Cancer - In the Sanctuary of my Soul

by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #19, June 14, 2000

The Sun shines through the Cancer sky from June 20th through July 21st. Cancer is the archetype for humanity's universal desire to have a cozy home, to feel safe and secure, to care and be cared for, and to sit down to a home-cooked family meal.

Every birth chart contains every sign. Each archetype is encoded somehow and some way in our psyche. Our Sun sign gets the most attention because it is the most obvious and the easiest to identify. Our Sun sign corresponds to our conscious expression and determines what we want. Our Moon sign is, however, of equal importance in our quest to understand who we are. Our Moon sign is the indicator of our instinctual reactions and unconscious expressions. Our Moon sign sheds light on our subjective reality and our emotional needs. The Moon is the celestial body associated with Cancer.(1)

The Water Signs

Three each of the twelve astrological signs embody the four elements - air, earth, fire and water. Together they make manifestation possible. The air signs (Gemini, Libra and Aquarius) seed ideas with thoughts. The water signs (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces charge ideas with emotional energy. The earth signs (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn) provide the action and grounding to bring ideas into concrete reality. The fire signs (Aries, Leo and Sagittarius) motivate us and perceive the meaning of it all through the intuition.

In our culture, which is dominated by the rational scientific worldview, external behavior and objective measurable reality are considered the primary factors in the manifestation process. We are too often unaware of the role and power of our feeling nature. This limited view stems from the belief that what we believe and do alone determines our reality. Although belief systems circumscribe how and why we take action, they alone do not explain the results of our efforts. It is the disconnect between our actions and the outcomes that gives us a clue that something else must be going on. That something else is our feeling nature, which is the world of the water signs. The dimension of desire lives hidden behind the world of events.(2) This is the arena of the astral plane where the emotions pull the strings, and covetously cause everything that happens in our external life.

The development of free will is contingent upon self-knowledge. For the water signs self-knowledge is in the arena of the emotions. The path of emotional awareness is elusive and confusing because we are rarely aware of the dynamics of our desire nature. When we are out of touch with our feeling nature, we feel emotionally frustrated, vulnerable and isolated. The water signs teach us how to find our way through the maze of our feeling nature and to uncover the "motivations which lie below the surface of consciousness".(3)

Emotions and Our Desire Nature

The nature and quality of our desires control our reality. This would not be much of a problem if we were in touch with this aspect of ourselves. The problem is that our desire nature remains largely hidden in our subconscious. This is so because our emotions and desire nature are considered "bad," because we are afraid of this subjective aspect of ourselves, and because it takes time, effort and training to know and befriend this subtle aspect of our being. In our society, using our mind for this task is not given priority. Instead we use our mind to convince ourselves that we really don't want something, to repress our feelings and to build a wall of denial between our conscious and unconscious minds.

The problem is that denial does not eliminate our desire nature. On the contrary, it reinforces it. When our feelings are driven underground, they increase in power. Instead of being a critical ally they become destructive saboteurs. From the underworld of the unconscious, the hidden emotions cause an individual to act in ways that he or she does not understand or even consciously agree with.

Subterranean emotional energy creates illnesses that seem to have no rational cause (cancer for example) and elicit behaviors that are misunderstood. Desire energy, like physical energy, cannot be destroyed.(4) When any form of energy is blocked in one way, it will find another channel of expression. When emotional energy is not experienced consciously as sensations in the body, it finds expression in the physical body through stress and disease, and in events that manifest our fear, anger or sadness. This is how we come to the realization that what we fear the most is what we often make come true.

When we are unaware of the power of our desire nature and how it contributes to creating our reality, it is easy to understand why we blame others and circumstances for our plight. A victim mentality is often the result of suppressed desire energy. It is not easy for our egos to own up to the fact that we are the creators of our own reality. It is even more of a challenge to get in touch with HOW we use our emotional energy to create, and how to consciously harness this vast resource.

It is hard to accept our physical and emotional pain. But in the larger context of our soul growth and evolution, honoring pain as our teacher leads to our own empowerment and liberation. The spiritual path of the water signs demands that we understand how we block our emotional energy through fear, anger and sadness. Our quest is to actually experience the primal energy of the emotions in our bodies. This can be scary, but it is essential to unblock and embody the energy of our soul.

Symbology - The Crab

The Babylonians designated the Cancer constellation as a tortoise. The Egyptians viewed it as a scarab beetle.(5) In modern astrology the Crab is the metaphor for Cancer.

The Crab's habitat gives us clues to its approach to life. The Crab lives in the tide pools and rocky crevices that join the ocean and the solid ground. This transitional environment is turbulent and can shift between sun-baked rock or submerged ocean without notice.(6) In her constantly shifting world, the Crab needs her shell, her pincers and her sideways walk simply to survive. As the Crab maneuvers between land and sea, she alternates between form and formlessness. In the ocean she is in touch with the rhythms of the sea, the Moon and the Cosmic Mother. On the rocks and sand she seeks to anchor her presence on solid ground. Her search for security is her most natural instinct. Her life path is about discovering that she must find security within herself.

In the water, the Crab is privy to invisible forces. Her fine sensitivity allows her to cultivate relationships with forces that are beyond her conscious control. She knows how to tune into and flow with the cycles and rhythms of nature. When the tide is out, she works with a different kind of knowledge. She enjoys the comfort of shelter, possessions and familiarity. But the Crab always lives in an unpredictable world. It takes only one wave to bring one reality to an abrupt end and the instantaneous imposition of another. The shock of changing realities breeds a sense of uneasiness and anxiety in the psyche of the Crab.

Home Territory

The territory of Cancer is the home, family, childhood, the past, origin and roots. Cancer and the corresponding fourth house represent the individual's inner and outer base or foundation. We often think of Cancer in terms of our physical home. However, Cancer is far more complex, as it represents our inner space as well. Cancer deals with our personal unconscious, our inner sense of safety and security, and our conditioned instinctual responses, which are determined by the emotional atmosphere in our early childhood.(7) The impact of our home environment and surroundings takes place before we are able to select, evaluate and discriminate. These influences happen to us without our ability to consciously choose whether we want them in our psychological make up or not.

The emotional programming that we receive as a young child lies deep in our subconscious. Buried deep in our psyche, it must first be discovered before it can be dealt with. Until it is brought to the surface, this deep subterranean river silently and secretly controls our behavior and our state of being. Cancer's territory is the most personal of any sign. What is inside us, only we can know. And it often takes years for us to ferret out the unconscious factors that rule our inner feeling world.

Cancer's Inner World

Ideally, our early connections with our parents, especially our mothers and our home environments, facilitate the cultivation of a secure inner emotional environment. This, however, seems to be the exception, even for those who have had loving parents and supportive environments. Somehow most of us have early experiences that we interpret as threatening, unsupportive or rejection. Some event, series of events or general atmosphere conspires to undermine our feeling of personal security. Denied a sense of protection, our inner development is thwarted.

There are a multitude of situations that can negatively impact an individual's emotional state. Whether the reasons are intentional, accidental or even non-existent does not matter. The psyche is impacted, and until the cause is understood the imprints of abandonment, lack of love and isolation, remain and dictate our approach to life, our thoughts and our every action. Imprints of being unloved and unwanted lead to a mistrust of emotional intimacy, unreasonable craving for security and permanency, and basic emotional immaturity. All this often remains unconscious to the person himself. Although the fear-based actions and anger-driven communications are more apparent to the observer.

It is our encounter with the Crab that teaches us that the emotional burdens that we carry can wreak havoc on our health, sap our power and cripple our relationships. Emotional scars and resentment can undermine our sense of self-worth and prevent true intimacy in relationships. The "gift from the garbage" is that we are obliged to create our own sense of inner security and self-worth if we want to achieve inner peace. The missing love and support must be supplied by ourselves. In current therapy this is often referred to as "parenting your inner child".

From Codependence to Independence

Most people are dependent upon the support and love of others. Their confidence is dependent upon the ever-changing attitudes, opinions and emotional states of the people in their lives. Support in our early years can give us a head start, but sooner or later we all learn that soul consciousness and inner security must be developed on our own. The path is painful. We must experience the vulnerability of our feeling nature, our neediness and our deep desire to be loved. Sooner or later we must realize that our pain is proportional to our dependency on others, for what we must ultimately give ourselves. We must acknowledge and honor our emotions at a deep non-verbal sensation level. We must embrace our intimate personal world and develop an on-going relationship with our inner being. We must descend into our emotional underworld to integrate and balance our masculine and feminine natures. Only when we do so, can we surface with the rare gift of serenity and inner peace.(8)

Co-dependence and the path of empowerment through self-identity, self-acceptance and self-love are the territory of Cancer. The Crab must learn to be responsible for her own feelings. She must learn to separate her reality from others' stories, intrigues and even attacks. She must train herself not to react to what is going on around her. She must train herself not to take external events and circumstances personally. In sum, she must master the creation of her own inner reality. In an energetically interdependent universe this seems impossible to the untrained Crab.

There are, however, several factors that motivate her to do this challenging work. First, the emotional energy that she uses to react is the energy of her Soul. It is far more interesting and rewarding to use this energy to communicate with her own Soul than to waste it on pointless reactions. Second, the more she establishes her energetic boundaries, the more she will have a sense of her own self-identity. Third, the more she feels her own feelings in her body, the more she will enjoy her body. The more she enjoys her body, the happier she will be. The happier she is, the more she will love herself. The more she loves herself, the more she will embody her Soul. Embodying her Soul gives her the power to manifest. Once she gets the point that within herself is an ever-expanding universe of win-win, she will jump into her shell and enjoy her cozy, supportive home.

The Path Inward

Cancer is a very private sign. The Crab's journey is inward. Any internal path is particularly challenging in our externally oriented world. The Crab may feel defensive and be criticized by others who do not appreciate the value of her inward journey and need to be alone. Yet the Crab teaches us that the true foundation for expansion and connection begins from our internal anchor to our body and our soul. The emotions are the means of establishing the connection with the body and soul. The Crab's task is to learn to feel and be ever present to the primal energy of her emotions in her body. The Crab must establish a profound relationship with her emotional body, and be willing to be comfortable and uncomfortable with what she is experiencing at all times.

The Crab aspires to a state of emotional stability. The basic paradox is, however, that the emotions are inherently unstable. The emotions are in constant flux. Change is a constant for Cancer. The Crab is endowed with the gift of sensitivity, to be able to deal with the continual ebb and flow of her emotions. The Crab who has not befriended her emotional energy will be enslaved by her emotions, and doomed to unpredictable and misunderstood moodiness. The Crab who learns to be comfortable being uncomfortable, acquires the abilities of being receptive and responsive to personal, collective and universal fluctuations. She also acquires a deep knowing of personal, circumstantial and universal truths. Cancer's path is to move from being unpredictably upset to highly attuned to deeper meanings.

Cancer teaches us that each one of us, in our own personal way, must withdraw from the external world and build an inner reality within ourselves, which affords the security and love that we cannot find outside ourselves. Each one of us must build a conscious base in our own psyche, where we can retreat and nourish ourselves. Cancer offers us an opportunity to develop a solid inner structure that cannot be shaken by outside influences. In fact, the quest for inner security is one of the most ardent driving forces of our psyche.

Emotions - The Force Field of the Soul

The Crab must get in touch with and then learn to consciously embody the primal emotional energies - mad, glad, sad and afraid. The stories and reasons behind these feelings are the territory of Scorpio. Scorpio figures out why we feel the way we do, and gets to the cause so that hurt emotions can be healed. Cancer's path is non-verbal. Cancer's job is to connect with the primal pulse of her Soul, through the force field of the emotional body, which is the force field of the Soul.

In her asleep state of consciousness the Crab does not relate to emotional energy at this level. It is Cancer's spiritual assignment to cultivate a relationship with her Soul through the emotions. When the emotions are stripped of the mental stories and felt only as sensations in the physical body, they become a means to communicate with the Soul. Comfortable, positive, relaxing feelings become affirmative messages from the Soul. Uncomfortable, negative, resistant feelings become warnings from the Soul. The emotions become a method of Soul talk - a tool to distinguish between what works and what does not, a way to identify what we want, a means to get information that can be used as a basis for direction and decisions.

Cancer is driven to connect with her emotions because emotional desire energy is, as we said, actually the force field of the soul. Cancer demonstrates that it is by feeling our feelings in our body that we invite in our Soul. Our Soul persists because it wants to be experienced in the physical body and manifested in our personality. When we turn our awareness to our desire/Soul energy, we tap a higher expression of our being. Our emotions then become communication messengers and generators of charisma and manifesting power.

Cancer's gift is the conscious connection with our ever present and undying Soul, which gives us true emotional security. We find our divine roots when we experience the loyal presence of our Soul, which is silently present during all the vicissitudes of human life on Planet Earth. Cancer's codependent trip ends when she finds the security and permanency of inviolable connection with her Soul.

A Delicate Path

One day I found a perfect crab shell on the beach. Despite the fact that I placed it very carefully in my pocket, it was cracked by the time I arrived home. The Crab has a very fragile shell. The challenging aspect of this aspect of herself is that she is easily impacted and influenced. The gift of this aspect is that she is constantly connected to the pulse of the Universe, and receptive to universal energies. Being a water sign, she naturally merges with others and flows with her environment.

The Crab's delicate shell is always there to remind her that, ultimately, she must separate herself from mass consciousness, in order to be reborn in the love of universal consciousness. The more honest she is about what she feels, and the more she allows her feelings to be pure sensations in her body, the more she will energetically create her own security, presence and charisma. She will be loved because she has become the embodiment of the Love of the Divine Mother. She will not need love, because she is Love.

Anchoring the Soul in the Body

Aries expresses the urge to be. Taurus expresses the desire to have and to manifest. Gemini expresses movement of our vital life force. Cancer, as the next stage of unfoldment, strives to achieve a synthesis of the mind, desire and movement by integrating the three soul urges into the physical form. In the Ancient Wisdom Teachings, Cancer represents "the Gate In" or the cohesive anchoring of the Soul in the physical body.(9) The Soul establishes its presence in the physical body through the feeling sensations in the body.

To understand the Crab, it is important to remember that she inhabits both the sea and the sandy beach. Although she is a water sign, the Earth is also her home. The Crab is intimately attuned to the ebb and flow of the sea, yet it establishes her security and presence on the Earth. Her psyche is nourished by the alternating rhythms of the ocean's waves. Her physical survival is however linked to the Earth, where she finds protection and a port to anchor her Soul. Like an embryo, the Crab takes refuge in the soothing waters of the Mother's womb, yet she needs to breathe the oxygen in the air to establish her own separate identity.(10)

The Crab's path is similar to the infant. She is constantly lured back into the waters of Mother Sea, but in order to embody her Soul, she must learn to breath on her own. It is through her own body and lungs that she can breathe in the life force of her Soul. The breath anchors the Soul into the physical body. The Crab's challenge is to overcome the urge to retreat back into the sea, and to accept the challenging task of embodying her Soul in her body through the breath and her emotions. It is her own connection to her body, and the establishment of her individualized self-definition, that will allow her to merge into the sea of universal love without getting lost or destroyed.

The path out of the water must be achieved before she can go back in. The Crab must establish her own sense of psychological independence, and anchor herself in her own self-expression, before she can safely swim in universal waters. The Crab teaches us that the more individualized we become, the more universal we also become.

From Mass to Universal Consciousness

Unevolved Cancer represents undifferentiated mass consciousness. The Crab is a metaphor for the instinctual desire to be nourished and loved. The most automatic response of this desire energy is "I want. I need. Give me."(11) The Crab instinctively experiences an undefined mental hunger, emotional neediness and physical craving. The Crab experiences hunger because she needs to be nourished to develop into a healthy and integrated being. If however, this need remains at the level of instinctual desire, it will never be fulfilled. The Crab's path is to make this need conscious and bring it into the realm of energetic experience. It is at the level of conscious experience that primal needs are translated into Soul needs, and undifferentiated consciousness blooms into Soul consciousness, which in turn delivers the awake Crab to universal consciousness.

It is only through direct experience that the truth can be known. The Crab's basic desire is to know the truth and to embody it. Her quest is to embody the light of her Soul. It is only through this process of individuation that her hunger is ultimately satisfied.

Cancer's Mode

Cancers are typically concerned with having a cozy home, which they use as the foundation for their worldly endeavors. They often run their businesses out of their homes. Cancer represents our universal desire for comfort, familiarity, safety and protection. Everyone wants and needs a place to nest and rest. Everyone instinctively creates a personal space to which he or she can retreat, and call his or her own.

The Divine Mother rules Cancer's territory. The Mother instinctively comforts, nourishes and protects. She creates a sense of security and safety, even dependency, and establishes tradition. She is compassionate and sensitive. But when she is challenged, her hypersensitivity becomes self-centered, defensive, possessive, manipulative and retaliatory.(12) She will defend herself and her loved ones with patient and tenacious strength. The Crab, like the Mother, is loyal, determined and unassuming in her manner. Yet her inconspicuous role is deceptive. Witness how any household, where the woman disappears, falls apart. The Mother's values or lack thereof determine the fate or destiny of her child. It is the energy of the Mother that gives us a sense of security and self-love.

Mother Cancer is secretive, self-protective and inward. Her modus operandi reflects her watery amorphic origins. She glides, swims, dances and often evasively meanders through life.(13) "Moving right along-sideways" could be Cancer's bumper sticker. The Crab approaches life indirectly rather than head on. However, its oblique approach to life only camouflages her persistent and one-pointed focus. She is attached to what she wants. She will claw to get what she desires. She will cling to what she believes is rightfully hers. The Crab is not able to fight out battles with brute force, but she can bring her foes to their knees with her passive-aggressive, manipulative and nagging powers. The Dalai Lama (a Cancer) and Gandhi (Libra with Cancer on the midheaven) are two examples of how the patient Crab can hold her position with passive resistance until the counter forces yield.

Moon and Moods

The Moon is the Crab's mentor. The Moon embodies the feminine principle and our inner reality. It is through the influences of the Moon that we cultivate a deep awareness of our subjective reality and identity.

The Moon rules many facets of our lives including:

1. Attachment and self-preservation
2. Mothering and the mother
3. Home and family life
4. Origin, the past, roots, and ancestry
5. The ability (and inability) to integrate physical and emotional realities and to establish cohesion between our inner and outer worlds
6. Psychological belongingness, patriotism and tribal identification.(14)

For the asleep individual, which is the majority of humanity at this time, lunar influences are experienced as instinctual emotional responses, behavior patterns formed by early family conditioning, conforming social behavior and identification with mass consciousness. As the individual begins to wake-up and individualize, he or she acquires a more objective relationship with the external world. It is the inner awareness of Self, the ability to define and feel the force field of the Soul and to identify oneself with the life force in our form that liberates us from the subjective play of the emotions, and delivers us to the flow of universal consciousness.

Many planets and signs change color like chameleons. They instinctively fluctuate and change "because it is their nature to do so whether circumstances require it or not".(15) The mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces) instinctively create change to open the field for transformation. Cancer, and the planets associated with it - the Moon, Neptune and Mercury - are chameleons by nature.

The Moon changes signs every 2 1/2 days. Therefore, the energetic forces that most influence the Crab's existence fluctuate constantly. The Moon is a powerful testing ground for the Crab. For the asleep Crab this means that her moods are constantly changing. Without a firm anchor in her body and a means to relate to these cosmic shifts, emotional upheaval can become the norm. The fluctuations of the Moon force Cancer to tune into how universal energies impact her physical and emotional realities. Instead of being a slave to emotional shifts, her path is to become conscious of her acute instinctual sensitivity. She must cultivate non-attachment to desire energy in order to break with the past and release old patterns. Her path is to lift the veil of Maya and align with the more evolved lunar love/wisdom influences available through feeling-sensitive awareness.

Asleep Crab

The asleep crab is preoccupied with self-preservation. The magnetic forces of mass consciousness engulf the unconscious Crab in undifferentiated beingness. She has no sense of boundaries or individuality. Asleep Cancer identifies with her tribe and family, which unknowingly pull her strings, determine her behavior, bind her to a particular form of expression and perpetuate her karma.(16) She compulsively accumulates and hoards possessions "just in case she might need them". Her emotions swing back and forth with the phases of the Moon and the moods of her surroundings. She has difficulty interpreting and dealing with the psychic impressions that constantly bombard her. Her natural reaction is to hide and to avoid interactions that are in the slightest threatening. Actually, almost everything is perceived as a threat to the asleep Crab, who is unable to differentiate between her own feelings and external influences. The line between herself and others is blurred.(17) She silently struggles to hold on to herself by collecting objects and obsessing about her next meal.

The asleep Crab feels isolated and lonely. She is imprisoned in a shell of fear. She suffers from the paradox of being so connected (enmeshed) with others that she cannot meaningfully connect (interact). The problem is that there is no defined individual to connect to.

Asleep Cancer is sensitive to every word and innuendo. It is hard for her to be clear and concise in her communications. Her indirectness often leaves others in the dark as to her intentions, which may lead to misunderstandings.

The asleep Crab can get caught in an endless swirl of emotions. Lost in a sea of emotions, she is unable to ground herself and clutches to fantasies for security and form. The asleep Crab can also deny her emotions and sensitivity as a survival tactic. The problem is, of course, that denial does not eliminate emotional energy; it just pushes it underground. In the process she loses touch with her own intuitive powers. Instead of being tuned into and responding to the rhythms of life, she becomes a moody slave of her emotional cycles. She bobs through life like a helpless victim of changing circumstances.

Asleep Cancer often feels rejected or abandoned and struggles to attract attention. She is endlessly concerned with getting her survival needs met. Although she feels needy and wishes someone would rescue her, she also feels like she is alone and must fend for herself.

Cancer embodies nurturing energy. She is the mother who soothes our wounds, tells us that everything will be OK and assures us we are loved. A common problem for the unconscious Crab is that her need for love often goes unmet. As she devotes her time to nurturing others, she builds up hidden resentment and bitterness, even rage, based on her feelings of being neglected, over-burdened and unappreciated. She can shut down emotionally in order to stop being drained by the needy personal interests of others.

The wake-up call for asleep Cancer often comes from burnout and exhaustion. At first she blames something or someone outside herself for her distress. But ultimately, she realizes that she has compulsively given too much of herself. She has tried to trade care-taking for love and approval. Her healing process begins when she realizes that she is the one who must nurture and love herself. Her path to empowerment takes place by taking responsibility for freeing herself from her oppressive mental games and emotional dramas. Her freedom comes when she decides to create a more loving emotional reality within herself.

Awakening Crab

The awakening Crab discovers that what she really needs is time to nurture and know herself. She simply needs to be left alone and isolate herself from others who divert her energy towards their personal crises and involvement in group activities. It takes emotional discipline to call her energy and attention back to herself. Because she naturally takes care of others, she must pull herself back into her shell. She must control her compulsion to nurture others and develop her muscle for self-nurturing.

Self nurturing includes being good to her body, getting enough sleep, preparing and eating healthy food and stopping her habit of pushing herself beyond her limits. The Crab must renew her energy with self-focused activities. She must slow down and return home to her quiet, inner center. Her goal is inner rebirth. She must cultivate a feeling of security, which comes from inner peace, not from external emotional attachments. To achieve this she must examine her unresolved dependency issues and hidden insecurities.(18)

Emotional growth is the focus for the awakening Cancer. She must cultivate an inner sense of security before she can feel safe enough to venture out into the world. She must break out of her dependency patterns and cut the cords of suffocating family dynamics. This includes becoming aware of family secrets and unspoken issues, that continue to feed subconscious disturbances and effect her ability to trust and feel safe. She must break through nostalgia and sentimentality, and quit fooling herself about how perfect everything is. She must get in touch with the deep sadness, undefined heaviness and repressed anger that have remained unconscious weights on her psyche for years.

Awakening Cancer discovers that subjective emotions cannot be easily verbalized and that she cannot detach herself from what she is feeling. Her internalization process teaches her that human emotions are the unconscious expression of the Soul. As long as she is alive she will carry this energy inside her. The need for security and protection and the instinctive urge to retreat to a safe inner sanctuary are messages from her Soul. The anguish of unfulfillment coaxes her to explore deeper and more expanded levels of Self.

Security issues are the basis of most of Cancer's self-defeating behaviors. Defensive coping mechanisms and building a wall around herself do not transform her inner angst. The awakening Crab realizes that she must embrace her anxieties and the unknown, before she can find the peace and security that she so desires. Cancer teaches us that emotional security requires getting to know our ghosts, shaking free from blockages and fixations that keep us "stuck in defensive but immature modes of operation" that impede our ability to be intimate with ourselves and others.(19)

Self-nurturing leads the Crab to a more intimate relationship with her body, and with Mother Earth as well. Rooted to the Earth and her body she naturally feels more secure. Connected to the life force of her own body and the Planet, her vitality is restored and her healing powers open up.

The Crab is instinctively afraid. The need to establish a sense of separation may exacerbate her fears. However, as she finds her own personal path and forms of self-expression, her fear diminishes. It is from her personal nest that she can objectively choose situations and relationships that nurture and support her. The awakening Crab must move from protecting herself from all outside influences, to learning how to intelligently discriminate and choose among them. The awakening Crab needs to establish psychic as well as physical boundaries. She still feels at home only with her close friends, with her own "tribe" and with like minded people.

The Crab's awakening process does not require her to be totally alone. Her empowerment process includes cultivating the ability to discriminate, to choose and to appropriately (without projecting neediness or manipulation), reach out to others who give without strings attached. She must be in touch with her own feelings, to be able to identify which relationships will lead to abandonment and exploitation and which ones are sincere and caring.

As she establishes her emotional boundaries, she will also stop intruding into the emotional space of others, and entangling herself in relationships where she is trapped. As she feels more emotionally contained, she will feel safer and more confident to interact with others. As she trains herself to use her emotions as her inner guide, she will trust herself to make the right decisions. As she becomes more in tune with her own truth and reality, she will stop taking every day circumstances and interactions so personally. As her own inner conflict subsides, she will stop wasting her energy trying to defend herself "against the conflict-creating attitudes of others".(20)

Cancer's domain is food and nurturing. The asleep Crab has a tendency to be preoccupied with food and tends to over eat or over consume. Asleep Cancer never feels satisfied, no matter how much she eats or how much she accumulates. Awakening Cancer realizes that her hunger symbolizes a deeper need - a primal urge to reconnect to her Soul and to be nurtured by the Love of her own Soul. She continues to be obsessed by her cravings and addictions until she becomes "addicted" to her own self-nurturing and self-love.

The awakening Crab must safely anchor her identity in a strong, integrated ego structure. To do so she must learn to distinguish between herself and her environment. She must become aware of herself as a separate entity. She must explore life on Earth and become conscious of her surroundings. She must develop a conscious relationship with herself, her body, her Soul and the Earth Mother.

Awake Crab

The awakened Crab does not have an ordinary relationship to feelings. She does not respond defensively, reactively or sentimentally. She is keenly aware of the universal Love that permeates all life. She feels the desire to experience this Love as the motivating force in all communications. Perceiving the desire to receive and give love as the primal motive of all beings, she is no longer attached to personality stories and games.

The awake Crab has depersonalized her feelings. She no longer gets caught up in revenge patterns and power plays of ordinary life. She is invulnerable to others' neuroses and emotionally motivated stories. She is detached from the traumas and dramas that once were the center of her reality. Serene and calm in her own center, she is true to herself.

The awake Crab knows how to use her emotional energy to her advantage. Her sense of flow can help her maneuver circumstances. Her sensitivity can help her pull invisible forces into form. With patience and skill she can hold a vision until it manifests.

The awakened Crab facilitates the transition from a conflictual to a supportive society. She knows that everyone is looking for affirmation, support and love. She knows that when we are no longer at war with ourselves, we will no longer be at war with others. Once the Crab has experienced love for herself, she helps others achieve connection with the Divine Mother.

Awake Cancer feels at home no matter where she is, because she takes her home with her wherever she goes. Her home is the sanctuary of her own Soul. It is within her and can be violated by no one. Her inner anchor creates the foundation for her to merge with the universal expression of Love, without getting lost. The Love of the Mother blooms in her own heart, and the world, indeed the Universe, becomes her home. She accesses the limitless compassion of the Divine Mother and exudes selfless nurturing energy.

Awakened Cancer has found the Light within and established her home in her own heart. Her Soul passionately and peacefully dwells in her own body. She has a keen connection with invisible forces and the future. She carries the blueprint of life within her womb and nurtures it into life. With every breath our Mother Crab declares, I'M HOME".

Kundalini Yoga Meditation

There are many ways we can come home to ourselves. Some of them include the following:

1. Sit quietly and simply be present to the energy in your body.
2. When you catch yourself reacting try to feel the sensations of anger, fear and sadness in your body as energy before these emotions become verbal stories in your mind.
3. When you are with others, bring your attention to the energy in your own body and catch yourself when you move your attention away from your own sensations.
4. Close your eyes and look into your own space. Do this until you are aware of your own space. Cultivate this space as your own sanctuary.
5. Listen to and follow your emotional responses as messages from your Soul.

References and Footnotes

"Soul-Centered Astrology", Alan Oken, The Crossing Press, Freedom, CA, 1990, pp. 178.-184

"Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil", Liz Green, Samuel Weiser, Inc, York Beach, Maine, 1976, pp.15-23.

"Alive and Well with Pluto", Bil Tierney, Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN, 1999, pp. 145-160.

"Cancer: At Home in the Belly of the Wolf", Dana Gerhardt, The Mountain Astrologer, Issue #85, June/July 1999, pp. 35-40.

1. The sign of our Ascendant or Rising Sign defines how we present ourselves to the world and how others perceive us. The sign of our Ascendant defines our behavior patterns, our style, how we go about do things. The sign of Saturn defines the worldly aspects of our personal struggle toward greater consciousness, the factors that cause us to fail or succeed, and the criteria we use to determine if we are satisfied or dissatisfied on our quest.

2. Green, p. 16.
3. Green, p. 19.
4. Green, p. 17.
5. Gerhardt, p. 36.
6. Gerhardt, p. 37.
7. Green, p. 19.
8. Green, p. 23.
9. Oken, p. 179.
10. Oken, p. 179.
11. Oken, p. 180.
12. Gerhardt, p. 36.
13. Oken, p. 181.
14. Oken, p. 18l.
15. Green, p. 18.
16. Oken, p. 182.
17. Oken, p. 182.
18. Tierney, p, 151.
19. Tierney, p. 151.
20. Tierney, p. 160.

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