Cancer and Mother Love

by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #194, June 20, 2012

Beginning June 20th, the mother figure of the Zodiac embraces us for a month. The Cancer archetype offers the healing that only the Universal Mother can give.

Planetary Alignments

When your mood shifts, you feel either stuck, or suddenly mobilized to take action, check out what is happening in the heavens. At the time of new moons and full moons, solar and lunar eclipses, when a planet changes signs, goes retrograde, turns direct, or there are major planetary interactions (conjunctions, squares, oppositions) we are impacted in a variety of different ways. You are not going nuts. You are feeling the effects of planetary shifts. It all boils down to cosmic support for transformation and quantum shifts in consciousness.

There are a lot of these planetary shifts and alignments coming up. The message is CHANGE!

Sun in Cancer and First Uranus/Pluto Square

The Earth shifts at every solstice when the Sun moves into Cancer. The electric Gemini energy gives way to softer, more nurturing energy. We are going to need all the nurturing energy we can get during these turbulent times. The intensity of the Earth shift at this summer solstice is greatly amplified by the first exact square of Uranus and Pluto. There are six more coming up between now and 2015!

Uranus calls for freedom, reform, innovation, and revolution. Pluto obliges us to look at what is hidden in our subconscious, that gets in the way of expressing our authentic soul power. Squares mark major turning points. We are obliged to transform from deep within, and to make major changes in our personal and collective lives. I am sure you have noticed that the pressure for transformation is increasing.

The intensity and force for change continues with:

  1. the Sun in Cancer, opposing Pluto and squaring Uranus (June 29th), and
  2. Mars opposing Uranus and squaring Pluto (July 18th).

Although these dates are the exact points of interaction, their effects build up and continue through July. These planets form what is called a 'T' (at 8°) and interact in the 'cardinal' or action signs - Aries (Uranus), Capricorn (Pluto), Cancer (Sun and Mars).

The other cardinal sign is Libra, which has Saturn at 22°. So although the cardinal cross (all 4 signs) has one leg not exact by 14°, the cardinal dynamic is active and may play out in relationship issues. By taking action, you will relieve some of the pressure and feel better. If you want things to happen, know that you are being supported by the planets to co-create what you want.

Saturn and Venus Go Direct, Mercury goes Retrograde

We are going to feel a sense of relief and more energized when Saturn and Venus go direct. We will feel less resistance and be able to finally move forward. It has been a strange year, with these long periods of retrograde, including the Mars retrograde, so don't be so hard on yourself if you feel like the time has passed and you haven't gotten much done.

However, we have only a short window before Mercury goes retrograde, from July 14th through August 7th, so take advantage of the direct movement while it lasts. Don't worry, after August 7th only the outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, will be retrograde, until October 4th when Jupiter goes retrograde in Gemini. We have 2 months (August 7th through October 4th) when we can flow with the cosmic tailwinds. These 2 months are going to be the action months of 2012 - plan now.

Capricorn Full Moon

This Full Moon exposes our Cancer/Capricorn issues, which we discuss below. We might not be quite so hard on ourselves because Mars enters Libra the same day as the Full Moon, but beware, talk less and feel more.

Uranus and Mercury Go Retrograde

When a planet goes retrograde, it hovers in the sky, apparently to slow down and change direction. When an outer, or slow moving, planet like Uranus changes direction, its presence and influence is intensified for weeks. The 5 months that Uranus is retrograde (until Dec 13th on the Sagittarius New Moon) gives us a chance to identify what programs, beliefs, and cultural conditioning enslave our psyche and to let them go.

Mercury retrograde in Leo invites us to pause and identify if we are operating out of our ego or heart.

Cancer New Moon

The Cancer New Moon happens just days before the Sun moves into Leo. It is intensified by Mars opposition to Uranus and square to Pluto. Our ability to fearlessly move forward in our life (Capricorn) will be a good way to monitor the progress we have made in dealing with our Cancer issues. Since our inner reality (Cancer) greatly influences our outer reality (Capricorn), our outer life will demonstrate our inner success.

Cancer - Evolutionary and Developmental Stages and Themes - Summary

This issue is the sixth in the series investigating the illusions that we must identify and overcome to tap the powers and gifts of the 12 Zodiac archetypes. Neptune in Pisces for the next 14 years presents us with the themes of denial, illusions, truth and reality. In this issue we look at the seven developmental stages, and evolutionary themes, in relation to the Cancer archetype.

Those with a Cancer Sun, Moon, Rising, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will relate in a very intimate way to the following discussion. However, everyone is being touched by an inner awakening of the feminine polarity of their soul. The Cancer archetype - its energy, lessons, and higher expressions - help us understand our personal responses to re-integration of the Divine Feminine into the collective psyche.

Cancer Lessons

In Cancer territory our emotions dominate and, in fact, control our inner and outer realities. The path of the first water sign is to develop a harmonious relationship with our emotions, and to embrace our emotional body and its instinctual communications as the flowing/feminine polarity of our soul.(1)

Cancer's evolutionary themes focus on:

  1. finding security, i.e. feeling safe, secure, and protected in life,
  2. receiving nurturing and love,
  3. figuring out how to deal with intimacy and vulnerability, without getting lost or used,
  4. finding an inner identity that honors and supports (not tries to transcend) the above human needs, and
  5. learning how to use our subtle sensory system, to tap into the power of love in our feelings and emotional body.

The Cancer/Capricorn polarity pair is about creating a sense of security, and nurturing, within ourselves (Cancer) and sustaining this consciousness in the challenging circumstances of worldly activities (Capricorn).

[1] Innocence and Naïveté - Illusions

In our state of innocence, we feel safe in the world, which we perceive as one family where everyone and everything is taken care of. We operate from the belief that despite challenges or pain, everything will end happily.

Cancer and the other water signs (Scorpio and Pisces) are exceptionally sensitive. The fluid nature of water, and emotional energy, means that we are intimately connected energetically to our environments. By osmosis we identity with what we feel, which is everything! It is difficult in this receptive state to have a defined concept of our own identity, to acknowledge our own needs, to establish and maintain boundaries, and to operate from a clear and decisive decision-making authority, that computes accurately what is in our best interest.

Everything activates Cancer's emotional body, including the ring of the phone, other people's voices, and external noises. Because of this acute sensitivity, we can maintain our innocence only at the expense of reality and fully living life. To avoid emotional pain and anguish, we suppress our feelings, and shy away from intimacy, commitment, and challenging circumstances. We try to hermetically seal ourselves off from anything or anybody who might challenge our fragile existence. We try to protect ourselves and feel safe by avoiding life.

[2] Wake up and Pain - Circumstances

The Crab tries to find safe and dependable relationships and environments where it can feel nurtured, let go, relax, and not always need to be on guard. However, this strategy, which focuses on creating ideal external conditions by trying to change and manipulate circumstances, requires excessive effort and we never really succeed. Wherever we count on external security, protection, and nurturing, we are sooner or later disappointed. The expectation and desire for guaranteed safety in physical reality never materializes. We continually feel exposed, vulnerable, and insecure. We can even feel that others' actions are purposeful provocations. We sometimes escape into fantasies to try to deal with our unprotected aloneness.

Early life experiences create neediness and feelings of neglect. Young children, who witness abusive behavior between their parents, hide to protect themselves, and withdraw to try not to be a burden. In both cases they sacrifice their need for nurturing. When parents are unavailable to meet a child's physical and emotional needs, the child experiences a deep sense of deprivation. These are actually archetypal wounds suffered in one way or another by everyone. What parent is authentically available to not only meet, but to understand, the profound existential needs of a soul who incarnates as a baby, and must learn everything to grow into adulthood? Even the most sincere parents are still figuring out life for themselves, and trying to get their own needs met.

Our inner Cancer becomes disillusioned when we discover that the world (our family) cannot be counted on to serve our needs. We are shocked by the fact that the world can be a very unfriendly place, and that others use and abuse our generous nature. Our initial reaction is usually to feel victimized, by what appears to be someone else's fault or bad luck. Then we feel overwhelmed by the burden of taking responsibility for our own security and nurturing.

Cancer's path continually subjects us to experiences where we are confronted by inner fear and insecurity. Our emotional body is continuously challenged by events and even non-events! Cancer has to face the fact that its fear-based programming creates self-induced trauma. Eventually, we learn that no relationship, no circumstances, and no environments are going to make us feel secure. We alone are totally responsible for our personal security and for parenting our inner child.

Cancer's wake-up, and maturation process, teaches us that security, nurturing, and love are not freely guaranteed. In fact, without our personal effort to connect with the universal energies that make these experiences possible, they remain unavailable. Initially, we search outside ourselves for nurturing, security and love. However, at some point we realize that our external focus sabotages our ability to connect with that which we must find within. We must reorient our focus inward to be available to receive. It is our lesson to make ourselves consciously receptive to have these experiences. Without consciousness, these higher frequency energies/experiences are illusive, and dissolve like clouds in the sky.

[3] Accepting the Evolutionary Nature of the Human Journey - Effort and Lessons

Like every archetype, Cancer must deal with its loss of innocence and mature into adulthood. We have to learn how to handle life, and all its challenges, from a position of inner confidence, self-love and power!! Cancer's main challenges always involve the emotional body. Our emotional reactions can be overwhelming and even lead to emotional breakdowns. We must learn how to overcome the constant anxiety and stress that is caused by the slightest trigger. We must develop and strengthen our fragile emotional immune system, so that we can operate in life without extreme emotional reactions.

Cancer must learn to take care of its own vulnerabilities, and develop the ability to give and receive love without hidden agendas and neediness. As we cultivate a stable inner foundation, we can give up simplistic ideas about being protected by a friendly Universe (without effort on our part), or clinging to a partner (surrogate parent) who takes care of us. The reality is that our emotional body is continually challenged, and we have to figure out what to do about this condition of our existence.

Strategies that don't work include:

  1. denying our feelings and escaping into our mind 'so that we can stay positive and carefree',
  2. avoiding the examination of our painful past, and identifying the programming that keeps us in a state of trauma and fear, and
  3. choosing to obsess and blame instead of learning from our tests, forgiving and loving ourselves exactly the way we are, and moving on to more satisfying soul experiences.

There is no disputing the fact that feeling fear-based emotions is both painful and confrontive. The problem is, however, that to avoid feeling keeps us emotionally crippled, and our out-of-the-body spirituality makes us into a spiritual paraplegic. Disconnected from our feelings and our body, we are unable to be the conduits for the flow of Light and Love, and we are unable to give or receive that which we want the most - unconditional love and nurturing. We stop ourselves from expressing and interacting in ways that allow us to have the most sublime human experiences, which are possible only when we vibrate with the ecstatic frequency of Higher Love.

Before we graduate to the sublime and ecstatic, feeling our emotions dumps us into unchartered and uncomfortable territory. We are often encouraged to be brave, and there is no doubt that bravery is required, but if our strong and courageous tactics disconnect us from actually feeling, we suffer from a serious case of denial.

How do we know when we are avoiding the lessons that our emotional responses are trying to teach us? If the same emotional problems and relationship dysfunctions keep surfacing, the verdict is 'denial'.

Cancer's basic problem is deep seated fear, which activates fear responses when we encounter many normal life situations. We can feel threatened by almost anything. When we live in a chronic fear state, we invest a large amount of emotional energy responding to perceived and exaggerated threats. Because we are controlled by fear, we overreact and create more trauma for ourselves. The expenditure of emotional life force leaves us depleted, exhausted, and isolated.

Withdrawal to escape life situations doesn't solve the underlying problem, but separating ourselves physically and emotionally can be an appropriate strategy, to give us the time and space to build an inner foundation of security and self-love. Inner awareness meditation is how we build a secure inner space. The real test of our progress happens as we engage in life from an inner empowered space, and find that we can relax and operate from love, not fear.

[4] Ego Definition, Separation and Individualization - Empowering Self

A major Cancer lesson is to become aware of how we use our emotional body, and how it uses us. We empower ourselves by breaking our debilitating subconscious fear programming that sustains self-sabotaging habits. The water signs awaken us to the deep reservoir of fear, which can be elevated to Love. By confronting and loving our fear, we access our soul power - unconditional Mother Love.

[5] Developing Awareness and Consciousness - Higher Perspective

The long term solution to every archetypal challenge is based upon an expansion and elevation of consciousness, which makes it possible to deal with our life issues from a higher perspective.

It is critical to examine spiritual perspectives which can actually make things worse. The upper chakra based religious and spiritual paths, which deny and debase the lower chakras, the emotions, the human body and physical experience, advocate denial instead of transformation of our physical and emotional bodies. They offer refuge through escaping, not embracing, our humanness. The belief that purity, and salvation, exist only when we leave our tormented human existence invites us to suppress our feelings and emotions, be impatient with our inner child, and neglect the flowing polarity of our soul.(1)

A related impediment to our human and spiritual growth, is the expectation that life can be perfect, and that we are supposed to be perfect ourselves. This belief sets us up to be even more vulnerable and afraid. We don't accept, and in extreme cases, even hate ourselves. We make ourselves miserable when we cannot accommodate, and accept, the imperfect human condition. Our rigidity increases our emotional vulnerability. We feel shame for our own 'weaknesses', and we project blame on those who disturb our fantasy reality.

It is easy to identify where the 'should be perfect' belief shows up - recurring situations that we must face over and over again, despite our efforts to escape. These include changing locations, relationships, jobs, and even spiritual paths - and finding that we face the same challenges in the 'new' situation. Years ago a student who had already lived in several ashrams, asked Yogi Bhajan if he could move yet one more time. Yogi Bhajan's response was, "You can move, but you have to take YOURSELF with you wherever you go".

Running away is never the answer. The Crab has to realize that wherever it goes, and whoever it relates to, its shell is delicate and must be protected by inner and auric strength. We have to deal with the way we are. We are each born to find our power from our 'weaknesses' (undeveloped gifts). We find resolution in learning our life lessons, not by escaping into a perfect paradise devoid of challenges. We have to accept the fact that we are currently enrolled in Earth School. The only way our inner Crab can feel safe, is to strengthen our emotional immune system through self-love, so that we can deal more effectively in the physical world.

[6] New Territory and an Expanded Reality - Spiritual Connection

Naïvely interpreted, spirituality can be deceptive, and promote illusions that get us in trouble on the physical plane. When we use 'spiritual illusions' as an excuse to avoid confronting fearful and painful life challenges, we prevent ourselves from evolving, maturing, and growing emotionally and spiritually. The professed need to transcend our humanness in order to become pure, worthy, good, and to achieve salvation, are seeds for intolerance, guilt, shame, and unhappiness. We facet the diamond of our soul by facing and learning how to deal with difficulties in the physical plane. There are no easy escape routes. There are just modes that are more effective - forgiveness, patience, kindness, and self-love. These strategies work because they are an expression of, and deliver us to, the highest emotion - Divine Love itself.

Our human journey needs to be both demystified and elevated. It is a gradual process to embrace our humanness, to learn our lessons, to become mature, to graduate into our soul identity, and to experience oneness with Universal Love. The human path is not about transcending or, more accurately, denying and suppressing our physical and emotional desires and needs. Our human path is about accepting our state as a child learning about life, ourselves and others through experience, i.e. trial and error, failure and success.

Our spiritual journey takes us inside ourselves, where we can identify the soul force that gives us life. Ultimately, the only way we can attain a sense of security is to create a connection with Higher Love, and the Universal Mother in our own inner space. Continual effort is required on our part to align with, maintain our alignment, and deepen our experience of the nurturing love of the Divine Mother, which most fortunately is always available. Our inner child feels safe only when it experiences being protected in the presence of our Divine Parents.

We eventually experience that our true strength comes, not from willful mental escapism, but from our unquestioned inner connection with our soul and the Divine. We feel IT, we trust IT, and we are strong because we identify with our soul and are one with the Infinite Force.

Our Divine Connection has to be real to offer us an authentic experience of security and protection. Cancer connects us to the presence of the Divine Mother, the universal source of nurturing, and the creative force that gives us life and love. Once we experience the nurturing energy of the Divine Mother, we are able to truly love ourselves, our mother wounds can heal, and our presence can nurture others and the Planet.

[7] Work is Worship and Life Is Sacred - Mission and Destiny

All the capacities that we develop to deal with life position us to be in service of peace and love.

Our ability to embrace our own emotions, and love our inner child, awakens us to subtle sensitivities of the inner child in every man and woman. When we witness how every human being is a child in this world (doing the best that they can!), we can relate to others with both respect, kindness, and compassion. We feel the deep longing to love and be loved, and can speak to the heart of everyone's soul. Others feel accepted in our presence, which gives them the space to love themselves.

In public and teaching settings, the emotional dynamics require our ability to hold the space of love, and to not get pulled away from our center. We have to relate to ourselves, and each other, from a soul perspective, which is simultaneously personal and impersonal. Our ability to stay conscious, neutral, centered, and kind is required to maintain our identity, space, and projection, which uplift, inspire, and transform. As Yogi Bhajan said, "Consciousness is caught, not taught".

To perform our mission on Planet Earth, we can never take consciousness for granted. We must continually invest effort in expanding the quality of our consciousness as our gift to the world.

In elevated consciousness, Cancer becomes a sacred mother figure for others. She/he attains this state of grace by realizing and relating to everyone as a child of the Universal Mother. This understanding opens our heart, and awakens compassion for all beings who are here on Planet Earth to learn together, through trial and error, to activate their Light and to share Love.

The Inner Art of Love by Guru Rattana, Ph.D.

 
The Inner Art of Love by Guru Rattana, Ph.D., answers both basic and profound questions on the navigation of your spiritual journey.

HOW to use the sacred technology of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation to:

Kundalini Yoga - Mother Power Meditation

While the Sun shines in Cancer, we are supported to connect with the Universal Mother, and can use this energy for healing our inner child and cultivating self-love.

Mantras are sounds that connect us with levels of intelligence beyond our rational mind. Mantras are the sounds of the language of the Universe. Mantras are tuning instruments. If we want to tune into, and access, a particular universal frequency, we chant the mantra that vibrates that frequency. For instance, chanting MAAAAAAAAAA tunes us into the frequency of the Divine Mother and the Flowing Force.

At first we connect at the personal level and think of our own mother. As we continue to vibrate with MAAA we tune into the universal Mother Force. Below is a simple yet powerful meditation to experience Mother energy and healing.

Cancer Classes - Guru Rattana Online

Check out Guru Rattana Online lessons for Cancer under EMOTIONS/WATER ELEMENT for classes on 'Grounding and Emotional Balance', 'From Fear to Love', 'Evolutionary Flow of the Soul', and more!

If you haven't already subscribed, you will need to do so to watch these classes. For a low monthly rate you can enjoy unlimited access to all my classes.

References and Footnotes

"Gemini Solar Eclipse - May 20", Austin, Stephanie, The Mountain Astrologer, Issue #162, April/May 2012, p. 100

"Capricorn Full Moon - July 3, Cancer New Moon - July 18", Austin, Stephanie, The Mountain Astrologer, Issue #163, June/July 2012, pp. 105-6.

"Neptune, the 12th House and Pisces", Fernandez, Maurice, Trafford Publishing, 2004.

1. My new book, The Inner Art of Love - Awaken Your Heart with Kundalini Yoga, explains in depth the nature of the two polarities of our soul, and how to experience their highest expressions.

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