This Love Again
We talk glibly of Love as if it can be bought like a bag of pastel-coloured macaroons. Or conjured up by a psychic who says, deftly spreading a well-worn deck of cards: “now let’s look at the love-life!”
We talk flippantly of Love as if Love can be compartmentalised into 
a neat life. As if Love is a play-thing, to put aside when we tire of it, or it becomes too big and boisterous. We window-shop for Love on dating sites. Foolishly mistake Love for Sex. Balk at provocative choices. Terrified we may expose our soft-bellied vulnerability, we manacle ourselves with the cold steel fear of rejection, memories of past betrayals, disappointments. We play it safe, never daring to throw the dice lest we score too high for comfort.
Then one new day, we awake to find our fervent prayers have been answered by a benevolent god. How we tremble and shake in unspeakable terror as we stand on the precipice; afraid to take that giant leap, to tumble weightlessly into Love. Afraid to do what it takes to be with the one we cannot be without.
Love, like old age, and death, is not for the squeamish. To fall into Love requires valour. To stay in Love demands tenacity.
Science attempts to measure the power of love by assigning our light-headed wholehearted omnipotence and euphoria to dopamine and oxytocin. Those delectable mood-altering chemicals that flood our brains, bathe our cells in Ecstasy. Our right (emotionally intuitive) brain, lights up like a Christmas tree, our left ( logic and language) brain is all shook up. Astrology is a language that describes the synastry, the poetics of a relationship. It offers a map for the choices we will be offered as we embrace Love’s Mystery. Science can measure the how. But why we fall into love’s hallowed portal, blouse unbuttoned, hair unloosened in the face of our fears, remains a Mystery. “Nothing is Mysterious. No human relation. Except Love,” writes Susan Sontag.
The poetry of the skies in September reflects the moist soulfulness of our human hearts. The Sun, Mars and Venus are in Virgo this month, highlighting that part the zodiac and our own birth chart, where we must be mindful, wholehearted, discerning of those we invite into our lives. Virgo is the Sacred Harlot. She reminds us to choose carefully from the smorgasbord of life those lovers, friends, soul companions who hold us gently through life’s storms.
Embrace Virgo’s true meaning by moving into yourself today, stay grounded in your soft animal body. Listen to her whispers.
Love yourself into Aliveness.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves—Mary Oliver
James Blunt—This Love Again