One good theme to watch for with Venus in Sagittarius, maybe not the most obvious one, but even more pronounced as Venus moves toward Saturn, is fidelity, or faithfulness in love.
In all of our relationships, whatever style or shape, we are fooling ourselves if we think that romantic love or positive feelings are the only necessary ingredient. Just like we’re fooling ourselves if we think that being a spiritual person is only about the awe or excitement we feel while looking out at the ocean or right after a good yoga class. The rush of sex, the thrill of romantic conquest, and the newness of a lovers body fade in time and all too often we use the absence of these thrills to justify our having chosen the wrong person, or having fallen out of love, or needing someone newer, someone more “truly and spiritually” compatible.
The word “fidelity” means devotion and faith, and both words suggest sacrifice, commitment, discipline, and even obedience or loyalty. If commitment to higher truth was natural, then we wouldn’t spend so much time and money and effort “working on ourselves.” If living an easy virtuous life was 100% natural, then we wouldn’t spend so much time thinking about our shortcomings and working toward a more ethical or balanced existence. Similarly, relationships require faithfulness. Like the spiritual life, their most profound offerings often come when we enduring suffering and choose to learn something from the process. Like the spiritual life, their benefits outweigh the sacrifices we have to make. In the spiritual life, we are constantly turning away from or forsaking those temptations in life that would take us away from the path of higher truth, and likewise in relationships for the union of a relationship to yield spiritual fruit we have to turn away from all the temptations that would take us away from the bond and the intelligence of its course.
Some people think this makes relationships a burden, and the difficult truth is that this is true. Relationships are some of the heaviest responsibilities we are given in this lifetime, and they are often full of sacrifice and difficulty and pain. However, if we choose to pit this reality against the reality of some higher romantic reality, then we miss the opportunity to experience the romance of what relationships actually are. We miss the poetry and soulfulness of commitment because we refuse to soften, surrender, and love in the ways we find uncomfortable.
All of this being said, with Venus in Sagittarius moving toward Saturn, the adventure of commitment is on the radar. Relationships take faith and hope constantly…like the roots of flowers need rain. What are we doing to renew or restore faithfulness in our relationships? How are we balancing our need for freedom and excitement with the spiritual path of commitment to others?
Though this post has leaned toward the difficulties of real, enduring commitment, comparing them with the benefits of committed spiritual work, it’s also obvious that some relationships aren’t meant to last, and some forms of commitment are more about denial than they are about lasting devotion. It takes two and there are unfortunately many good reasons why relationships simply won’t work. Without denying any of this, we should remember that if we love the people we are in relationships with, then it will likely require no small amount of long term faithfulness to receive the deepest benefits of our bonds.
Most of us practice spirituality because we believe it benefits the life of the soul or spirit, something whose existence is prior to and after this bodily life. We forget this when we relegate relationships to only having relevance to our bodily life, or when we forget that our relationships also have spiritual lives that came before and will come after our bodily life. After all, we aren’t just individual souls, but groups of souls, families of souls, lovers of each other’s souls, and our spiritual life is not merely about ourselves but about all of the rest too.
Prayer: Renew our faith in each other, renew our devotion, and remind us of the beauty and romance of the sacrifices we make for each other, as often as we think of ourselves only
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