Mercury's now retrograde until the end of the month. Here are some thoughts to contemplate, and ideas of how to utilise this phase for your own benefit.*
"'We talk to hear ourselves.'
As we become adults the words and sounds of our mouths become as tired as old branches falling. We do not say what we mean. We complain about life. We talk it out and often go on living the same old way. Our words have lost their integrity, their ability to change us or others. Why?
This is what many of us learned in childhood about speech.
~ We learned that words did not matter. It was the actions which counted.
~ We learned that we could say only part of what we thought. We had to begin censoring our words, thus causing a split in our personalities between the part we could show to the world and the hidden, often more true, part of ourselves.
~ We learned that adults did not listen to most of what we had to say. The adults did not understand us and were selective about what they wanted to hear.
~ We learned that we were to tell the truth, but we saw that the adults lied to each other and desribed the facts about our own person differently from the way we perceived them.
~ We learned that it was safer to lie or not say anything in order to protect ourselves from adult power used to dominate us.
~ We learned also that the grown-ups wanted us to say everything which was on our minds but that sometimes they would use that information against us. They would embarrass us in front of our friends, punish us for wrong-doing. We gradually leanred to keep our mouths shut with the unfortunate result that we felt alienated from others and even from ourselves.
~ We learned that talk was dangerous. You had to learn to say the right thing or you would upset someone. We learned that we could not say what we felt because no-one could take it, not the adults and not most of our peers.
So as we grew up to be adults, our speech became degraded. Now we must change that. If we do not express ourselves we will not express life. All words express something essential about life. Although some words seem good and others seem bad, they all have their places as expressions of reality.
Some of us use talk as a verbal masking. We talk non-stop about ourselves, not allowing pauses in the conversation for silence, or for the other person to respond. We are preventing intimacy by controlling the verbal impression the other person receives. As mature people we can learn to heal our tongues. We can learn to say what we mean, give voice to what we feel, listen carefully to others, articulate the language colourfully, and use it to be effective in the world.
Others say little but think much. They are afraid to express who they are and hide behind the mask of silence. They need to learn to put themselves verbally out into the world, to share themselves and to give up alienation and unbonding.
Verbalising is a reflective process to make conscious what is happening to us. First we live the experience, and then we reflect upon it, trying to find the meaning in what we just lived out. Most of us talk our lives through with others. We talk to affirm our life and consciousness, to convey value and experience to others. We listen carefully to make contact with another person, and to change. To fully hear someone is to let their words affect you. If you leave an in-depth conversation unchanged, you have not heard what was being said. Talk, then, is the interweaving of inner content with outer reality, the healing bridge which cures alienation, and which brings the joy of living to the world."
Ideas to play with:
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~ What are some of your earliest memories of speech as a child? What seems to be reflected in these memories about yourself?
~ What was your childhood talk pattern like, and how is it still in effect today? Use the text above to analyse how you did or didn't talk. How is this pattern still active today, and what can you do about it?
~ Were you honest as a child? What kind of lying did you do? Where would you lie today? What does lying do for you?
~ What commitments can you make as to how you use speech for growth and direction in life? Examples might be to say how you feel no matter the circumstances [without being vindictive, of course - the goal is wholeness and healing], or to express what is going on inside you at various times throughout the day.
~ How did you express yourself today using words? What are some ways you might become more expressive and real in the use of words?
~ Practise listening to someone else and resaying some of what they say so that you may practise accurately perceiving another person's thoughts and words.
~ To free up your language for more feeling responses [Mercury is going back into Cancer, so this is very appropriate collectively], practise talking in imagery. Open up to your unconscious and let the images come. Also give personal reactions t what you say. This is the feeling response.
Hear what you say and you will say what you feel."
For more info on this Mercury retrograde period, see the article posted on the front page of astrology21.co.uk
* The above text is quoted from Strephon Kaplan Williams' book 'Transforming Childhood', which is actually about transforming ourselves as adults and our adult lives.