The Heart of a Mercury Neptune Square

Transcript:

0:00
Hi everyone this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology and today we are going to take a look at Mercury square to Neptune. We're going to take a look at it from a slightly different angle after previewing this long transit at the beginning of the week. Before I do that, as always, I am in promotion mode right now for my upcoming programme so if you haven't checked it out yet you can look at my website nightlight astrology.com. It's a one year course in ancient astrology It is called ancient astrology for the modern mystic it begins in June. You can check it out on the courses page, learn all about it. We are filling up more people registering each day. It's a great programme, tonnes of supported guided material. One of the main reasons that I think it's a great idea to take a course in astrology versus doing it yourself as someone who did it myself for a while and then ended up finding some teachers and taking courses is that for you know, a couple 1000 years astrology has been passed on primarily through the inner spark that is transferred from practitioner to student. And I know that my own practice changed a lot when I found a few teachers that I really resonated with, and was able to kind of hear them talk about astrology and learn astrology from them and from the heart of their practices. To me, that's the way that astrology should be taught and should be learned on some level, at least partially. And so if you're looking for that connection, and you resonate with my work, check it out. Now the payment options, there's an early bird payment you could say $500 off, there's a monthly payment plan and there's tuition assistance for people who might need help. So check that out on my website. If you have any questions, email us info at nightlight astrology.com, got a staff full of people that are helping me with this programme year round, so you're very well supported throughout the whole year.

1:53
Alright, so let's take a look at the real time clock. And notice that Mercury and Venus are both preparing to square Neptune Venus a little farther away right now but Mercury is going to be making that square from today into tomorrow, you're going to see that square perfect. This is May 20 into the 21st. Now you're going to see this square around for a lot longer than is usual and we talked about that at the beginning of the week when I did a previewing the long square between Mercury and Neptune. You'll notice that Mercury is going to sit down around the 24th degree of Gemini. As Venus goes through the square with Neptune This is around May 27 in a week, and then Mercury is going to turn retrograde right after Venus passes over conjunction with mercury. That retrograde will then take mercury back through the square to Neptune around the beginning of June. And finally, Mercury will come back through the square with Neptune later on in June after going through its full retrogradation and turning direct again. So we have a long opportunity to get to know mercury and Neptune and today I decided I wanted to approach mercury and Neptune from a slightly different point of view. First I want to recommend a few books. I always love to recommend books. This one's one of my favourite if you haven't read it cosmos and psyche by Richard Tarnas. I love this book. It's you can see it's just beat up I've got it marked up all over the inside it's one of my favourites.

3:21
Here's what Richard Tarnas writes about Mercury. "Let's review these qualities of Mercury, the principle of mind, thought, communication, that which articulates the primary creative energy and renders it intelligible. The impulse and capacity to think to conceptualise, to connect and mediate, to use words and language to give and receive information to make sense of to grasp to perceive and reason understand and articulate to transport translate transmit the principle of logos Hermes, messenger of the gods." So a really nice succinct definition of mercury from an archetypal perspective. Now let's hear what he has to say about Neptune.

4:05
"Neptune is associated with the transcendent, spiritual, ideal symbolic and imaginative dimensions of life with the subtle, formless, intangible and invisible, with the united, timeless, immaterial and infinite, with all that which transcends the limited literal temporal and material world of concretely empirical reality, myth and religion art and inspiration ideals and aspirations, images and reflections, symbols and metaphors, dreams and visions, mysticism, religious devotion, universal compassion. It's associated with the impulse to surrender separative existence and egoic control to dissolve boundaries and structures in favour of underlying Unity's and undifferentiated holes merging that which was separate healing and wholeness, the dissolution of ego boundaries and reality structures states of psychological fusion and intimations of intra uterine existence nelta ecstasy, mystical union and primary narcissism with tendencies toward illusion and delusion, deception and self deception, escapism, intoxication, psychosis, perceptual and cognitive distortions, conflation and confusion, projection fantasy, with the be dazzle ment of consciousness, whether by God's archetypes, beliefs, dreams, ideals or ideologies, with enchantment in both positive and negative senses." That's really nice, right? So you're taking the mind and the principle of communication and speech represented by Hermes, and you're throwing it into Neptune land right now. preferable for a good while it's going into Neptune land.

5:42
I love that for the poetic, imaginative, otherworldly and mystical states of mind to articulate subtle ideas to be inspired by non linear spaces for devotional practices, like recitation of mantra to be very open and fluid. So I love this connection between mercury Neptune for all of those reasons. Obviously, you have to be careful of boundaryless sort of mental states that are boundaryless and that can flutter overwhelmed the mind or overwhelm you in different ways. And be very careful of what you are influenced by in your environment. going to talk about some of these things today.

6:26
But before I do that, I'm going to read you from another one of my favourite books, the archetypal Universe by Renn Butler, it's kind of like an archetypal cookbook, you know, the old cookbooks were like what a planet means when it's in this house, or what this aspect with that planet means and, and they were kind of basic, but what I love about the archetypal cookbook, I shouldn't even call it that might even sound disrespectful. But what I love about Renn Butler's book is that it gives you just page after page after page of understanding archetypal combinations, which is something that we need to do over and over again every day. Because if we do that, and we understand new ways in which the jewels of the archetypal combinations can be turned and understood, and we then enter into a much more creative relationship with the astrological transits as they come across every day.

7:20
"Mercury, Neptune, an open and peaceful mind, gifts of intuition and insight, flowing imagery and inspiration and ability to perceive patterns and connections a search for higher meaning, a tendency toward errors and misunderstandings, confusion and wishful thinking issues around honesty and clarity. Shadow quality is a tendency towards errors and mistakes, missing information and flawed assumptions, misunderstandings and miscommunication, deafness and unreliability, missed appointments and overly subjective way of thinking and inability to communicate one's experience ambivalent or ambiguous meanings the influence of the unconscious clouding one's thought, mental confusion, lack of clarity, euphemisms, uncertainty, doubt and scepticism, wishful thinking and denial, believing whatever one wants to believe the fudging of important details and distinctions.

8:10
"The possibility of deliberately or inadvertently misleading others or being misled issues around honesty, deception, speaking with a forked tongue secret harmful plans or research people who pretend who want to be or pretend to be psychic, a hushed or sanctimonious way of speaking a habit of talking about one's magical or spiritual powers, the need to perceive oneself as a holy man or woman." So you can feel that kind of the potential for the mind to get sort of inflated with a mystical sense of grandeur or, or, you know, when people suddenly pronounced that they have this psychic feeling about something and sometimes, you know, maybe they do and we should listen. And other times you're like, maybe you just ate something like nobody else is feeling that. Maybe that's unique to you. Okay, you get the idea. But that's the kind of territory where it's tricky to know the difference sometimes with mercury Neptune. On the other hand, the right brain the perception of archetypal patterns and connections and acute awareness of meaningful coincidences and synchronicities. Information perceived through non sensory channels are rare instances the possibility of premonition clairvoyance or channelling, an interest in the mystical capacity of the psyche, a sense of awe and mystery visions of cosmic unity, experiences of accessing or participating in a superconscious level of intelligence. So when you get that omen that speaks in nature when you're on a walk, Mercury Neptune, when you start to on understand the the liminal spaces between life and death, I'll never forget several years back when Robert Schmidt who was one of the chief translators of the ancient Hellenistic source texts in the modern era of astrology, and a philosophical commentator, who inspired this whole generation of astrologers, who are now thinking about practising Hellenistic astrology.

10:18
When he passed, there was a lot of factors, but he had a stroke right before he died, that, you know, sort of incapacitated him. And I was there to go and meet up with him for some tutoring and to hang out, and I knocked on the door and no one was home, called his wife on the cell phone, she said he had had a stroke, and they were in the hospital since the night before. So I went to the hospital, and, you know, ended up sitting with him a couple of times before he passed, and then was at his funeral as well. And this great philosopher was passing over and it was Mercury Neptune that transit was leading up to and then after, as I was there, got there was with him, right before he passed, not as he passed, but a couple of days or a week or something before he passed that I was in the hospital there with him. And mercury was square to Neptune.

11:17
And at one point, I had the opportunity to, you know, people were saying prayers and doing Reiki and I did a little chanting in the room there for him. And read a little bit of chanted some of the Bhagavad Gita. And all of the things that I love most about him really involved his mind. Right, he was very, very brilliant and articulate. As a philosopher, I didn't know him very well as a person, but as a teacher, as a philosopher, as a thinker, as a writer, as a linguist, as a, you know, scholar, I just was so in love with his mind. And in that space, what I was aware of was, he was a soul. And what like, you know, kind of watching him getting ready to leave his body. I was in such deep admiration of his soul. And my appreciation for his body of work was really it was it's sort of, you know, it was sort of it was just dwarfed my intellectual appreciation for him by the emotional space that opened up and getting to see how much more important it is that we're spiritual beings, then we are great thinkers, or great translators of a tradition or something like that. So that was a moment in my life. That that really changed me as an astrologer Mercury, Neptune.

12:54
Okay, anyway, one of the things that I wanted to talk about today comes from one of my favourite scriptures called the shriek, who by deshawn, Rita, which means the nectar of instruction. So famous texts in the bhakti yoga tradition. The first text says, "a sober person who can tolerate the urge to speak. The minds demands, the actions of anger and the urges of the tongue belly in genitals is qualified to make students all over the world. For disciples, a sober person who can tolerate the urge to speak the minds demands, the actions of anger, and the urges of the tongue bellies and belly and genitals is qualified to make disciples all over the world."

13:50
And one of the reasons that I love this, so much that text so much is because as someone with Mars in Gemini, I find that that's very difficult. In fact, in the sixth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, as Krishna is outlining the system of yoga, there's different kinds of yoga different approaches, and he's outlining jhana yoga, where he talks about seeding yourself on, you know, a little pile of kusa grass and focusing with single pointed attention controlling the mind. And Arjuna is like, Man, that sounds like it's really difficult. Impossible, the mind is like, it's gotta be impossible to control the mind. Krishna is like, it's very difficult.

14:38
But then the final instruction that he gives in that chapter is, it's essentially it's easiest for the person who surrenders in their heart. When we surrender in our heart, it's less of a battle with the mind. And one of the blessings of Mercury Neptune is the reminder to surrender the mind through the heart, there's a bunch of really good lessons about mercury Neptune that have to do with communication, and the learning gradually, ever so gradually how to control the mind and the tongue in particular. And I just want to run through some insights that I wrote down while I was preparing this morning.

15:18
One of the things that we talk about in the bhakti yoga tradition, in broadly speaking, you could say in yoga philosophy is that we take on the karma of the people that we bad mouth, or that we judge or that we criticise, especially publicly, but also even if we're only doing it mentally.

15:41
This is important, because Mercury, Neptune implies a kind of boundary list state, where what we say and how we say it, and who we say it to, can have ramifications that are not immediately apparent to us. And so being very careful about boundaries and communication is a good idea. During a Mercury Neptune transit, we take on the karma of the people that we judge that we dwell on mentally, whether it's, you know, someone that's really bothering us, or someone that we feel like isn't doing something correctly, or whatever it might be, we take on the karma of the people we judge dwell on, think about gossip about criticise, etc. So a simple instruction like self preservation, if you don't want other people's bad karma, then don't dwell on gossip about criticise or judge them in that way. Now, I'm not saying that you can't be thoughtful, or that you can't be that you should ignore or deny the existence of negative traits, bad decisions, you know, we're not saying to be like kind of turning a blind eye to things.

16:55
But we let things pass with Mercury, Neptune, it's a great time to see to notice to say, Oh, that's there. And to instead, one of the easiest ways to let things pass, if you're having trouble with it, is to say, Well, I hope that someone will forgive and let go of the things that they notice in me that are off or that missed the mark, somehow, it's a simple practice. But if we do it over and over and over again, what we'll find is that those encounters are not coming into us as a very subtle poison, because we have given them a chance to come in by opening ourselves up through judgement, gossip criticism.

17:36
On the other hand, we also take on the best qualities in people that we deliberately take the time to see praise or amplify. And I don't mean in some showy, excessive, you know, when I was a kid, what did they call it in classes, we called it brown nosing, terrible, reflect on like, half of the things that I learned in grade school, they're all terrible. So we take on the karma of the best qualities and people that we deliberately take the time to see without trying to be a flatterer, or something like that. But if we if, for example, if I take the time to notice that someone else is really thoughtful, I mean, I think a lot about my girls, and the difference in my experience, if I take the time, to reflect upon what's really good about what they're doing, or what's really special or sweet about them. And the way that that amplifies, I essentially share in communion with those same qualities, I bring some little spark of them into myself, when I take the time to notice them and appreciate them our capacity to appreciate increases, the more that we appreciate. And as our capacity to appreciate increases, our ability to be appreciated by others increases because we will have take taken on more of the qualities that are praiseworthy.

19:07
So this is simple Mercury, Neptune stuff because there'll be a more profound effect. Yesterday, I was talking, you know, I had a very frustrating day with my daughter yesterday, my oldest daughter. And one of the things that she said to me yesterday, she said, it just feels like today I can't do anything, right. It's like, she was of course talking about in terms of my being frustrated with her. And it was one of the first time since she's been born that I she's been able to articulate something that at that level of like emotional intelligence, it was very disarming for me. And it immediately shifted something in me. It opened my heart, it softened me and we had a long cuddle and a good talk.

19:59
And I feel like sometimes we need to do that with ourselves too. Sometimes we have to recognise, in our own mind that it feels like the world can't do anything, right? People around us can't do anything, right? Maybe even we can't do anything, right. And, you know, another aspect of ourselves a higher self that can make room for that, that that part of ourselves can step in and say, let's have a talk and a long cuddle. You know, well, whatever that looks like. Our soul receives the criticism we give, we can't tell the difference on a certain level between the words we think that we're sending, and those that we're actually receiving. So we suffer the barbs of the emotions or words that we think are reactions to others.

20:56
And in a sense, they are reactions to others, they are reactions to other people and environments and things like that. But we are heart and soul experiences, the things that we think we're sending also as things that we're receiving, I was in an Iowa ceremony once that I'll never forget, I in this vision for it's kind of hard to explain because on the one hand, I was outwardly saying a lot of things that I was frustrated by depressed by angry by scared of I was just like a verbal.

21:30
There's just like tonnes of words coming out. And that was completely out of my mind. I was completely just saying everything that I was outwardly upset by scared, scared of I mean, it went and it was all outward focused, during the midst of this vision, when I was unconscious of this stream of stuff just coming out of me, and I saw my first of all, I saw my, my tongue in my mouth, going up into my mind, like it was a part of an elaborate flower. And then my mind going into my heart, like they were all part of this one, like flower, that's the best visual that I can give for what I was seeing. And what I recognised was that the whole flower was undulating so that all the things that were coming out of my mouth that logically seemed like they were directed toward others things in the environment, things in my past, that this undulating flower was experiencing it all as if it were coming in toward it toward it, it was receiving all of it.

22:51
And it was the first time that I realised that that's me, I'm the heart and soul. And my mind is either going to be a very gentle, protective Guardian steward of that heart space, or it's going to be something that thinks it's all alone, fend for itself. And in directing things outward aggressively or protectively is actually harming my heart centre. So it was one of the most profound moments in my life really, because the simple vision was one of, you know, a number of such experiences that started pushing me toward yoga as a daily practice, because obviously, psychedelic missions are nice, they can change your life, but I needed daily sadhana I needed daily practice to it's like, if you get the if you get the message on the phone, hang up the phone. Well, I got the message. So that was around the time in my life when daily yoga, daily exercise, change of diet, daily meditation started becoming a thing because I realised that my mind as Krishna says, In the Bhagavad Gita, is either going to be the worst enemy or is going to be my best friend. And I had to make a choice. And it's a daily choice.

24:13
I asked, I said to me, You aren't the same as other people. But in order to relate to others and God consciousness, you have to feel them as yourself, you have to recognise that whatever you share with others, or whatever you perceive in the external environment, and how you perceive it is always coming back through and being experienced as yourself in yourself, doesn't mean you're identical or at one with everything in some kind of woowoo mystical state, you know, like, Oh, I'm just I'm you and you're me. And there's no difference or separation.

24:46
Not quite that but that there's a connection, that and that reality is relational. And that we have to be so gentle and and sensitive in order to foster. Stir loving relationships with everything. So we have to safeguard our mouths in order to safeguard our hearts can't do that this is my own realisation around this time in my life can't do that unless I learned how to control my mind can't learn how to control my mind without a regular, consistent devotional space in which to learn how to control the mind, which is a lot like as it turns out, raising a kid, I realise all of my struggles, and I realise all of my strengths, so much more amplified since having kids when it comes to controlling my own mind.

25:40
Our mind needs praise, it needs loving structure, not just discipline. I mean, discipline is a good word, it means it comes very similar to the word disciple, we need to make a disciple of the mind. I'm here because I believe in the heart, I'm connected by the heart, the heart needs me, when the mind feels that way, it's a friend. When the mind feels like you're bad, you're an enemy, you're dangerous. You are nothing but trouble. Bad mind, heart, good, bad mind, then it feels like I can't ever do anything. Right. That's that's what the mind ends up saying.

26:20
So our mind needs encouragement of its creativity of its contributions. But it also can't be allowed to be the master, it has to be part of the larger hole, which is the heart and soul that it serves temporarily in this particular body in this particular lifetime. Our minds are also easily influenced and the influences on like a time delay, this is all Mercury Neptune stuff. So if we think that we're the victim of something, often we will not recognise the time delay and how elements of the very situation some of which very well could be coming from outside people or things outside of ourselves that we are being victimised by. But often, the situation itself or elements of the situation, are coming from things that we have allowed to influence our mind to influence us patterns of thought patterns of behaviour, patterns of association that we make, and over time, they have a very strong influence on us, and they're on time delay, so you can't see them right away. So then it can often feel like they're sort of random meditation or working with the mind and realising how porous and fluid it is, in a gently structured devotional way every day, it helps us to recognise the time delay, and go, Oh, oh, yeah, I'm doing this. I'm starting to do this and react to that because of this other factor. For example, this is really stupid. But I was watching the basketball game last night between the Lakers and the warriors. Just admitting it, just gonna admit it.

28:03
So I was watching the game last night. And I realised that first of all, when basketball games get really intense, I have a tendency to go for. Repeated repetitive carbonated water drinking Lacroix. I'm not a big Lacroix person. In fact, I have to be somewhat careful of the Lacroix stuff. Because it tends to agitate my reflux. I've been dealing with reflux for a long time. And so I have to be very careful with it. But I've noticed that I get really is the energy of the game gets so intense, you know, and then I start, I start like cracking open, like all into it. And then I so I've gotten better at this over time. But last night, by halftime, I already had to go to the bathroom a couple times, right? Because I'm just going through a couple of cans of this Lacroix.

29:12
It's harmless, it's just water. It's just water. It can't mean anything. So but anyway, I realised because I was going to the bathroom so many times. I was like, I have to stop this now. Because otherwise I will be going to I will be getting up to go to the bathroom throughout the night. Then throughout the night, if I don't realise that this is because I drink a bunch of Lacroix. I'll start wondering if I have cancer or if I'm just kidding, but you know what I mean? Like your mind will just get spun out then you won't sleep well. And the next morning you'll wake up and you'll feel like am I even good at life? And it's all because you just didn't realise how you were? How I was responding to the anxiety.

30:00
Your attention to the basketball game. So I did two things. I stopped drinking Lacroix. And I turned off the volume on the game. So I didn't have to listen to it. And I was just reading a book and then kind of just paying attention. And then I waited until like the very end, when things were more intense to like, have 10 minutes of overstimulation rather than, like several hours. So anyway, I know those things, those examples are really probably, you know, you guys probably don't watch basketball. But this is the time delay factor. And I was so aware of it last night, I was like that time that there's that mercury Neptune period can make you so much more aware of how porous everything is and how important it is to pay attention to what influences you positively or negatively and that time delay that comes. Also surrender.

30:47
Sometimes we think that we're in control of everything. And it's a really good practice to meditate or to have some way of getting to know the mind. Because if we, if we get to know the mind, we often realise how difficult it is to control and how little of our lives we are actually in control of which ironically, doesn't make us feel powerless. If you're very serious about it. I want to share with you to close a quote that someone shared with me and apologies to whoever shared it with me because I can't remember who shared it with me. But I had to go look for it online because I remembered someone shared it with me. And then I couldn't quite remember the quote, and then I had to look it up and I found it. It's from Leonard Cohen, who was born with a Mercury Venus mutual reception with Venus conjoin Neptune. So there's a strong connection there with mercury and Neptune in his chart as well, since Venus and Mercury are in mutual reception, and Venus is conjoined or merged with Neptune. So if you like Leonard Cohen, who had devotional spiritual practices in his life, spent some time in a monastery at one point, I believe, anyway, he said this, the evidence accumulates as you get older, that things are not going to turn out exactly as you wish them to turn out. And that life has a dreamy quality that suggests that you have no control over the consequences. You may believe you have some control over the decisions, but certainly not the consequences. But you live your life as if it's real, as if you're directing it, but with the intuitive understanding that it's unfolding as it should, and you are not running the show.

32:31
So I hope that this meditation on Mercury Neptune has been helpful for all of you today. I would love to hear your reflections on how you're noticing or working with this energy right now or over the weekend. And if you have a Mercury Neptune contact in your chart, how have you learned to deal with it? Or do you feel more sensitive than the average person when it comes to environments that you're in? Or are you a poet You know? So share us share with us something about that placement if you have it in your chart? And yeah, my my daughter, my daughter and I are heading out to the zoo right now. So wishes, wishes better luck than yesterday. All right. We'll talk to you guys later. Bye.