Full Moon Reflections:
Laws of Motion
by April Elliott Kent

Suddenly, with the popularity of the book "The Secret," everyone seems excited about the idea of creating the life you want through the power of positive thinking. It’s an appealing, though not particularly fresh concept. But I suspect that what appears to be a kind of loophole in Eeyore’s Law – which states that if your life can suck, it will suck – is not exactly a get-out-of-jail-free card. This is because you are not the only force at work in the world, and so your power to achieve precisely what you want is necessarily limited by what others want. After all, the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates may all envision themselves as leader of the free world, but only one of them is going to end up taking the oath of office.

I don’t mean to dismiss positive thinking out of hand; I perform my new and full moon rituals, after all. But it seems obvious that what we want is not always exactly what we’ll get – sometimes, it won’t even be close. And I’ll take this a step further: Sometimes, maybe we shouldn’t get exactly what we want. I shudder to think what would have happened had I married the man with whom my 25-year-old self was so desperately infatuated. Our ability to visualize something and to pursue it with positive thoughts and actions is not only no guarantee that we’ll get it – it’s not even a guarantee that it’s something worth pursuing.

That’s one reason our closest relationships are so important: they help us see past our blind spots. My family and friends were all rightly skeptical of my early, bad relationship choices. Yes, their negative thinking was a bummer and I didn’t always appreciate their perspectives. But as it turned out, they were right about what was good for me, and I was wrong.

Watch a toddler exploring his world – wordlessly, unconsciously, and completely without fear. From the moment he awakens to the moment he falls asleep, he’s in motion. He pokes, prods, nags, cries, and shakes his tiny arms in frustration. He eats whatever he finds on the floor, makes a grab for his older brother’s favorite toy, hurls himself at the unsuspecting family dog. And an entire household responds swiftly to teach him the consequences of his actions and the boundaries of acceptable behavior. The dog growls at him. His mother and father frown and tell him "no." His brother hollers and kicks him in the shin.

It’s part of human nature for a child to exert his will and try to get what he wants. It’s only through the reactions of those around him that he gradually learns that other people want things, too, and sometimes we have to share or compromise.

You don’t have to have spent a lot of time on the planet to recognize that there is a little bit of toddler – sometimes more – in each of us. In astrology, we call this primal, uncivilized force of nature Aries: the warrior, the initiator, the Man of Action. The Sun, which is astrology’s shorthand for conscious will, is considered "exalted", or exceptionally strong, in the sign of Aries. This reminds us that action serves us best when it is an expression of conscious will and integrity.

Aries’ opposite sign, Libra, is the sign of Saturn’s exaltation. Libra rules reaction, the consequences of exerting our will through action or force, and Saturn symbolizes what we might call karma – more or less another way of stating Newton’s third law: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if we push, the world will push back. If we choose to take action, there will be consequences. Sometimes they are positive consequences; other times, not so much. Often, we have no way of knowing in advance which way it will go, which is a gamble worth taking if your action is well-considered and you believe in it with all your heart. But because taking action can have a large effect on the world, Libra encourages us to consider advice and alternative perspectives before we act.

This Libran second-guessing has drawbacks of its own, of course. From time to time we get stuck, and I think it’s often because we doubt our ability to make a difference. I’ve spent a few years hanging around the periphery of the peace movement, not because I went looking for it – although I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq from the start – but because a friend of mine was involved in a local peace and justice group. She and I had formed a singing group with another friend, and she asked us to sing with her at some demonstrations and related functions. This we were happy to do. But honestly, without that invitation I seriously doubt I’d have gotten involved. My feeling was that the problem of war was too massive for my feeble actions to be of any consequence. I’m just one person and puny in contrast to the size of the problem. What, I figured, was the point?

I see it differently now. My singing at a protest rally can’t stop a war, period. Newton’s second law states that force equals mass times acceleration, and one person doesn’t have much mass compared to an entire war. But get a lot of voices together and you have a chorus – a "mass" of small, individual voices that carries a lot more force.

Action always creates a reaction - but you can’t always predict or control the nature or magnitude of that reaction. In fact, you might not even recognize it at first, because it will reflect not only your own actions and intentions, but something more mysterious too - the tone of the times, and the collective will.

So maybe the message is this: Go ahead and visualize what you wish to attract. Act on your wishes, with consciousness and good faith, and from the truest, most recklessly hopeful, Aries part of yourself. But be ever mindful that your individual – and limited – vision is not the only one that counts. The Full Moon in Libra reminds us that we’re all part of a larger collaboration, and that joining together with others can make us wiser, stronger, and more influential – even if it means that we occasionally have to yield our Aries desires to the wishes of others.

© 2007 April Elliott Kent
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