Carolyn’s AMR Journal

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Carolyn Winter, Life Repatternign Coach

Aug 20th – The AMR (Aligned for Mercury Retrograde) session is over and I am getting ready to leave for the weekend .   Its my mother’s birthday and all the daughters are showing up for the weekend.  I get a call to say bring the keys as the phone entry system telecom thing is not working.   Cool – a problem and I am informed about it BEFORE I leave town.

August 22 – we are driving back from St. Catharine’s to Toronto on the QEW.  It’s the fastest route to Toronto and staying within the speed limit (or keeping up with the middle lane of traffic) we can be home in 75 minutes.  I love the drive from Niagara to the scenic bit over the Burlington skyway where you can see Toronto on the Lake Ontario shoreline when glancing east or the big steel mill glancing left.  After that the landscape is a boring mix of industrial land or shopping malls. 

Today just off the ramp and around the bend from the skyway traffic grinds to a halt – unusual for a Sunday early afternoon.  I don’t think too much about it, and just crawl along with the others.  It’s hard to see what’s ahead.  My sister notices a van darting out and off an exit ramp we are just approaching. She says “maybe we should do that too”.   I flick on my signal light, check the lanes which are clear and respond with “yes I think you are right” and take the exit headed towards the Lakeshore drive.  This route will take us through the small towns on the lake, and past the luxury mansions that have sprung up on this route in the last few years. It is a far more visually appealing route than the rest of the QEW.  As we exit the ramp I now have a full view of the highway several miles ahead. It’s bumper to bumper of stopped cars going nowhere and an ambulance vehicle lights and siren blaring trying to get through.  I send prayers ahead for those who might need it – even though I don’t know who they are and express gratitude that I am not in that snarled mess of traffic.   The drive along the Lakeshore Drive at least to Oakville, puts 20 extra minutes on our trip, makes the drive more interesting and leaves me in awe and wonder about being aligned with Mercury retrograde as I am sure, I could have just as easily been trapped in the traffic backlog for an hour or two.

August 25th – sharing my mother’s retrograde nightmare.  Last Friday morning, my mother takes out cash from her local bank machine. She leaves in a hurry to get to her second-hand book store for a new supply of Agatha Christie and realizes she does not have the money! She zips back to the bank, and asks the tellers about it. They explain that if she left the money in the machine and it was not picked up in 60 seconds that the machine sucks it back in. They won’t be able to tell her until after closing time, so they’ll call on Monday. (this all had to happened during the session) Then, at 2:00PM she received a call from the bank, – a customer after her in line, realized he had too much money from the machine, and turned around after his first errand to return it. They called her right away. I say she is aligned.

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THe Healing Space Of Mercury Retrograde

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Carolyn Winter, Life Repatternign Coach

The Dark Clouds of Mercury Retrograde Are Approaching

It’s not hard to seriously mind the slowing down action of Mercury Retrograde (August 20th) as it challenges our frenetic pace on the path of success or the life we think we want. I personally have a long ‘to do’ list but I am already making Mercury retrograde priorities, as things are starting to get misunderstood, confused etc. In a tic toc world of getting things done quickly, and packing more into a day than our grandparents did we are ruled by the clock more than ever and to push the envelope on accomplishment.   This is not easy to do during Mercury retrograde. 

However, if as energy beings, we connect to our true self, and our connection to nature we open the door for new levels of awareness and being in-tune to our own life.  When we align with Mercury retrograde, we naturally and organically, take the time to slow down and do life a little differently incorporating all the Mercury Retrograde do’s and don’t’s.    Doing so has many benefits such as seeing where things can improve.  In my own case I am seeing that I need improvements to how information flows around my websites – I am looking at reorganizing a few things but taking the time to investigate further first.  

One of the upsides to Mercury retrograde periods is that it may also dredge up areas that need to heal and can do so quickly and unexpectedly.  For example, the trickster planet may just arrange for that the person with whom we have held a long standing grudge to show up in our life at a point of no escape.  Instead of running in the opposite direction we might take it as a sign to initiate a conversation to bring closure.   It is a good time to engage the healing process and reflect on events like these in our life and take action to stop them from festering.   It is a good time to make a list of people we need to forgive and do some inner work to get the job done.   The benefit is that we will release an unconscious weight that on the surface has contributed to our Mercury retrograde tribulations.  What we are releasing is actually baggage we have been carrying for a long time and once released, we emerge from this period with more clarity, energy and enthusiasm for the next chapter of our lives. 

Mercury is retrograde August 20th – how will you leverage this energy? 

With love and light, 

Carolyn 

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The Shadow of Mercury Retrograde Begins on August 1st the dilemmas begin!

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Carolyn Winter, Life Repatternign Coach

The shadow of Mercury retrograde begins on August 1st. Whatever issues apply to you during the Mercury retrograde period will set themselves up starting then.   This is a good period to wrap things up that are being started or launched because as all astrologers I know of will tell you, – don’t start anything new during a Mercury retrograde.  It will be fraught with delays, misunderstandings, or contracts gone wrong.   See your astrologer if you DO have something huge pending during this period.  They’ll give you a precise reading based on your chart as it seems to me sometimes Mercury retrograde energy can be leveraged to advantage.

For me, my quilting dilemmas are coming to the forefront.  I am painfully aware that the star table topper quilt that I really got into during a retrograde on the premise of old business (I had bought the material a year before and cut it out during the shadow) is still one year later 95% done.  It stares at me with the spirit of the Trickster planet silently saying “I dare you to get this finished.”   I have entered this as one of my procrastination issues for repatterning in the Aligned for Mercury Retrograde repatterning session.   It sounds trite, but the frequency pattern of this quilt, something is always only 95% done,  I am sure is transposed to many other projects and situations in my life.  So I am keen to transform this pattern. I will get back to you.

On the other hand I am called to enthusiastically finish “The Twelve days of Christmas”  quilt that got started AFTER the last  Mercury retrograde.  In my mind it is done.  In reality it needs approximately 1.5 days for me to finish the embroidery on it and sew the blocks together.  Would love to have it in the hands of our favorite long arm quilter Jennifer   BEFORE Mercury goes retrograde.   This definitely feels like a good activity to do during a shadow period. BUT wait! Should I send it to the long arm quilter during a retrograde?  Conventional astrology wisdom says ‘not a good idea’.  Then again, I hoping it can’t hurt because, Jennifer has a 2-3 month waiting list for custom quilting.   One more intention to add to the AMR session to create coherence for being in synch with Mercury retrograde energy. 

In between, I have oodles of tiny quilt projects that can be done in an afternoon, many already half started.  During the shadow, I intend to get these projects better organized, so that when a few free hours presents itself, I can easily pick up one and finish it. 
What is your take on Mercury retrograde and what are you doing to take advantage of this astrological frequency pattern?  Comments welcomed!

Carolyn

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Mercury is Retrograde August 20th 2010 by Julie Simmons

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Carolyn Winter, Life Repatternign Coach

Mercury Retrograde from August 20th – September 12th

 Themes:  The overall general theme of Mercury retrograde is about reflection.  It offers us a time to be more reflective about life on planet earth, to contemplate and to create order by eliminating things that block our clarity.  Therefore it is generally a good time to write, edit meditate, retreat and organize.  Based on the sign it is in at the time it makes this journey, we find more specific direction about what is required at this time.

This period of Mercury Retrograde will be in the sign of Virgo the whole time. Mercury is said to be both at home and exalted in this sign. Basically what that means is that our ability to think is enhanced by Virgo perceptions. Virgo encourages us to puzzle; to fit the pieces together and make things work. During a retrograde period this suggests that any project we are involved in will benefit if we go over what we have learned. We can also gain insight when we allow ourselves to play with different possibilities from the ones we were sure about before August 20th. Even if these retrograde patterns don’t pan out ultimately they will offer new ways of seeing our projects.  A little clowning around could go a long way toward shaking up the pattern enough to break through to a better one.

Below you will find the days when Mercury interacts with other planets. These are times when the story that Mercury is telling is highlighted.

September 3: Sun conjunct Mercury: This is the big news of every Mercury retrograde period. The whole dance happens at all because of the relationship between Mercury and the Sun. In general the Sun burns up Mercury when it’s retrograde and this indicates we have to be careful to think clearly in the midst of confusion but on the day they are conjunct we are meant to find mercy at the heart of our confusion or/and disorientation. In this case it is a time to suspend criticism and anxiety and simply listen to the body. Let the mind still and feel into your intestines to be specific. (Virgo rules the small intestine and the corresponding ability to sort through things – separating the useful from the useless). The power of Mercury in Virgo is found in our ability to create the larger by keeping the smaller parts healthy and connected to the whole.

July 30th: Mercury trine Pluto: This is exact during the shadow period, before the actual retrograde but it’s significant because when Mercury actually goes direct in September it will do so at the same degree of Pluto’s station in April. Essentially what this shows us is that there is a connection between the two planets; and a good one! When Mercury meets Pluto the offering is profound thought. It is a good time for detectives and researchers. Digging around in the muck will bring results; an archeologists delight! Don’t be afraid to plumb the depths. This is also very strong from September 9th – 17th.

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