The full moon in Capricorn is happening today. Following the cycles of the moon is akin to following to the cycles of the unconscious. Beneath the ego’s conscious realm of logic and reason dwells the realm of intuition, feelings, soul and the unconscious. The sun is the ego’s domain and the moon is the soul’s domain.

When the moon is full it is illuminating the soul and the contents of our personal shadow that wants to be seen at this time. Bring in Capricorn and we get a focused light. Capricorn focuses the lunar light on what is pragmatic, tempering our feelings and bringing rational understanding to the watery realm of feeling and intuition.

Bringing pragmatic and rational understanding to the feelings and intuition is calming for the nervous system. Many of us are experiencing heightened suffering right now in our personal lives and facing the crisis of this country. We are experiencing relationship challenges, health challenges, loss, confusion, emptiness, rage, sorrow, and battling to get out of old stories of suffering.

Bringing rational understanding to the feelings means discerning the feeling from the story. The feeling itself is a somatic expression. Sorrow is crying. Anger is screaming. Despair is wailing. Emptiness is staring into space. You get the idea. It’s never healthy to repress the feelings. Let them have expression.

Maybe you express through singing instead of crying and screaming. Maybe you express through running. However it gets out, get the feeling out. Make time to get the feeling out. Just like you wouldn’t hold in poo that needs out (how ridiculous!), do not hold in feelings because if you do it will make you sick just like holding in poo.

Use the rational Capricorn energy to make time to let your feelings have release.

The next step up the mountain is to keep your hawk eye out for the stories that like to grow on feelings the same way yeast likes to grow on fruit. Sadness may grow an “I am not good enough” story. Anger may grow a “you are bad” story. Emptiness may grow a “life is meaningless” story. Despair may grow a “I want to die” story. On and on. These stories are akin to unhealthy bacteria that make the system sick.

Just like fruit grows moldy if left uneaten, feelings that are left unfelt tend to grow bacterial stories. Other times these toxic stories grow from dwelling too much in a feeling. If you eat 100 apples you will get sick. If you dwell in sorrow you will soon grow a story that says you are incapable, used up, worthless and worse off than everyone else.

Having a regular meditation or yoga practice helps the mind stay aware of the stories so that we can cherry pick which stories are healthy and which to ignore. When you ignore a story long enough, it recedes and eventually dissolves because stories are not real. Feelings, on the other hand, are very real. If you ignore and avoid a feeling it will grow into a story that that you think is real while the repressed feeling makes you sick by showing up as illness, crisis, codependency and so forth.

The pragmatic thing to keep in mind is that the feeling is what needs tending and releasing so toxic stories do not build up and deceive the ego into nailing the self into it’s own coffin while still alive. Dramatic, I know. But truth be told, we humans are dramatic creatures. We are sensitive creatures. We need tending.

If we do not care for our feelings we get addicted to toxic stories and substances and relationships and people. Being able to show up as the present true self in each moment is tall order for the state of the human collective we are in. Crisis is global and personal. Capricorn reminds us to take each moment one baby step up the mountain of progress.

Take one little baby step of awareness to look within….

See how you feel. Feel how you feel. Hear how you feel. Know how you feel. However you get there. Find your feeling in your body. Maybe a song, movie, or story helps you get there. Maybe talking to a friend, a therapist, a healer, a pastor, a tarot deck, or spirit helps you. Locate the feelings in your body and take some time with it. Take some time to feel. Feeeeeeeeel. Breathe. Sit with it. Dance with it. Be with yourself. Connect with yourself.

It’s hard to feel the painful feelings. Sorrow, anguish, rage, despair, oh so hard. Anxiety is a cover up feeling, not the root. Anxiety is the ego feeling a loss of control and security. Some of us need medication or outside support in one form or another to manage anxiety. If you are able, could you allow yourself to feel beneath the anxiety…to feel the loss itself? Could you allow yourself to go deeper and feel the shame?

It’s not easy….it takes time, patience, love and tenderness…and it’s still hard…

Can you see the toxic stories you are telling yourself about yourself? If not, you may be projecting them onto others. Maybe your partner, a friend, a child, a sibling. Can you pull back these projections and face that you feel this way about yourself on some deep down level? If you pull back the projection, you will be forced to feel.

Capricorn is ruled by Saturn and Saturn is our karma. Our karma is our attachments. Our attachments are our feelings. Feelings are so hard to feel that we actually carry them from lifetime to lifetime. Feelings do not just go away. They must be felt to be released. If you die with guilt you are born with the same guilt in your new life. This is your karma.

Saturn will bring you lesson after lesson, experience after experience, to get you in touch with the feelings in your shadow that you are denying. Each time you ignore the feeling and project blame outward or blame the self, you miss the point and your karma continues. What if you felt the guilt all the way instead of avoiding it by trying to be good? Then you would feel what is beneath the guilt. Beneath the guilt may be a feeling of joy or love you never knew existed inside you.

Denied feelings may be painful or joyous and everything in between…

Coming back to the simplicity, feeling the feelings is the medicine. Feeling the feelings dissolves your karma, dissolves the toxic stories, dissolves the complexes. You purify yourself by feeling the feelings. But…there’s one more little aspect to liberating yourself from your limitations, your karma, your toxic stories, your patterns….and this is…

Love. If you bring love to the feelings you can be assured that the feelings are releasing. If you bring judgement to the feelings by crying and judging yourself as you cry, you are creating a toxic story and the feeling perpetuates. You release sadness and create new sadness at the same time. Some people are addicted to this process of continually releasing and re-creating sorrow, despair, anger, etc, through the power of telling themselves they are bad.

It can get very tricky in the psyche. Love assures you of complete release and experiencing love is not something Capricorn, Saturn, me or anyone can teach.

Love is the divine. Love is the transpersonal. Love is God. Love is Goddess. Love is larger than you. Love is life. If you call upon the power of love it will come to you and although it may take time, love will permeate the shadow and every feeling inside. Self love is as mysterious as the divine. You must know and feel this love personally and nobody can tell you how.

Love is not Capricorn’s domain but it is the moon’s domain. The full moon in Capricorn means we have the opportunity to bring unconditional love to our karma, limitations and the feelings that are wizard behind the curtain of every story created.

Capricorn full moon bring unconditional love into the heart of every human being on Earth and fill our cups until they are overflowing. Illuminate the stories we are creating and the feelings beneath the stories that ask for release. Bring us this step up the mountain of progress. May we heal, may we evolve, may we climb with gentleness, pragmatism, and grace.