Happy “new year!”  I put new year in quotations because many of us do not celebrate the new year until the spring equinox at the end of March as our ancestors did. This is also considered the astrological new year as Aries is the first sign of the zodiac. In fact, celebrating the new year on January 1st has only been done for approximately 400 years. Nonetheless, we are now in the year 2023, numerological year #7, which is the spiritual year and signifies the year of evolution, analysis and wisdom. For most of November and December, the collective energy has felt pretty calm. It seems as though the universe was giving us an opportunity to rest and integrate all that we have experienced last year. Although we are going through a rough Mercury and Mars retrograde right now, as well as a Cancer full moon, we will likely have a bit of an energetic reprieve from mid-month, when this clears, until the spring.

We will then be experiencing two major shifts in March, which I think will be the highlights of 2023. Saturn, the planet of restrictions, will move out of Aquarius, where it landed in 2020, into Pisces. I do not think I need to remind you of what transpired in March of 2020. Pluto, the planet of transformation, will be changing signs from Capricorn, which we have been in since 2008, into Aquarius where it will stay for the next 20 years. If you recall, we had a financial crisis in 2008 when this transit occurred. These shifts have the potential to be quite significant, which may likely prompt another huge contraction in the 3 D matrix. Whatever this year brings, we are definitely more prepared with all the work we did last year. This upcoming shake-up will likely be a shock to those who are still not fully aware of where we are heading as a collective. We will likely have a lot of work ahead of us; helping those who will need guidance in navigating whatever these two powerful shifts will bring. I suspect that with these shifts we will also have greater clarity as to the specifics of our new roles in this ascension process and start taking more concrete action moving forward.

I decided to end 2022 in a slightly unconventional way. Because I do not celebrate the holidays, I routinely travel out of the country for my year end vacation. Ever since I moved to Mt. Shasta a little over a year ago, I really have not desired to travel too far from home. It might be that I am, as all of us are whether we realize it or not, still experiencing PTSD from all that transpired since 2020. It may also be that because the trajectory of my life shifted so radically since 2020, traveling may not be a priority in my post-2020 life. Nonetheless, I took a week off at the end of December, but wanted to do something interesting. Two weeks before my break, I met with an intuitive who gave me a great idea. She stated that I needed to do more silent meditation. For the past few years, I had wanted to experience Vipassana, which is a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I decided to do a 7-day stay at home silent meditation experience. I planned on meditating at least three times per day for at least one hour, taking my daily hikes, practicing yoga, reading and writing.

I started my meditation on the new moon. The first 3 days were amazing. I meditated for most of the day. It was as though my brain was craving the time off. In between silent meditations, I listened to chakra balancing music focusing on a different chakra each day. On Monday, the fourth day, it was little bit harder to focus on my meditation but I stayed the course until the seventh day. It was an interesting experience and would definitely do it again. I was feeling so aligned and peaceful and then Mercury went into retrograde. Initially, I really did not feel anything, which was not surprising since pre-2020 mercury retrogrades did not really affect me. In fact, I did some of my best writing during mercury retrograde because retrogrades are all about the subconscious and that is a comfortable place for this Pisces. However, in 2020, all that seemed to changed. It seems as though ever since 2020, the astrological shifts seem to have just amplified. The last one in September was quite a doozy. I speculate that these shifts are feeling as though they are stronger because they just might be. The vibrational energy of this ascension is triggering us to dig deeper than ever before. On the second of January, a few events served to trigger a childhood trauma that I thought I had processed and dealt with a while ago. I became so incredibly annoyed and frustrated because all the emotions I was experiencing were really interfering with my “life.” I had things to do, but just could not seem to get anything done. I remember finding myself in this frustrated state several times last year. As I was sitting and processing, the words “remember why you are here,” kept running through my mind. This realization calmed me down. Oftentimes we forget, especially when we are in a distressed state, that the reason we are here on this planet is to evolve spiritually and each of us, especially right now, is here to evolve the consciousness of the planet. And part of this evolution is to process and work through all the stuff that comes up for examination and clear during this ascension process. This may be why these astrological patterns are getting stronger; to help us continue evolving. Something to keep in mind as we continue moving into 2023 is to keep remembering why we are here. We are here on this planet to grow and evolve! Hope all of you have a wonderful spiritually filled 2023!