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Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Author, psychologist and spiritual educator.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 0:32

Aloha everybody. This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Welcome to your Heart Magic, and today we are talking about the archetype of Gemini. It is Gemini season. We move into it on May 20th, so when this podcast comes out, we'll be a couple days in, and we have been doing our astrological archetype series this year, which has been really fun so far, and Gemini is a really fun one to dive into, with lots of bright, quick movement and energy. So before I start talking more today about it, I want to share a poem that I wrote called Gemini Moon, to set the stage and set the tone, and anytime I'm doing an archetype series and I wrote something somewhere along the way with that name in it that it inspired it in me. I love to share it on the podcast.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 1:30

So this is Gemini Moon. It is from Revelations of the Sky and I wrote it back in 2018 when I was doing more of a deep dive on astrology and starting to learn what it meant. Gemini moon the sun and moon rest in perfect equanimity. Gemini rises, finding balance through duality. Our shadow becomes light and light becomes dark, and dark becomes the matter to transform our hearts. The sky is endless in cyclical reach, teaching all phases are valid and seen. All sides of self are the sum of our full. So we must be like the moon's changeful soul, forever dissolving, revolving, evolving, dissolving, revolving, evolving, finding our truth and the shades of our whole. I wrote that back in December of 2018. The Gemini full moon usually falls in December. It's not Gemini season, but the full moon is almost always in the month of December and we've talked about this a little bit on here. But just to jog your memory, if you don't always track the moon cycles, the new moon of a sign always falls within that astrological season. So the new moon in Gemini will be coming up on May 26 and fall within the window of Gemini season, and then the full moon and the same sign is usually about six months later, somewhere around there. So the Gemini full moon is usually sometime in December.

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And I remember when I wrote that poem, it was a beautiful day on Kauai. I'd woken up really early in the morning. It was dawn, I was living up in the jungle at the time and the moon was still out in the morning. I love it when you can see the moon in the daytime and as I was taking Frodo on his morning walk in these early dawn hours, sunrise was coming up and it was really quiet and peaceful. This poem started to come through and so I came home and I sat down and I wrote that and it encompasses my idea at the time of what Gemini was really about, and that is duality and finding balance between disparate parts and holding space for both shadow and light.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 3:54

Gemini is an air sign. Air signs represent the energy of communication, ideas, flight of ideas. Air signs are more focused on our mind, intellect, curiosity, movement. Gemini is also a mutable sign in astrology and that means that mutable signs are more known for flexibility and adaptability. Mutable signs are more known for flexibility and adaptability, the ability to embrace change, to change one's mind, to be moving in one direction and then choose to go in another.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 4:27

Gemini can be a very social sign and is the social butterfly of the zodiac, so it's always a good season if you're seeking connection or looking to get out or engage or do something and go be around people. There's really nice supportive energy for that. For myself, this is the third year in a row that I've choreographed the summer musical for the After Dark program at Hawaii Children's Theater, and that always falls in the beginning of Gemini season, and so I've always loved that energy of being extroverted and peopley, to go out and to go step into that role of choreographer and working with people and being more in a context of engaging in creativity and engaging in those creative relationships. So I have personal associations with Gemini season based on that. But those are kind of the surface things of what Gemini is about.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 5:25

And when we take it a little bit deeper, gemini represents the twins. Gemini is the twins. It's based on Greek mythology and the mythology of the twins Pollux and Castor. One of them was mortal, one of them was immortal. They both had different fathers. I don't remember all the details off the top of my head, but I know that the takeaway is that they are the two twins and they balance each other out. They are two parts that when they come together they make a whole.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 5:56

And that idea that one of them was mortal, human, and the other was immortal, spiritual, divine, I think really lays the foundation for the depth of the Gemini archetype and looking at the parallel that it brings for our human journey of what is it to be a human being, a mortal being? We have a certain lifespan. We don't know how long it will be or what it will look like, and we're asked to take this human journey, but from the spiritual perspective, we are also an immortal soul. We are part of the immortal flow of life, part of the cosmic consciousness, part of all that is, and so we have this spiritual perspective as well and we are asked to embrace both of them. We are asked to learn what it is to be human on this journey and to walk the path of being a true human, to be authentic, to not shy away from our humanity. We are also asked to engage with our spiritual connection and to find the doorways and portals that we can step through, that we connect with higher consciousness and connect with love and connect with whatever spiritual energies or higher essences or power that we might have a personal belief system around. So we hold space for both and sometimes those can work together and they can feel really harmonious, and other times not so much, and we feel like, on these scales of balance, we're tipping too much in one direction or tipping too much in another, or we can't reconcile what feels contradictory inside of us. And it's all part of the journey. It's all part of the whole when we learn to embrace it and look at it from a higher perspective and look at it from a more holistic perspective. And so I think the heart of Gemini is embracing that.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 7:53

Every archetype has more of the superficial qualities and by superficial I will clarify of just more of the surface ones. I don't mean that they're necessarily shallow qualities. Like I said earlier, I love the inspiration from Gemini season to be a little bit more extroverted. I'm not sure if it's an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert, but I'm such an intuitive empath at heart. I also enjoy, in some quantities, going out and connecting in certain social situations. I'm laughing at all the qualifiers that I'm putting on it, but I definitely refill and recharge on my own. I love a lot of time by myself and I love a lot of time to be in my inner world and in my thoughts and really stay close to the heart of my home and spend a lot of time in my writing and books and ideas and thinking and all of that, and so moving my energy in a way that's more extroverted and then moving it as a choreographer and moving it in dance. It awakens this very different aspect of me that's been with me a long time. So I love Gemini and how it supports that and that social engagement and feeling like I can bop around from place to place and be a little bit more light and a little bit more playful.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 9:18

So these surface qualities are ones that we can dip into and just use for inspiration. They're super fun journaling prompts where we might ask ourselves how might I experience more movement this month? Do I feel called to engage with people or engage in something new in any way? What does air energy mean to me right now? What ideas are shifting? What am I being curious about? What am I being intellectually engaged or simulated by? If I've been feeling slow or bored or dragged down sometimes, when we are in the earth signs, they're very, very grounding. I love being grounded, but the counterpoint to feeling very grounded and centered and patient can also be feeling slow, lethargic, feeling too grounded, and so Gemini is like come on, get up, get off the couch, go leave the house, go explore, go do something, think about something new, learn something new, go do something, think about something new, learn something new.

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Gemini comes on the heels of this very earthy, grounded Taurus energy that asks us to think about what do we belong to and finding stability and security in these long-term systems and really building something that feels familiar and consistent. And it comes and challenges us and says okay, now that you've got some stability going on, let's shake things up a little bit and let's bring this new, lighter energy in. So it's really awesome for that. But, like I said to me, at the core of it is the idea of finding balance between our disparate parts, finding harmony between duality, between what is light within us, what is shadow within us, what is human within us, what is divine within us, what we find beautiful and bright and easy to embrace, and what we might be tempted to reject or judge or see as our flaws. Gemini asks us to hold space for both of those and to see both of those as having equal value and to understand ourselves in a more holistic way by looking at what might feel divided or different or dual in us.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 11:35

So with that, I want to share a piece for a little bit more inspiration that speaks to this idea of duality and finding harmony in the whole, and this is from my book Small Pearls, big Wisdom. It has a really fun title. It's called Unicorns and Mud, and I wrote this some years back, but the words still make me smile Unicorns and mud. There is a huge place for positivity in this world, for rainbows and unicorns, for finding happiness and pursuing joy, for good words of light and loving energy and for anything that is like an ice cream sandwich for our soul. But there is also a huge place for the dark, for the growth disguised as mud, which is really a healing agent here to cleanse and exfoliate us. For the darkness that makes us search that much harder to find our starry diamonds and our heart sky so we can navigate in the black, for all the hard edges that sharpen what's strongest in us and force us to actively choose the light. Those dark periods are not the destination. They are just part of the path as we keep moving towards our becoming, spirit expansion and heart growth.

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We are human. Our depth of emotional experience makes us whole and our journeys will keep us traveling back and forth from the light to the dark, to every shade in between, as we grow and become, in our human shells, the souls we are meant to be. There is a season for everything, a reason for each aspect of ourselves, and there's no right or wrong way to be. Each piece of who we are makes up the greater mosaic of us, makes up the greater mosaic of humanity. There is truth in every piece. Learn to live life in such a way as to embrace and find meaning in all that is shadow and all that is bright, from the gentle happiness of a rainbow to the blackest hole that lines the night. You will find that, from mud to unicorn, there is room for all our experiences sorrows, joys, dark moons and radiant lights.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 14:25

Something that I keep learning is that the concept of learning to hold space for contradictions, learning to see and embrace all of our parts, to make room and make space for all of our shades, that it is much easier said than it is done, and I think the idea of that many of us might say oh yeah, of course, or agree to in some kind of way. Perhaps we feel like, because we have a self-love practice or two, that we love all of ourselves or that we see all of ourselves, and I think the real nuance of this challenge is in the gritty little details. It's in those times where we might notice that we're really down on ourselves for something or we feel like we've made a mistake or we are feeling one of those very human feelings where maybe we feel rejected or abandoned or worthless or like we aren't contributing or anything that somehow puts us into that space of feeling less than and feeling fearful or in luck, like we're not enough. And if we really stop and pay attention to how often does that material come up in our week to week or within the span of a few weeks, how often do we say, oh, my self-esteem today was not that great or I noticed that I had some judgment on this aspect of my life? We probably see that that is where the shadow stuff is and that's where the true invitation is to say how can I embrace this and see this with more compassion? How can I work with this part of me? How can I invite this part in and ask it what it has to say?

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 16:16

And that work it's hard. It's hard, it's deeply personal. It's the kind of work that takes place within our contemplations and reflections. It might be the kinds of things that we talk about in a therapist office or talk about with a trusted wise friend. It's the kind of thing that we write in the pages of our journals and we grapple with and we work with and we do the sticky work of saying what's my attachment to this, why do I have this negative belief. What is this about for me? And really taking space to unpack those judgments, those criticisms, those parts of ourselves that feel shadowy, and look at what it is, and then taking it a step further and seeing the wisdom in it to see that something in us that we might want to reject has a reason for its origin. It's there for a reason. It came from somewhere.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 17:12

A lot of our stuff I just did the air quote stuff kind of being this generic term for the stuff that we might feel is our personal baggage that we're working on healing inside of us A lot of it has been there with us for a long time and it might be something that we internalize because it was something taught to us or said to us. A lot of it might be maladaptive coping that at a young age we learn to do something and it helped us cope in the moment, and then we overlearned it and did it so well that it became part of how we are. And so then we go into adulthood and maybe have these feeling states that aren't particularly helpful for the relationships we're in or for the roles that we might find ourselves in or for navigating life at this life stage. But it's really hard to let those go because they've been with us so long and if we can sit with it and find. Well, where did this come from? Is this an inherited pattern? Did I see this in a family member? Did I learn this as a way to protect or defend myself? Is this aspect of myself trying to serve me in any capacity? That's really the heart of learning to see ourselves with love and learning to see the wisdom and that part of ourself and then asking the question what does this part of me have to teach? Is this part of me here to help me see that maybe I'm relying on this old defense mechanism because it masks this wound that I have and this part of me is popping back up again and it's helping lead me on this journey to get back in touch with this wound so that I can bring it to light and to heal it in a bigger way, to forgive myself or forgive somebody else, or to do some release work. There's so many ways that we can go about healing ourselves, so there's no right or wrong to this. There's no one size fits all. It's hard to take these concepts and put them into definitive language and actually describe.

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What is it to embrace our shadow parts? What does that even mean? I hear people talk a lot about doing shadow work. I see that sometimes in the spiritual communities and I'm always a little curious as to what that means to the individual and what their ideas are if they are trying to work in a capacity of a spiritual coach or a teacher or something like that. I'm very curious as to what do you see as the shadow work and how might you help somebody do that? I think it's a really intriguing concept and it is interesting to me the degrees of interpretations around what that means.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 19:52

But from my perspective, whatever it is that we're doing, that might be our mythology for doing the shadow work or working with those more difficult aspects of ourselves. Whatever tools that we might have for that, the heart of it really is learning to witness ourself, learning to acknowledge it, learning to hold space for parts of us that we might judge is less than worthy. We don't like them. We wouldn't want to tell somebody else this is in my personality makeup, because we'd be afraid of being judged. How do we bring love into that? How do we see that it's not better than or worse than that? It's part of our whole and that we might not choose to operate from that space, but we can see that there's some value in it and to me, that is the very deep interpretation and the invitation in Gemini season. It is to be good friends to ourself, to be social with ourself, to connect with ourself, to build bridges with ourself and make amends and build alliances and to see if we can hold space for contradictory parts and say I might not always understand this aspect of me, but I'm working on it and I'm working on seeing it with compassion and I'm working on loving all of me and learning the wisdom that I have in my multiplicity.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 21:12

A really easy journaling prompt that I sometimes do myself that I will share with everyone here that might be really helpful for Gemini season is to do an I am statement and write down something like I am happy and sad, I am whole and broken, I am struggling and at peace, like write about your duality, write about the parts of yourself that feel contradictory, write about whatever it is that you need to slap an and between and remember that both of those things are part of who you are. I am flawed and perfect adaptability of thinking, being more embracing of how we think. Instead of veering towards more black and white thinking that often underscores a lot of Western society, we tend to move towards what's positive and reject the negative, and we will sometimes do that within ourselves. And that is the challenge sometimes of a lot of the self-help, self-improvement stuff which I really like a lot of it. But I always think but there is room for our shadows, there is room for that part of ourself and sometimes when I see this over-focus on constantly bettering ourself, constantly growing, constantly being positive, all of those things, it feels a little bit toxic to me, because I know the value found in shadow lands and the value of doing that muddy work and that we really can't have one without the other.

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This human journey is not a journey of ease. It can be a journey of struggle and challenge and hardship and it can be one of such beauty and such brightness and a magnitude of magic. It's both, and so we don't want to dismiss one. We want to find the value in both and we want to make that personal and take it into our space and learn to love and embrace the whole of who we are. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I will be back next week with a new your Heart Magic episode. In the meantime, have a beautiful week and, as always, be well, be loved, be you and be magic you've been listening to your heart magic with dr bethann kapansky.

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Right tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.