Sun Square Neptune: 5 Karmic Rules Everyone Should Know

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today we're going to take a look at the sun square to Neptune, and we're going to talk about five different karmic lessons to be very aware of when it comes to any sun transit.

The reason we're focusing on this one is that the sun square Neptune is effectively hosting Mars' retrograde in Leo. When a planet like Mars is retrograding in Leo, it's important to pay attention to what the Sun is doing as the host of that Mars retrograde. That’s why we’re going to take a look today at some of the shadows that can come up around sun transits or aspects from the sun to any planet, like Neptune in this case. We’ll discuss what to be aware of, what to watch for, and what kind of karmic entanglements and traps you might encounter.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at this from a slightly different perspective. I think you’ll really enjoy today’s discussion. Some of these lessons come from things that I have learned and was taught within the context of yoga philosophy and the Vedic astrological tradition. I first encountered many of these ideas when I was in India a few times, and they’re very applicable to the Sun in this case.

Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. If you're new to the channel, welcome! I hope you're enjoying the content. It’s free to subscribe if you haven’t already, and it really helps us grow our channel and business. Also, giving us a thumbs-up helps too.

You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, NightlightAstrology.com. A few things coming up this week that I want to share with you:

On Thursday night, we have a webinar on the sixth house. If you want to learn more about the sixth house, why it’s considered a difficult house, and what’s redemptive about it, go to the events page and click on "Live Talks" to register. The webinar is Thursday night. If you can’t make it live, we’ll send you the recording afterward.

Also, if you're in the Minneapolis area, we have a solstice gathering this Saturday evening at the Grapevine Collective in Minneapolis. This is an in-person event only; we’re not hosting it online. If you're in the area, come join us! Please RSVP so we know you're coming. It’s free to join, and we’d love to see you there as we ritualize this special moment of the year.

The other thing happening right now is our annual Kickstarter campaign. During the last days of the year, we try to rally support from all of you to donate and help support the channel in the year ahead and all the good things we do, including free content year-round. As of the time I'm recording this, we still need 14,155 backers, and we have just over 15 days to go. We have a long way to go, but thank you so much to the over 500 people who have already donated to support the channel. We really appreciate it. Any and every donation amount helps!

Right now, we’re over 100 backers behind last year's pace, and we need to match or beat that goal to ensure we have the financial support we need. We’re aiming to hit 19,136 backers like we did last year, which will also help us cover expenses and continue offering all the services we provide. We have a staff of 11 people, including a full-time social media manager who helps distribute, edit, post transcripts, and manage the dissemination of this content year-round.

We also offer affordable options for our services, including a sliding scale for readings and need-based tuition for all of our classes. Our infrastructure is designed to make sure anyone, regardless of financial background, can study something sacred. So if you value those things, it really helps when people pitch in $5, $10, or $15.

There are also a variety of rewards available when you support the channel. I’ll go over those at the end of today’s talk. We have 50% to 75% off all of our courses, including our first-year course in ancient astrology, which begins in June and November every year. We also have second-year and third-year courses, a horary astrology course, and a masterclass series. There’s a lot of great material available through the Kickstarter campaign, and this is our best sale of the year.

Thank you so much again to everyone who’s already donated. You can find the link to the Kickstarter in the description of this video, pinned to the top of the comment section, or on the website, NightlightAstrology.com. Again, thank you, and please help us make this big final push over the next two weeks to reach our goal. We really appreciate all the support.

I like to say something every day about what I think makes this channel valuable and why you might consider supporting it. The only thing I want to say today is that if you get horoscopes here regularly—like several times a month, or if you enjoy our monthly horoscope overview with Dana and Alex, or if you appreciate how we use this platform to build the success of other astrologers—we’d love for you to consider supporting us.

We bring in talented, promising astrologers and try to give them a platform to develop their name, work, and career. If you appreciate getting horoscopes and the way we use this platform to help others, please consider supporting the channel.

Alright, on that note, we will now turn our attention to the Sun square Neptune.

All right, let's go ahead and get into it. We're looking at the sun square to Neptune today, and we're going to be looking at it from the standpoint of some of the major spiritual lessons that often accompany Sun-Neptune dynamics. Now, this could also be applicable for those people who may have a Neptune transit to your natal Sun. Any of these thoughts and ideas today would accompany transiting Neptune to your natal Sun as well.

The premise behind the list that we're going to look at today of kind of the five karmic rules that everybody should know relative to the Sun-Neptune really have to do with some of the shadow sides of Sun-Neptune. There are many things that are very beautiful and lovely and uplifting about this combination of planets, and we may even explore some of those in tomorrow's episode, as the transit is still coming through. But I want to look at some of the shadows of the Sun-Neptune and some of the karmic entanglements that often accompany this transit, which I've seen, obviously, in my natal practice over many years, and is also something that will be stirred up sometimes by these transits—something we can watch for this week.

All right, anyway, let me put the real-time clock up, and let's take a look at the aspect first, just kind of remind ourselves of the timeline. So here you can see the Sun in Sagittarius moving within a degree today, Tuesday, December 17, into the square with Neptune. Now, if I move this ahead just one day, we'll see that it's tomorrow that the two perfect the square. And then if we give it just a couple more days beyond that, Friday into Saturday, the Sun will ingress into Capricorn, and the square is complete. So you could say this is something that's coming through today, tomorrow, and into Thursday—probably as the narrowest and most acute range of the symbolic expressions—but certainly, maybe even take it into Friday.

So a transit that is not very long-lasting. It's not the world's biggest transit. It may be subtle, depending on where this lands in your natal chart. You know, we'll see how loud it gets. But let's talk now about the five karmic rules that everyone should know relative to the Sun and Neptune. I've done stuff like this before, where I've talked about some of the things that I learned when I was part of the bhava yoga tradition, and some of the teachings about karma. There's a lot of really solid, practical advice about how to avoid creating bad karma for yourself within the vast field that can be broadly called Karma Yoga.

Now, Karma Yoga is so much of it. Karma Yoga really has to do with our actions in the world, and our actions being part of what purifies us spiritually speaking. Now, you may not buy into any of the yogic paradigm whatsoever, so you could always take this today as just thoughts from a tradition that are interesting. You don't necessarily have to be a card-carrying member of, you know, a Hindu or yogic tradition to take something of value from these teachings. I find them very interesting. Of course, I've been deeply influenced by the history of yoga philosophy, some of the scriptures from the bhava yoga tradition, so they're a part of my life and part of my belief system. But again, as I've said in other videos, you take this and you do what makes sense for you with it.

Now, the reason that I think these karmic pieces of advice from within the history of karma, yoga, and yogic philosophy are important is because they all have to do with traps of the ego. And if there's one major shadow side to the Sun-Neptune, it has to do when the ego thinks of itself as greater or bigger or more grandiose than it really is. I mean, you know, one of the first things we can say about the Sun-Neptune is the potential for delusions of grandeur exists. And the reason for this is that the Sun can be very heroic, and the Sun can fill us with a sense of purpose and pride and importance and specialness that is not unreal, right?

I mean, each of us are as unique as a snowflake. Each of us are an utterly beautiful, infinitely unique creation. So the Sun-Neptune can be a transit that comes along and fills us with that sense that our life is meant for a dharmic purpose, that there is something of essential spiritual value in who we are, and that it is being called to express itself in the world—that we are called to imaginative, romantic, spiritual purposes in life—all Sun-Neptune dynamics that are just lovely. So forgive me, we're not getting into all of that part of it today because the shadow, you know, sometimes we look at the shadow of these aspects to unpack some things that are worth exploring, and then we'll maybe take it from a different angle another time.

One of the shadows, again, would be that the Sun-Neptune has to do with lessons that all exist around pride, around ego, around vanity, around grandiosity, around, you know, getting too big for our britches, that kind of thing. It's a real part of Sun-Neptune that we can get inflated in inflation or delusions and a kind of egotistical mania that is often present as soon as the Sun and Neptune are even within six-seven degrees of one another. You'll start to feel this kind of amplifying.

I find it really interesting that the Sun is the ruler of Mars retrograde in Leo, and the Mars retrograde in Leo is also a retrograde that may have to do with pride and ego and jealousy and competition for who is most special or who is most important. And there are so many interesting shadows of the sign of Leo that could also be a part of how we're looking at the Sun square Neptune right now because the Sun is the host of Leo. So that makes this, to me, a really good moment to pause and talk about some of the downfalls of ego, a big solar theme, when Mars is retrograding in Leo and the host Sun is squaring Neptune—the potential for downfalls of ego exist.

And so what are the things that lead to a downfall of ego, which, if we're honest, will have us like a wounded, embarrassed lion, licking our paws, licking our wounds? So, most of us want to have a healthy ego. You know, we all have one. It's not a bad thing to have an ego, but what does it mean to have a healthy one? And what are the traps that we know exist? What has this great tradition of yoga—Karma Yoga—said about the traps of the ego and how to avoid them? And so I thought this would be worth reflecting on today.

These are things that I wrote down in a notebook from a collection of talks. I took notes all the time when I was a student of bhava yoga and sat in on so many different talks. And, you know, I get with the equivalent of like a sermon, I guess, you know, dharma talks—talks that come that are rooted in scriptures or a particular verse or chapter or story. And I learned so many things. So one of the pieces of my notebook that I cherish is all the things that I jotted down that I heard different teachers say about karma and the traps that everyone should know about.

So before I get into this, let me just say a few things about karma that I think are sort of universally applicable because there may be some people who hear that word and don't like it, and I think that's probably, for the most part, really fair. Like, people are rubbed the wrong way by that word. It's usually for good reasons. So what I have come to understand about the word karma, and why it's a word that I feel comfortable with, is that it broadly refers to the fact that we live in this energetic material space where, when you act like the butterfly flapping its wings, it has all sorts of ripple effects. And our actions, and the intention and the consciousness within the actions, create chains of action and reaction.

And that, broadly speaking, is a part of the fabric of this constantly fluctuating, changing material world. So really, all karma means is just that—that there is a world of choice, of action and reaction, and that it is all orchestrated together in intelligent ways that are also highly mysterious. And that our actions and the outcomes that come about through our choices and actions have a way of offering us feedback and reflection, though many outcomes in our lives are deeply mysterious. We can't see the root causes, and it's not as simple as saying, like, "Oh, something bad happens to you, then you should simply reflect on what you did to cause it." That's not actually how karma works, as I've had it explained to me by many teachers in the Indian tradition. There is, of course, a very moral sense of the way in which karma works—like actions that are immoral, that are lacking in virtue, care, compassion, sensitivity, etc., will generate feedback for us that will be instructive and corrective.

But the way in which destiny, fate, and the intervention of spirits and of the divine in our lives work is not just a system of moral checks and balances. This means that not every event that happens can simply be reflected on as a result of how elevated you are morally or how lacking you are morally, or something like that. So anyway, there's a way in which karma is deeply mysterious. And you know, like Krishna says, "Not even the wisest sages can comprehend the workings of karma." And so all karma means to me is just that there is a world in which choices, actions, and reactions are all mysteriously woven together. If we study our choices, our consciousness, our intentions, and we look at what comes from choices that we make, there is an intelligence built in that can help refine our consciousness, our character, and can help us become wiser

, more compassionate beings, etc. And that all experience, all outcomes, are divinely arranged.

So if you believe something like that, broadly speaking, you probably have no problem with the basic idea of karma. The equivalent version of it in the ancient Western world was really the idea of fortune—the Wheel of Fortune—which is also something that's very similar in the Taoist perspective. There's a way in which life is just always changing and fluctuating. Things are full and high, and things are low and empty, and there's always a vacillation of circumstance. The sage is one who reflects upon the cycles and reflects upon their actions and the kinds of reactions that come through in this medium. That is part of living a contemplative life, whether you're a Taoist, an ancient Christian contemplative, or anything.

Okay, I say all of that again just so that we can kind of have a safer, more comfortable space within which to explore the following ideas about karma in relation to the Sun and Neptune. So I hope that helps people out a little bit, and remember you're free to have your own thoughts about all of this stuff. But take these—I think these lessons are sort of universally applicable. You will notice that these are things that are taught in many different religious and spiritual traditions. I believe they are sort of perennial human values, but they are also specific rules about not making your karma worse, which means not creating circumstances for yourself through unconscious kinds of motivations and intentions and activity that will have a feedback effect that is often a little painful to get the kind of correction karmically.

So, I do believe that happens, as someone who's reflected myself on times, for example, where, you know, like a Sun-Neptune thing, when there's been tremendous arrogance, the feedback has often been painful and humbling. And so there's really good advice about how to avoid some of the traps of the ego, and that's a big Sun-Neptune thing. So let's get into it... number one.

All right, let's go ahead and get into it. We're looking at the sun square to Neptune today, and we're going to be looking at it from the standpoint of some of the major spiritual lessons that often accompany Sun Neptune dynamics. Now this could also be applicable for those people who may have a Neptune transit to your natal sun. Any of these thoughts and ideas today would accompany transiting Neptune to your natal sun as well. The premise behind the list that we're going to look at today of kind of the five karmic rules that everybody should know relative to the Sun Neptune really have to do with some of the shadow sides of Sun Neptune. There are many things that are very beautiful and lovely and uplifting about this combination of planets, and we may even explore some of those in tomorrow's episode, as the transit is still coming through. But I want to look at some of the shadows of the Sun Neptune and some of the karmic entanglements that often accompany this transit, which I've seen, obviously in my natal practice over many years, and is also something that will be stirred up sometimes by these transits, so something we can watch for this week. All right, anyway, let me put the real time clock up, and let's take a look at the the aspect first, just kind of remind ourselves of the timeline. So here you can see the sun in Sagittarius moving within a degree today, Tuesday, December 17, into the square with Neptune. Now, if I move this ahead just one day, we'll see that it's tomorrow that the two perfect the square. And then if we give it just a couple more days beyond that, Friday into Saturday, the sun will ingress into Capricorn, and the square is complete. So you could say this is something that's coming through today, tomorrow into Thursday, probably as the narrowest and most acute range of the symbolic expressions, but certainly, maybe even take it into Friday. So a transit that is not very long lasting. It's not the world's biggest transit it may be subtle, depending on where this lands in your natal chart. You know, we'll see how loud it gets. But let's talk now about there's five karmic rules that everyone should know relative to the sun and Neptune. And I've done stuff like this before, where I've talked about some of the things that I learned when I was part of the bhava yoga tradition, and some of the teachings about karma, there's a lot of really solid, practical advice about how to avoid creating bad karma for yourself within the vast field that can be broadly called Karma Yoga. Now Karma Yoga is so much of it. It Karma Yoga really has to do with our actions in the world, and our actions being part of what purifies us. Spiritually speaking. Now you may not buy into any of the yogic paradigm whatsoever, so you could always take this today as just thoughts from a tradition that are interesting. You don't necessarily have to be a card carrying member of, you know, a Hindu or yogic tradition, to take something of value from these teachings, I find them very interesting. Of course, I've been deeply influenced by the history of yoga philosophy, some of the scriptures from the bhava yoga tradition, so they're a part of my life and part of my belief system. But again, as I've said in other videos, like you take this and you do what makes sense for you with it. Now the reason that I think these karmic pieces of advice from within the history of karma, yoga, yogic philosophy, are important is because they all have to do with traps of the ego. And if there's one major shadow side to the sun, Neptune, it has to do when the ego thinks of itself as greater or bigger or more grandiose than it really is. I mean, you know, one of the the first things we can say about the sun Neptune is the potential for delusions of grandeur exist. And the reason for this is that the sun can be very heroic, and the sun can fill us with a sense of purpose and pride and importance and specialness that is not unreal, right? I mean, each of us are as unique as a snowflake. Each of us are an utterly beautiful, infinitely unique creation. So the sun Neptune can be a transit that comes along and fills us with that sense that our life is meant for a dharmic purpose, that there is something of essential spiritual value in who we are, and that it is being called to express itself in the world, that we are called to imaginative, romantic, spiritual purposes in life, all sun, Neptune dynamics that are just Lovely. So forgive me, we're not getting into all of that part of it today, because the shadow, you know, sometimes we look at the shadow of these, of these aspects to, you know, unpack some things that are worth exploring, and then we'll maybe take it from a different angle. Another time, one of the shadows, again, would be that the sun Neptune has to. Do with lessons that all exist around pride, around ego, around vanity, around grandiosity, around, you know, getting too big for our britches, that kind of thing. It's a real part of Sun Neptune that we can get inflated in inflation or delusions and a kind of egotistical mania that is often present as soon as the sun and Neptune are even within six seven degrees of one another, you'll start to feel this kind of amplifying I find it really interesting that the sun is the ruler of Mars Retrograde in Leo, and the Mars Retrograde in Leo is also a retrograde that may have to do with pride and ego and jealousy and competition for who is most special or who is most important. And there are so many interesting shadows of the sign of Leo that could also be a part of how we're looking at the sun square Neptune right now, because the sun is the host of Leo. So that makes this, to me, a really good moment to pause and talk about some of the downfalls of ego, a big solar theme, when Mars is retrograding Leo and the host Sun is squaring Neptune, the potential for downfalls of ego exist. And so what are the things that lead to a downfall of ego, which, if we're honest, will have us like a wounded, embarrassed lion, licking our paws, licking our wounds. So we, most of us, want to have a healthy ego. You know, we all have one. It's not a bad thing to have an ego, but what does it mean to have a healthy one? And what are the traps that we know exist. What has this great tradition of yoga Karma Yoga said about the traps of the ego and how to avoid them? And so I thought this would be worth reflecting on today. So these are things that I wrote down in a notebook from a collection of talks I took notes all the time when I was student of bhava yoga, and sat in on so many different talks. And, you know, I get with the equivalent of like a sermon, I guess, you know, dharma talks, talks that come that are rooted in scriptures or a particular verse or chapter or story. And I learned so many things. And so one of the pieces of my notebook that I cherish is all the things that I jotted down that I heard different teachers say about karma and the traps that everyone should know about. So before I get into this, let me just say a few things about karma that I think are sort of universally applicable, because there may be some people who hear that word and don't like it, and I think that's probably for the most part. It's really fair, like the people people are rubbed the wrong way by that word. It's usually for good reasons. So what I have come to understand about the word karma, and why it's a word that I feel comfortable with is that it broadly refers to the fact that we live in this energetic material space where when you when you act like the butterfly flapping its wings, it has all sorts of ripple effects, and our actions, and the intention and the consciousness within the actions create chains of action and reaction, and that, broadly speaking, is a part of the fabric of this constantly fluctuating, changing material world. So really, all the karma means is just that, that there is a world of choice, of action and reaction, and that it is all orchestrated together in intelligent ways that are also highly mysterious, and that our actions and the outcomes that

come about through our choices and actions have A way of offering us feedback and reflection, though many outcomes in our lives are deeply mysterious, we can't see the root causes and are not. It's not it's not ever as simple as saying like, Oh, something bad happens to you, then you should simply reflect on what you did to cause it. That that's not actually at all how karma works, as I've had it explained to me, by many teachers in the Indian tradition, there is, of course, a very moral sense of the way in which karma works like actions that are immoral, that are lacking in virtue, care, compassion, sensitivity, etc, will generate feedback for us that will be instructive and corrective. But the way in which destiny and the way in which fate and the intervention of spirits and of the divine in our lives work is not just a system of moral checks and balances, which means that not every event that happens can simply be reflected on as a result of your you know how elevated you are morally, or how lacking you are morally, or something like that. So anyway, there's a way in which karma is deeply mysterious. And you know, like Krishna says, not even the wisest sages can comprehend the workings of karma. And so all karma means to me is just that there is a world in which choices, actions, reactions are all mysteriously woven together that. If we study our choices, our consciousness, our intentions, and we look at what comes from choices that we make, that there is an intelligence built in that can help refine our consciousness, our character, that can help us become wiser, more compassionate beings, etc, and that all experience, all outcomes, are divinely arranged. So if you believe something like that, broadly speaking, you probably have no problem with the basic idea of karma. The equivalent version of it in the ancient western world was really the idea of fortune, the Wheel of Fortune, which is also something that's very similar in the Taoist perspective, that there's a way in which life is just always changing and fluctuating. Things are full and high and things are low and empty, and there's always a vacillation of circumstance. And that the sage is one who reflects upon the cycles and reflects upon their actions and the kinds of reactions that come through in this medium that that is part of living a contemplative life, whether you're a Taoist or, you know, an ancient Christian contemplative, or anything. Okay, I say all of that again, just so that we can kind of have a, you know, maybe a safer, more comfortable space within which to explore the following ideas about karma in relation to the sun and Neptune. So I hope that you know helps people out a little bit, and remember you're free to have your own thoughts about all of this stuff. So but take these I think these lessons are sort of universally applicable. You will notice that these are things that are taught in many different religious and spiritual traditions. I believe they are sort of perennial human values, but they are also specific rules about not making your karma worse, which means not creating circumstances for yourself through unconscious kinds of motivations and intentions and activity that will have a feedback effect that is often a little bit is a little bit painful to get the kind of correction karmically So, and I Do believe that that happens as someone who's reflected myself on times, for example, where, you know, like a sun Neptune thing, when there's been tremendous arrogance, the feedback has often been painful, you know, and humbling. And so we there's really good advice about how to avoid some of the traps of the ego, and that's a big son Neptune thing. So let's get into it number one. So let's say you have a friend and you're, you know, you you work with them, and they just keep getting into bad relationships, right? And you get so frustrated with them because you're like, man, you know, this sucker just won't learn. You know, we all know someone like that, and what we're like that too, right? That's the point. But the the advice is, anytime that we find ourselves observing, oh, look, Karen got what she had coming to her, you know, she got into another, another bad relationship, and she's enamored by the wrong kinds of guys or whatever, and you can see it coming from a mile away. And there's a little satisfaction that you take, you know, maybe some people take a look a big Porsche like a big piece of satisfaction cake on their plate. Probably most of us maybe take a little satisfaction, right? But any measure of satisfaction that we take in the downfall of other people, even if they're really unconscious and ignorant, or even if we find them to be a despicable character for one reason or another, we find their choices to just be like so ignorant that when we celebrate the downfall of other people, when we go, ah, that's that's exactly what they they got, what's coming to them that that entangles us in their karma. And the fact that I heard a teacher in India say that one time, it immediately made sense to me. I was like, yeah, like, maybe you aren't going to be entangled with that person. Literally, it's not like you become best friends with Jeanine at work, who's dating all the wrong men, and then suddenly you date a wrong man. I don't think there's doesn't have to be that literal. That literal, but there is a way in which, at some point, you you have entangled yourself in the constellation of someone else's karma by celebrating their misfortune or their difficult learning lesson or their difficult experience with a pattern that you can see, but maybe they can't, or whatever. It's easy to be on the side of righteousness when looking at other people and seeing Whoa, that's dark, that's ignorant, that's you know, but one of the things that comes with the sun Neptune is this delusional thought that we are above everyone and everything, that our that we are somehow, that we rise above our own entanglements and our own problems. There can be a delusional way in which we think of ourselves as God, like with sun Neptune. And I'm not saying that we aren't divine. We certainly are, but to go to that level of hubris with our sense of self is problematic and. Entangle us. One of the simplest pieces of advice with the sun. Neptune is and I'm going to go through several virtues that dissolve pride, but this is a point of pride that can come up under Major Sun Trine. Remember, Mars is retrograde in the sun sign, Sun is square. Neptune celebrating someone else's bad karma or difficult situation, even if you can see very clearly why it's like, oh, they had that coming. You know, that will entangle us. We have to be very careful of that. It's actually self preservation, karmically to create peaceful, better, more conducive, to whatever extent we have any control, and that's a big mystery too. But to whatever extent we do, it certainly doesn't help anything to celebrate the downfall of other people. There can be a way in which we see, you know, people who are criminals, people who have done terrible things, being brought to justice. And we can feel gratitude that justice is at work, right, but that that larger feeling of gratitude is different than the personal, sort of vindictive celebration of someone's misfortune. It's different. You know, number two, I told you so means we haven't yet learned it's very similar, but slightly different. You know, sometimes we're in relationships with people, and, you know, there's a debate about something. There's a debate about what's right, what's wrong, what to do, what not to do, even something as simple as, like, you know, let's debate about some kind of fact. And then we're gonna, we're gonna pull out our phones and we're gonna use AI, we're gonna look it up, we're gonna figure out who is right, and, oh, I'm right. See, I told you so there is a warning that I heard my one of my teachers say all the time, which is that I told you so means you haven't yet learned the very thing that you think you know. And I mean, that might sound kind of weird in the case of like I told you, so dishwashers don't run on batteries they you plug them in. I don't know you know what I mean, like, there might be some some application of this that seems pretty benign and stupid, but my my point is that when we're in dynamics with other people, and there are debates about who knows more, or who knows what, or how to do something, and it turns out that we're right and the other person was wrong. That it is incredibly important that within that space, we not take a moment to, you know, we don't take a victory lap. We don't dunk on people. And that might seem like the smallest thing, and there's a, there's a way in which, obviously, like, if you're having fun with someone, I told you so you know, like you're and that's different, right? I don't think there's any harm in play, but when we have that little jab of like, I was right, you were wrong, I win, you lose. That entangles us, that will make it the way that my spiritual teacher explained it in the bhakti tradition, and I have always just believed, just believed this to be true as like certain things I'll take away. I might not be card carrying member of the bhakti tradition any longer, but I do believe this is true. If I jab someone with the Yeah, I told you. So I knew it. I was right,

there will be a way in which I will have to be put into the opposite position, and I will be jabbed for being wrong, right? It's like something that we have. There's something we haven't learned yet, about grace, about mercy, about compassion, about humility, that we're we're our pride is taking over, and it's a small little thing. It's so easy to want to take a little victory lap or dunk on someone when we're right and someone else is wrong. I stay away from most forms of social media engagement that are heavily text based, because it seems like a lot of these forums, this is just my reflection. A lot of these forums are about putting ideas out there and then trying to fight with people about them. And then there's a lot of like, I was right, you were wrong, and that, all of that, that whole, that whole realm, for whatever moments we may be right about something in the, you know, in the, what are the pissing competition of ideas, in the sword fight of ideas? Um, those victories are very temporary. And the amount of egoic inflation surrounding victory in that context is entangling. And this is something I learned really profoundly while Mars was retrograde in Gemini a few years ago. That was like one of the big takeaways that I had, because I got to this point where I was very frustrated with dealing with people leaving really mean, sometimes very personal and vindictive comments in on, you know, social media, on YouTube, posts and stuff like, it was just like, really, like, jabbing mean things. So I thought, you know, I'm just gonna fight back. But it entangled me in a way that was good to learn. It was good to see. And then I was like. Like, Ah, now I really have disinterest. I'm not just holding myself back falsely with some false sense of being above it all. Sometimes we do have to tangle with people to learn how to really detach that it's really worth it to detach because the entanglement is which. So you can't learn that without doing it, you know, but it is a lesson we learn again and again, which is that winning and being right and taking a victory lap usually entangles us further, so we have to be really careful about that. Protect our serenity, as we say in Al Anon. Okay. Number three, lack of humility and reverence comes prior to downfall. Pride comes before fall. This is something that is a very literal teaching that comes through the scriptures. In the bhakti tradition, the bhava Gita, the bhava Parana, the mahabha. There's so many instance of this in mythologies from all around the world that in moments where you let your pride, your ego, your sense of being good or special or better, overwhelm, overcome, and sort of step across an invisible line. We all know that there's a line and there's a there's a way in which being full of yourself is beautiful, right? Being full of yourself is nothing more than being full of your own spirit. So beautiful to be full of ourselves in the sense of light and love and happiness and dharma, I am full with the beautiful, divine essence of who I am. And then there's an imaginary it's like the dimmer switch we've talked about. All of a sudden it gets just so bright that it drowns, that you go across some kind of invisible line. And as soon as we do there, we have set in motion a way that the universe will have of giving us a response to help us develop greater awareness of the of the dimmer switch being full of yourself, and also making sure there's enough space for others to be full right. Humility is in reverence. I reverently respect the reality that I'm in. I reverently respect all other beings. You know that these kinds of things, no one's perfect, no one's walking around like perfect Bodhisattva, but Reverend of every blade of grass. You know, it can go so far. I mean, I think about, you know, there's an interesting tradition, the Jains in in India, where they would be careful not to walk on a bug. You ever heard of that before? It's fascinating. So, I mean, people can take this pretty far, this whole idea of humility, reverence, sacred, consideration for everyone around you, really being careful to be humble as we walk through the Earth. However far you want to take, it is your business. But if you want to avoid the bugs cool, I have a fly swatter. I'm not I have to admit it so anyway, but the basic idea with sun Neptune is that great spaces of inflation, egotistically, typically precede things like disappointment, failure, humiliation, not humility, but humiliation and and downfall, a crash of the ego. Those are usually painful for us, even if maybe they end up being healing and instructive, but we can avoid having to learn in that way. One of the things that you know we have Hilda. She's asleep in the bed over there. You can't see her, but she's a big dog. And when we first had her, she was first coming into her home. She's a rescue dog. She's a mastiff. And, you know, I thought that I had to be more severe in my tone with commands like, sit, stay, no, yes. Like, then I had to be because she's so big, right? And then what I learned, we worked with a trainer, and I absolutely love this guy that we worked with. His name was Chris, and he was like, he was observing me working with her, and he was like, you've got the right amount of firmness, but your your tone is too severe. It's too strict. You can be firm, but gentle, you know, so be be firm with her. Stern is maybe even the right word, but not intense, not severe, not punitive. And I was like, yeah. And he was like, um, he made the point. He was like, sometimes when people get really big dogs, they're not used to having big dogs. It's you're a little nervous, you're a little scared, you're a little anxious, so you kind of overcompensate by being a little too severe, because you're afraid you have to control something that's unmanageable. Oh, my God, you coach humans, not dogs, you know. And I was so thankful. Like this is so true. So since then, you know, gradually, it's been a process of learning that firm does not mean in, you know, intense. Now I say that because there's, there's a way in which our anything, that we any anything that we do to try to correct ourselves or to bring ourselves to a wiser or more enlightened position, sometimes because we recognize the ego is a little unmanageable, right? So then we get severe or strict or stern with the ego like it's an unmanageable kind of scary thing to me, that behavior isn't great, so how do I manage it? And what I think is important for all of these points when it comes to the ego is that the ego is not a bad thing, so it needs some guidance from our higher self, but that guidance should be firm, but not severe, because any punitive treatment of the ego typically just creates bad behavior. That was the point. The dog trainers point exactly is, like, if you want a healthy dog that's big, like this, you your firmness, but your gentleness is how you get the good behavior. And I was like, Yeah, I'm because, you know, it wasn't like I was being mean, but it was just like too much like, too much intensity. So I was like, Okay, this is this makes sense to me. Then I have to look inside and go, Well, I realize that it's my fear, that it's my worries, whatever it's my anxiety that I'm projecting. And I think the same, I think same kind of thing happens when it comes to trying to manage our ego, when we notice and realize that it sometimes gets out of hand, that we overcorrect, we overcompensate because we know a behavior isn't good. We call it bad, but actually this kind of positive reinforcement, encouragement, firmness, but not severe, is how we gently guide our ego back to, you know, the right place. So that dimmers switch kind of analogy that we're we have the right amount of self that we're full of ourselves to the right amount. Okay, let's go on. Number four, being seduced by power is actually disempowering. So one of the things that I've said, I've said this before, and by the way, I also feel very I want to just disclaimer, I feel very open to a constructive use of this word, and just because I have some concerns with this word doesn't mean that I don't support people's right to use it and feel good about it. But I sometimes have issues when people talk about the point of spiritual growth and something like the word sovereignty, the issue I have with that word is just, you know, it's etymological history has a lot to do with power and dominion and power in association with things like land or, you know, it's a word that is, Like, pretty, pretty tied into things like colonization and things like power over people and power over land and

and so the measure of our worth being equated to how much power we have in with a word that where that word sovereign is usually about how much power we have relative to other people. So when people say, I want to be my own sovereign, you know, I kind of functionally understand the idea, right? It's like I want to have my own agency. I want to have my own dignity. Okay? So fine, that on that level, like I get it. But I think there are sometimes in the sort of, broadly speaking, sort of New Age culture, there can be uses of that word that are problematic. And when we think of the purpose of our lives and what is going to make us feel happy or good, all of the spiritual traditions that I've ever studied do not emphasize a great augmentation of power, personal power as what, as the as the path to happiness, or as the path to contentment or peace. It's not that some sense of agency, some self belief, some confidence, some ability to act and choose, some affirming of our dignity isn't important. So on that level, I don't quibble with the word, but it gets into this space where we have to be really careful. Because one of the things that, again, I learned from some of the teachers in the bhakti tradition, that I really appreciated, was that when you think about what will enhance your self worth, your happiness, your contentment, be careful to think that it has anything to do with power. Just kind of be careful, because bizarrely, the more that we get interested in the augmentation of our power, the more disempowered we become, because power is seductive. And power is something that can actually possess us more than it's something we possess. It's you'll find similar passages in the I Ching that talk about any real contact with power is the power of reality itself, the Tao, right? So people like people who are effective channelers of power, understand that they are doing just that, that they're being a conduit, and that there's a very humble, quiet acknowledgement within, almost like a secret place within, where you go. None of this is me. None of this belongs to me. And people around you don't look at you. They don't, they don't know you as someone who claims to be in ownership of possession of power, right? And that doesn't mean that they don't, that you are not experienced as a powerful or effective person, but being seduced by your power, by how much power you have, by how victorious you are relative to other people, is, in the end, something that tends to disempower us. That's interesting. That's really fascinating, something I find that I have to be really careful of the temptation to compare myself to, you know, other other people, other astrologers, other you know, other dads, or what you know people I meet, whatever. Number five, being good isn't about getting things. Now, this one is like, anyone who's a parent knows this very well, right? Your kids are like, there's a way in which we teach through rewards, like, if you're if you have good behavior, you get something good. And you know, there's a place for that, and there's certainly a way in which the karmic reality that we live in seems to sometimes reward good behavior. I don't have any problems with any of that. There's also this teaching that you've we all know it's as it's as basic as parenting 101, which is that being good is its own reward, that we need to develop a taste for virtue without any attachment to what it brings us. I think one of the reasons that you know it one of one of the reasons right now that I think we see there's a there's a concern always for human beings, that we act virtuously. And then there's also a way in which we don't like it if someone seems to take pride in acting virtuously. And so and then there's this funny karmic loop where you go that person is taking pride in acting virtuously, you know? And you, you go, well, they'll get what's coming to them. And now you're entangled, right? It's all of these things end up relating to one another. You go, Gosh, I don't like that person. Look at them. They're acting so self righteous, like they've got the moral compass of the universe going on. What an annoying self righteous person, you know? They'll, have, they'll just have to learn the hard way. And then before we know it, there we there. We are entangled. So it's interesting because we there's a way in which we all have to learn this very gradual lesson over and over that, you know, being in the humble, sincere, curious, compassionate, forgiving, patient place feels good and that, you know, it's sort of in my experience these virtues that I just mentioned, passion, compassion, patience, etc. It's sort of like sobriety in that initially there's a way in which sobriety feels like I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the thing I ought to be doing. And then over time, as you deepen into sobriety, and this is speaking as someone who dealt with addiction in my early 20s, that moving from sobriety as the right thing to do into something that feels good, into something that is a feel good space to be in. The same thing happens when it comes to cultivating virtue. And so when we cultivate virtue, at first it's like, this is the thing I ought to be doing. And then it can be very easy to stay in that realm. And then once we're in that realm, we start measuring our goodness and other people's goodness, or that person's self righteous, and they're going to get what's coming as long as we stay in the realm of oughts and shoulds, even if they're good oughts and shoulds, we're not quite in the space we need to be in yet, right? It's there's another step. All these traditions talk about the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law, for example, in the New Testament. So what does it look like to actually feel good while doing the right things. And you know that self righteousness, hypocrisy, criticism, judgment, severity, you know the the ego. You'll know it when it starts coming in, because you'll feel it starting to steal your peace, steal your joy, steal your you. Forgiveness, your patience, and you know it because you feel it, something, a presence, a thought, an attitude, is starting to come in and take me out of the good feeling that comes with the good things. And it's the feeling that eventually allows us to attune ourselves to that space. And that's a sun Neptune thing as well, staying in a felt presence of the light of divinity, of sacredness, of love, of compassion, of forgiveness as a permeating reality that we can live in and move in, just like fish swimming in water, that is something we it's a felt presence that we have to move into. We don't abandon our ego either, but we are very careful of the way the ego can take in, come in, and take us out of that flow. So the virtues that dissolve this pride, we've mentioned, humility and curiosity, we can cultivate this as a sun Neptune dynamic that we find the universe to be magical, beautiful, without need for any explanation or certainty, mysterious, beautiful, and yet we're filled with a kind of confidence and faithfulness. It allows us to stay humble and curious. It's so beautiful that we can stay humble and curious. Forgiveness. I forgive myself when I mess up. I forgive other people that is an inclination or an impulse that comes up prior to condemn, condemnation, judgment, pride, ego, power, compassion, that when other people are suffering, that we feel compassion for them, rather than judgment, annoyance, I told you so I know more than you do. Look at what's coming for you reverence, that we look at everything happening in the world as sacred, and that we see it as arranged by the gods, arranged by divinity, and so we stay reverent of what's happening. And we know that judgment, ego, pride, vanity, takes us out of reverence, and we can feel it when it's happening. Acceptance, acceptance is a simple one, that there's a there's just a simple way in which the things that come up, that come through within us, within others, that we accept, that we say okay, that that is what occurred, you know, just an ability to roll with things that really is part of Forgiveness, passion, compassion, reverence, etc. So some thoughts today.

I think probably what we'll do, we're going to, for sure, be spending some time with the Venus Jupiter Trine this week, but thought it would be good to explore some nuances and some spiritual insights behind Sun Neptune, especially since Sun is ruling that Mars Retrograde right now. All right, we'll leave it there. After I sign off, you're gonna hear me talk about the rewards that you can get when you support the channel. We have need for still over about 1500 backers, as far as I knew at the time I was recording this to go. So we still need a lot of help. If you you can find the link to the Kickstarter in the comment section in the description of the video on the website, Nightlight astrology.com Every donation really helps any and all amounts help us meet our goal. All right. Thanks, everyone. Bye. You.