The Sun is Running the Gauntlet This Weekend

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Happy Friday, everybody! Today we're going to take a look at the Sun moving into an opposition with Neptune and trines that it will be making with Pluto and Uranus. An activation of the Sun with all of the outer planets over the weekend, and I've got a list of things to watch for, given the significance of these transits, which will be, I think, quite powerful.

When you get that many aspects firing off in close succession from the sun or any other of the traditional planets. It often becomes quite personal for us, and sometimes collective events have an interesting overlap with personal life as well. So anyway, we're going to look at those things today, and hopefully, not only give you a sense of what might occur, but how to think about and work with what's occurring.

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All right, let's open Nicchepso and let's take a look at what's happening over the weekend. So you can see here, Friday, September 25, that we are about half a degree away from the sun opposing Neptune. The sun will then trine Pluto, the sun will then trine Uranus.

And so we have a sequence of events taking place over the next few days. That's quite powerful. The official timeline for this is going to be the 25th through the 28th, and let's again just sort of highlight. Let's back this up to Friday the 25th today.

And you're going to notice that if we fast forward this just by one day, by tomorrow at the same time in the morning, we're going to see that the sun has just passed through the opposition and is now trining Pluto, and then if we give this until Monday the 28th.

The sun will trine Uranus, kind of completing that that cycle of activity. So we've got about three days of this significant energy coming through, led by the opposition between the sun and Neptune. I want to talk about the kinds of things that can occur for us when when the sun and Neptune oppose.

And then add in everything on my list today is considering the effect of many outer planets at the same time with the lead opposition between the sun and Neptune. All of these things tend to be about very big scale ideas and concerns. The intersection between historical, theological trajectories, like why are we here?

What is it all about? What is my role in whatever it is all about? Those things tend to ramp up considerably when the planets get together in these kinds of configurations. All right. Well, I've got five things to watch for with all of this in mind, and I hope you find this useful.

As always, I feel like I want to qualify what we're about to say with just one comment, which is that to me, as the planets are passing through their major aspect sequences, the archetypes that they present us with, these archetypal patterns that we start to notice or feel or see, they all invite us to reflect philosophically upon our existence.

And what reality is here for in us and through us, and they do so in many different ways. So I'm always just trying to capture a little bit of the essence of the transit in terms of how we might think about and process what we're experiencing, because the patterns Reflect deeper, deeper ways that we have of of thinking about why we're here in the first place.

And maybe none greater than sun opposite Neptune, which can be quite existential. So here are five things to watch for. Number one, and I titled this talk "The Sun Is Running the Gauntlet" this weekend. It's a little dramatic, but it actually came from me thinking of that phrase and being like, "Is that dramatic?

And then I said to myself, "I want to look up what it means to run the gauntlet because I'm pretty sure it's some kind of medieval torture device. I was like, "Before before I invoke those words, which we're also going to talk about invocations today and incantations Coming soon. I wanted to know what it meant.

So to run the gauntlet originally meant being forced to pass between two lines of people who strike or attack you while you move between them. That's terrible. Metaphorically, though, we use that phrase to describe what it. Who knows where that originally came from? Some sick puppy came up. Some some sick dude, no doubt.

It's not a woman who came up with that idea. I don't think some guy was like, "Hey, Steve, you know, you know what would be great if when that Alan guy on Nightlight Astrology cocks off, we make him run through the gauntlet. It'll just everyone will just have sticks. That's terrible.

Anyway, but we use the phrase. Sorry, we we use the phrase to describe any period where it feels like life, not people, not not Steve and his boys, but life is hitting you on all sides. You know what I mean? Running the gauntlets, like I'm going through a difficult period where it feels like I'm getting hit on all sides by stressors, by life.

So everyone knows that experience, and I think can appreciate the gruesome metaphor. But you know, when you're running the gauntlet metaphorically, it feels like the odds are stacked against you, and it feels like it feels a little unfair, and it feels very overwhelming. This is one of the key words for Neptune transits: is overwhelm.

And one one of the most I think common responses to periods of time where we feel like we're overwhelmed by multiple forces and stressors that are coming at us from different directions. It feels very overwhelming. Is we don't know the right response. What am I supposed to do?

And it's really easy to fall into feeling sorry for ourselves, or quitting, or or even developing some real deep doubts. Like nothing means anything. This is just way too much at once for me to trust that there's some kind of fairness in the universe, so it can get pretty nihilistic.

Actually, it's funny. I remember Liz Green saying that many times aspects to Neptune will bring up the feeling of or the the sense of oblivion. You get really overwhelmed. It's not even nihilistic. It's just sort of like it's it. There's a feeling like you're just being whited out by oblivion.

You know, just like like a whiteout winter storm or something. But it's your conscious. You just can't handle. Just take me away. You know, it it has that. It's not good or bad. It doesn't even have to be nihilistic. Like nothing means anything in a dark way.

It can just be like complete overwhelm and this feeling of being consumed by oblivion. So I think we really struggle when it comes to Sun Neptune oppositions to find the right response. And again, I'm I'm amplifying all of this so that it looks really big.

But a lot of us may experience that sense of overwhelm in ways that are somewhat you know mundane, kind of kind of boring. But it is life, and a lot of life is the overwhelm of the mundane. And so, if you if you are a praying person, but even if you're not.

One of the best ways to tap into Neptune is to try to see what you're experiencing in terms of something that is happening to everyone everywhere, or maybe a little bit more accurately, that is happening to many people in different circumstances that actually look a lot like yours.

If you're a praying person, the prayer, and I don't even think you have to believe in a higher power necessarily to pray. You can just say, "Please help me feel connected to everyone who is suffering as I am in similar ways, and what that does is it can then open an even deeper level of the same prayer.

Please also help me open my heart to those who are experiencing versions of this suffering far greater than anything I've ever known. And several things start happening if we make that a practice. At times where we feel like we're running the gauntlet, or things are overwhelming us on all sides, suffering can make us contract.

And Sun Neptune, if you open yourself to the suffering you're experiencing as something that exists in a collective dimension of suffering, and in dimensions that go even beyond way, way beyond what you're suffering with. And you can keep your imagination and your heart open to that, and literally try to connect with it.

And rather than the temptation of collapsing inward in despair or self pity or whatever else, just overwhelm. You can use what you're feeling to pray for those who are suffering similarly. The the that phrase, "the rising tide lifts all boats, prayer. for those who are suffering similar to you, and those who suffer far more than you do.

That's the those that is the prayer of the Bodhisattva, and that is the prayer that helps us lift. You imagine that that prayer goes out into the universe, and that all the people who are suffering similarly may actually feel a slight prompt to care or feel concern for others as well.

And then all of a sudden we're wrapping our arms around one another, and we think, "Well, I'm just one person in this sea of of people suffering from something like this. So, what good am I going to do? But it doesn't work like that. Your your faith in that prayer can be as big as a mountain, even though it looks small in size.

So when we keep the heart open, when we ask for help too, when we say, "Please help me, I'm suffering. Universe, higher self, gods, even just the act of asking for help starts to invite that help in from wherever it may come from. When we persevere with faith during difficult times, we also trust that there may be reasons for this that I can't understand yet.

And I don't need to understand yet. Maybe someday I will, maybe not. But I'm going to keep going with faith that there is meaning in life and in passages like these, I don't have to know it now. I don't have to. I don't have to like have it all spelled out, or or you could even just say to persevere is a valid response.

I'm just going to persevere. So we move from suffering and overwhelm to connection, right? Love and empathy and compassion and vulnerability and receptivity, and if that's our response to this overwhelm, well, that doesn't mean the gauntlet's going to just disappear, but it does mean that suddenly we're not alone.

Suddenly, we find ourselves running through something that feels like a very isolated, very specific and private form of cosmic abuse into something that that joins us with others. It's the joining with others that the Sun Neptune can connect us to if we're willing to see ourselves as an instrument of the healing of the collective as soon as we just take the time to tap into it.

One of the reasons that I, you know, the director of a school and a program of of astrological learning, right? One of the reasons that I Try to keep Nightlight as a safe place for all different kinds of marginalized people, queer people, people of color, anyone who's gone through marginalization. And one of the reasons that that's really important to me is because, although I I have not gone through anything compared to what a lot of these folks have gone through that I'm mentioning right now.

I was bullied in high school, just a little microcosm of of I guess what it's like to be like seriously marginalized. And as an adult, as an astrologer, wherever I go, as soon as I say I'm an astrologer, quite frequently, like 75% of the time, I'm looked at like I'm not serious, and that hurts.

But what I, the thing that's been really inspiring for me is to say, that's a little like, I this practice because I meditate daily, and I have for 17 years, and in my daily meditation practice. One of the prayers that's been very meaningful for me is exactly the one I'm saying to say to myself, I'm not alone in this.

I know that there are people who are suffering from feeling misunderstood or unfairly characterized or not seen or you know all the way back to when I was in high school. It was my Christian youth group friends who were all, for the most part, the kids I hung out at with church were like the people who were not taken seriously and made fun of at school, and our faith was something that brought us together.

Honestly, that's just that's like, and I know that's like a very small thing compared to what a lot of people deal with. I think of one of my friends in high school. I was in theater. One of my friends in high school was coming out to his family. We're Christian, and at that time in the '90s, it was still, you know, it was a lot less safe than it is now.

Not that it's entirely safe now, but it was a lot less safe. And I remember him coming out and just being like it helped me put into perspective the bullying I was dealing with, and being like, he's got a whole different level going on, you know. And even now, one of the reasons that it's important to me to be making sure that Nightlight, whether it's my channel or my school, is a space where people that have been marginalized feel included and safe, and given space to be on staff or to speak on the channel or to teach in our classes.

Is because every time I am, I think of myself being marginalized as an astrologer, which is like again, it's a small thing, you know. But the practice for me has been to say, "Please help me to see myself as connected to everyone who's suffering as I am, who has a job or a role in the world that just gets put into some bin that people think of as crazy, you know, or stupid, or is not serious.

Help me connect with those people, so I know I'm not alone. And then the next iteration of the prayer has been, please help me open my heart to those who are experiencing versions of this kind of suffering that are far greater than anything I've ever known. And when I think about that. It's not that it eliminates the kind of suffering I'm experiencing, or that it's so healthy to go around saying, "Well, your suffering is greater than mine, or mine is greater than yours.

But if I'm serious, I know that people are suffering from things that are like mine, but also far worse than mine, and that keeps my heart connected in empathy and compassion to all different kinds of people who might be coming to astrology from different walks of life, who have experienced, you know, things being directed at them that I know something about, but they've had it a lot worse than I have, right?

I think that I think that's probably a part of why this transit, the Sun Neptune, often has so many like Christian and sort of like bodhisattva. It's very Christ-like, very bodhisattva-like, very Kuan Yin-like. If you know Kuan Yin, even the overflow of compassion and empathy for those who are downtrodden, for those who are labeled as the the least, right?

It's very Christ-like. Jesus was hanging out with people who were stepped on by other people, sex workers, or you know, the he's hanging out with like a tax collector who was sort of despicable. He's hanging out with people who are poor, and I think drawing our attention to saying like unless unless we're really taking care of the people who are suffering the most, we're not really taking care of ourselves because they're a part of us, and the sun Neptune is such a good transit for remembering our pain is real.

You don't have to compare it to anybody else's. It's not a competition, and also be real about the fact that your your suffering is not. You're not alone in it, and there are also people suffering and handling even more than you are. And this can bring compassion and empathy and a sense of solidarity.

We go from isolation to feeling solidarity with others and protective of others, and protection, and a sense of sacred mission to be someone whose pain helps me relate and connect to others, and think of them as people I have to look out for. You know, that's good for us.

It takes us out of the black hole isolation tank, you know, of our own suffering, and I think that's a huge part of the work of inner salvation, inner spiritual enlightenment, inner awakening. All right. Well, number two on my list is incantational power. Sun Neptune is also a transit that brings up that I don't know kind of yucky topic of manifestation.

The reason I say yucky is because I think a lot of us by now have probably run into someone who's using that language in ways that are just inherently selfish, and it's it it just kind of rubs you the wrong way. I'm going to manifest a car, house, money, fame, you know, whatever.

But there's a subtler version of manifestation, and I know many people who work with the power of manifestation are aware of this distinction and are not cheapening this. You know, so I don't mean to sound judgmental, but words. words are very creative, and the Sun Neptune reminds us that words and actions, even especially words, but actions, words, thoughts, responses are incantational.

They have real magical power. It's almost like you're, you know, like when you start really desiring something, and then you think to yourself, "I'm going to go get that thing I desire. I want to go try to obtain it, and it will satiate me somehow if I obtain it.

Right? You're putting a quarter in a machine. You know what I mean? Like you're putting like you're you. It's it's not. I don't want to say it's as ominous as like be careful what you wish for, but it sort of is, because when our our desires, our fantasies, our hopes, our wishes, our longings, we really have no idea whether or not they are good for us or right for us, or whether we will really be satisfied by them, and so you're you.

Any time you act out of fantasy and longing, and you you paint something in your head as like this is what I want, this is what will bring me this or that, you are like you're in a you're in a circus, and you're putting a quarter in a circus ride.

You know, it's like okay, here we go. Words are creative. The logos in the beginning was the logos. The word, the word was with God. The word was in God. These kinds of phrases from it's the Book of John, if I remember correctly.

We're casting spells, little spells, all day long. I I don't want to think about that too literally. I just think it's a good metaphor. Pay attention to what happens after you speak for. Anger, or gossip, or mockery, or resentment, or self-righteousness, or contempt, or exaggeration, or gossip, or certainty about things that we couldn't possibly know for certain.

Sun Neptune periods can create this, I mean, uncanny feedback loop, where something that will come back at you that mirrors what we've just put out into the world through thoughts, feelings, ideas, images, desires, hopes, longings, and and even just things that we say sort of carelessly.

I don't think that karma is always like a sledgehammer. Sometimes it's this, you know, those mirrors in the fun house. You stand, and it's like really funny. You get all warped, and you get short, or you get really wide, or your face, you know, changes or something.

I think sometimes karma is a lot more like that, where your desire for something, or the way you do or say something will come back in this bizarre feedback mirror, and it's about just getting you to see what was there unconsciously and what you put out.

And in this way, one of the things that Sun Neptune is doing is making you aware of the incantational quality of ordinary actions like speech, words, thoughts, reactions, hopes, fantasies. What kind of world, in other words, am I invoking through my thoughts, judgments, feelings, actions, words, speech?

What happens to my consciousness, and what kind of feedback do I get from the environment, from people, from things that start to happen when I'm continually speaking cynically, judgmentally, when I'm continually gossiping, when all that can fill my mouth is what's going on with other people, their dramas that I'm suddenly inserting myself into.

What kind of feedback loop does that create for me when I repeatedly tell myself the same negative story about myself or about someone else? What kind of feedback does that give me? All right. Well, number three on my list is the way home.

Now, the sun opposite Neptune reveals something really profound about desire, which I've been alluding to, which is that our desires are often costumes for something deeper and far more basic. All of the ancient traditions talked about desire in this way. These mystical traditions that practiced astrology, behind a lot of our worldly ambitions, whether they are personal or cultural or historical or societal or humanitarian, there can be a very deep longing for transcendence.

We want peace in the world. We want justice. We want safety. We want prosperity. We want health. We want belonging. We want reconciliation and healing. We want a better world. Literally, we just want a better world. But underneath the desire for those things in this time-space container we call planet Earth, I think the ancient mystics pointed this out quite plainly: is the soul's desire for God, and by God we could mean goddess, we could mean source, we could mean oneness, we could mean Buddha consciousness.

I don't care what you call it, I don't care how you conceptualize it, or not. There's just a yearning for something eternal. Let's put it that way. And one mistake that the Sun Neptune can bring up is believing if I can just arrange the worldly circumstances perfectly, if I can fix society, society. Okay. Just it just grabs me sometimes. Oh, it's been like teasing me for like weeks.

There's been number of times where I've said it, and I, but sometimes it just it's like a little gremlin that just pops out. Okay. Okay, so we believe that if we could fix society, if we could eliminate conflict, if we could perfectly secure everything going on in our bodies, right? That's whole like health industry around that.

We could perfect our relationships if they would just change, right? Or if I could just fix myself because I mess up every relationship. Maybe you're hard on yourself. If I could get to the bottom of my psychological healing, then, and only then, will I arrive at the peace that I'm seeking or that the world is seeking.

But all of these ancient traditions and the entire language of astrology. Riddled as it is with the tension of opposites, tells us that existence, manifest existence, contains an unavoidable alternation of opposites of light and dark, of creation and destruction, of pleasure and pain, of gain and loss.

The cup is full. The cup is empty. Now we recognize this. It doesn't mean that it's an excuse to be indifferent towards suffering, but what it does mean is that we have to be realistic about what we're trying to create in the world and why.

And this is where the yogic concept of the gunas or the modes of material existence come in really handy because of those modes, tamas, rajas, and satva. You have satva as the sort of the environment that we're trying to create on Earth, not as the end of itself, but as the kind of world that is most conducive to the end.

So let me explain what that means. Satvic consciousness, a satvic vibration, is peaceful, truthful, compassionate, healthy, hygienic. Right? It's like you've taken a bath today. You smell pretty good, right? You've clipped your toenails. It's it's orderly, orderly, not as in like you know anal retentive, but like it's it's there's like a feng shui to life.

It's more conducive. All of these things, all of these things, if we create them on Earth, peace, truth, compassion, health, order, some order, and health of the whole, not just the the one, but the whole, all people. This kind of environment is more conducive to the goal of spiritual life, which is the awakening of transcendental awareness.

And according to these traditions, you can take this or leave it. The transmigration of the soul out of the cycle of death and rebirth. I know some people hearing that will immediately kind of want to defend like birth and life and manifestation, and that's good. But these traditions, where astrology comes from, are transcendentalists.

They believe that our home lies beyond the cycle of death, rebirth, and transmigration. So you have to at least consider that perspective, chew on it a little bit. I guess it certainly is the perspective I have in my life, but I always try to stay open because not everyone in the audience will necessarily feel the same way.

But this kind of environment-peaceful, truthful, compassionate-is the environment most conducive to people cultivating that awakening, as opposed to an environment on planet Earth that is dominated by violence, deprivation, marginalization, dominance, agitation, fear, chaos, etc. So, when we think about the Sun Neptune, a classic thing that comes up is the urge to make a better world.

It's a very compassionate transit, in the sense that it activates things like charity, service, compassion, and efforts to alleviate suffering. Very Sun Neptune. But one thing that we have to be aware of is that these are about favorable conditions for spiritual awakening. They are not the end goal because even for these ancients, even light ages that are just extraordinarily satvic, will come to an end, and there will be a kali yuga.

So we don't cultivate this perfect world because the perfect world is the answer. We cultivate the conditions in which it may become easier for ourselves and others to recognize transcendental liberation. That's the perspective of, for it's very explicit within the yogic Vedic tradition of astrology. There's a Buddhist parallel as well, which is that peaceful conditions in general, clean conditions, which often are found in monasteries, for example, can provide fertile soil for awakening, but liberation cannot ultimately depend upon arranging impermanent circumstances perfectly.

That would be to think that impermanent circumstances can be permanently adjusted. So, a Sun Neptune transit, in other words, is about saying what worldly longings in me are actually carrying a spiritual longing that I've mistaken for its worldly object, and and how can I serve the world compassionately and truly create a better life, a better world, a better environment?

What in what ways can I contribute to that? Recognizing that my salvation does not lie in the perfect arrangement of the world, this world will die. Right, darkness will persist; it doesn't go away. The answer with Sun Neptune has to be about, in other words, holding the tension of the inevitable impermanence and fluidity of everything, alongside of the ultimate goal of transcendence.

Now, number four on my list are about cults and their characteristics. All right, so the next one on my list, which is very Sun Neptune, has to do with cults and what characterizes a cult, because the sun Neptune can very easily bring up the desire to join or belong to something religious or spiritual or something that feels like, ah, this is where I belong.

This will really take care of me or grant me a sense of purpose or meaning. And it's not wrong to belong to groups or religions or cultures or anything, but it is important to distinguish some characteristics of cults that can sneak in around Neptune transits for sure. I mean, if you think about it, we when we hear the word cult, we usually imagine some very bizarre organization.

You know, you've got spiked Kool Aid, and you know, like terrible mass suicides. You've heard about these girls, like, but it's actually, it's it's cults can be a lot more mundane and a lot simpler. And the word cult actually isn't even that bad. It just literally like any kind of group is a cult, you know, in the in the most simple definition of the word.

So there's not one universal checklist that determines whether something qualifies as a cult or not. But I was doing a little bit of research online, like what are the characteristics of a cult? This is a list I found: us versus them. Outsiders don't understand, and criticism of us is usually the evidence that we're right.

I thought that's yeah, can understand that idealization. Whether it's a leader, a teacher, an ideology, a community, a religious text, you know, something becomes increasingly difficult to question. Suppression of doubt was another one where any kinds of questions or skepticism becomes a sign of disloyalty, impurity, betrayal, ignorance, information control.

People are discouraged and even ostracized for seriously engaging perspectives that might challenge elements of the group's worldview. Purity tests belonging to such such group will increasingly require displaying correct, coded like attitudes, sayings, doctrines, or or even like phrases or words. Another one is moral exceptionalism, which is behavior that would normally be troubling is considered praiseworthy or acceptable because this cause is righteous.

So treating someone like crap in the name of what you know or do, right? Because they're the outsider. Fear of exclusion is a symptom internally or psychologically where you're worried that your disagreement could threaten your friendships or your community or your status or your identity within the group. Shame, fear, and guilt.

I collected these from a couple different spaces. Shame, fear, and guilt would be like, yeah, just a lot of emotional coercion. This is how you ought to think and feel. Totalizing explanations. I thought that was an interesting one, where this worldview explains everything. Like this is why everything is what it is. This is what everything needs to be.

An ambiguity is intolerable, and is a sign ambiguity, or even feeling like sort of neutral about something within this space that we're describing, could be seen as intolerable and evidence that your faith is waning, or that you play for the other side, or something, ends justify the means thinking because a mission, a belief, a doctrine, a dogma is extremely important.

Then normal ethical restraints and considerations become more negotiable, and then eventually, and this was one that I found on every single page I visited, was a loss of individual discernment, and that's my own phrasing, but it was said in different ways in different sources, which means that you you slowly lose the feeling that you that you're.

Individual, your individuality matters, and usually, what gets people out of a cult or on the path of coming out of a cult is the recognition that you've lost yourself somehow. This could be religious, it could be cultural. It could be just social, just a friendship group. It doesn't have to be like a religion.

In other words, a cult in the way we're describing it is really about a sense of belonging in the world, along shared visions or views of the world and your purpose, or so on and so forth, And I think one of the things we're living with right now is Pluto in Aquarius can, in the background, be bringing up the fact that like a lot of us, a lot of us are looking, starting to look at and recognize the degree to which cult-like characteristics are permeating our world and ourselves in so many different ways.

Right, this is not to say that I'm seeing one group or issue as the cult or something. It's just everywhere. Finally, projection, fame. These are very Sun Neptune qualities. So projection occurs when something is arising within our own psyche. Let's start there. Could be an emotion, or a desire, or a wound, or a fear, or a judgment, or some kind of ideal, Or even parts of ourselves that we've sort of disowned, and we unconsciously experience it as belonging to someone else.

So projection doesn't mean that the thing that we're seeing isn't actually there. Someone may be, for example, arrogant or angry or really smart or beautiful or super charismatic or dishonest or inspiring or whatever, and that may actually be there. But then the question with projection becomes: Well, how much of my reaction to that belongs to me?

Okay, so let's just take one for example, that I I come up against in myself. I'm going to be real here and just share one of my own. Sometimes I find people like unbelievably like arrogant or self righteous, and I start having this really strong reaction. And I have to do this for myself.

My meditation practice isn't usually where I find myself checking back in and doing this, well, maybe they are right, you know. But why does their confidence or their, you know, their arrogance or whatever it is, like why does it provoke such an enormous reaction in me? What's my own relationship with pride, ambition, wanting to be seen, wanting to be famous, whatever it is, or wanting to be like strong and confident, right?

And if I take time with that, if I then I really have a powerful opportunity to cultivate love and compassion for myself and for others, and I slow my the immediacy, the strength, the power of my reaction to those qualities because I have located them in myself, and I've spent time with them, and I've learned to love them.

And everybody knows that this is the work. There's idealizing projections, and I mentioned this recently. I was at a astrology conference, and I had a lot of people coming at me with idealizing projections. That I-it's weird because on the one hand, it's like there's something real there that I can receive, and then there's like a too Muchness, and one of the reasons that I've become very careful about those things, I had a number of people after I mentioned this in a recent podcast that I was dealing with.

This say, "Oh, just receive it. You know, people are so nice, and it's like, yeah, but I've been doing this for 17 years, and I've been, I I have many times received it just kind-heartedly, like thank you so much. That's so nice, and really received it. Only to watch people who have done that, and I felt in my heart it was a little much maliciously swipe me off the pedestal they put me on later.

You know what I mean? So it's not like an entirely safe thing to just deeply receive something when you're feeling that there might be a bit of idealizing projection taking place, but it becomes really it. It also is something I've learned to just sort of not take any of it and not reject any of it, to just let it pass through, to say thank you, to sort of buy. And let it pass through.

This is very Sun Neptune, by the way, to let to receive light, but as soon as you receive it, let it pass through. Don't hold it, or to give it, but give it in a way that allows it to pass through. And learning that is an art. This teacher understands everything. That person is extraordinary, and yes, they may be remarkable.

But maybe we're also projecting something of our own unlived, untapped, unrealized, unloved wisdom, beauty, etc. onto someone. Another way of projecting is to say, "I know exactly why they did that, or why they said that, or why they think that. We've we have observed something about someone and unconsciously supplied a motive.

But the story may reveal as much about us as it does about them, and we can learn so much if we take the time to catch ourselves when we're doing that. Oh, I know why they're doing this. This is why. Oh, really? Huh? Let me sit with why I think that I know that.

Why that? Why I think I can so easily understand or discern someone's motivation. What is that saying about me? See, there's such beautiful mirroring with Sun and Neptune. Yeah, there's emotional projections, there's collective projections, and then there's another topic which is fame. I want to close with this one. Why are we so fascinated by fame?

I think that there's psychological, sociological explanations. Of course, fame might represent, for example, a huge allotment of resources, and we're like, I wish I had that many resources. Or you know, so there's there's lots of different explanations, but I think spiritually, the explanation I've heard that I love best also comes from the ancient Vedic and yogic perspective.

When we encounter someone really, really great, and it you know sometimes for me it's like an athlete because I I love sports, or it's a musician, or it's an artist. So it doesn't necessarily have to be like a saint, but it could be, could be Jesus or Mary or something, you know.

But what we're seeing when we see something truly luminous is the glamor of eternity. Liz Green pointed this out in her book on Neptune, which is maybe the greatest book written on Neptune in the modern era of of astrology since we've been using Neptune. She says that Neptune is the glamor of eternity.

Now, if you were to use Christian theological language, you would call it like the glory of God, right? I grew up with that language, but it's something. the The gist of it is that it's something timeless that is shining through something temporal, and I I think that it's natural to see that glimmer of something famous.

In other words, this is eternally beautiful. It's it's natural to be drawn to it. It's unnatural and dangerous to try to possess it. If I can get close enough, we think to this fame, then like I can own it. I can possess it. But greatness is less about possessing life.

For those who are have touched greatness and been truly wonderful ambassadors on behalf of it, not on behalf of themselves. Right? All examples you've ever had in your life of this moments of leadership you've appreciated from other people or whatever. You recognize that it's about becoming transparent enough for something greater to shine through, but it's not something that we're trying to own.

And leaders, in a sense, are people who model that for us. They say, "Look, I'm just a person, and anything great you see in me is just something that's come through, and I'm as enamored by that thing as you are. But it's not me, me. You know. In other words, I'm not the owner.

I'm not. I'm not trying to slap a trademark on this. Do you know what I'm saying? So these distinctions can become really strong with the sun and Neptune: fame, glory, glamor. But if we locate it, if if we can say, "Yeah, that's eternity sparkling through, it is far more likely. That it will land like a bird on the tree of our being, and grace us with its song.

If we are, if we are appreciators, admirers, if we are people who have thanksgiving and gratitude in our hearts for any contact we have with that-you know, not some false crap, you know, some false humility, like some gross phony humility, but a genuine appreciation for beauty. Just wow, you know, it's so much more likely to shine through us and to use us as its mediums, and there is nothing more amazing than that, right?

So, well, we went to church today, but it's the sun Neptune, so we had to. I hope that what you felt in this talk, as I stumble through life and try to figure things out, just like all of you, is nothing more than my appreciation for being able to talk. Like it's amazing we can talk about any of this.

That we can sit here on Friday and have conversations about infinity is pretty neat. And I feel I feel really fortunate to be able to talk about any of these things and share them with you, despite the fact that I'm just as blind and wandering as as all of us, so I'll leave it on that note.

I hope you're having a great day today. I hope you have a great weekend. Stick around. I'm going to tell you about the year one program next. Bye. Hey everyone, thanks for sticking around. I'm excited to tell you about our upcoming program, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic, which begins again in November.

This is our first year class in Hellenistic astrology. We have four full years of professional training programs and curriculum at Nightlight that you can take. Whether you're aiming to be a practicing professional astrologer or this is just your spiritual calling, the programs are really designed to meet people where they're at.

So, what I want to do is tell you all about the programs, what this first year program includes, what you'll get out of it, who it's ideal for, how registration works, so you can think it over as enrollment is open and our early bird sales are now available.

I want to start by talking about who I think is an ideal candidate for deeper astrological learning or training. I think that it starts with recognizing that for some people, astrology is a calling. It feels like it's a language that you can't help but see the world through.

It's gone from curiosity and interest that's sort of infectious. That you know, it's like you you just love astrology and want to think about it and learn as much as you can about it. And it goes from that to feeling like this might be my path.

It might be as close to feeling like you belong to a religion or a spiritual tradition as anything ever has, or it might be something that you just can't help but think about, and almost like a filter through which you start to see the world.

If that is you, and you are someone who thinks about fate and free will and destiny and karma, and you're sort of a spiritual seeker in general, but astrology also feels like it's it's one of your primary languages or primary modes of spiritual like practice or lifestyle, then for many people it will help things dramatically help you to study astrology at a much deeper level in community with guidance and structure.

All of those things can give you the depth that you need for astrology to either become a professional practice or for something that can really deeply transform you, and you can learn to use with much greater confidence for yourself and the people that are perhaps close to you for the rest of your life.

So, ideally, this program is for people who want to go deeper and have a sense that there is a lot more depth and structure and continuity, but might feel overwhelmed by all of the information that's out there, and sometimes the feeling that it's hard to keep it organized or to sort through everything.

Astrology is a bit like you know, it's like an ocean, and you can just feel like you've just been thrown in the deep end of a pool or something. If you are the kind of person who loves symbolism, myth, divination, you really want a structured path of learning.

You feel maybe overwhelmed by trying to sort through it all on your own. You want some structured guidance from, you know, a practitioner, a method, a class, a community. You know that kind of seriousness of intention. If it's starting to come up in you, or if you feel it now and then, that usually means that you're going to be a really good fit for our program.

This is for people who want to take astrology more seriously, whether it's just for yourself as a lifelong tool, or if it's something that you might even think about practicing for others. Interestingly, many people who come through our program who don't think they're going to practice for others end up doing so because you gain that confidence and that clarity as you go.

So anyway, what will you learn in our program? The foundations of traditional Hellenistic astrology in our year one program, are the focus. We're talking about learning the basic features of the language: planets, signs, houses, dignities, aspects. But for most people, even if you're like, "Well, I already know something about planets, signs, and houses, if you've never studied Hellenistic astrology, then you're going to be learning them in a way that is radically different than anything you've ever studied.

Before, because so much of Hellenistic astrology is about the underlying philosophy that once you understand gives you a huge degree of intuitive freedom and flexibility in the way you practice. It's a bit like teaching someone how to go from playing a song on sheet music to being able to make your own music because you understand how music works.

For most people, when they study Hellenistic astrology, they're worried that they're going to go back to some prescriptive traditional approach. But what you're actually learning when you study Hellenistic is the why beneath everything, and I mean the why. What is the what is a house, and how is it different from a sign?

What is a sign, and how is it different from a planet? Why are these differences there at all? How do you use them intuitively, artfully? What is essential dignity? What are aspects? Not just you know how how do you read a trine, but what is a trine, right?

So we get really really deep into these things because that gives you the freedom to work really intuitively as you progress. We also get into practical skills, reading charts, delineation methods. Our year two program moves us into prediction and forecasting. Our year three into psychological dynamics and counseling.

We have a horary program, so you can progress through our programs and develop all the skills you need for yourself for a lifetime, or even to practice professionally, or both. We are integrating at every step of the way ancient tradition with modern insight. I have a background in psychological, archetypal astrology, evolutionary astrology, but you're going to find that those things are integrated alongside of your Hellenistic foundation from this year one program forward.

You're learn. You're not just getting information. You're learning a whole system. You're learning the why behind it, and that's really important. The other thing that you're getting from this class and all of our classes are live hands-on experience with real people and clients, so that you're seeing what does this look like when you actually apply it, which is huge for us at Nightlight.

We don't believe that astrology is learned in a vacuum. We believe that believe that astrology is learned through live practice, and so you see a lot of that. And there's a lot of hands-on practice in all of our programs. Now, how does the course work? It's a year-long container for this first-year program.

It's live classes. Everything is hosted through live webinars. If you can't make them, of course, everything is recorded, so you can go at your own pace. But everything is taught and hosted live. We also have a very strong community element with discussion forums, tutoring, which means outside of class, you can ask questions in our forum and always get answers within a business day, unless it's the weekend.

And also, we have meetup groups in between our major units of study, where our staff is going to lead you in tutoring and Q and A to help you integrate. We also have guest guest teachers that come out throughout the program outside of our curriculum, just to guest teach, and you get all of the benefit of those guests in your program as well.

You're going to get real chart work, live readings. You can go at your own pace. You have as much bonus material and extra reading as you could ever possibly want. So, it's a very well structured, well supported program. Now, I've been practicing astrology for going on 17 years.

I've seen over 13,000 clients, and we have had over 5000 students come through our programs. We have helped many people become professional astrologers, part-time professional astrologers, and we've helped a lot of people just transform their lives by providing an incredible community and container for learning.

What I care about the most is that people find astrology as a spiritual practice and lifestyle, and then whatever comes from that, that you have this benefit of astrology as a spiritual path for the rest of your life. When students come out of our programs, they typically feel way more confident reading charts.

They have a much deeper understanding of life cycles. They have a different way of seeing time and and meaning. And astrology will become a very well-informed, structured, sort of traditionally trained part of your life, and that can you can go in whatever direction you want with that.

So it's a living practice, and we're a living tradition, a living community, a living lineage, so to speak. Now, the start date for our next program is november 14. It's coming up soon. You can learn everything you need to know about it on the website.

I'll take you over to the page so you can see it real briefly. You're going to go to the Nightlight Courses page. Click on the Year One program. Again, we start November 14th. Registration is open. At the bottom, you're going to find the enrollment options.

There is an Early Bird payment plan and Early Bird installment plan. That's going to save you hundreds of dollars off the cost of the course. I also recommend coming in on this course because our prices will be raising in 2027. It's a good time to get in on a cheaper price of the course before our prices go up next year.

There's also always tuition assistance at Nightlight, which means if you need to find a price point that works within your budget. Maybe you're hurting or constrained financially. You can apply for need-based tuition, and that is going to give you the flexibility of a price point that works for your budget.

We have a sliding scale that you can work within if you're hurting financially, but you really want to study. And we we are part of our mission is making sure that astrological study and training. And readings are always there. There's always some financial flexibility worked in, so that something that is of such high spiritual value is still accessible for people of different financial backgrounds.

So, with all of that in mind, check it out. If you have any questions about the program at all, email us info@nightlightastrology.com. I hope you're having a great day, and that this was useful for you. And hopefully, we'll see you in class soon. Bye.