Decoding the Next Astrological Shifts (with psychological astrologer Jennifer Freed)

0:02Don't hold anything too tightly. Just wish for it, want it, let it come from the intention of real truth for you, and then let it go. For me, our soul is like, it's unbound. It's limitless. But we will use words to limit ourselves. When people stop believing that somebody's got your back or Superman's coming, we turn to ourselves, and that's where you become empowered. Courageous participation attracts positive things.

1:00I deeply admire her and the way she keeps her heart open to the world. Together, we believe that engaging in open-minded, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations has the power to change our lives. All right, over to Cleo. Hi, this is Cleo Wade, and today I am so excited to be chatting with my friend Jennifer Freed, who is going to be giving us a mid-year astrological update. For those of you who don't already know her, she is a psychological astrologer and the author of Use Your Planets Wisely and A Map to Your Soul. I actually did a blurb for A Map to Your Soul because I love that book so much and I love Jen and I'm so excited.

1:50So let's dive in.

1:55I can't even control my tone right now because you know you're one of my favorite people to talk to I love being able to have the privilege to process the world with you and the characters in the world with you and so and the characters that we become and are constantly trying to strip ourselves of with you so I'm really grateful that we get to do this in community because you know how much I love your work and you know how much I love your book. I think I blurbed your book. You did blurb my book. I love that book. I'm your super fan. So this is like a girl crush experience. Okay. And something you and I talk about a lot and I write about a lot is just this, the ways in which our lives are seasonal.

2:36And it's not just kind of the four quadrants of the seasons. Although I think it's kind of really important and cool when you can align your own personal seasons or shifts with those kind of four seasons of the kind of greater energies of, you know, summer shifting into fall or fall shifting into winter. And so as this summer season is kind of coming to its transitional space into fall, I'd love to talk about the cosmic shifts that are, that are, you know, kind of falling into place at the same, in the same period? And do you think that that energy kind of helps us to kind of take in those cosmic energies or cosmic shifts?

3:19Thank you for asking about the cosmic shift because the listeners are going to get this starting Tuesday and then keep listening. And we'll have come out of an enormous full moon in Aquarius this Monday. And this is so important, Cleo, because this full moon in Aquarius is indicating this shift that we're about to make that is going to be so galactic that we all need to be prepared. So come November 19th, but we can feel it coming now. Pluto goes out of 20 years in Capricorn into 20 years in Aquarius. That shift is from compulsive consumerism and power grabbing into conscious coalition building.

4:20We are starting the project for human rights and humanity that we have been longing for, I think for lifetimes, but we need to make the very best use of this energy that's coming for our highest good. What is something that the purse that we can do, you know, what is that Monday full moon in Aquarius, you know, it just to kind of shrink it into the day to day. And then what are things for us, you know, what is something that on that Monday would be kind of helpful for us or just affirmative for us if we have been feeling a certain way as this Monday is coming. And so I'd love to do that for Monday.

5:02And then I'd also love to ask you that for that November 19th date. Yes. Well, there's a lot of other big changes coming. I actually came up with five simple ways to be in this cosmic moment and prepare for this shift. So here they are. One, and this is the biggest one, and you know this, you and I have been tasked with this. Make a huge pause before reacting to anything. Reset your response to the outcome you would like to see instead of just indulging in your hurt or outrage. And I'm going to say this again, because this is going to be the biggest one. Pause. I have never regretted in my life getting more centered, getting more heart oriented before I speak.

5:52I have, on the other hand, regretted speaking hastily. So one is pause. Everybody take a big pause, even when you're listening right now. Second, critical. Take time every day in nature or in quiet reflection. And when I say quiet, I mean without any digital devices. And really concentrate on what's going to enhance your day and your mindset. Like think actively, what's going to enhance my day and mindset? Three, this is huge for the time we're in to counter all the negativity. Do five small random acts of kindness every day, every day. It's as simple as this. Leave somebody a loving text. Open a door for somebody.

6:43Bring somebody a gift or forward an uplifting video or talk like this one. Number four, make it a point once a week. and this is also going to be essential to meet with somebody outside your normal thought or social group and find out about their life experience. We're going into Pluto in Aquarius, which means one humanity, one humanity. We can't keep circling in silos of thought. We need to tolerate oppositional thought, diverse thought, other people's life experiences. So we have to meet with somebody outside our normal social and thought group. Five, and this is huge, and you already do this, and so do I, but it means everything.

7:35Join some type of group that prioritizes joy. What is all the suffering for if we don't point to joy? And one thing why I'm crazy, crazy about your work is I cannot look at one thing you do without feeling joy. your art, your words. So you're doing it. You're the example of it. So some type of group that prioritizes joy, and that is a group with art, a group with music, a group with hiking, a group with yoga, library groups, sports. They don't have to cost anything. Because one thing I really hate is when people give a lot of tips that all cost money, because a lot of our friends don't have the privilege to spend more money on these things.

8:21So all of these things are free. It's free to upgrade our mindset. It's really interesting. You say these, and I've been furiously taking notes as you've been speaking. And because we recently had this amazing person on who I have to introduce you to her name was Julie Hots. And she wrote a book called social prescriptions. And they're all And when I tell you the alignment with what you just said in her social prescriptions, nature is one of them. Community groups is another one of them. And she broke it down into five categories. And when I tell you the ways in which these overlap, you will not even be able to believe it.

9:02And this idea, and I was saying that I'd never, when I met her for the pod, I said, I'd never heard the term social prescriptions before. And it's these things that it's not necessarily in lieu of or in exchange for medications, although they have seen results like that for pharmaceuticals. But it's these things that are that we add to how we cope or deal with, you know, whether it's anxiety, whether it's depression, whether it's loneliness and disconnection and art, nature, social groups of whether it's a sea swimming group or in service and and five days of kind, you know, your five acts of kindness is service.

9:40And what's really interesting is she also kind of connected the feelings we were having to why which thing helps us. So it was really interesting for me because then when I had friends who would say to me like, oh, I just feel so stuck and in their stuckness that they were feeling kind of sorry for themselves. She was like the social prescription for that is service. And so whenever, so then instantly I was able to, as a listener and someone holding the space for a friend who's going through kind of a period of why me, what woe is me kind of, you know, I was able to offer them the tool of saying, well, maybe go into a space of service where you're not thinking about your own experience because you're offering, you know, yourself to another and then see how you feel.

10:26And every time it was, you know, for the past three weeks that I've been doing that, it's helped whoever I've talked to about it. Exactly. And two points are these. One, you know, I'm much older than you. I'm 66 and so happy to be alive and I feel great. And what I've learned is time spent in my own bubble and own head is not happy making. happiness is being in the world in nature in connection so there's two axioms I want to say that I live by those who move the most are happiest and I mean movement in the body so when I'm dancing walking hiking holding my cat and walking up the hill I'm happy movement is happiness and the next again you and I both do this so we know those who create and contribute their gifts are the happiest.

11:23So we have to move. I mean, this is a huge shift that's coming. We've been in earth and water, which is kind of like being in dreamy mud. We're going into air and fire. Air and fire means readjusting from wait and see to I make it happen. So often as an astrologer, people say to me, well, what's going to happen? And I always say to them, what are you going to do? This is not a preset orchestra. We're each playing our part. And when I don't play my part, the orchestra is off. So we want to remember each of us, no matter what your creative of contribution is whether it's cooking gardening hair my granddaughter's coming for a week and she does my hair like i'm thrilled because nobody wants to touch my hair she'll do it so i'm just saying this whatever it is do the thing so many people like to create rituals around the full moon so what's a good ritual for this full moon in aquarius on the trail of a full moon like after a full moon.

12:36It's still a very plump time. It's still a very exquisite time to really look at what the trajectory of your desires is creating in your life. You know, we're all desire creatures. There's nothing wrong with that. We have wants, we have needs. Beautiful. Are they taking us where we want to go. And the biggest thing I wanted to say today, and I'm guilty of this myself, is the addiction to devices and consuming social media has hurt us all deeply, like very deeply. So we know now it worsens your eyes, creates more anxiety and depression, creates sedentary lifestyles, which are horrible for the back and joints and sleep and all of that.

13:30So one of the most important things we will be able to do now coming out of the dreamy, muddy Pisces and Capricorn is we can decide to be conscious consumers. We can use the devices instead of being hostage to them. So if you start out each day even asking yourself, what is the purpose of my consumption today and what is the outcome of my consumption, even getting aware of those two things will change how you consume.

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15:17one question i've been asking myself because i've had this kind of summer of savoring and a lot of that was trying to have this detox from my device i the the thing i'll add to that consciousness is this kind of practical layer which is what are the things that i think get me connected to my device as like almost a gateway. So for example, for me, it was that I'm always conscious of the time because I have to think about when I'm dropping the kids off at their camp or when I'm doing this or what time to do or what time I'm going to take something out of the oven or da da da. And so what I realized is that one of my kind of ways in which I kind of bribe myself to connect to the phone is through, oh, but I need that.

15:59I need to know what I need to know the time. I need to have my time where I need to have, because we always have these, these kind of what we think are practical reasons that bribe our consciousness, right? So we're like, get real, you know, we're, you know, we have our kind of highest self that's saying, you know what, why do I need to feel connected to this? What is the purpose I'm getting out of this? And then we'll have this kind of low hanging fruit within us that is just like, but I need to know the news and I want to need to know or whatever it is. And so I also, my added layer would say, where does this kind of like low hanging practical self say, but you need this where you perhaps don't, because I bought like a digital watch and, you know, that was not a, I, you know, smart watch in any way, but did have a timer and everything on it.

16:44And I bought an old school oven timer and have like three different ones in my kitchen for all the different things that are on the stove at various times. And that was very helpful too. And, and I even put, you know, at some point, if I said, oh, but I need to look this thing up, I'd say, okay, well, I can put my laptop on the counter. So if it's something I really do feel that I need to look up, I can look it up on here. And I stripped it of everything else. I don't have it, it can't receive my messages and all the other things so that if I do really feel I need that it's there. I am so impressed with you.

17:21I hope everybody takes that as a challenge, the Clio challenge, because you have done this active resistance to this numbing, dumbing, destructive social media addiction. And you've claimed your own life force back and you're savoring your life instead of spending your life. Do you have tips for people to welcome themselves home back into each other? I mean, I know you just gave the kind of ways that we can be more aligned in the greater thing, you know, thing. But do you have those kind of smaller details of kind of coming back to aliveness within real life self? Yes. So there's a great way to reorient towards your senses.

18:08What the devices do is rob us of our senses and give us just talking head digital focus. So to get back to our senses, the easiest one is you take your two fingers on each hand and you rub them, closing your eyes and feel the ridges of your fingertips. And you just do that for two minutes and you don't have to do it perfectly, but just to get back in your body, gently rub your fingertips. The next one is you take a part of the room or outside and you gaze upon it lovingly with appreciation, looking for detail for two minutes. That also helps you orient back to where you are and in the environment you're in.

18:57Next, you take your eyes again closed and you can play music or you can just listen to nature sounds and see how particularly tuned in you can be to the sounds in your surround. And then finally, the easiest is to take three deep breaths and then exhale six breaths and do that repeatedly. So what you've done now is you've welcomed your body soul back into the equation. And it takes at five to eight minutes. and then the other one for me because I do a lot of zoom work is I go and I walk in my yard I'll take five minutes and walk in my yard and I have these beautiful avocado trees and orange trees my cat will come out behind me and I'll sit on a bench and for five minutes just stroke the cat nothing is freaking better than that I think that there's something really cool about the discipline of going to doing each one and being really focused and then there's it's cool when you can do a crossover of like kind of two or three at a time, because you could be stroking the cat and gazing upon it lovingly, or, you know, whatever that may be, where you can kind of do this combination as this, this added layer, which is, yes, we'll just call it, claim your senses back routines, because once we're in sold and in our sense body, we're present.

20:29We are not present when we're only in our mind. And we all know that because I can be disassociated so quickly being in my mind and my thoughts. Yeah. And, and, and by the way, because the mind and the thoughts is like, it's also the ego space. And so in that, you know, we are, it's unable to be in the heart space. Yes. I agree that sometimes our thoughts lead to our heart, but we have to be very intentional about directing our thoughts to open our heart. I remember when I wrote the book Heart Talk and the phrase Heart Talk didn't exist, you know, I made it up because it was this idea that there are these, this kind of like loving thought space in your heart that it wasn't the thoughts that my heart grabbed from my head and then somehow alchemized into a heart space, but looking at the heart as a really intelligent energy rather than the heart as your kind of moral values, you know, for some people it kind of can be annoying at times or whatever, but, you know, we, we value because my, the intellect of the mind so much because of, you know, capitalism essentially, because the world values that intellect with money so often.

21:49And so the idea that actually it's, you know, we just, we tend not to value the ideas of the thoughts coming that the heart is this incredibly intelligent energy space that we just don't kind of live out more often than that. Well, yes, your thought is something I've been tracking for a while, which is we overvalue the profit makers and we undervalue the nurturers in every single way. Women are underpaid. Mothers don't have child care. people that have hedge funds get incredible tax breaks because they are doing something important and valorous so what you're talking about is we have to shift which i believe we can with pluto and aquarius and also uranus going into gemini we can shift to the idea that nurturing in partnership with profit making is possible it does mean that we have to lean into caring about people to make different decisions instead of just caring about the profit margin.

22:58We have to really hold people accountable for that. Like we are in a time astrologically, cosmically, and you see it everywhere where the wealth gap and what we call the plutocrats, the people that get their power from wealth have become so large that vast numbers of people are living in what I call unnecessary poverty. And those conditions breed violence. They breed medical problems. And I like to say, we don't have a mental health crisis. We have a mental care crisis. And we don't create, so we don't invest in social safety nets that give people the best possible chance to have medical intervention when they need it and have the support.

23:57I have a friend who always says, we spend so much time in this space of talking about what to do with trauma without ever dreaming of a world in which the child never had to have trauma to begin with. I love you for saying that. That's what I'm all about. We can create with Pluto and Aquarius and Uranus going into Gemini and Saturn and Neptune going into Aries, communities of care where people's needs are met and invested in. Because what is true is societies that have more equity always rate highest on the happiness and satisfaction scale. Always.

24:45Talk to me a little because you're, I feel as though human rights are coming up so much in this conversation. So talking about human rights, how they can be a spiritual practice. Well, I don't know if you're familiar with Loretta J. Ross, who's teaching about calling in instead of cancel or call out culture. She's phenomenal. Anyway, she talks a lot about human rights is a spiritual practice. because when you really believe in what every world religion and spiritual practice believes that we have to center love, we have to center compassion and forgiveness, love, compassion, forgiveness, every single theology depends on that.

25:32So when we take that into a human rights discipline. It's not just theory. It means that person's suffering is on my dime. If I can do something about it, how dare I not do something about it? What we've done up till now with Pluto and Capricorn, so I want to give us all a break, is we have been much more focused on the survival of the richest, the survival of the richest. now we're going to have the opportunity to shift into the survival of the most caring, the most connected. Connection is going to be much higher of a resource than concentrated wealth. About, okay, I'm going to try to get this right, but please correct me as I begin to get it.

26:27Around the time I was writing Heart Talk, so this is almost 10 years ago, is when I first started learning about the kind of different shifts and it was a shift into Aquarian out of Piscean, or it was a really like that really, really big shift where it was about manifestation and the other one was like work, work, work, and be really, really regimented. And if I just kind of grind myself down, then it will, what age was that? Well, we are moving into the age of Aquarius. So you're correct on that. And Pisces as an archetype is the savior and the martyr. So we're moving out of the savior martyr archetype into the communal leadership type.

27:09And did that kind of begin happening eight years ago, 10 years ago? Well, it's such a huge cosmic shift that happens every 2300 years that we're in it in a very minor way right now, but we can all feel how tired we are Cleo in the last years of just being beasts of burden. Yeah. Well, I was with the reason I was wondering that is because I remember at the time when I was learning about it, everyone was saying that, you know, you'll notice those who are willing to flow with this energy to say the way that energetically in this giant energy and change. I feel like, like flowing with the seasons, you know, as in, you know, I'm not going to just, just rebel against fall by keeping on my flip-flops.

27:58Right. So you know, that what someone had said to me at the time is what you'll notice is those who are able to kind of flow with and ride this will also be those who can find some way to, you know, feel their power in it because they're harness the power of this energy rather than those who you'll find kind of grinding up against it. And they're going to feel like they're hitting their head against the wall all the time. I think that's a very apt description of the choice we all need to make right now. We need to make a choice. And if we're stuck, today's a great day to get unstuck and choose again, because what you're saying is right.

28:39Things are shifting. We either wake up willingly or we get the deafening fire alarm clock. This is something I've just been thinking about in general. So I'd love to get your point of view on it. But, you know, as far as when these big shifts do happen, I think it shifts you away from people or things because, you know, the difference of where you are and where they are. And so much of what I think keeps people connected is that they're kind of growing in a similar space at the same time, whether that's when they meet or as they, whenever they come together, even if they're in different spaces, they're almost in this kind of same kind of spiritual space.

29:18And so if you're having periods of disconnection with those that you have previously felt connected to, and a lot of it feels like, you know, you're kind of following this energy, right. Of, you know, maybe having judgment because you've had judgment for yourself or disappointment in yourself over your own inherent or subconscious investment in this kind of nuts, late stage capitalist survival of the richest era that we've been in, you know, how do you, you know, also, and I guess maybe you're answering it through like pause, give space for others to just feel that they're not in the same place, but you're not trying to friendship break up with everyone, you know, that is still like addicted to wealth.

30:03That makes sense. It completely makes sense. This is how I think of it. We have affinity vibrations. When we're in certain stages of our own evolution, we're drawn to certain people and it's beautiful. Not everyone walks the whole way with us. At the same time, I feel so grateful for those affinity vibrations I've moved away from. They were instrumental. So I don't in my life. So it's all I can offer. Sit in judgment of anybody that I'm drifting from. I wish them well. I say, oh, please have your best life because that will enhance my life. At the same time, I feel no guilt or shame of gravitating toward people that are going to keep me honest, accountable and evolving.

30:58that's my quest I'm always looking for who's going to help me raise my vibration and call me in on things that I could be better at that's who I want to be around but I don't need to look back and demean diminish or discount people that have been very influential to me go have your best life Go have your best life. Or build the case. You know, something I've been really kind of spiritually practicing is, and as a Virgo, very difficult. You know, we love to build a case so that it is clear to all why we have made the decision that we've made. And I think that's a very human thing too, but it's particularly like Virgo.

31:44I mean, I think every time Simon and I have even the smallest conflict, he's like, okay, I'm not trying to go up against you in the courtroom. and even yesterday I had this really kind of weird thought that seems so basic but I'd never had it before which is I've had a miscommunication with someone and then I kind of was talking to my brother on the phone about it afterwards he's like oh yeah that just sounds like a miscommunication and then he just kept it moving and I was like wow I've never completely separated miscommunication and blame. And then I thought about blame's place in all of our little confrontations and conflicts or these moving aways or, you know, blame is often the thing that is like putting us into, you know, there's some kind of deep sense of I, and there's something wrong with me that I'm always trying to say there isn't that thing wrong if we're looking for blame.