Yesterday I mentioned the big push of astro-energy that jumped us into the New Year.  Today I want to touch upon the other bit of astro-energy that is with us as we embark upon turning our resolutions into realities and that is the current retrogrades of Mercury and Mars.

To preface the article, I am not an astrologer (if you are looking for someone who really knows what they’re talking about when it comes to the stars, visit http://astrobarry.com/), but I do recognize that the movement of the stars and planets affect our lives.  Mars and Mercury are two of the three closest planets to Earth, so when from our perspective they are both moving backwards that seems to me to be a pretty clear message that we too should be looking backwards to find some clues about where we need to go from here.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of my friends and family are having a rough start to this year–missed connections, crazy weather, hard drive crashes, lost jobs, exploding energy plants, even just a general feeling of malaise seems to be stopping us all in our tracks.  How do we deal with these setbacks?  How do we reconcile them with a belief in a purposeful Universe that rewards positive energies?

I’ve written before about the Law of Attraction and how I think many of the people who teach it in our communities today do a disservice to their students by treating the Law of Attraction as if it is the Midas touch that turns everything to gold.  Personally I believe that the Law of Attraction is more about learning to find the positive aspects of everything that happens in your life, learning to accept life as it comes, and learning to live from a place of “No Regrets.”  That can be really difficult in the present when we are going through a tough time.  The present seems almost designed to make us question our choices and learn to regret them.  But before we drown ourselves in the ecstasy of “should have, would have, could have” let’s follow the lead of  the planets and really look back at our pasts to figure out when and we felt the way we want to feel and why.

One of my biggest goals in life is to live purposefully and make positive change in our world at large.  When I look back over my life to see when I felt most effective and guided by purpose, the first period I look to is when I was in college. I had grown up in a severely religious right home, and when my parents learned I was gay they disowned me personally and financially.  That experience was one of the most painful and traumatic events in my life, but not only did I still finish college in four years, I wrote articles that are still being published and republished to help LBGTQ youth and their families.  I found myself speaking and performing at national conferences and events.  I was interviewed and profiled in national publications.  When I look back at that time I am in awe.  How did I manage to raise and channel that much energy into positive change?

There are other periods of my life when I felt both effective and affective and all of them have been marked equally by pain and success.  My first (and to date only) tattoo marks a period of my life five years ago when I both lost my former husband and had breakthrough productions as both a performer and a director that have defined the course of my artistic career to date.  Even this past year, which was marked by amazing successes and development for the Circle of Dionysos, was personally and financially excruciating for my partner and I as we dealt with unemployment, eviction, and major health scares.  Frequently I had friends marveling at the creative life I was leading last year, and my response was that it’s easy to lead a creative life when there is no other choice but do nothing.

As I look forward to 2010 I do hope and pray that the current struggles ease and we all begin to make the sorts of breakthroughs that will assure our security in the long run.  But I also offer thanks for our hard times for they keep us truly alert and invested in both life and our communities.  The Latin root from which we derive the word passion is also the word for suffering, and it is from our passion that we truly derive fulfillment.