Understanding Moon's Fundamental Needs (meditation)

[Jim Eshelman]

While some of you are concluding your solar meditations and perhaps organizing your experiences in a post, I'll move on and post the new week's work. The proposal is that everybody spend about one week on the following meditation, keeping a record of your results and sharing them here. Enjoy!


Fundamental Need of MOON: Response and adaptation: instincts, neuroplasticity. Adapting to one’s physical, psychological, and social habitats.

• Ensure that you understand the words of the definition.
• Identify this specified need in yourself. Recognize that you have it. Reflect on how it manifests in you at a simple, basic level, and then as secondary motivations and behaviors that arise from the simpler ones.
• How strong is this need in you compared to other needs? Compared to its strength in other people? How has it expressed itself in you at various stages of your life (from earliest memories through later life stages)?
• Have you been able to satisfy this need? Or has it gone largely unsatisfied?
• What are the worst things in your personality and behavior that arise from this need (and from succeeding or failing at satisfying it)? What are the best things?
• As far as possible, answer these questions about other people you know well.
• For this week or longer, as you meet and interact with other people, observe the presence of this specific need in yourself and in the other(s) during the interaction. What can you observe in terms of both how you share the need with them and how differences in the need’s intensity, your psychological maturity, and other factors produce different expressions.
• Please share the results of this exploration on this thread and feel free to engage in such discussion as arises.

[Jim Eshelman]

Adapting to one’s physical, psychological, and social habitats.

I'll risk biasing the trend a little by saying that the above words have come, to me, to be the essence of it all. The other "entry" words in the above description are necessary, but these words make Moon both simpler or more complete.

Moon is that in us that adapts to our habitat. Simple idea. Biologically essential. But that habitat can be our physical environment OR our social habitat OR entirely our own psychological environment. The mechanism is all the same. Placing that essential need in different contexts discloses more about its pervasive operation within us.

[Jim Eshelman]

[STILL WORKING ON THIS]

I don't want to be the first to write on each of these (and probably will simply stop doing it after this planet), but it's now been more than a week since posting the thread and I should download what I have to say and be done with it.

It's hard for me not to think of solar and lunar fundamental needs as so pervasive that they are simply the air I breathe, that they are everywhere always. That's not true of all the planet needs sets, but it certainly is of these two. I think this is because we are dealing with the two primary parts of the human psyche and both of these are developed in me. Or... it might be because they are the two most angular planets in my chart (Moon being the only truly foreground planet.) I dunno... Others' input will make this clearer.

Fundamental Need of MOON: Response and adaptation: instincts, neuroplasticity. Adapting to one’s physical, psychological, and social habitats.

These needs are so basic it's hard for me to think of them as needs, i.e., as something I have to satisfy or do. Response and adaptation seems, oh, like breathing. Of course I need to breathe - most seriously! - but I don't spend time thinking about it or worried if I can fulfill that need to breathe. It's something I do unthinking.

And so it is with lunar needs. In a lot of ways, it's hard for me to distinguish these from Mercury - Moon and Mercury are totally opposite in some ways and nearly identical in others - because response and adaptation is a constant process of learning and rewiring for me. Though I don't sit around worried about whether I can properly adapt to my physical, social, and psychological habitats, I spend more or less every few minutes of my life adapting to my physical or social or psychological habitat. I am meeting whatever comes at me and either adapting to it, molding to encompass it, opening to receive it, or unbelievably quickly moving to evade it. Aren't we all like this? I suspect we are... though perhaps lunar people are more like this than non-lunar people.

I see these reflexively, automatically operating in me (both, of course, being lunar words). I can boil most of these things down to some kind of appetite that has to be fed. I get that I have this need, reflex, instinct: Behavior arises from (usually fluidly) adapting to whatever I encounter within or without of me. - It's pretty easy to see how this manifests in secondary behaviors (I suspect we all could write thick books on that subject if we had the patience; I know that I could [if I had the patience]).

Safety is always a rheostat on this, whether physical safety or psychological safety. For example, the reflex is to indulge dishonesty or reticence if conditions feel unsafe and to indulge openness and surrender if they are. (There I go again: Indulge is tied to appetite, like most lunar threads feel to me.)

Is this stronger in me than in others? The astrologer in me says that of course it is, I have an angular Moon; but in observing others I can't see that it is. The whole social matrix is a connected web of dynamic adaptative response. (Or is it just that the strong lunar side of me sees the web more? Or maybe everybody does?) I can at least easily respect and understand this need when I see others responding to it.

I can see, in my youngest years, how distorting this was. Pre-puberty and mostly through adolescence, there may have been a struggling solar push to distinguish myself (figure out what kind of adult I would be) but, mostly, there also was a pretty routine making stupid moves trying to match what was expected, as if trying to learn from every interaction "how people are supposed to act and feel." I outgrew that but only started to when I moved away from home, distance giving the necessary psychological safety to explore differently. I clearly knew I was created not to fit in and so there was this push-pull between being the one outcast, ostracized, at odds with the norm and yet responding to conditioning to be part of it all. It took distance and adulthood to start letting an authentic distinguished self emerge.

Have I been able to satisfy this need? Well, it's an ongoing process. One doesn't satisfy it once and for all. It keeps operating as long as one is breathing. But, yes, I've learned the skills to leverage it to the advantage of my life. One way in particular: Once I had matured to the point where I could recognize automatic behaviors and halt them with mindfulness, I then started using them and seeing how much of my life I could have so stable and predictable that I could put it on autopilot and let subconsciousness just run it automatically and direct my appropriate actions unthinkingly. This freed my mind to work on other things consciously and not have to pay attention to the majority of what I was doing. It basically let me be a very busy person who, however, had most of my time to myself while doing everything else. (I think of subconsciousness used this way much the way magicians traditionally think of talismans: Design it, consecrate it once, keep it in a safe place, and, with only minimal care and attention, let it work automatically at whatever you had dedicated it to do.)

The worst traits I have from this lunar need-mechanism are probably all extremes: Appetites that are too extreme for one reason or another or which reroute me from something else. Over-responsiveness (over-sensitivity) that has the risk of overwhelming me enough at the wrong moment so that I shut down a bit (risking reactivity). Over-adapting in a conciliatory way without keeping authenticity equally engaged. When these emerge, the function has simply continued to work too hard in an inappropriate context so that, in truth, it isn't really adapting me to my immediate habitat.

For this week or longer, as you meet and interact with other people, observe the presence of this specific need in yourself and in the other(s) during the interaction. What can you observe in terms of both how you share the need with them and how differences in the need’s intensity, your psychological maturity, and other factors produce different expressions.[/list]

Having watched this for years, it all seems mostly a blur of everybody creating together familiar patterns of interaction that keep an interpersonal context functioning.

[Mike V]

I'm a strongly Lunar person like you are, Jim, though not through angularity but rather intensity of aspects. Like you describe, I also have some difficulty distinguishing between Moon and Mercury in daily life.

Identify this specified need in yourself. Recognize that you have it. Reflect on how it manifests in you at a simple, basic level, and then as secondary motivations and behaviors that arise from the simpler ones.
How strong is this need in you compared to other needs?

Like in your experience, I have trouble relating to Moon in terms of the word "need," because it operates so automatically."The instinctual urge, if I can rephrase it, to adapt to my social environment is incredibly strong. In situations where I can't quickly figure out how "people are supposed to act," I feel intensely anxious. I have always wrestled with social anxiety, but I think a large portion of what underlies it is a concern about being able to detect this and adapt to fit it. (Given Moon's aspects, and my Sun sign, there are more complications sitting on top of this, but I think one of the core pillars of it is just a need to feel like I have identified and implemented it quickly in any social situation, purely for its own sake.)

Even as a teenager I recognized just how rapidly, automatically, and constantly I was doing this. I have had a few mini-crises of identity because my personal expression morphs so automatically based on who I am interacting with.

As far as neuroplasticity, or rather, the psychological equivalent - I find that I rapidly adjust to the tone and intention of a piece of writing or media. This is so automatic and powerful that I sometimes have fears that I can accidentally end up indoctrinating or brainwashing myself by not being careful in what media I consume.

Regarding expressing instincts... these actually take a serious back seat to matters of social acceptance for me. I have a longstanding difficulty in just expressing benign instinctual urges (changing my seat, adjusting something in the environment, taking a break to use the bathroom) if these are even slightly socially disruptive, leading me to feel unnecessarily uncomfortable. I'm not surprised that this is the case.

Compared to its strength in other people?

Like you, I'm unsure to what degree this type of thing is unique to me as a phenomenon, and to what degree I am just more aware of it than others (or even if I am). I tend to think that I am more aware of it than others are, but I don't have much proof of that.

How has it expressed itself in you at various stages of your life (from earliest memories through later life stages)?

As a child, I got absolutely and totally absorbed in whatever I was doing; it was my entire experience during and even after the activity. I was very resistant to changing the topic of my focus due to being so absorbed in it, and would fight having to re-adapt to something else.
When I was a pre-teen and a teenager, I was aware of this automatic social and psychological adaptation (and anxiety around it) taking place, but did not have much intellectual or emotional clarity about it.
As an adult, I have actually needed to consciously remind myself to indulge this appetite to adapt myself to new contexts (at the very least, through new and engaging media I can get absorbed in). I automatically adapt when actually in it, but I tend to put off satisfying the need for it. This is partially a sublimation of my childhood instinctual resistance to changing contexts - I know I need to give this part of myself more expression, but, ah, I'll get to it later... or tomorrow...

Video games are a very relevant outlet for me for expressing this urge to adapt. I am generally very competent at many different genres, and that mostly comes from rapidly "understanding what is expected" and responding to it.

This exact same mechanism has tended to make me very good at taking standardized tests. I think that I score higher on them than I would "otherwise" just because I feel like I can sense what the correct headspace and context is, and I can get into it.

Have you been able to satisfy this need? Or has it gone largely unsatisfied?

I feel both that I have been able to largely satisfy this need, and also that it is just so needy that I could always use more. "Unsatisfied" is not accurate, though.

What are the worst things in your personality and behavior that arise from this need (and from succeeding or failing at satisfying it)?

I can get totally lost in "adapting" to projections about the psychological and social environment that I am in, rather than adapting to the actual environment. This leads to incongruence between my current state and the environment I'm actually in. This is perhaps best seen as a "failure at satisfying" the need.

I can also be far too agreeable with others, since I adapt so thoroughly to our "shared context" in a social situation that I lose track of the concept that - wow, I actually don't really want X, I only thought I did since that was the group's headspace. (Part of this is acceptance-related, but part of it is even more automatic and neutral than that. Even if others in the group repeatedly offer me space to dissent, I just lose the ability to detect that I even do, or would, dissent.) This is definitely "succeeding at satisfying" the need.

What are the best things?

My life purpose centers around knowing, recognizing, relaying, and completing the patterns of the universe. My Moon is immensely important in this endeavor - the automatic adaptation to some context (when consciously chosen) enables all of my other best traits to flourish with little energy expenditure: a quick and capable mind that has the benefit of already "being in the headspace" once it comes online, much energy and passion that can be directed with instinct rather than constant calculation, the instinct to teach others and help bring them into shared understanding, and so on.

It also helps me teach others much more effectively - when I can adapt to what they're seeing and expressing, I can better phrase things so they can better receive them.

Also, frankly, it makes me able to make friends more easily - I adapt very quickly to other people.

As far as possible, answer these questions about other people you know well. For this week or longer, ...

I will come back to this part. I haven't had the bandwidth to participate in the ongoing witnessing/social component of these meditations, but I want to do it eventually.

[Jim Eshelman]

Mike, thanks for diving in. You triggered a few thoughts for me...

Even as a teenager I recognized just how rapidly, automatically, and constantly I was doing this. I have had a few mini-crises of identity because my personal expression morphs so automatically based on who I am interacting with.

In my 20s in particular, when I would come home Anna-Kria said she could always tell who I'd been with because I was acting like them, my energy was theirs, etc. (The lunar chameleon.) This is still true to some extent, but not as much. I especially pick up accents quickly and unconsciously. - I went through a phase where one could count on my "final opinion" on some complicated decision was always that of the last person whose views on it I'd been around. (Last voiced vote wins.) I had to grow out of that by paying attention and, partly, by getting fewer outside opinions. In particular (most K&C especially) I worked to make sure that all outside opinions were completely cleared from my psyche before I would settle to decide what I wanted - that final answer coming from within. (But I had to find the balance first between getting input and having the input make the decision for me. My integrity was in having nothing at all influence my decision other than what came from inside.)

This exact same mechanism has tended to make me very good at taking standardized tests. I think that I score higher on them than I would "otherwise" just because I feel like I can sense what the correct headspace and context is, and I can get into it.

I could say the same - always in the 99th or 98th percentile of every Iowa Skills Test every year we took them - but there's no way I can distinguish this from my Virgo Sun and, by process, my Mercury-Saturn conjunction. It always seemed to me that my brain was organized like a data reference system (a card catalogue of sorts) and I simply moved through catalogued data quickly.

I can also be far too agreeable with others, since I adapt so thoroughly to our "shared context" in a social situation that I lose track of the concept that - wow, I actually don't really want X, I only thought

Me, too... except I think I have an advantage with the Aquarius Moon. All the above is true, except something in me (related to the reflex to be part of a social matrix) reflexively rejects social conformity much like a horse's hide reflexively ejects a fly that lands on it.

My life purpose centers around knowing, recognizing, relaying, and completing the patterns of the universe.

Oh, you Sag-Virgo, you! <g>

[Mike V]

I went through a phase where one could count on my "final opinion" on some complicated decision was always that of the last person whose views on it I'd been around. (Last voiced vote wins.) I had to grow out of that by paying attention and, partly, by getting fewer outside opinions.

I relate to this a whole lot - although I will say that, at this point, I sort of continue seeking opinions until one feels really right (or lines up with what I do think internally, I suppose), and then I usually stop seeking opinions - or if I do, I tend to explain or defend the one I settled on rather than absorb newer ones the way I did the initial one(s). Similar trajectory, different conscious management of it.

I could say the same - always in the 99th or 98th percentile of every Iowa Skills Test every year we took them - but there's no way I can distinguish this from my Virgo Sun and, by process, my Mercury-Saturn conjunction. It always seemed to me that my brain was organized like a data reference system (a card catalogue of sorts) and I simply moved through catalogued data quickly.

I can relate to this too (and we have some similar factors of course), although my internal metaphors are a bit different. I tend to process new concepts by relating them in some kind of spacial arrangement to other concepts - not like a "memory palace" or anything per se, but "this concept is the inverse of this other one, so it is physically flipped inside out and is located 'across' from the first one." Things like that. Memory for me often involves some kind of unconscious return to, or exploration of, spacial concepts originally used.

In particular (most K&C especially) I worked to make sure that all outside opinions were completely cleared from my psyche before I would settle to decide what I wanted - that final answer coming from within.

Thank you for sharing this. I think this is a hygienic habit I should cultivate much more.

[RingsOfSaturn22]

I will refrain from letting the other responses influence what I want to say here.

Fundamental Need of MOON: Response and adaptation: instincts, neuroplasticity. Adapting to one’s physical, psychological, and social habitats.

• How strong is this need in you compared to other needs? Compared to its strength in other people? How has it expressed itself in you at various stages of your life (from earliest memories through later life stages)?

The instincts part is what I identify with the most. For me, moon is largely about feelings, emotions, perceptions, intuitions -- taking in stimuli from the environment and processing that in my inner world. This is a VERY high need for me.

When I was younger (say maybe up to around age 7 or 8), intuition and instincts were much more natural for me. Then, as I got into school more and was trained in rationality and logic, it caused me to lose touch with my instincts. I was trained to not trust my instincts, because instincts came from a place that didn't have reason or rationale. I ended up excelling in things like the sciences, mathematics, research, technical writing, the written form of foreign languages, and test taking, but I suffered in the arts, creativity, and the oral form of foreign languages. After seeing many other people around me who were still rooted in their instincts, and thus had no problem with creativity, art, and intuition, it made me want what they had. I felt like I was missing something very important. So around age 19 or so, I made the conscious decision to try to reclaim what I had lost. I consciously chose to stop denying my instincts and intuitions, and that was the best decision I ever could have made. It allowed me to more authentically be ME.

I let the full wave of impressions, feelings, and sensations overcome me, even if they made no sense to my logical mind. I learned to be ok with that. I made friends with it. I realized I didn't have to understand it logically in order to be able to make good use of it. So I guess you could say I became adaptable to impressions, instincts, and intuitions.

When I don't do this, I feel like I am depriving myself of some essential nutrient. It's like I'm starving myself of life replenishing nectar.

With that said, I see this need in others in a myriad of ways. For some people, they are so hard wired into their emotions and instincts that they don't know how to live any other way. For others, emotions and these inner impressions are completely foreign, and they don't understand why people get compelled by them. And then there is everyone else in between these two extremes.

For the point that I am currently at, I would say this need is a good bit stronger in me than in most people I know. What I think and how I feel are wed now. Perhaps sometimes even the feeling leads the thinking. I can't think without feeling. I can't react without feeling. (By feeling, I mean emotions, perceptions, and impressions.) Before I make ANY decision, I have to check in with my inner world of feelings first and listen to what they are telling me. If I don't do this, my spirit feels like it is dying a death of 1,000 slow cuts. We are united at this point. The other way of functioning is now just only a memory.

In regards to the adaptability part, it is dictated by the instincts and feelings. In order for me to adapt, I need a chance to take in the stimuli from my environment and thus check in with what I am feeling. If it's an unfamiliar situation or something with a lot of unknown variables, I go in kind of as a (relatively) "blank canvas" so that my PERCEPTIONS are open more widely, and I can get a chance to FEEL what I need to do to adapt to the situation. This is the "chameleon" aspect I mentioned in the moon in Pisces thread. When I'm not able to get a chance to "process" and "take in" new surroundings, then it can lead me to feeling overwhelemed. As a result, in new social situations, I'm usually quiet and reserved. I allow others to take the lead so I can absorb the environment for a little bit and figure out how to blend in with it. Once I can sense what is going on, then you could get any possible character out of me -- extroverted, quiet, playful, suspicious, sympathetic, etc. As time has gone on, I can execute this entire process rather quickly, sometimes to the point where it is happening subconsciously because we are more united now.

• Have you been able to satisfy this need? Or has it gone largely unsatisfied?

Yes, it is satisfied, and I have to continue to nourish it everyday, for it is the breath of life.

• What are the worst things in your personality and behavior that arise from this need (and from succeeding or failing at satisfying it)? What are the best things?

The worst thing about this need is I get such an overwhelming amount of impressions that I gave up on trying to name them a long time ago. As a result, when it comes to needing to explain something, I am sometimes at a loss because the mind processes information infinitely quicker when operating from this perspective. I often don't even have words to describe what I'm perceiving or how I came to those conclusions. I mean, I CAN do it, but it feels like going from a 1GHz internet connection back to a 56K dial up modem! It's so slow and takes SOOO long. But as a teacher, I must sometimes do it. I refrain from doing it as much as necessary, but when it is unavoidable, I will do it, as painfully slow as it is.

The best thing is it helps with understanding and relating to people a lot more. And also with nature. I feel more of a unity with all things. Thus it leads to calmness and a relatively easy going nature.

I must add, perhaps part of what strengthened this in me and de-emphasized the sun are a lot of the spiritual practices I've done over the years, particularly prāṇayāma exercises. An Ayurvedic practitioner warned that if you do prāṇayāma exercises correctly, these types of changes are to be expected.

Furthermore, as an extension from the Sun needs thread, in many Eastern cultures, I feel this moon dominance much more strongly in the form of a rich inner world. In Western languages, we are very visually driven, and it is reflected in our vocabulary. I feel that is more of a Sun need -- the external appearance and connecting with the outside world. But in Eastern languages and ancient languages, I've noticed they tend to have more words to describe SOUNDS as well as states of their inner world. This, to me, is more connected with lunar needs.

So I guess you could say one of the ways I continue to nourish my lunar needs is by studying Eastern languages and ancient languages, as they help to give me a framework to describe the mass of feelings and perceptions that come to me in areas where Western languages have failed me. Also, studying things like Carl Jung, being involved in the arts/music, and studying the Vedic scriptures feels like it fulfills my lunar needs. Being in nature, but really being mentally and emotionally PRESENT in nature satisfies the need too.

[RingsOfSaturn22]

In my 20s in particular, when I would come home Anna-Kria said she could always tell who I'd been with because I was acting like them, my energy was theirs, etc. (The lunar chameleon.) This is still true to some extent, but not as much. I especially pick up accents quickly and unconsciously.

This happens to me too, especially the thing about accents. If I am around foreigners, I begin to adopt their accent as well as the way they word things. When I started studying Italian, on many occasions, I caught myself saying "I was wanting that you...", as that is exactly how they would say it in Italian. A friend has told me that Japanese has affected me too in terms of how I lay out my thoughts. The ideas have a flow and continuity like Japanese discourse, especially when I'm writing informally in text messages or in messenger. In some respects, I feel like I've lost touch with English and entered into a weird hybrid zone.

[Jim Eshelman]

I let the full wave of impressions, feelings, and sensations overcome me, even if they made no sense to my logical mind. I learned to be ok with that. I made friends with it. I realized I didn't have to understand it logically in order to be able to make good use of it. So I guess you could say I became adaptable to impressions, instincts, and intuitions.

This is soooo Pisces Moon - and the Pisces relationship to the world in general. You're also describing very well the Virgo-Pisces reason-unreason polarity and, with what you've said here of your chart, you need to embrace both. (Good work!)

I think it is hard (impossible?) to disentangle lunar and neptunian themes in you. You've wandered off the primary message of adaptive response or plasticity for survival a bit, into the surging tides of sensation and emotion of Pisces, but I think that's natural to your lunar side. You also seem to have integrated your Virgo and Pisces halves quite well.

Thanks much for all the above.

[SteveS]

You also seem to have integrated your Virgo and Pisces halves quite well.

Indeed!

[RingsOfSaturn22]

This is soooo Pisces Moon - and the Pisces relationship to the world in general. You're also describing very well the Virgo-Pisces reason-unreason polarity and, with what you've said here of your chart, you need to embrace both. (Good work!)

I think it is hard (impossible?) to disentangle lunar and neptunian themes in you. You've wandered off the primary message of adaptive response or plasticity for survival a bit, into the surging tides of sensation and emotion of Pisces, but I think that's natural to your lunar side. You also seem to have integrated your Virgo and Pisces halves quite well.

Thanks much for all the above.

Thank you. I think you're right. It feels nearly impossible to separate lunar and neptunian themes in myself. They feel married. I'm at a loss for how to talk about my moon without it having a heavy Pisces coloring.

[Jim Eshelman]

I'm at a loss for how to talk about my moon without it having a heavy Pisces coloring.

Another perspective - I'm not saying this is the right perspective...

Moon isn't very strong in your chart unless you count the moderate opposition to Sun. Moon is background. It may be that none of this is lunar at all - that the lunar erge is actually as foreign to you as the solar erge - and that what you have been distinguishing so far is more Virgo vs. Pisces.

Just thinking aloud... The goal of these exercises, of course, is to acquire a cell-level understanding of each of the planets from a shared fundamental needs basis using their existence in ourselves as a starting point. Maybe both the solar and lunar needs are minimal in you (although there is the moderate Sun-Moon mundane opposition to give them a bit of life).

[RingsOfSaturn22]

I'm at a loss for how to talk about my moon without it having a heavy Pisces coloring.

Another perspective - I'm not saying this is the right perspective...

Moon isn't very strong in your chart unless you count the moderate opposition to Sun. Moon is background. It may be that none of this is lunar at all - that the lunar erge is actually as foreign to you as the solar erge - and that what you have been distinguishing so far is more Virgo vs. Pisces.

I HAVE considered that might be a possibility. But aside from being a Virgo-Pisces distinction, what else could it be? I can't really see it fitting in with any other planet.

Moon, I feel, has been influential in my life in a lot of other ways too. Women greatly outnumbered the men in my intermediate family, especially women with strong intuitive and spiritual senses. (In my overall family, though, there are more men.) For whatever reason, most of my teachers (around 80%) have ended up being women. (Even when it seemed almost like I was going to have a male teacher, something would always happen to where I'd end up with a female teacher. Even attending an all boys high school, I somehow ended up with most of the female teachers despite most of the faculty being male!!!) The most influential teachers I've had have always been women with the exception of one music teacher that felt very lunar to me. Lunar based spiritual traditions make more sense to me, somehow.

Perhaps as I respond more to the other planetary threads, this will piece together more.

[Jim Eshelman]

I HAVE considered that might be a possibility. But aside from being a Virgo-Pisces distinction, what else could it be? I can't really see it fitting in with any other planet.

Just to be clear, I'm not considering the relative prominence or relationship of your Sun sign or your Moon sign when considering the strength of your Sun and Moon per se. Sun in Virgo does a lot to enhance the strength of the Virgo-Mercurial nature, but it doesn't have anything to do with how distinctly solar you are or with the strength of the solar need.

Nonetheless, Virgo-Pisces would be expected to portray the base template of your character.

So, just maybe, the traits you are discussing are Virgo-Pisces (which happen to be your Sun sign and Moon sign) but are not about the strength of the solar or lunar characteristics per se. (That's all I was suggesting.)

BTW, while there is no strong conventional way that Moon is prominent in your chart, there's something intriguing: Your Ascendant degree is the exact exaltation degree of Moon! In theory, this is the most lunar degree of the zodiac, though it's been hard to objectively say that's so. I've written a piece elsewhere about how the exaltation degrees keep presenting themselves to our faces, but (knowing their origins) it's entirely illogical they should have any significance and perhaps there are other reasons they have seemed legit. That uncertainty aside, it's interesting to me that you have Moon's hypsoma as your ascending degree.

[RingsOfSaturn22]

So, just maybe, the traits you are discussing are Virgo-Pisces (which happen to be your Sun sign and Moon sign) but are not about the strength of the solar or lunar characteristics per se. (That's all I was suggesting.)

Ok, I see where you are coming from now.

BTW, while there is no strong conventional way that Moon is prominent in your chart, there's something intriguing: Your Ascendant degree is the exact exaltation degree of Moon! In theory, this is the most lunar degree of the zodiac, though it's been hard to objectively say that's so. I've written a piece elsewhere about how the exaltation degrees keep presenting themselves to our faces, but (knowing their origins) it's entirely illogical they should have any significance and perhaps there are other reasons they have seemed legit. That uncertainty aside, it's interesting to me that you have Moon's hypsoma as your ascending degree.

I never once paid attention to that before. Thanks for highlighting it. I will meditate on that more.

[SteveS]

Rings wrote:

Lunar based spiritual traditions make more sense to me, somehow.

Indeed Rings! “Reading in between those lines” moves me the most but I have difficulty expressing it with words, but I feel it deeply.
Jim wrote:

Your Ascendant degree is the exact exaltation degree of Moon! In theory, this is the most lunar degree of the zodiac, though it's been hard to objectively say that's so. I've written a piece elsewhere about how the exaltation degrees keep presenting themselves to our faces, but (knowing their origins) it's entirely illogical they should have any significance and perhaps there are other reasons they have seemed legit. That uncertainty aside, it's interesting to me that you have Moon's hypsoma as your ascending degree.

I notice this too Jim, and it reminded me of the most important psychic I have ever known who moved from Iowa to Stone Mt Georgia with her 3 degree Taurus Moon on her Stone Mt Georgia MC. She told me she did not know why, but when she moved to Stone Mt Ga---it was like a Lunar presence took over her being, she became a highly sought after word of mouth psychic, mainly with other women. She knew nothing about astrology.

[Veronica]

As I reflected on this Moon Meditation I realized how much more powerful I feel This need then The solar. Meaning I feel that my physical environment, the world at large demands of me to be constantly on the alert, ready to duck and swerve, adapt, maneuver, rethink, recalibrate and adjust my plans, time, energy to accommodate the hierarchy that I am at the very very bottom off.
I need to do this or I will die is how it feels.
Sure I would like to be Veronica The Sun, but I like breathing on this side of the grass too.
The worst thing in my behavior to satisfy my need to be adaptive is my seeing the things in the outside world as something more then they are so I can change, switch, reorient instead of being still and focused and able to work long periods of time at something over and over and over to master it.
The best thing about my need for adaptability is that I have experienced a very interesting and bizarre life in many ways and met a host of a variety of different characters.

[Jim Eshelman]

Both your Sun and Moon are strong, Veronica, but your Moon is indeed a bit stronger.