Are your freakin' out again because you've heard another Mercury Retrograde is on its way next week? Take a breath. Take another. Now take a real breath, deep and slow, all the way down to your knees.
There's no need to dread the Mercury Retrograde periods. We can use their energy productively. They are meant as a time to review, reassess, replan, redesign, and redo, so they do promote-- as all planetary retrogrades do -- taking your attention inside yourself to observe your inner processing.
Mercury retrogrades are a good opportunity to examine how you are thinking when worry and stress rise up. They are the cosmic prompt to anticipate what energetic detours might come onto our paths, so that we can be more resilient in meeting challenges. They help us release and shed those mental constructs that no longer serve our soul's path.
For sure they can make electronics go wonky and screw up appointments and other mundane stuff -- but it's a cosmic lesson in not over-reacting. Mercury Retrogrades can be a time of becoming softened by Spirit and a time of deep breathing, reflecting and facing your inner ego's drives with the intent to not sweat the small stuff.
Celebrate it. It's a cosmic event for your highest good
Many people say they feel unsettled or on edge or something that they don't like -- we'll talk about making friends with that later -- when a variety of astrological events are happening or are about to happen. So it could be Mercury, but so what?
Feeling a feeling is not cause to freak out, despite what the makers of prozac try to tell you.
In my view as a psychological astrologer, there's always another way to interpret this energy -- usually it's a cosmic attempt to disrupt the status quo or redirect us back onto our soul's growth path. Sometimes that is done through throwing us into unsettling circumstances, sometimes through difficult people, sometimes through what we think of as uncomfortable physical sensations.
The good news is that whatever might be influenced by the planets is going to be time-limited, because they are always in motion, always changing, and relief comes eventually .... and sooner if we learn to take things in stride.
Hope that helps understand Mercury Retrogrades a little better.
BTW, just for a bit more astrological perspective, Saturn and Pluto are also retrograde at this moment, and Neptune will be going retrograde next month. Venus and Uranus go retrograde in July.
I've always wondered why the gloom and doom mystique is so singularly focused on poor little Mercury. LOL Essentially, all these cosmic energies are about getting our attention, deepening our awareness, helping us develop equanimity as a spiritual strength and virtue.
Let's think about this for a moment
An astrological retrograde is an optical illusion. A faulty perception of reality. Nothing is actually happening to Mercury. Zero. Zip. Nada. It is going about its business, all fat and sassy. It is human perception from a particular astronomical position that creates the illusion of this poor little planet going backwards in the sky. It really doesn't do that. Really. I promise. It's a story we make up. And then we freak out about that story and forget it's a total fiction in the first place. So --- why do we do that? What is it in human psychology that causes us to be fearful of an illusion? And maybe fearful of the feelings that astro-lore and the makers of prosac and the crusty old farts at the American Psychological Association think should never be experienced? Well, there's the expectation that something we won't like will happen ... or some emotion we over-react to, or find hard to cope with, will come a-callin'. And sure enough, the potential is there for plans and contracts to get screwed up, and for miscommunications to occur, for electronics to go haywire, and for a feeling to be felt. Guess what? That potential is always there. Guess what else? We mostly are fearing a fear, an illusion, rather than a for-certain reality. And we have choices about that. So please let's not blame Mercury for our illusionary fears. Let's do instead what a retrograde is metaphorically for, astrologically speaking --- reconsider, re-envision, redesign, revise, regroup, rebuild, and rejoice! smile emoticon