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A woman went to her guru with the question that had been burning in her heart. "Dear teacher," she began, "The same situation keeps happening to me over and over again. I fall in love and all of life is wonderful, and then the relationship invariably falls apart and I'm lonely, gloomy, and life seems terrible. This goes on until I fall in love and again, life is grand, only to be followed by the darkness of disappointment when it doesn't work out. This keeps happening to me, can you help me?"
The teacher thought for a moment and then responded, "Dear lady, love is a rare and precious thing. What you keep falling in, must be something else!"
Yes, true love is a rare and precious thing, and falling in love seems to be easy, but maintaining it—now that is something else. Sustaining the feelings of love is an art and can be cultivated. In this chapter, awakening the power of love from within, so that it is not dependent on outer circumstances, will be explored through the Sun in your birthchart. Learning how to relate to the world from this vital center allows for love to be the norm in your life, instead of something that you occasionally fall into.
This chapter is arranged in three sections. The first section is dedicated toward identifying and actualizing the Sun within you, regardless of what sign it was in at your birth. The second section focuses on identifying and interacting with the Sun in others—again, regardless of the particular sign. Both sections are filled with exercises and activities designed to bring your attention to the Sun aspect of your character. The third section explores the Sun through each of the signs, first for you, and then others. This describes the specific needs, strengths, and challenges of each Sun sign, particularly in regards to relationships.
Every birthchart has a Sun in it, and every person has a source of strength, purpose, and power that animates his or her life. Here resides the pure, radiant, essential self. The planets represent the questions, the subtleties of distinction that make up the complete you and your connections to the world around you. But within, just pure you. In the center of the solar system, as in the core of your being, lies the heart of the matter. Power, light, love—the source.
Love is a personal resource; not something that is found in the world. I remember the first teacher I had concerning this principle. This happened when I was a young man, just starting my family. I did the grocery shopping and regularly went to a large supermarket and, as these places tend to be, it was quite impersonal. However, there was one grocery checker that eventually caught my attention. He was always so sunny and playful with the customers, and I enjoyed watching him, as he was noticeably different from all of the other workers. It got to the point where I would stand in his line even when shorter lines were available! It always lifted my spirits just to interact with him.
One day my curiosity got the best of me, and I asked him how he was able to always be so happy. He did not have to think to come up with his reply. He smiled, a twinkle could be seen in his eye,and he said, "It's easy, I just figure that my love and happiness are the only things in life that nobody can tax or take away from me!" I was stunned by the simplicity and clarity of his philosophy on life. Here was a person who knew that the true power of love was his personal resource, not dependent on variables in the world or other people's actions.
Awakening the Sun from Within
The Sun is the core spark that animates the heart's natural urge for the experience of life: to reach out, touch, and embrace experiences with a sense of wonder and awe. To live life from this center is a true blessing that is available to everyone. However, the ability to maintain the state of heartfulness becomes more and more difficult with the pressures, responsibilities, and experiences of adulthood, but this is the path to the Sun; the center, the heart, the child within.
It is amazing to me how easy it is to love a young child. Interacting with a child tickles our hearts and brings joy to our life. We are not so enchanted with everyone as they get older; why is it so easy to love a child? It is because, at this early stage of development, the child is pure essence, all heart, the Sun. As they mature, the complications of integrating all the other planets and all the questions this creates veils the light of the Sun. To reawaken to the original essence of self is the path.
To be in loving relationships one has to be a loving soul. This starts with the self. Self-love is not possible if you simply wish for it. It can be a grand idea, but without action, it is just futile. As with loving another, self-love must be demonstrated in some way. It is like doing the dishes in this sense. You could wish that they were not dirty, wonder why, trace it all the way back to your childhood and experiences with your parents, or even contemplate as to whether or not it is a residual past-life experience that has created the condition. But in truth, action is required—you have to wash the dishes to have them clean.
It is the same with self-love. All the wishing, wondering, and questioning will not fill the void. Activity will. Cultivate the experience by creating disciplined time in the daily schedule. Just five minutes is enough—more is great—but a few minutes helps you to move out of the questions and into the experience of present time. Be Here Now: perhaps the simplest and most direct teaching of all.

Exercises for Being in Present Time

1. Breathing: Simple breathing exercises are excellent for pulling attention back to the moment. Focus on the in-breath and then on the out-breath. Whether you are walking or sitting, just focus on your breath. The in-breath and the out-breath. No thinking. Become so aware that you can even hear the subtle click as the breath changes from one phase to the next. This is a technique of entering into present time. The focus is on what is, not what could be or could have been.
2. Daily Walks: A daily walk with the intention of being fully aware of the experience, the sights and sounds of nature, would be another excellent technique to practice the art of living in the moment. If you live in an inner city, you will have to look for it, but even one flower, a bird, a cloud against the sky can do the trick. Stay in the moment and surrender totally to the beauty of nature. Notice thetrees, birds, and clouds, along with drinking in all the sights, smells, and sounds that surround you. It is amazingly refreshing to not think.
There are countless other ways to connect with the eternal now. Great peace can be achieved through listening to music with the sincerity of becoming the music. Remember, no jumping backward or forward in time. Stay in the present. Dancing, t'ai chi, yoga, and gardening are also satisfying ways to connect with the inner self, but then, so is doing almost anything that you fully enjoy. The trick is having the discipline to integrate these exercises in a schedule that seems already too full. It is exactly when you haven't the time to do these types of exercises, that you need them the most.
There are many paths to awaken the heart, depending on your personality type. What do you love to do? The importance lies not with which path you choose to connect yourself to the vital core within, but that you do, indeed, find a path.

Exercise

Do something good for yourself the first thing every morning.
This could be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, depending on your inclinations. A physical workout, yoga, meditation, a morning walk, journal writing, reading or listening to inspirational wisdom, and numerous other activities with the same intention of doing something good for yourself will work. By treating yourself with loving kindness and nurturing your self-development, you are cultivating self-love.
This helps create a more loving and lovable you. Cultivating the ability to experience love, even when new romantic love is not available, is an art that, once developed, can be the single most important thing that you can do for your health. It is not just coincidence that when people fall in love, they rarely experience ill health—love stimulates the thymus gland and activates the immunity system of the body. It works. It would be grand if the passion of new love continued at the same level as in the courtship stage of a relationship, but that is not the way things are. Love may be blind, but time isn't. When it is not available through romantic love, you must find a way to cultivate this same feeling in other ways.

Exercise

Spend ten minutes a day celebrating and appreciating your life.
On good days, bad days or in-between days, it is always possible to be thankful for something. Even if you cannot find anything that you appreciate, make something up! The effect that it brings is certainly worth the effort. The classic story of two friends walking down the street together is illustrative. One person looks down during the entire walk, noticing the litter and garbage. He inwardly grumbles at the mess of life. The other person looks up, noticing the clouds, the birds, the trees, and the beauty of nature. At the end of their walk, they each feel differently, even though they just were together experiencing the same time and space. Each is surprised at the other's perception of the experience.
It is really a matter of attention, isn't it? What are you paying attention to? Are you seeing what is there or what is not there? It makes a difference. For at least ten minutes a day, focus on the beauty of your world. If you can't find it, you're not looking hard enough!
You get what you look for in life. For a person skilled in the art of finding the highest good in others, there is no one they cannot reach. For a person who is skilled in the art of finding the lowest in others, there is no one they cannot criticize. The highest and the lowest are to be found in each of us.
The world of experience calls and the cycles of life pull us out of this center and into life with others. We get caught up in trying to fit into other people's expectations of us, drift far away from self-acceptance and self-love, enter into all types of questioning of who we are or should be, and eventually resolve the questions by returning to our center, incorporating our experiences into an expanded awareness of the self. The cycle repeats itself forever. We start from innocence, have experiences, create difficulties and imbalances in our lives, and eventually return to our innocence, hopefully. It is like one of my favorite sayings—somewhat crude, but to the point: "Enlightened today, asshole tomorrow." Doesn't this happen to all of us—often? Thus the cycle of the natural state, the questioning state, and the resolution—over and over again.
The natural state of the heart is open to the essential goodness of life, excited about opportunities to reach out and take in the delight of experiences. These very experiences, however, trigger the questioning state. Self-doubt and insecurities take the place of self-love. Measuring self against others, the confusion from broken dreams and difficult times, and just some of the harshness of life throw us into questioning ourselves at each and every turn. Ideally a healing occurs when we integrate our experiences, come back to our center and enter into the resolution stage—reconnecting with the eternal child within, forever open to the wonder and awe of life.
The natural state of your Sun is the easiest part of you to know because it is the one element that is always with you. One way to identify this core identity is to reflect back on your life and note which of your qualities have always emerged, have always returned, regardless of the ups and downs of life. Through all of the experiences, the successes, and the failures, which traits have been eternally you? These qualities and traits are the core level of truth about who you are and represent your natural state.
The questioning state arises because the Sun is part of a system—the other centers of consciousness represented by the planets and the Moon, ultimately must be integrated into the system as well. Each of these planets creates various situations and scenarios that draw attention into the many facets of being. When you expand consciousness to include each of these centers, the experiences connected to the next layer of consciousness at first seem to be external. With experience and awareness, the planet gets incorporated into self-awareness. Thus, the soul evolves with an ever-expanding awareness as more and more of what at first seems to be external to self at the questioning stage becomes integrated within the self at the resolution stage.
The Sun of your self-identity is the strongest message that you send to the world about who you are. When you project incompleteness or uncertainty about who you are to the world, you will obviously attract incomplete and uncertain relationships to you. When you project need, as in "I need a relationship," you attract relationships that reflect this state of need, and there will always be something lacking. The sad truth is that many who are searching for happiness outside of self would not recognize it even if they fell into it, because they have not yet found it within themselves.
An important question to ask yourself is: where is the source of your happiness and love? What are the conditions that you place on experiencing the power of love in your life? If your conditions are external, so that you focus on achieving the perfect conditions in the world, you have the cart before the horse. You are deferring responsibility for your experience of love to others. It is easy to assume that your partner is the source of the love that you are experiencing. But what is closer to the truth is that this other person is getting you in touch with your power of love. It is your love that you are sharing. This awareness leads to the resolution of the questioning state.
The Sun, the radiant self, continually burns brightly in the center of each of us. There are times when it gets pushed pretty far down inside, and other times when so much armor gets put around it to protect its vulnerability, that it becomes a task just to experience life from this center, even occasionally. The soul urge calls, however, and this is felt as a deep hunger, a hunger to experience life from the heart, the spirit of life itself. Return and accept are the strategies that work with the heart, rather than attain and acquire.
Additional Techniques for Activating the Sun
The following techniques are methods of integrating the power of the Sun into your life. Make it your responsibility to lead a positive, loving life and when you have accomplished this, your happiness and love will not be dependent on the actions of others. Joy becomes your resource that no one can tax or take away, and you will have contributed in making the world a more loving environment.
• A friend tells of his morning run, what he calls his "tune-up." After he has settled into the run, and has a steady aerobic pace, he then begins to integrate visualization into the activity. He first visualizes each of the chakra centers and feels their energy. Next, he focuses on the heart chakra and creates what he calls his love circle. While focusing on his heart and the warm feelings of love, he thinks of each of the people that he loves and brings their image into his love circle. As the heart is pumping away in the body, he pictures that all the love he is visualizing comes into his heart and then is distributed through the body, filling every cell in his body with love.
• Even something as common as eating your meals can become a ritual of experiencing life's fullness. Prayers and blessings at the meal can be integrated with a reverent attitude throughout the meal. Experience each bite, each taste, each texture: be thankful, and allow the experience to resonate with a deep level of satisfaction within you.
• Any activity that cultivates the attitude of thankfulness as a regular discipline works. To open up the emotional heart, count your blessings and set regular time aside each day for enjoying your heartfelt joys. Living in an environment that affords the splendor of nature is especially beneficial. Feel the sunset, the waterfall, the sunlight shimmering on a leaf dancing in the wind. Also, being with children and totally experiencing their reality certainly awakens the heart.
• The mind tends to be the dominant tool that most of us make decisions with in life. We analyze the potentialities like a business person, then weigh the alternatives in terms of plusses and minuses and make a rational decision. These decisions think good, but they do not always feel good. Learning to make decisions concerning important life path decisions from the heart, rather than the mind, can alleviate the tendency to be doing everything right and still not enjoying it.
We found a wonderful quotation in The Sun magazine by Mary McCarthy on this issue. "If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision,' you immediately understand that he's resolved to do something bad!"
Essentially, you learn to use the mind and heart as a team. The mind becomes involved, focuses on the question, gathers the information relevant to the question, and brings this before the heart to be the final judge. The trick is to awaken the glad heart before the question, make your decision, and then observe if you can stay in your heart with the decision made. If the decision pulls you out of the heart, assume that acting on the decision would do the same. If you are able to feel good about the decision, so that it is both mentally and emotionally a strong, positive affirmation of the question, then the omens are good for your ability to live with the decision in a heartfelt way.
The Sun in Relationships
Imagine this scenario: the Day of Judgment is upon us. The big guy comes down and makes a proclamation: "Some of you will go to heaven and experience eternal bliss. Some of you will go to hell and experience eternal damnation. Who goes where will be decided by a simple test. Those who pass the test go to heaven and those who fail will go to hell. The test is as follows: tomorrow, you will have to spend at least fifteen minutes in total harmony with the person closest to you." In this scenario, where the stakes are so high, each and every person could pass the test. It is not a question of whether we could get along with each other, it is a question of will we do what it takes.
The first section of this chapter focused on skills and techniques to help you find the Sun within yourself. The following section focuses on the skills required for relating to this core level of vitality within others. The sequence is important because the amount of self-esteem and self-love you develop will directly impact the quality of experiences you have with others. So, of course, the relationship you have with yourself, your inner partner, still has to be considered the most important and influential relationship that you have, for it is from this center that you set the tone for the quality of the relationships that you will have with each and every person you meet.
Being in touch with your inner partner at one time in your life is not enough— it is an ongoing process that requires daily participation. Neither is pure introspection enough to give you the awareness and sensitivity that are needed to form the bonding required for easy communication between the inner and outer you. Contrast is needed, and is provided by others in your life who will form this necessary contrast for definition of self. It is easy to define yourself as loving, forgiving, easy-going, and generous when you live alone, but bring in a close relationship and you will put that definition to the test! Your relationships, all of them, are necessary ingredients on your path to wholeness as you are given the opportunity to know more about yourself with each of them. They will mirror back to you the quality, or lack of quality, that you are projecting.
When you meet someone who recognizes the core within you and relates to your essential dignity, you feel very special and often associate the feeling with a sense of magic. When you recognize this in others, they feel the same thing—that someone has seen their real face. Let's call this soul recognition. When two people simultaneously recognize this special part of potentiality within the other, love occurs. The spell of territoriality is broken and trust allows each of the individuals to move closer to the other, giving birth to the highest manifestation of the relationship. At this stage, the fears of closeness or rejection begin to fall away, your defenses are dropped, and your face softens as you let go of the armor that has protected your vulnerability. When this simultaneously happens between two people, you revitalize and empower each other.

Exercise

Make it a daily habit to find, nurture, and bring out a sense of power, love, and joy in another person.
1. Ask your friend what he currently enjoys most in his life. Never assume that you already know the answer to this question, as this is a focus that frequently changes. This is an exercise of listening, and is your opportunity to make your friend feel special. All too often people end up in counseling or therapy, simply to have an hour a week when someone really listens to what they have to say. Encourage your partner to share the deepest, innermost thoughts, and you will find the more you listen, the more trust your friend will feel and the easier it gets for both of you to open up and communicate.
2. Develop empathy for your partner by trying to see life through her eyes and supporting the highest image she has of herself. Praise the light in your friend whenever you see it. This is most needed in trouble situations when you feel certain that everything that person does is wrong, bleak, or boring. What you see is what you get, and you have the power to emphasize whichever points of another person's character that you choose. The good and the bad are always present within the personality, just waiting to be watered so they can grow into full expression. Which side of your friend do you want to emphasize?

Exercise

Make it a habit to set aside at least ten minutes a day to celebrate the beauty and the joy of the love that you share with your partner.
This exercise is enhanced if both individuals in the relationship partake in the joy of their relationship together, but positive effects can even be attained if only one person does the work inwardly. This exercise is easy to do when the relationship is going along beautifully and not so easy when it is on shaky ground. When couples polarize on various issues, both people are locked into a "this and only this" reality, and from a spiritual perspective, we know that this is quite impossible. This exercise requires you to rise above the polarity to see a larger reality that encompasses both polarities, at least for ten minutes.
Allow for honoring the differences—agree to disagree. Keep in mind, as the first two exercises have shown,it is always possible to find the positive when you take the time and responsibility to look for it. Even on your darkest days, set aside the challenges just for ten minutes and remember what it is like to feel the love and peace in your relationship with each other. This will greatly help keep the problems in perspective.
Through this daily celebration of joy, you will be empowering your relationship with love and vitality, constantly renewing the strength of your bond and affirmation that you have chosen to experience your lives as a team. You are energizing your relationship to the degree that even challenges and problems will be a source of continued learning and growth instead of potential material for a break-up.
This series of exercises for activating the Sun are probably the simplest and easiest to perform of all the exercises presented in this book. They are also the most important and the ones that you will want to come back to whenever you or your relationship enter into troubled waters. Remember to always test yourself at this first level before you seek to make any other adjustments in your relationships. Are you in touch with your center so that your observations are not altered by an imbalanced perspective?

Excerpted from Astrology and Relationships by David Pond
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Astrology & Relationships

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