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Intro/Outro Music (00:13):
Aloha and
welcome to your Heart Magic, an
illuminating space wherepsychology, spirituality and
heart wisdom meet.
Here's your host, dr BethannKapansky-Wright.
Author, psychologist andspiritual educator.
Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wri (00:32):
Aloha
everybody.
This is Dr BethannKapansky-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, sowhen this podcast comes out,
we'll be a couple days in, andwe have been doing our
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astrological archetype seriesthis year, which has been really
fun so far, and Gemini is areally fun one to dive into,
with lots of bright, quickmovement and energy.
So before I start talking moretoday about it, I want to share
a poem that I wrote calledGemini Moon, to set the stage
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and set the tone, and anytimeI'm doing an archetype series
and I wrote something somewherealong the way with that name in
it that it inspired it in me.
I love to share it on thepodcast.
So this is Gemini Moon.
It is from Revelations of theSky and I wrote it back in 2018
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when I was doing more of a deepdive on astrology and starting
to learn what it meant.
Gemini moon the sun and moonrest in perfect equanimity.
Gemini rises, finding balancethrough duality.
Our shadow becomes light andlight becomes dark, and dark
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becomes the matter to transformour hearts.
The sky is endless in cyclicalreach, teaching all phases are
valid and seen.
All sides of self are the sumof our full.
So we must be like the moon'schangeful soul, forever
dissolving, revolving, evolving,dissolving, revolving, evolving
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, finding our truth and theshades of our whole.
I wrote that back in Decemberof 2018.
The Gemini full moon usuallyfalls in December.
It's not Gemini season, but thefull moon is almost always in
the month of December and we'vetalked about this a little bit
on here.
But just to jog your memory, ifyou don't always track the moon
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cycles, the new moon of a signalways falls within that
astrological season.
So the new moon in Gemini willbe coming up on May 26 and fall
within the window of Geminiseason, and then the full moon
and the same sign is usuallyabout six months later,
somewhere around there.
So the Gemini full moon isusually sometime in December.
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And I remember when I wrote thatpoem, it was a beautiful day on
Kauai.
I'd woken up really early inthe morning.
It was dawn, I was living up inthe jungle at the time and the
moon was still out in themorning.
I love it when you can see themoon in the daytime and as I was
taking Frodo on his morningwalk in these early dawn hours,
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sunrise was coming up and it wasreally quiet and peaceful.
This poem started to comethrough and so I came home and I
sat down and I wrote that andit encompasses my idea at the
time of what Gemini was reallyabout, and that is duality and
finding balance betweendisparate parts and holding
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space for both shadow and light.
Gemini is an air sign.
Air signs represent the energyof communication, ideas, flight
of ideas.
Air signs are more focused onour mind, intellect, curiosity,
movement.
Gemini is also a mutable signin astrology and that means that
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mutable signs are more knownfor flexibility and adaptability
.
Mutable signs are more knownfor flexibility and adaptability
, the ability to embrace change,to change one's mind, to be
moving in one direction and thenchoose to go in another.
Gemini can be a very social signand is the social butterfly of
the zodiac, so it's always agood season if you're seeking
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connection or looking to get outor engage or do something and
go be around people.
There's really nice supportiveenergy for that.
For myself, this is the thirdyear in a row that I've
choreographed the summer musicalfor the After Dark program at
Hawaii Children's Theater, andthat always falls in the
beginning of Gemini season, andso I've always loved that energy
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of being extroverted andpeopley, to go out and to go
step into that role ofchoreographer and working with
people and being more in acontext of engaging in
creativity and engaging in thosecreative relationships.
So I have personal associationswith Gemini season based on
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that.
But those are kind of thesurface things of what Gemini is
about.
And when we take it a little bitdeeper, gemini represents the
twins.
Gemini is the twins.
It's based on Greek mythologyand the mythology of the twins
Pollux and Castor.
One of them was mortal, one ofthem was immortal.
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They both had different fathers.
I don't remember all thedetails off the top of my head,
but I know that the takeaway isthat they are the two twins and
they balance each other out.
They are two parts that whenthey come together they make a
whole.
And that idea that one of themwas mortal, human, and the other
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was immortal, spiritual, divine, I think really lays the
foundation for the depth of theGemini archetype and looking at
the parallel that it brings forour human journey of what is it
to be a human being, a mortalbeing?
We have a certain lifespan.
We don't know how long it willbe or what it will look like,
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and we're asked to take thishuman journey, but from the
spiritual perspective, we arealso an immortal soul.
We are part of the immortalflow of life, part of the cosmic
consciousness, part of all thatis, and so we have this
spiritual perspective as welland we are asked to embrace both
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of them.
We are asked to learn what itis to be human on this journey
and to walk the path of being atrue human, to be authentic, to
not shy away from our humanity.
We are also asked to engagewith our spiritual connection
and to find the doorways andportals that we can step through
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, that we connect with higherconsciousness and connect with
love and connect with whateverspiritual energies or higher
essences or power that we mighthave a personal belief system
around.
So we hold space for both andsometimes those can work
together and they can feelreally harmonious, and other
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times not so much, and we feellike, on these scales of balance
, we're tipping too much in onedirection or tipping too much in
another, or we can't reconcilewhat feels contradictory inside
of us.
And it's all part of thejourney.
It's all part of the whole whenwe learn to embrace it and look
at it from a higher perspectiveand look at it from a more
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holistic perspective.
And so I think the heart ofGemini is embracing that.
Every archetype has more of thesuperficial qualities and by
superficial I will clarify ofjust more of the surface ones.
I don't mean that they'renecessarily shallow qualities.
Like I said earlier, I love theinspiration from Gemini season
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to be a little bit moreextroverted.
I'm not sure if it's anintroverted extrovert or an
extroverted introvert, but I'msuch an intuitive empath at
heart.
I also enjoy, in somequantities, going out and
connecting in certain socialsituations.
I'm laughing at all thequalifiers that I'm putting on
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it, but I definitely refill andrecharge on my own.
I love a lot of time by myselfand I love a lot of time to be
in my inner world and in mythoughts and really stay close
to the heart of my home andspend a lot of time in my
writing and books and ideas andthinking and all of that, and so
moving my energy in a waythat's more extroverted and then
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moving it as a choreographerand moving it in dance.
It awakens this very differentaspect of me that's been with me
a long time.
So I love Gemini and how itsupports that and that social
engagement and feeling like Ican bop around from place to
place and be a little bit morelight and a little bit more
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playful.
So these surface qualities areones that we can dip into and
just use for inspiration.
They're super fun journalingprompts where we might ask
ourselves how might I experiencemore movement this month?
Do I feel called to engage withpeople or engage in something
new in any way?
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What does air energy mean to meright now?
What ideas are shifting?
What am I being curious about?
What am I being intellectuallyengaged or simulated by?
If I've been feeling slow orbored or dragged down sometimes,
when we are in the earth signs,they're very, very grounding.
I love being grounded, but thecounterpoint to feeling very
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grounded and centered andpatient can also be feeling slow
, lethargic, feeling toogrounded, and so Gemini is like
come on, get up, get off thecouch, go leave the house, go
explore, go do something, thinkabout something new, learn
something new, go do something,think about something new, learn
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something new.
Gemini comes on the heels ofthis very earthy, grounded
Taurus energy that asks us tothink about what do we belong to
and finding stability andsecurity in these long-term
systems and really buildingsomething that feels familiar
and consistent.
And it comes and challenges usand says okay, now that you've
got some stability going on,let's shake things up a little
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bit and let's bring this new,lighter energy in.
So it's really awesome for that.
But, like I said to me, at thecore of it is the idea of
finding balance between ourdisparate parts, finding harmony
between duality, between whatis light within us, what is
shadow within us, what is humanwithin us, what is divine within
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us, what we find beautiful andbright and easy to embrace, and
what we might be tempted toreject or judge or see as our
flaws.
Gemini asks us to hold spacefor both of those and to see
both of those as having equalvalue and to understand
ourselves in a more holistic wayby looking at what might feel
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divided or different or dual inus.
So with that, I want to share apiece for a little bit more
inspiration that speaks to thisidea of duality and finding
harmony in the whole, and thisis 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
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, but the words still make mesmile Unicorns and mud.
There is a huge place forpositivity in this world, for
rainbows and unicorns, forfinding happiness and pursuing
joy, for good words of light andloving energy and for anything
that is like an ice creamsandwich for our soul.
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But there is also a huge placefor the dark, for the growth
disguised as mud, which isreally a healing agent here to
cleanse and exfoliate us.
For the darkness that makes ussearch that much harder to find
our starry diamonds and ourheart sky so we can navigate in
the black, for all the hardedges that sharpen what's
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strongest in us and force us toactively choose the light.
Those dark periods are not thedestination.
They are just part of the pathas we keep moving towards our
becoming, spirit expansion andheart growth.
We are human.
Our depth of emotionalexperience makes us whole and
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our journeys will keep ustraveling back and forth from
the light to the dark, to everyshade in between, as we grow and
become, in our human shells,the souls we are meant to be.
There is a season foreverything, a reason for each
aspect of ourselves, and there'sno right or wrong way to be.
Each piece of who we are makesup the greater mosaic of us,
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makes up the greater mosaic ofhumanity.
There is truth in every piece.
Learn to live life in such away as to embrace and find
meaning in all that is shadowand all that is bright, from the
gentle happiness of a rainbowto the blackest hole that lines
the night.
You will find that, from mud tounicorn, there is room for all
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our experiences sorrows, joys,dark moons and radiant lights.
Something that I keep learningis that the concept of learning
to hold space for contradictions, learning to see and embrace
all of our parts, to make roomand make space for all of our
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shades, that it is much easiersaid than it is done, and I
think the idea of that many ofus might say oh yeah, of course,
or agree to in some kind of way.
Perhaps we feel like, becausewe have a self-love practice or
two, that we love all ofourselves or that we see all of
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ourselves, and I think the realnuance of this challenge is in
the gritty little details.
It's in those times where wemight notice that we're really
down on ourselves for somethingor we feel like we've made a
mistake or we are feeling one ofthose very human feelings where
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maybe we feel rejected orabandoned or worthless or like
we aren't contributing oranything that somehow puts us
into that space of feeling lessthan and feeling fearful or in
luck, like we're not enough.
And if we really stop and payattention to how often does that
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material come up in our week toweek 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 Ihad some judgment on this aspect
of my life?
We probably see that that iswhere the shadow stuff is and
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that's where the true invitationis to say how can I embrace
this and see this with morecompassion?
How can I work with this partof me?
How can I invite this part inand ask it what it has to say?
And that work it's hard.
It's hard, it's deeply personal.
It's the kind of work thattakes place within our
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contemplations and reflections.
It might be the kinds of thingsthat we talk about in a
therapist office or talk aboutwith a trusted wise friend.
It's the kind of thing that wewrite in the pages of our
journals and we grapple with andwe work with and we do the
sticky work of saying what's myattachment to this, why do I
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have this negative belief.
What is this about for me?
And really taking space tounpack those judgments, those
criticisms, those parts ofourselves that feel shadowy, and
look at what it is, and thentaking it a step further and
seeing the wisdom in it to seethat something in us that we
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might want to reject has areason for its origin.
It's there for a reason.
It came from somewhere.
A lot of our stuff I just didthe air quote stuff kind of
being this generic term for thestuff that we might feel is our
personal baggage that we'reworking on healing inside of us
A lot of it has been there withus for a long time and it might
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be something that we internalizebecause it was something taught
to us or said to us.
A lot of it might bemaladaptive coping that at a
young age we learn to dosomething and it helped us cope
in the moment, and then weoverlearned it and did it so
well that it became part of howwe are.
And so then we go intoadulthood and maybe have these
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feeling states that aren'tparticularly helpful for the
relationships we're in or forthe roles that we might find
ourselves in or for navigatinglife at this life stage.
But it's really hard to letthose go because they've been
with us so long and if we cansit with it and find.
Well, where did this come from?
Is this an inherited pattern?
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Did I see this in a familymember?
Did I learn this as a way toprotect or defend myself?
Is this aspect of myself tryingto serve me in any capacity?
That's really the heart oflearning to see ourselves with
love and learning to see thewisdom and that part of ourself
and then asking the questionwhat does this part of me have
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to teach?
Is this part of me here to helpme see that maybe I'm relying
on this old defense mechanismbecause it masks this wound that
I have and this part of me ispopping back up again and it's
helping lead me on this journeyto get back in touch with this
wound so that I can bring it tolight and to heal it in a bigger
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way, to forgive myself orforgive somebody else, or to do
some release work.
There's so many ways that wecan go about healing ourselves,
so there's no right or wrong tothis.
There's no one size fits all.
It's hard to take theseconcepts and put them into
definitive language and actuallydescribe.
What is it to embrace our shadowparts?
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What does that even mean?
I hear people talk a lot aboutdoing shadow work.
I see that sometimes in thespiritual communities and I'm
always a little curious as towhat that means to the
individual and what their ideasare if they are trying to work
in a capacity of a spiritualcoach or a teacher or something
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like that.
I'm very curious as to what doyou see as the shadow work and
how might you help somebody dothat?
I think it's a reallyintriguing concept and it is
interesting to me the degrees ofinterpretations around what
that means.
But from my perspective,whatever it is that we're doing,
that might be our mythology fordoing the shadow work or
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working with those moredifficult aspects of ourselves.
Whatever tools that we mighthave for that, the heart of it
really is learning to witnessourself, learning to acknowledge
it, learning to hold space forparts of us that we might judge
is less than worthy.
We don't like them.
We wouldn't want to tellsomebody else this is in my
personality makeup, because we'dbe afraid of being judged.
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How do we bring love into that?
How do we see that it's notbetter than or worse than that?
It's part of our whole and thatwe might not choose to operate
from that space, but we can seethat there's some value in it
and to me, that is the very deepinterpretation and the
invitation in Gemini season.
It is to be good friends toourself, to be social with
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ourself, to connect with ourself, to build bridges with ourself
and make amends and buildalliances and to see if we can
hold space for contradictoryparts and say I might not always
understand this aspect of me,but I'm working on it and I'm
working on seeing it withcompassion and I'm working on
loving all of me and learningthe wisdom that I have in my
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multiplicity.
A really easy journaling promptthat I sometimes do myself that
I will share with everyone herethat might be really helpful for
Gemini season is to do an I amstatement and write down
something like I am happy andsad, I am whole and broken, I am
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struggling and at peace, likewrite about your duality, write
about the parts of yourself thatfeel contradictory, write about
whatever it is that you need toslap an and between and
remember that both of thosethings are part of who you are.
I am flawed and perfectadaptability of thinking, being
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more embracing of how we think.
Instead of veering towards moreblack and white thinking that
often underscores a lot ofWestern society, we tend to move
towards what's positive andreject the negative, and we will
sometimes do that withinourselves.
And that is the challengesometimes of a lot of the
self-help, self-improvementstuff which I really like a lot
of it.
But I always think but there isroom for our shadows, there is
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room for that part of ourselfand sometimes when I see this
over-focus on constantlybettering ourself, constantly
growing, constantly beingpositive, all of those things,
it feels a little bit toxic tome, because I know the value
found in shadow lands and thevalue of doing that muddy work
and that we really can't haveone without the other.
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This human journey is not ajourney of ease.
It can be a journey of struggleand challenge and hardship and
it can be one of such beauty andsuch brightness and a magnitude
of magic.
It's both, and so we don't wantto dismiss one.
We want to find the value inboth and we want to make that
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personal and take it into ourspace and learn to love and
embrace the whole of who we are.
Thank you so much for joiningme on the podcast today.
I will be back next week with anew your Heart Magic episode.
In the meantime, have abeautiful week and, as always,
be well, be loved, be you and bemagic you've been listening to
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your heart magic with dr bethannkapansky.
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Right tune in
next week for a new episode to
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