Love Makes the World Go Around as the Lion Roars - New Moon August 1st 2019
A New Moon is a new cycle – a new beginning – and a time to set intentions for the new lunar month. At this New Moon on 1stAugust we have Venus and Mars as well as the Sun and the Moon in the sign of Leo. Leo is a masculine, Fire sign – and, just like the lion, Leo is majestic and proud. Leos can also often stand out because of their mane of hair. They desire deeply to be noticed and to receive praise for their actions. Warm, loyal and generous, they have the enthusiasm of the Fire signs and in this way they have the ability to inspire others. Leos are good at the drama and can put on a very good front – their worry is failure – so sometimes they may not try to succeed in the first place The Leo can also be somewhat childlike and may sulk if another takes the centre stage away from them, but, on the positive side, this makes them one of the playful signs of the zodiac.
In addition to the actual time of the New Moon you can also take advantage of repeating your intentions on August 5thand 9thas these too are opportunistic points when the Moon is still waxing.
Because the Sun in the chart represents the ego, the Sun in his own sign of Leo may be guilty of having an inflated ego and of seeking to brag or show off, and in this chart we also have Mars in Leo, adding to this boastful side of the Leo nature. The Leo Sun is royally at home in his castle. He is happily and confidently ‘mansplaying’ as he sits on his throne seeking appreciation, praise and acknowledgement for his good deeds. The Leo for sure wants to be the best and to shine in the spotlight, but is equally able to shine the light on someone else and that’s why Leos make good therapists, leaders and have the ability to work on a one to one basis.
This New Moon also has Venus schmoozing close to it, seeking love, pleasure, money and attention; she will put on the sweetness act to get what she wants. But, with a square to Uranus active, there’s also a desire to enjoy excitement, something different – a thrill with some zing. Mars in Leo also sits with the asteroid Juno who signifies relating, so relationships may indeed fare better than they have of late. If you need to cosy up to someone, then now is the time.
With Jupiter still in Sagittarius and square to Neptune, we can still have our fill of dreamy fluffy bubbles and illusion – maybe a bit like having an invisibility cloak on the wrong way round so that we can’t actually see things like the Saturn/Pluto/South Node tasteless sandwich! Mercury is ending his retrograde period and is standing still ready to go direct. He sits opposite Pluto
and wants to dig deep, delve down, and try and uncover a few secrets and lies to take with him on his forward journey.
Leo and the Heart
But it is the Leo energy that really dominates this chart and Leo rules the heart, so anything we do now should be heartfelt – our actions should make the heart sing. According to the Bible the heart is the centre of spiritual activity and the central wisdom of feeling, whilst the head contains the wisdom of reason.
The heart is the first functioning organ in the developing embryo and starts beating at about the third week of development, whereas the electrical activity of the brain doesn’t begin until the fifth or sixth week. It is our hearts that contain the spark of the divine and connect us to our soul’s purpose and calling.
The Mesopotamians and the Greeks both thought of the heart as the centre of the soul – the Mesopotamians performing human sacrifices where they extracted a still beating human heart to offer to the Sun God. Of course, we no longer extract still beating hearts to give to the Gods, but the Scientific Revolution and its mechanistic view of the universe has a lot to answer for in terms of how we view our bodies and the miracle of life itself. It was then that we began to think of the heart as just a physical pump rather than a connection to innate intelligence; it ceased to be a connection to feelings, emotions and our higher selves.[1]
The Heart under Stress
Dispenza tells us that the heart needs to feel joy, gratitude kindness and compassion. Then the nervous system will respond by increasing the brain’s energy, creativity and intuition. If the heart is not feeling these emotions of coherence then we feel anxious, out of balance and on edge. This state of stress depletes our vital life force and our bodies find it difficult to repair and we find ourselves in a loop of addiction and chaos. The newborn baby instinctively breathes using the diaphragm and expanding the belly, but as we grow older and succumb to stress we begin to shallow breathe. If we breathe in a shallow way the body remains in a stressful state with low immune response and poor cognitive function.
When we are under stress the amygdala sends signals out to release adrenalin – there is an inverse relationship between adrenal hormones and melatonin which we need to balance our sleep cycles, so when we are anxious and stressed we can’t sleep and our bodies cannot restore.[2] Interestingly also when we are stressed the body stores carbohydrate energy and stores it as fat because our primitive genes signal there may be a famine.
Every emotion we feel affects our hearts because the heart contains nerves from both branches of the automatic nervous system. Dispenza maintains that heart coherence is a learned skill which will allow people to maintain clarity, decision-making ability and composure in high stress situations. He states that when we choose to cultivate and experience elevated emotions, these signals cause the brain to release chemicals equal to those feelings and emotions into the body so that instead of depleting vitality, the biochemical changes in the body promote growth and repair itself. However, if we live in a constant state of stress our ability to create is stifled. Whilst the heart and the brain are connected by pathways, 90% of the nerve fibres ascend from the heart upto the brain. Signals from the heart to the brain connect through the vagus nerve straight to the thalamus and on to the amygdala, the centre of the fight or flight. So emotions and feelings originating in the heart help to control how we think, process information, the heart centre acting as an amplifier to jump start the brain and create balance and order throughout the body.
As Dispenza states, you can repeat an affirmation such as I am fearless, but if you are actually feeling fear rather than fearlessness, the brain won’t react. You really do have to choose to consciously feel the elevated emotions of love and gratitude, joy and create a new emotional baseline. But, our world of instant gratification doesn’t make us conscious of a need to feel grateful for all that we have. We take that for granted and expect it, so we tend to find it difficult to truly feel gratitude.
The Heart and New Paradigms
We are going to need the strength and courage of the lion (Leo) to face the new paradigms ahead and learn to love and embrace – the unknown future is a scary place. We need consciousness and awareness to become the conductor of our lives so that we are prepared and ready;[3]just as the lion – the king of the jungle has to be in order to lead. If we are unprepared as a group, the collective feelings of fear will ramp up the collective evolution as well as the personal until we find it hard to escape the hardwired loop of stress and fear. The brain may think, but when you turn your heart into an instrument of perception, it knows.[4] I am reminded here of the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz who thought he lacked the courage he needed to be the King of the Beasts. Leos seek praise and recognition and if they fear not receiving this they will seek a comfortable place where they can shine and feel safe but where they don’t risk failure. However, the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz eventually learned that he had indeed been brave all along and that he didn’t need any magical courage. He didn’t understand that courage means acting in the face of fear. He just hadn’t realized that it is natural to feel a fear of the unknown and that feeling a sense of fear is not a failure. And so he learned to truly roar.
Becoming heart coherent
Becoming heart coherent has to be a conscious action, using meditation. During heart coherence meditation – put the awareness to your heart centre and breathe slowly and deeply. When your mind wanders bring the attention back to the heart centre. Bring up elevated emotions while continuing to breathe from the heart centre
Love makes the world go around
The Leo song is a song of pride – so remember to be proud of yourself for where you are now and give gratitude for that. Astrologically Leo represents the heart and the personal creativity and wisdom our hearts define. And the heart represents love, and particularly this Leo New Moon sitting with Venus. We enter this world as helpless babies – we need to be loved so that we can survive. So we give love. Essentially our earthly journey is about love and how we continue through life seeking love and giving love. Sometimes, however, along the way things go wrong and we get hurt. Then we seek to protect our vulnerable hearts – sometimes we harden them.
The heart really is the centre of feeling. It skips a beat when we fall in love and it breaks when love disappears. We speak of having a ‘heavy heart’ or an ‘aching heart’ and it really does feel heavy and aching when we lose something or someone we love.
The heart is the centre of your own personal creativity and your inner wisdom. So remember to nourish your heart – it’s not just a pump, it is your centre. At this New Moon heart, soul and spirit are completely aligned. So have gratitude, be creative, find joy in the small things and connect to your soul’s true purpose. Start a new project, breathe life into relationships, take pleasure in nature and be grateful for life itself. And above all be able to roar from the rooftops.
[1]Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Hay House, 2017, p. 155
[2]Dispenza, do. P.259
[3]Dispenza, do. P.250
[4]Dispenza, do. P. 173