singular thing that is either intact or out of, but it's a living organism that shoots off like the way that trees drop to spread and proliferate their seeds.

Number three, the heart grows stronger when we say yes to our experiences. Remember, I'm just giving that image of the heart from my ceremony and to seeing it being like yes, yes, yes. I think it is the hardest but most artistic and courageous thing that we can do, and it doesn't always happen in the moment; it can happen later in reflection. But to say yes to all of our experiences doesn't matter. You don't have to say yes to your experience in the actual moment of the experience, though that does help. But you can say yes, too, in reflection. That was a hard day. But as I sit and reflect upon it, I say yes to it, and somehow, that brings the experience back into my heart, and my heart is the ultimate yes machine.

Bring it back in, baby. Let's go. Gather that in, bring it in. It's like a mama just bring it in, get it into the hug machine, and this hug machine is an existential hug machine. It's not a, you know, it's not a fluffy BS hug machine. It's deep. You know, it says it has to say yes to the most complicated confounding, painful, impermanent, difficult experiences gutsy to do that kind of work. But that's what the heart likes to because if you bring it in the hearts like, oh yeah, here we go, yes, yes, yes, let's go.

Number four, the heart grows stronger when trampled. Did you know that my wife is the one who taught me this? She's an herbalist; as you guys know, chamomile, when trampled, they actually literally, in certain places, will plant cam a meal in walking paths because when it's trampled, it emits this beautiful aroma. Not only that, but when Kim Emile is trampled, it actually helps it grow and proliferate, and it gets stronger. So there are some plants that are like that; if they get trampled, it actually helps them grow and spread and release beautiful smells and aromas.

Now, this is a radical one because I'm not advocating that you trample on anyone else's heart or that you go looking to have your heart trampled, but in the case that your heart has been trampled. Remember that the heart is like chamomile. The heart has this amazing ability, when it's trampled, to say yes, right, and to grow stronger. I would say that there are some times when it's really hard to recover from having the heart trampled.

There's trauma, and there is a long, slow, winding path of recovery for many of us. So I do not mean for this to sound trite or like it is easy or like it doesn't require serious help and intervention at times. But here's what I have learned time and time again from almost 13,000 clients that I've seen in my astrology practice over 13 years.

I have seen that most of the time, people who face and deal with trauma, much of which could be described as having had the heart trampled. Most of the people having done that work or in the process of still doing that work, that there is something remarkably strong and courageous about such people, and I think that a lot of people turn to astrology because astrology helps validate the karmic faded ups and downs of life that we have to live through and that most of us appreciate knowing about, and appreciate reflecting upon because we recognize I have learned, I have grown stronger. I think it comes back to the heart having to say yes to our experiences, but it's the same idea.

Consider that the most beautiful aromas that your heart has to offer the world that you have to realize about yourself, the most beautiful qualities that you can realize about yourself, come when our heart gets trampled because, guess what, what we end up realizing, eventually, I believe it's in this lifetime or the next, that eventually, we realize, my heart is still okay, it's still beating, it's still affirming, it's still back there just thumping out the most beautiful, yes, that I've ever heard.

Number five, the heart is already perfect. We realize this in proportion to our ability, in proportion to our ability to accept ourselves. This is a truth that I feel has been really helpful for me, there's nothing wrong with me, there never has been, there's nothing wrong with you, there never has been even the darkest people the most, you know, our greatest enemies, and even the things that we would probably call evil and functionally they are, you know, in the world, we experience them as evil, they have a role to play and we subjectively we describe it as evil. That is what it is on a certain level.

But behind the existence of darkness itself, the ability that darkness has to exist and be a thing is sustained because there is a universal heart beating and going, Yes, yes, yes, yes, and so what I've realized is that this universe, with the inclusion of everything that, in our experience, can be described as ugly, dark, evil, etc. Everything is also in this incredibly transcendent way that baffles me most of the time, perfect.

When I realized that when I take that, and I apply it to myself as a dad, or as a husband, or as a friend, or as an astrologer, you know, as an employer, to the people that I employ to help my programs and stuff like that, the responsibilities I have and whether I'm doing a good job of it or not. How am I performing as a dad today, you know, all these things, that there's a time where I reach the space pretty often where I just have to go. I am perfect, exactly as I am. It's some cosmic Mr. Rogers happy horseshit, but it is true, you know. The more deeply I can accept myself just as I am, The more that I am able to actually feel my heart.

Number six, the heart connects to entire networks of hearts through compassion, forgiveness, and empathy, through listening, even something as simple as that. See, the thing is, is that we're all alike. As souls as beings and creations, we're all sort of like satellites, little satellite hearts orbiting the great heart, and it's a mystery because it's not easy to point to where that heart is or what it looks like or, but we're all a part of an orbiting this one tremendous heart.

We're not meant to be living life in a vacuum. Our heart, by its very nature, needs to have the experience of being connected. So many times I hear people in my daily counseling sessions, you know, looking at birth charts, fearing that the need that they have for positive, healthy attachment, dependence, interdependence, relationship, love, reciprocation, is somehow evidence of something that is wrong with them. I am not self-sufficient, I am not capable, I am not autonomous, I am not sovereign, I am not self-governing. So all of these things that I need or want or hope for that with regard to my relationships are only there because I have yet to become capable enough and independent enough.

Honestly, this is just more of just a modern, bullshit myth that we've taken individuality to such an extreme is problematic. Now, I personally help people all the time to also disentangle themselves from, you know, being overly dependent upon substances or people or whatever. So I can readily acknowledge that people need to individuate and that individuality and self-sustaining qualities are vital, right?

But not to the extent that most people think they are these days; we live in a relational reality that needs heart and soul connections. That is like water. Psychically we're malnourished when we live in little isolated spaces, projecting images of each other and not having real connections, for example, and I'm not going to tell you what a real connection is or isn't, but I bet you know what one feels like.

So how do we connect our hearts to other people? This Venus retrograde can be an amazing time to look at our lives and say, is this a heart and soul connection? Do I have them in my life? Where in my life do I need them? Where am I like thirsty for a heart connection to someone else? Well, the heart connects to entire networks of other hearts through compassion, being present for the pain and suffering of other people.

Forgiveness the act of forgiving people that have wronged us or that have harmed us who are seeking forgiveness, and even if they're not seeking forgiveness, we can do the forgiving in our own hearts, and through empathy, or just through listening. A Venus retrograde, no matter what sign, is always good for improving our connections to other people on a heart level, but this one, especially since it's in the sign of the Sun, the heart, ruler of the heart.

Number seven, the heart doesn't need the mind to justify its desires, attractions, or aversions. I'm not saying the mind, and the heart can have no connection to one another. Of course they can, they can have a very positive one. But a lot of the time, what I noticed for myself is my heart feels a feeling. I feel myself attracted to something, maybe a little bit averse to something; I can feel my joys, my desires, my attractions, my aversions, and then my mind goes, let me just check in and make sure this is all appropriate and all okay, it's like, You're not the boss of me.

You're a helpful ally. But our minds sometimes act like they are critics, judges, and overseers that are telling us whether the heart is okay or not. I think we need to move the mind into the role of friend, conversational ally, but not judge, supervisor, and like, you know, giving a stamp of approval. Cooperator that's a better role for the mind in relation to the heart, and these are things that can become so much more obvious when Venus is retrograde in the sign of the lion, in the sign of the heart.

Number eight, the heart's most life-affirming gesture, is to let things go while continuing to stay open hearts challenging moments; there is a way in which the most radical thing the heart can do. I mean, so many, so much of it comes back to that. Yes, yes, yes. But another way that we can say yes is to let things flow through. Just let them pass like water flowing through us. We can bring it through the heart in letting it pass through; it's very purifying.

I'm not talking about things where, you know, we can't just let something go; we got to deal with it, right? I'm talking about how many times during your day would it be easier to say, Oh, look at that. That's interesting. Let it pass through the big yes tributary of my heart, accept it, give it a big sunny hug somewhere, and let it keep flowing is one of the most amazing things that we can do. Because then we can have a good sense of humor about it. People say things that are absurd. They're doing things that are crazy. And we can be like, Yeah, I've let some crazy shit pass through the river of my heart too, and we can laugh, rather than being like, well, that's not allowed in my heart space. So there must be something wrong with you.

When we let things flow through us and just observe and kind of appreciate a laugh a little bit, but let little things flow through rather than scrutinizing them, and this is good, and this is bad, and judging and meticulously making our mind analyze and dissect everything. Just letting things flow through. It makes us so much more lovable and likable because we become deeper empathizers while also being less judgmental.

Number nine, the heart is fed by storytelling. Another thing that I hear people like averse to, and this is sort of New Age stuff. I saw this a lot in the yoga community that I was a part of the yoga studio for a long time. People are like; I gotta get out of all of my stories and just stay present. It's like, okay, I get that. Right. It was like, on a certain level, like, okay, yes. If you're getting lost in all of these crazy stories, you need to come to the present moment because the stories are dictating your happiness, and they're just spinning you out. Then okay, get out of storytelling and come to the present moment. Breathe, take a walk, and your body. Totally appropriate advice.

But sometimes it goes too far, and people think that somehow your life isn't a story. No, no, no. In fact, it is not just a story. It is the most grand dramatic. Choose your own adventure story meets opera meets summer blockbuster. And there's, you know, not just one storyline. But there are like 15 protagonists and 15 storylines, and our life is meant to be imagined along and live like a dramatic play, and we should soak that up.

There's nothing wrong with it. Getting lost in the beautiful storylines of our lives is, for most of us, enriching so long as we can have the ability to come back to the present and realize that, you know, what our heart is doing is our heart is like laying in the flowers, looking up at the clouds, plucking images out of the clouds, like what a great way to spend an afternoon. What's wrong with that? You're gonna deny yourself the ability to imagine a life story. Just because there are, it's rather subjective. There are multiple possibilities you can get lost in them. Well, that's dangerous. Stay away from storytelling. No, no.

Know that storytelling and imagination and fantasy and romance and adventure feed the heart and help us to ultimately tap back into the heart because all stories lead back to the same place, the happily ever after, the painful letting go, the difficult tragedy, all of these stories lead us back to the same place, and it's the heart anyway. So what's the danger in letting our lives live out stories, nothing.

So little advocating for stories, storytelling, and living a life that is imagined along, and if you need to come back to the present moment, get in your body, get grounded, and check out, you know, get get out of the storytelling if you need to. But stop hating on storytelling.

Finally, number 10. The heart is more than a physical organ, but you can know it by meditating on the physical organ. If you want to know what a heart is like spiritually, place your hand on your heart, close your eyes, and feel it.

That's what I've got for today. I hope that these pieces of advice, these meditations on the heart, will help you this summer as Venus goes through Leo for many months and takes a nice long retrograde through Leo; come back to these meditations, and maybe they'll help us as we are getting neck deep and some of the stories of the heart, the heart, and soul, the painful ones, the life-changing ones, the ones that, you know, it feels like we're just, yeah, we're so deep in the dramas of the heart, and that can very much happen when Venus is in Leo and retrograde.

But if we come back to what the heart is, and that we're we are the heart. I think that these truths can help us have a really positive experience, one that affirms us, affirms our lives, helps us deepen our relationships, and strengthen our heart connections. Alright, that's what I've got for today. I hope you guys are doing well. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye, everyone.