Find Your Heart’s Path: How to Cross the Bridge to Your Future With Mercury’s Latest Retrograde

Slideshow on Your Mercury Retrograde Experience

As with all cultures, the Maya kept an eye on Mercury. He was associated with the owl, or more precisely four owls — two for its appearance as an evening star and two for it as a morning star. Right now, if we look to the western sky at sunset, we can see Mercury close to the horizon. This is the signal that another Mercury retrograde is about to begin.

Not another one, you say? If you feel dismay at the prospect, you’re not using Mercury to its fullest! If you want to get the goodies from Mercury’s retrograde, read on.

Don’t Kill the Messenger!
Mercury’s retrograde (apparent backward motion) runs July 14 – August 7, in the midst of a cosmic Grand Dance. About every 3½ months, Mercury appears to stop, turn, and run backward for about three weeks, then turn again, passing over a small segment of the Zodiac a third time before traveling into new turf in its normal direction. Most people who know about it think that it’s when everything goes wrong, but this is not the case.

Mercury is the Messenger of the Gods, carrying messages from its celestial companions. He simply makes the connections and helps us solve the puzzles that arise. If we have a problem with that, we can look elsewhere for the source of our dilemma.

That’s Because Mercury Is About Creating.
Mercury teaches us that what we focus on is what we create. This is the power of our thoughts! If we are filled with worry, we have no room for the positive thoughts that will solve the problem we’re worried about. So if we are afraid of Mercury’s retrograde and think bad things will happen, guess what we’re creating?

This Mercury Retrograde Is in Leo.
During this retrograde, Mercury is in generous, brightly shining, courageous, but sometimes prideful Leo. We can think of July–August as a bridge to tomorrow, with Mercury the Conductor, telling us how to get across.

Leo is about what’s in our heart. When we feel into our heart, we become centered, at peace, and loving. When we are in our heart space, we know what to do. Now is the time to come from our heart and cast our gaze into the future and see what calls us. That will lead us across the bridge to tomorrow.

A Mercury Retrograde To-Do List
How can we get Mercury on our side? Here are some ideas:

• Think about where you are now. Write a few notes about that, what’s on your mind, and what you hope to change, maintain, delete, or improve.
• Create your heart’s plan. Prioritize but don’t set deadlines, unless you have to meet someone else’s time frame. Don’t forget to include what *needs* to be done as well as what you want in your heart. You don’t have to do the details — just paint the big picture.
• Work toward what you want between now and the end of August.
• Even if it doesn’t show up right away, this is the foundation of your new start. The bigger the change, the longer it could take to manifest.

Final Thoughts
Make sure you create thoughts of fulfillment, joy, health, and love — or whatever you want in your life. In general, we need to go bigger, not smaller! If something is not working, try a larger vision and see where it takes you. We of course need to temper this vision with pragmatism, not with fear or self-doubt. We are always more capable than we tend to think.

It’s no secret that the world is changing in ways that are larger than a single life and hard to picture. With care and planning, we can get Mercury to work for us, even in these challenging times, to create an abundant life.