Ambivalence & forward movement
A Full Moon in Libra
With so many planets in Aries, there’s energy and desire, impatience and urgency for forward movement. But the Sun is flanked by Saturn and Chiron, both of whom slow us down. And the Moon is full in Libra, a sign that’s rooted in deep ambivalence (although there’s a vast range of ways we each tend to recognize, relate, react or respond to that experience of having one foot in / one foot out).
Ambivalence carries the Latin prefix ambi- ("both, on both sides") and valentia ("strength," from valere "to be strong"). In other words — to be strong on both sides.
In a culture where forward progress, a linear mindset, heroism and individualism is uplifted, ambivalence often carries the negative connotations of being unable to pick a side, take a stand, make a choice, move forward.
It can be associated with being weak or complacent.
Like lacking the fire or courage to actually do or say a thing.
My argument is that you can keep moving purposefully, even while ambivalence continues to exist. Similar to how we don’t want to avoid healthy conflict with our partner to keep a superficial peace of sameness or agreement — we don’t want to avoid or bypass acknowledging our own internal divisions, splits and conflicts by buying into some pre-packaged answer or path.
We don’t have to convince or convert, make-wrong or make-better the parts of us that are dragging their feet, throwing up their doubts, feeling small or mean or unforgiving … in order to move firmly forward with our lives.
Allowing and intentionally holding space for our internal back-and-forth is what can give way to a broadened, deepened and robust sense of confidence and clarity.
This Full Moon is in a tight square to Jupiter in Cancer, and I’m really feeling how this Jupiterean capacity to hold space for a complex, chaotic, squishy, swirly, at-times-divided inner world — is what allows for a sense of strong personal conviction AND a receptivity to Life in all its un-tameable mysteries, multiplicities and paradoxes, to emerge and coexist.
Often we try to rid or save ourselves from our inner contradictions by using moral ledgers — what do we owe an old friend, partner, parent, kids, client, etc. We impose upon ourselves this kind of duty- or debt-related framework to think and rationalize our way to a “clear” decision around how we should be and act in relationship with another. It can be a way to avoid dropping in and discerning our own truth — which often comes from first meeting the personal desires, needs or instincts that complicate and challenge our current categorization of what a good person (daughter, friend, partner, parent) would do.
But by giving ourselves some space from cultural or familial or religious pressures, and allowing internal conflict to exist without making ourselves bad or wrong for it — we’re opening ourselves up to the aspects of being that don’t yet have a place in our internal or external systems. We’re expanding the possibility of making a place for them to exist, creatively express and participate.
And what’s Aries fire for anyway, but to bring in something new? To let the next petal of unfurling claim its place? To make space for more Life? And beauty?
What if the question shifted from whether you’re making a choice that is “right” or “wrong” according to some moral framework — to a question of,
How do you feel living with yourself, with this experience, with this choice?
Being selfish, one-sided or neglectful of a larger common good, is a common fear that freezes us when we consider allowing ourselves to prioritize how something feels to us personally.
But the first thing I want to say about that is, if you allow your inner multiplicity to exist and really feel into it by receiving your contradicting needs and desires — this multiplicity carries its own innate checks and balances that prevent you from being (at least persistently or habitually) selfish.
… Those perceptions of you might still exist. There may indeed be people who do perceive and believe you to be selfish. You can’t control that. But what you can do (and what Jupiter in Cancer can help you do) is hold space for an honest — and maybe lengthy — conversation with the parts of you that struggle with being perceived as selfish, and that carry doubts around whether others’ perceptions mean that you actually are that thing.
Being able to hold space for this hard conversation within yourself is what allows organic forward movement via the disruption of looping patterns that would otherwise keep re-cycling, energized by the avoidance of being perceived a certain way by others.
The second thing I want to say about this is that you don’t have to make everything inside of you agree on something in order to feel clear about your choice and to take action amidst unknowns with a (maybe incrementally growing or maybe suddenly expanded) sense of inner peace.
And lastly, as I sit with Saturn and Neptune in Aries, I feel how … when we look to an external authority to make our decisions for us from a place of wanting to escape our own inner complexity and ambivalence, we’re more likely to end up feeling betrayed by another who isn’t following our same rules. Or betrayed by Life itself. Because Life is fluid and slippery, multiplicitous and mysterious. Life will always be wilder than any dogma, and will always be more powerful than the force of individual will or the brilliance of the human mind to be able to pin down a one-size-fits-all-right-way-to-do-something.
Embracing our own ambivalence helps us enact more conscious decisions and apply intense focus, aim and effort — while also still having access to these many other aspects of self that help us receive what unknowns unfurl with each step forward and respond with more self-kindness (and with less madness around squashing the opposition or the unwanted things).
For support with nurturing ambivalence and finding creative empowerment in the complexity of who you are, book a reading where we let the Night Sky hold bigger, wider pictures of who we are and who we can be.
With much warmth,
Nicole
