© 2012 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved
“Waiting is fullness.”
~ Valentine Michael Smith,
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
No matter how many positive articles I write about Mercury
and Mars Retrograde [1], the pair have been murder on me. My Cardinal, hurry-up
Mars does not like this waiting around and uncertainty that’s thicker than thieves or thugs
blocking the doors. I feel like I’m in an invisible prison. It combines with
some other personal chart factors that have me banging on the bars of my
poky. I want out!
If you’re a kindred go-getter, you’ll probably be relieved when
Mercury goes Direct on April 4 and Mars on April 14. Back to what I said in the
Retrograde Rest Stop section of my latest
Mercury Retro article, this early year downtime is likely to be the calm before
the storm, the rest before the work, the boring days before life becomes the fulfillment
of the “Chinese curse,” living in interesting times. I like to think of the
times not as a curse but as a double-edged sword, combining challenge and
opportunity, a time that promises to keep me on my toes and grow me to my fullest possible height.
When I reacquainted myself with the Heinlein quote from Stranger in a Strange Land
, a cult classic in the ‘60s and ‘70s, my curiosity was piqued by a discussion in one article about the
book. It focused on how waiting in
fullness is not procrastination. In fact, it’s the antithesis of putting
something off. It’s surrendering to the necessary, underlying development of
foundations for anything you’re building. You can’t push the flower to grow or
the egg to hatch. It seems more obvious when the example is a literal, natural
process, but when it comes to the birth of an idea or project, it’s easy to
lose sight of the fact that we can’t see everything yet. Decisions and
directions need to be based on sound infrastructure in order to succeed, just
as if you were building a highway or bridge.
, a cult classic in the ‘60s and ‘70s, my curiosity was piqued by a discussion in one article about the
book. It focused on how waiting in
fullness is not procrastination. In fact, it’s the antithesis of putting
something off. It’s surrendering to the necessary, underlying development of
foundations for anything you’re building. You can’t push the flower to grow or
the egg to hatch. It seems more obvious when the example is a literal, natural
process, but when it comes to the birth of an idea or project, it’s easy to
lose sight of the fact that we can’t see everything yet. Decisions and
directions need to be based on sound infrastructure in order to succeed, just
as if you were building a highway or bridge.
For now, the work probably isn’t done in the invisible yet for
you to move forward on whatever you’ve been contemplating. We’ve only got a bit
to go before the pressure of waiting is off. My suggestion? Don’t leap, even
then, but initiate the test balloons and preparation for new projects,
practices, and important beginnings. Added to the retrograde mix and elongating
the process: Saturn, planet of structure and foundations, has been retrograde
since early February and does not go direct until June 25, 2012. In the sign of Libra, it has been asking us
to take others into consideration. In the three planets retro mix, it may be
asking us to wait till everyone’s on the same page before mixing the cement for
a new cornerstone.
Why, then, is waiting fullness?
Maybe the better analogy is eating, an activity where we know what full feels
like. In order for the idea or project to reach its full potential, we have to
feed it enough nutrients to build the bones and cartilage on which our skeletal
ideas will hang in the world and form enough flesh to be real.
Westerners are not very good at this sort of thing. That’s why
my best friend and both rankle when we’ve used the I Ching oracle. Its hexagrams
seem more like gobbledygook than wisdom to Marsy people. (She’s an Aries Sun.) The
Eastern perspective on life is much more astute about the need for waiting till
the time is right and yin and yang are balanced.
The Western Way is the yang, male-energy path—the same one that often ends in destruction, the path from which the adage was spawned, Fools rush in.
Part of what makes waiting
in fullness even more ironic is that Valentine Michael Smith, the guru
character in Heinlein’s novel, is a Martian—literally a Man from Mars. I don’t
know what, if anything, Heinlein knew about astrology, but juxtaposition is a
great teacher. Another thought: In its day, Heinlein’s novel was futuristic. In
1961 when it was first released, people often thought of extraterrestrials as
coming from Mars. It was our concept of far out, of strange and exotic, maybe
even of the limits of the universe. Those limits have expanded as astronomical
discoveries have increased exponentially in recent years.
So now, as we broach the finish of the first pair of the
retrograde trio’s backward motion this year, focus especially Mars, your can-do
planet. Visit the limits of what your Mars moving backwards and inching toward
a halt can teach you, before you move forward in mid-April on your next courses
of action. Make them appetizers until Saturn can support your fuller meal of
new efforts in early summer.
If waiting is fullness, there’s a feast in store for us by
mid-year. The hunger for action may be just the appetite we need to whip up
for the bounty of juicy, summer fruits that really give us something to sink our teeth
into.
~~~
NOTE
[1] Previous articles on Mercury Retrograde: A
Blessing for Mercury Retrograde, 10
Ways to Celebrate Mercury Retrograde, and Down
with Mercury Wrecko! Up with Mercury Respecto! On Mars: 10
Ways to Celebrate Mars Retrograde.
Photo Credit: ©
GoodMood Photo - Fotolia.com
In one of her recent presentations I attended, Maria talked about
how our addiction to busyness keeps us from asking ourselves meaningful
questions about our lives. (When I shared this with a dear friend, her one-word
response was identical to my own: “Busted.”) Our busy minds send us to the 
