Free will astrology for the week of May 15, 2019

ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to humorist Dave Barry, “The method of learning Japanese recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan.” As you enter an intensely educational phase of your astrological cycle, I suggest you adopt a similar strategy toward learning new skills and mastering unfamiliar knowledge and absorbing fresh information. Immerse yourself in environments that will efficiently and effectively fill you with the teachings you need. A more casual, slapdash approach just won’t enable you to take thorough advantage of your current opportunities to expand your repertoire.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I think it’s time for a sacred celebration—a blow-out extravaganza filled with reverence and revelry, singing and dancing, sensual delights, and spiritual blessings. What is the occasion? After all these eons, your lost love has finally returned. And who exactly is your lost love? You! You are your own lost love! Having weaved and wobbled through countless adventures full of rich lessons, the missing part of you has finally wandered back. So give yourself a flurry of hugs and kisses. Start planning the jubilant hoopla. And exchange ardent vows, swearing that you’ll never be parted again.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The Louvre in Paris is the world’s biggest art museum. Over 35,000 works are on display, packed into 15 acres. If you wanted to see every piece, devoting just a minute to each, you would have to spend eight hours a day there for many weeks. I bring this to your attention, Gemini, because I suspect that now would be a good time for you to treat yourself to a marathon gaze-fest of art in the Louvre—or any other museum. For that matter, it’s a favorable phase to gorge yourself on any beauty anywhere that will make your soul freer and smarter and happier. You will thrive to the degree that you absorb a profusion of grace, elegance and loveliness.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In my astrological opinion, you now have a mandate to exercise your rights to free speech with acute vigor. It’s time to articulate all the important insights you’ve been waiting for the right moment to call to everyone’s attention. It’s time to unearth the buried truths and veiled agendas and ripening mysteries. It’s time to be the catalyst that helps your allies to realize what’s real and important, what’s fake and irrelevant. I’m not saying you should be rude, but I do encourage you to be as candid as is necessary to nudge people in the direction of authenticity.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): During summer in the far northern land of Alaska, many days have 20 hours of sunlight. Farmers take advantage of the extra photosynthesis by growing vegetables and fruits that are bigger and sweeter than crops grown further south. During the Alaska State Fair every August, you can find prodigies like 130-pound cabbages and 65-pound cantaloupes. I suspect you’ll express a comparable fertility and productiveness during the coming weeks, Leo. You’re primed to grow and create with extra verve. So let me ask you a key question: to which part of your life do you want to dedicate that bonus power?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): It’s time for you to reach higher and dig deeper. So don’t be a mere tinkerer nursing a lukewarm interest in mediocre stories and trivial games. Be a strategic adventurer in the service of exalted stories and meaningful games. In fact, I feel strongly that if you’re not prepared to go all the way, you shouldn’t go at all. Either give everything you’ve got or else keep it contained for now. Can you handle one further piece of strenuous advice, my dear? I think you will thrive as long as you don’t settle for business as usual or pleasure as usual. To claim the maximum vitality that’s available, you’ll need to make exceptions to at least some of your rules.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful,” wrote author Flannery O’Connor. I think that’s an observation worth considering. But I’ve also seen numerous exceptions to her rule. I know people who have eagerly welcomed grace into their lives even though they know that its arrival will change them forever. And amazingly, many of those people have experienced the resulting change as tonic and interesting, not primarily painful. In fact, I’ve come to believe that the act of eagerly welcoming change-inducing grace makes it more likely that the changes will be tonic and interesting. Everything I’ve just said will especially apply to you in the coming weeks.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): There’s a certain problem that has in my opinion occupied too much of your attention. It’s really rather trivial in the big picture of your life, and doesn’t deserve to suck up so much of your attention. I suspect you will soon see things my way, and take measures to move on from this energy sink. Then you’ll be free to focus on a more interesting and potentially productive dilemma—a twisty riddle that truly warrants your loving attention. As you work to solve it, you will reap rewards that will be useful and enduring.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Hélène Cixous articulated a poetically rigorous approach to love. I’ll tell you about it, since in my astrological opinion, you’re entering a phase when you’ll be wise to upgrade and refine your definitions of love, even as you upgrade and refine your practice of love. Here’s Cixous: “I want to love a person freely, including all her secrets. I want to love in this person someone she doesn’t know. I want to love outside the law: without judgment. Without imposed preference. Does that mean outside morality? No. Only this: without fault. Without false, without true. I want to meet her between the words, beneath language.”

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn author Henry Miller wrote that his master plan was, “to remain what I am and to become more and more only what I am—that is, to become more miraculous.” This is an excellent strategy for your use. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to renounce any tendency you might have to compare yourself to anyone else. You’ll attract blessings as you wean yourself from imagining that you should live up to the expectations of others or follow a path that resembles theirs. So here’s my challenge: I dare you to become more and more only what you are—that is, to become more miraculous.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): London’s British Museum holds a compendium of artifacts from the civilizations of many different eras and locations. Author Jonathan Stroud writes that it’s “home to a million antiquities, several dozen of which were legitimately come by.” Why does he say that? Because so many of the museum’s antiquities were pilfered from other cultures. In accordance with current astrological omens, I invite you to fantasize about a scenario in which the British Museum’s administrators return these treasures to their original owners. When you’re done with that imaginative exercise, move on to the next one, which is to envision scenarios in which you recover the personal treasures and goodies and powers that you have been separated from over the years.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “I hate it when people tell me that I should ‘get out of my comfort zone,’” writes Piscean blogger Rosespell. “I don’t even have a comfort zone. My discomfort zone is pretty much everywhere.” I have good news for Rosespell and all of you Pisceans who might be inclined to utter similar testimony. The coming weeks will feature conditions that make it far more likely than usual that you will locate or create a real comfort zone you can rely on. For best results, cultivate a vivid expectation that such a sweet development is indeed possible.

Homework: Describe what you’d be like if you were already the person you’ll be five years from now. Write freewillastrology.com.

Saturday, May 18, is the Wesak (Buddha) Festival, the second spring festival of the year. Since Winter Solstice, disciples around the world have been preparing for this Taurus festival. It is a momentous event. The Buddha makes an appearance as the Forces of Illumination stream into the Earth. Humanity everywhere can sense something unusual is occurring. Humanity’s aspiration for illumination increases during Taurus, and thus humanity is able to respond to the impact of this festival.

Each year during Taurus (during the full moon), the Buddha makes his yearly approach to the Earth, bringing with him a great blessing from the Father, from Shamballa, where the Will of God is known.

On the day of Wesak, in a valley hidden deep within the Himalayas, a magnetic field of prayer is created which attracts the Buddha. There, Disciples (the NGWS), Hierarchy (inner world government), Christ (Pisces and Aquarian World Teacher), all world avatars, teachers, lamas, rishis, pilgrims, and holy ones gather in prayer and meditation.

A crystal bowl along with a diamond rod/staff lies on a rock ledge in the northeast corner of the valley. The mountains are dense with trees. A half hour before the Buddha appears, the Christ and Masters perform a slow sacred dance of geometric shapes (circle, triangle, square, five-pointed star, etc.) while sounding Oms. This creates a sacred vortex through which the Buddha is able to appear and descend.

The Buddha remains within the Earth’s field for eight minutes. Disciples surround the Great Ones and receive the blessing of the Buddha, radiating that blessing to humanity, whose minds are then illumined.

During Buddha’s yearly visits, Earth is lifted up into increased frequencies; energies of great potency are released into the etheric body of the human family.

Disciples at this festival become “light bearers” and “light conductors.” The Buddha’s blessing brings hope to humanity, the hope humanity needs to overcome the present darkness.

This festival supersedes time and space. If we are quiet, perhaps we can hear the words spoken at the festival, welcoming the Buddha: “We are ready Buddha, Come!” In our imaginations, we see ourselves drinking the Wesak waters from the chalice. We see Hierarchy/Christ and Shamballa, the NGWS and humanity align. Everything is enhanced, lifted up to the Light. In preparation for this festival, we place our crystal bowls in the garden to collect the light.

ARIES: It’s good to assess if there are any needs you or work colleagues have that are unspoken, existing in a sort of mysterious process that comes to life only with conflict. This is a good question to ask in all relationships, but especially now due to all the world changes taking place. Are there legal papers or situations you must tend to? Make plans for implementation soon.

TAURUS: It will soon be time to teach others what you know. You’ve been hiding information away until the right time, and now is that time. You cannot do what you’ve been doing alone anymore for any length of time. Offer all that you have to others. You have many resources to offer. You’re entering a most spiritual time. Revelations appear, guiding your every day and night.

GEMINI: Is there difficulty with concentration, communication or making contact? Take this time to reflect upon what you value most in daily life. Should there be expectations placed upon you, explain you’re working slowly now, pondering your future plans. As you’re called to tasks not quite to your liking, remind yourself it’s an exercise in sacrifice (love at the center). Take it slow. Be the harmonizer wherever you find yourself.

CANCER: Are you tending to family these days as the world turns, changes, adjusts, and transforms? Are you sleeping enough? Are you hungry? Soon something will slip into your life creating a sense of happiness. It comes with determination and courage, and a new sense of creativity. You’ll feel inspired. Prepare for a new life to appear. It includes others. You will want to feed them, and then realize the need to be more organized.

LEO: It’s time to travel. However, should you feel you cannot leave home for whatever reason, it’s OK to remain there. The incoming energies are calling you to tend to personal issues that are of value; cleaning and clearing environments; ordering and organizing, with some time spent on research. Reach out to previous friends. Is there a misunderstanding to be explained, some care and tending to be offered?

VIRGO: Make sure you’re getting enough vitamins and minerals, especially calcium, magnesium and B complex. There can be a lessening of appetite and a change in digestion. While monetary situations continue to be favorable, you discover more and more ways to balance accounts, more ways to bring in resources. Ponder upon the nine tests Mars provides. Is something financial hidden?

LIBRA: Make sure finances are in order, assess income and expenditures carefully. Tend to your relationships with enlightened care. It’s possible you may be a bit tired, impatient, confused and holding an old hurt. What do you need to feel safe and secure? Do you offer this to others? State clearly, in adult language, your needs and wishes. So many things hidden must be brought into the light of day. Rest more.

SCORPIO: Your life assumes additional intensity (actually, that’s your middle name), which you try to hide. But you’re unable to at this time. To ease the discomfort of this concentrated power, this force and energy coursing through your daily life, maintain consistent exercise. A new state of self is developing. Set your sights on goals that serve others. Happiness follows.

SAGITTARIUS: The structure you’ve sought is finally forming, both publicly and personally. But you must discipline yourself in the right use of energy and time. Many people waste valuable time in emotional endeavors because they don’t know what to do when emotions overtake them. Stay behind the scenes. Work on your foundation and home. Plan for future endeavors or do nothing at all. You deserve rest and an affair to remember.

CAPRICORN: It’s best not to assume extra tasks, lest exhaustion undermines your immune system. You’re fully capable of holding the entire world on your shoulders, but soon this becomes unbearable and unattractive. Create a manifestation list stating hoped-for goals, wishes, needs, and priorities. This becomes a magnet. Those aspiring toward the same will appear. Delays are part of the pattern now. Tell yourself you’re flexible, adaptable and almost perfect.

AQUARIUS: Understanding humanity’s needs and sorrows, you attempt to bring forth new ideas and messages of balance and harmony, reminding everyone to also have fun. Your ability to manifest hopes, dreams and wishes is based upon having specific goals. It’s time for financial planning. Make needed contacts, then maintain and nurture them. Among many, this is your specific talent. Tend to your home.

PISCES: Piscean teachers, travelers, publishers, writers, adventurers, and religious leaders are busy with schedules, plans, travel (careful!), cultural, and/or religious endeavors – attempting to infuse harmony, change and balance into daily life. This is a tremendous amount of work. Pray for direction, guidance and no matter what, remain curious. Safety is most important. Although travel seems fun, it may be emotional. Crowds may scare you. Maintain poise.