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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. Bethane Kapansky Wright, author, psychologist, and spiritual educator.

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Aloha everybody. Welcome to Your Heart Magic. This is Dr. Bethane Kapansky Wright. And happy Halloween and also happy November to everybody. We are talking about the archetype of Scorpio season today. Scorpio season is now in full swing, and I've been having such a good time doing the archetypes of the Zodiac series. Last year we did the tarot. That was a two-year journey through the major arcana. And this year we moved on to astrological archetypes and have been following the Zodiac wheel. And we are now full swing, as I said, into Scorpio season. So we're going to talk a little bit about today what is Scorpio? What might this archetype have to teach us? And how do we tune into the energy right now to help support our individual process in living with more peace and presence and heart coherence? So Scorpio is an interesting sign. It's perhaps one of the most mysterious signs of the zodiac, probably the most mysterious sign of the zodiac. And it's really a sign that I think of as a sign of psychological depths and diving into our deep, diving into the deepness of who we are and exploring things and really penetrating for truth. Scorpio is a water sign, and water signs always stir up emotions. They usually invite us to dive into our emotional waters, to get more in touch with our feelings, our psychic sense of things, our sensory experience. Water signs usually help things that have been lingering on the edges of our subconscious and trying to emerge into our consciousness. They usually help shake those things up and bring them out into the open. And each water sign has a slightly different emphasis on it. Cancer tends to be more about self-love and nurture and focusing on matters of the heart and home and things that probably speak to our hearts, things that nurture us, things that invite us into a deeper relationship with loving ourselves and loving others. Pisces, the other water sign, is one that asks us to dive into our intuitive depths and to look at more of our mystic-mindedness and our interconnection, our creativity. And Scorpio has these interesting associations on a very basic level. If you just look it up, it says Scorpio is associated with sex and death and taxes. I saw that somewhere on the internet today, and that made me laugh. I thought, well, that's quite a list of what those three have in common under the sign of Scorpio. But Scorpio is often known as a sign of hidden things, things that can be more taboo to talk about, things that are uncomfortable to talk about, things that we might not dialogue about with as much ease, and can sometimes cause us some feelings of discomfort when we confront them in our lives. They are things that we often might not have as many constructs around or social conditioning around, or maybe we do have social conditioning around them. And that's one of the reasons they feel taboo and a little bit harder to dive into. So Scorpio is a sign that asks us to confront difficult truths and hidden truths. And I want to put the caveat out there that I really like the sign of Scorpio. So it's not a bad thing to confront hidden truths. I suppose if we have never examined those things, this sign might be very uncomfortable for us and some really deep, hard stuff might come up during Scorpio season. But I'm going to operate under the assumption that if you are tuning into your heart magic, you are already on your path of self-awareness and trying to live more open-mindedly, living in your heart, have probably gone through some form of an awakening process or something that helped invite you into deeper awareness. So you're probably pretty used to confronting hidden truths. So Scorpio season might be less disruptive if you've already been doing the inner work and might be more of an invitation to explore things inside of you that you want to shine a brighter light on. And that ultimately is what confronting Things in the Shadows is all about. We turn the light on in a room that was dark inside of us, or we find a dark corner inside of ourselves, something that represents our fears, an uncomfortable feeling, a truth that we're not exactly sure of what the truth is around it. We just know we have these thoughts or inklings about something and we're not entirely sure of what our bottom line truth is. And we walk into that space and we light a candle or we turn on a lamp or we find a way to shine a light on that part of our awareness and we bring it out into the open. And we do that through journaling about it, reflecting, contemplating meditation work. We might talk to somebody trusted, a friend, a therapist, some form of a caring individual in our life, a mentor, a coach, somebody that we trust that might have some wisdom to contribute to the topic. And as we do those things, we bring what was hidden out into the light. We bring it into our consciousness and we get a better handle on what's there. We become unafraid of looking at it because we have found the courage to explore it. And when we have the courage to explore something, we get to figure out so what do I do with this? What does this mean? How do I apply this to my life? And those action steps are perhaps what might come from Scorpio season. It's the act of exploring those truths and the act of what I think of as deep sea diving that really marks the essence of Scorpio season. Interestingly, Scorpio is a fixed sign. I always get a little bit confused on which signs are the cardinal signs. Those are signs that are the initiation and sort of that fire energy that helps us ignite our origin something, which signs are the mutable signs, and those are the signs that usually signify the ending of something, a transition, a change, some kind of movement. And then the fixed signs are the ones that are about stability and creating an infrastructure. So in the zodiac, Aries is a cardinal sign, it's the initiation, and then Taurus would be the fixed sign. That is the sustainability, because Taurus comes after Aries, and then Gemini is a mutable sign, and that is the sign of change and a transition. And then we go back into cancer season and we start over at a cardinal sign again. And so it follows that pattern of cardinal, fixed, mutable, all the way through the 12 different zodiac signs, and Scorpio falls in a fixed position, which is so interesting to me because I think of Scorpio as this very changeful, transformative energy. I think of it as energy that can be disruptive and shake things up and helps us release things. Scorpio is an invitation to letting go. And yet the essence of the sign is a little bit contradictory. It's really about sustainability. And how I interpret that is ultimately, no matter what hidden truth Scorpio brings to the surface, it's here to help create systems and emotional ways of processing things that truly serve us and help create a healthier foundation of self. So I find that contradiction interesting and yet not because I feel like Scorpio is a bit of a contrary sign. As I said, it's a water sign. And I think a Scorpio energy is a little bit more fiery and more passionate than that. And yet it's about emotion and the water. And so working with that tension of opposites, working with finding that balance between things that are slightly contradictory, I think is also a lovely hidden gift in Scorpio season. Something else that I think adds a fun flavor this month is Mercury's going into retrograde on November 9th through November 29th. And it's actually retrograding from Sagittarius back into Scorpio. So while Scorpio season is going on, it sounds like Mercury will be back into Scorpio for a little bit. And Mercury is about communication and truth. It's about not only how we communicate, but how we think. Before we can speak something and express something into being and communicate, we have to think it and have an idea around it. And so when Mercury goes into retrograde, I often think of that as a time that we are doing some rewiring of how we think. Epiphanies and breakthroughs and mindset shifts and those kinds of good things can often come after Mercury retrograde. And so that emphasis on truth and thinking about what is my truth, what is hidden, what is it that I've been maybe circling around, but not quite thinking, not quite saying, I'm not quite getting something, and bringing that into our awareness and crystallizing our position or our stance or our heart's truth on something, again, are very in keeping with the theme of Scorpio season. For myself personally, it's interesting. I just finished my what I'll call my musical season this last weekend. And for me, musical season is doing choreography for musicals on the island. And I usually will do a show in the summer. The last two years I did a fall show. And so we just finished Rocky Horror Musical this last weekend. And that was that was an experience. That shows a real trip for those of you that are Rocky fans. And it's always a wild ride and really fun in such a unique and weird and expressive way. And we wrap that up. And I came home this weekend and had this moment of really feeling that shift from more of this external energy that I always bring to that role of choreographer and not just external in the sense of being creative and working with others and teaching dance, but it always requires a lot of movement on the island, not just through the literal act of dancing and moving my body, but the physicality of driving into town to go teach and driving back. I live far away from where it is. So it's a little bit of a drive and it's always a commitment when I do it. And there's such an interesting process around it for me because when I'm not in musical season, it's really hard to get me off the North Shore. And it feels like such a long journey to go to Costco or do some of the things that are in the town of Lahue here on the island. And I always laugh because when it's musical season, I make the drive all the time. I do it several times a week and I just get used to it. We do what we have to do in order to serve a passion or do what we love when we've made a commitment to something. But once it's over, I become more insular. And it's this really interesting process that I've observed in myself. And it reflects this almost parallel process of what I would call being. I'm not sure if I'm an extroverted introvert or an introverted extrovert. I think it's probably more of the first one, an extroverted introvert. I am an introvert at heart. I need lots of alone time and lots of solitude to not only fill myself back up, but my reflection time, my time in nature, my time running alone, running as a meditation, all of the practices that I have, so many of my creative practices, I can't hear my soul and my inner voice without having that alone time and being nurtured in that space. When I do those alone processes and invite spirit into the mix and listen to my heart, those things really sustain me. They're such a part of my soul care. And when I go too long without them, I get really dysregulated. And I notice that coming out in a lot of ways. So in my heart of hearts, I am an introvert, but I do have a part of me, and perhaps this is my Leo sun shining through that loves to dance and just comes to life when I'm getting to do what I love. And I'm in that performance space, and that feeds something inside of me too. And being able to be creative and to choreograph and then take that choreography and give it to others and have it become something bigger than me. It fills something up in me, and it's this valuable part of my process as well. So I recognize that as multidimensional beings, that part of all of our heart magic is diversity and having different things that fill us up and having different aspects of self. And I embrace all of that, but I find my personal process kind of marked by the end of musical season. And that always coincides with the fall season here in Northern Hemisphere. It might not really feel like fall on the island, but it will always be fall in my heart. I just spent way too many years, I think, in Alaska to not have an internalized experience of fall in the air when we start getting into September, on into October. And during that time, I find myself wanting to turn inwards. And so the season is over. I am home. And I'm looking forward to having more space for reflection and introspection and some of those inward practices. So I love Scorpio season for supporting that for myself personally. And no matter where you're at in life, whether your rhythm matches what's happening this season and your external rhythm matches it or not, all of us can benefit from working with the archetype of Scorpio. So I want to share three simple ideas for how we might tap into Scorpio energy this season. First, Scorpio is an invitation for letting go. And that idea of doing release work and letting go of what no longer serves us is something that is, I think it's a forever truth. That's just part of our growth, is that we are constantly asked to reassess what's working for me, what's not working, to make course corrections. Part of our growth is the realization that who we understand ourselves to be, or perhaps something we once valued or believed, or something that we thought. It does change as we change. We have new experiences, and our new experiences bring new things into our awareness. We have unmet parts of ourself or uncrystallized parts of ourself that we might have a little bit of an awareness of, but until we give ourselves space to explore the unmet self, the uncrystallized aspect of self, and get a better sense of what that part of ourself might have to teach us, we might not know something to be true for us. And then perhaps we allow ourselves that exploration. And what comes from that is change, change in how we might identify, change in how we think about something, change in how we might understand something. And so the idea of letting go is letting go of anything that no longer supports the truth of who you are and who you're becoming. And that can happen in ways that are very obvious. We might be called to let go of something very tangible. For example, I just let go of musical season and I had some feelings around that this weekend. And I had this really unexpected sadness of wow, okay, it's coming to an end. And for now, I hang up my dance shoes, so to speak, and I move into other aspects perhaps of my life and my creativity, but I'm done with this particular season of creative and the theater and all of that until the next show. And that absolutely will not be until next year sometime. My girlfriend needs a break. But having said that, there was sadness that came with that and sadness in letting go, sadness in seeing a show end and seeing something through to completion. There was some integration work that I needed to do. It feels like so much of it happened so fast. And I took some time this weekend to kind of list out my experiences this year in the theater and what I learned and all sorts of things from big picture lessons to tiny minutiae details that would only be meaningful to me to help me do that integration work and to support me in being able to let go and recognize that part of what makes life beautiful and part of what gives it meaning is that it is transient. Things do not stay the same forever. We do not stay the same forever. And it's okay to allow for release work and to recognize the sadness from that and grief from that, and also the beauty of potential and a new beginning. So this is a really good season if you've been working on releasing, letting go, shedding something, this will support it. I'm not sure that there's anything super active you have to do. I think it just happens as you do your inner work and trust your intuition. But if you do feel called to do something with water, take a cleansing bath, do your own water ceremony, work with water in some way. That is a beautiful element that supports cleansing and release and renewal. Another way that we can work with Scorpio season is through exploring our shadows and facing our fears. It's interesting. Why is it so uncomfortable for us to sit in the nothingness and to be in a place of unknowing? We feel like maybe we're doing something wrong. We wonder if we've missed a step on the path. Sometimes we feel like we have too much space to be in our own thoughts. And certainly if we are prone to a lot of anxious thinking or circling around things that doesn't get us anywhere, we might want to find constructive ways to redirect our energy. But outside of the anxiety mind running us in circles, if we can focus on what it is we're anxious about or what it is that's uncomfortable for us, or what it is we might be avoiding, it helps us go into spaces inside of ourselves that can be harder to explore. Our shadows are the parts of ourselves that are in our unconscious, our old patterns, our old wounds, old ways of being. And I don't think we have to spend all of our time in them. I think there's a really healthy balance between being present and positive and forward thinking and actively developing new neural pathways and new ways of being and holding space for the parts of ourself that we are still healing, still transmuting, still transforming, still bringing into the light so that we truly can have change from the heart. And as we change our heart and change our relationship to an old wound in us, we heal it. And as we heal, not only does that help us create a new pathway forward, but it's really deeply integrative. And so we feel not only more equipped to teach it to others, but we're not afraid of that trauma or that wound inside of us. We have faced it with courage. We know what's there. Whether or not it feels entirely healed. We at least found what we needed to turn the lights on in that space so that we have brought it into our awareness and we're able to move forward with more presence and more wholeness and more inner peace. And it's through that that we can shift some of those things that might feel uncomfortable to us and we can find higher wisdom. If we skip the step where we try and find a more positive perspective or try and find higher ground when there's actually something of value to explore and that more raw human place that might feel a little bit lower in our emotional range, oftentimes we not only can get to higher ground, but we take something with us. We take a gem of insight or something that we can learn from that kind of muddy, shadowy place of the things that make us feel uncomfortable, things about ourselves that we don't always like. And so there is such value in that work. And Scorpio season is very supportive of that work. And again, the emphasis is not hanging out in that part of ourselves in order to torment ourselves or to stay stuck in trauma, stuck in victimhood, stuck in an old story. That is not what Scorpio season is about. It is about finding the heart courage to confront the kinds of things within ourselves that sometimes are hard to examine and look at because they make us uncomfortable. And then do some work around them and figure out how do I work with this in the most constructive way? What's the challenge here? Am I being challenged to learn to love myself through this, to integrate an uncomfortable aspect of me? Is there a difficult truth that I want to look at? And when I really process my emotions on it, what comes from that is the invitation to make a change in my life. We go into the shadows in order to develop the courage to bring what's hidden into the light. And in so doing, we bring it into our awareness. And when it's in our awareness, we stop projecting it onto others. We stop acting from the wound, we stop being afraid or avoiding what might be inside of us. And we're being invited to see so we can have a transformative process that ultimately serves us in a beautiful and magical and light-filled way. And so that is the final perspective of Scorpio season, is that it's an opportunity to transmute shadow into light, to take something that feels unhealed or raw, and to have that alchemical process where we're able to bring light into something. And we bring light into something when we become conscious of it, when we choose to find the love in the situation, when we choose to find a hidden gift of wisdom in the situation, we don't have to take something that ultimately is not a good thing in our life or is harmful or hurtful and paint it with roses and call it something it's not. That's denial. That is not what this is about. And so I really want to be clear on that. We are called to be wise and discerning. And if something's really hurting us or is bad for us or toxic, we don't have to call it good or not take a stand for that. We can see it for what it is. But we are called to take what might feel younger, unhealed, still more ego-invested inside of ourselves, what's more reactive, what is an old pattern that we learned in the family, learned from society, our ancestral line, things that we might be called as a soul to work with to help bring healing on behalf of the collective. That's the stuff we're called to work with and transmute it and bring it into the light and finding peace with it, finding ways to build a bridge within ourselves to those darker places so we don't have to be afraid of them. And when we're not afraid, we can bring love into that space and self-love and self-acceptance. And so that ultimately is the invitation of Scorpio season. It is to bring love into those spaces. It is to have a transformative process where we go beneath the surface to find our diamonds of insight, our gems of light, our hidden pearls, and to bring those up to the surface of our life so we can live as a fuller expression of self, a more authentic expression of self. Happy Scorpio season, everybody. As I said, happy November, happy Halloween, happy All Souls Day. Have an amazing week. I will be back next week with an all-new Your Heart Magic. And as always, in the meantime, be well, be love, be you, and be magic.

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You've been listening to Your Heart Magic with Dr. Bethane Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.