You’ve probably had those moments or passages — the ones where you feel like someone or something has suddenly put shrink-wrap or a straitjacket on your life (and in your mind), making it hard to breathe and offering what seemed little ‘wiggle room’?
Those super-tight-squeeze passages, like the ones snakes move through to shed an old skin?
Where even ‘admirable efforts’ didn’t make a dent or move you forward?
It occurred to me in the wake of the epic Saturn-Neptune Square, (primarily in 2016 — a real challenge for a whole lot of people. More on that below), as I was immersed yet again in one of those ‘shrink-wrap’ or ‘between a rock and a hard place’ passages, that there is a very real practicality to what we call ‘spiritual practices’.

Sound familiar?
While it’s actually very intuitive and sensible, in the ‘dominant thinking’ of our culture this would seem counter-intuitive or ‘woo woo’. It’s not, for anyone who’s actually done it.
In astrological language, the practical value of more spiritual or artistic qualities and practices would be the essence of experience linked with Neptune (Spacious Mind. Expansiveness and Big Love) and Saturn (Narrow Mind. Constriction and Fear).
This is significant because these two energetic and archetypal ‘power players’ squared off in our shared macrocosm over the course of 2016, which likely showed up in our personal experience, too (for some — like the Sixties-Born Gen-Xers — more than for others).
Once Saturn entered the Earth-Feminine sign of Capricorn in late December 2017, it has been in more harmonious accord with Neptune (Sextile).
The Question For Now Is …
How will you incubate, plant, fertilize, and grow those insight-and-vision seeds that have their roots in the 2016 Saturn-Neptune Square timeframe?

I have the Saturn-Neptune square in my natal chart — meaning it was an astro-dynamic ‘headliner’ when I was born, so it has been a constant and demanding master teacher for me.
Here’s the gist, so you can see how this might play in your own life, and how you might engage with and benefit from it.
Traditional astrology often reduces big energetic and archetypal dynamics into pithy, and often negative, sound-bites.
Pluto is reduced to as ‘ruthless Pluto’; Saturn as the ‘punitive task-master’; Neptune as ‘delusional and dissolving’; Venus as ‘lipstick, hair gel, and lingerie ads’; Mars as the proverbial ‘hot-head brute’; Mercury as the grasshopper-minded flibberty gibbet; and so on.
While there can be some truth to these descriptions, they’re hugely incomplete.
Given that whole Nocebo Effect thing I wrote about recently, any such ‘word prisons’ are important to recognize and ‘open up’ into their fuller potentials, because we’ve all been conditioned with a saturation of fear-centric ‘word prisons’.

Traditionally, Saturn is associated with constriction, rock-and-hard-place circumstances, punitiveness, isolation or separateness, initiation through limitation and constraint, boundaries, and fear.
Neptune is associated with flow, grace, dissolution of form and boundary, surrender, trust, faith, imagination, dreams, and the Big Love, Agape.
Saturn is the rock (and thus the ‘hard place’), and Neptune is the water that flows onward, softening those hard edges … or the fog that obscures the ‘constructed world’.
If interpreted in the more limited, fear-centric ways, these interpretations shrink the ‘field of all possibility’ — like putting shrink-wrap packaging around something and sucking all the air out of it. That tends to come from, speak to, and heighten the fear-based conditioning in us.
“Expansion is the best way to survive any crisis. Fear deprives people of choice. Fear shrinks the world into isolated, defensive enclaves. Fear spirals out of control. Fear makes everyday life seem clouded over with danger.”
~ Deepak Chopra, SF Chronicle, 11/19/08
[Image source unknown]
The more limited, fear-centric Saturn qualities have long been a dominant staple in our culture — and they’re the point of the neuromarketing that saturates us — while the Neptunian qualities have been downplayed, marginalized, or outright dismissed.
Gosh, I wonder why that is, and just who benefits from it? But I digress …
All of Life, and Life within us, cries out for the release of that shrink-wrap and the restoration of balance, that Ayni I’ve hinted at in recent musings.
Spiraling back to the insight that dropped into my awareness during the recent ‘shrink-wrap’ moment …

I was reminded of several previous ‘rock and hard place’ passages where Saturnine (and other Planetary Pals) constraint and shrink-wrapping felt intense and beyond my previous experiences — and so stirred fear and anxiety to heightened levels.
I was also reminded that in those passages, when I leaned into the Neptunian ‘spiritual practices’ — like simple meditation done with Saturnine discipline and constancy — the shrink-wrap seemed to loosen and the ‘tangled conditions’ eased as if by some Grace flowing in through the opening created by the meditation (etc).
Most spiritual root-wisdom has long emphasized this in the teachings, and if we take clues from the recent neuroscience and consciousness research — like the work of Andrew Newberg, M.D., author of How God Changes Your Brain, for example — we see the evidence for it there, too.
So the Neptunian power of the Big Love and its Grace, and the spiritual practices that remind us of our ever-present connection with it; along with the imaginal, the dream time, ‘vision space’, and flow, and approach those practices with the Saturnine gifts of respect, discipline, devotion, and consistency, the Neptunian (in alliance with Saturn) becomes very, very practical in the effects we notice within ourselves and then rippling out ‘into our affairs’ as some word it.
“Every day, you have to wade through a relentless surge of soul-less facts.
The experience tends to shut down your sense of wonder.”
“Every day, you’re over-exposed to cynical narratives that have been
sucked free of delight and mystery. That’s why you have to make such
strenuous efforts to keep your world enchanted.”
~ Rob Brezsny, Pronoia & Free Will Astrology
I can tell you that I did just that, and at the very least, it gives the benefit and gift of supporting greater wellness, reduced stress, and increased ability to be centered amidst the storms and uncertainties.
And who knows, if we let some fresh air, Big Love, and Grace into that shrink-wrap, and therefore through as as within us, we might just become able to see-and-be more fully the greater possibilities for healing, restoration, regeneration, and creativity in a world troubled by the imbalances in it. The Big Love, flowed through us to Earth.
It’s worth the experiment, isn’t it?
Have you had experiences in your life where the Neptunian gifts and practices — whether imaginal ‘work’, dreaming, or meditation (and connecting with the Agape, Alaha, Big Love, not the sort that keeps you circling in your mind) have, in hindsight, helped to invite what seemed like Grace and a loosening (or dissolving) of the Saturnine constraints and ‘straitjacket’?
Feel free to share below in the comments, or by direct email if you prefer the more private conversation.
Related Sophia’s Children Inspiration
In This Moment, I Begin Anew: Phoenixing From the Ashes
In The Dark Places of Wisdom (in the Sophia’s Children deep-archives)
It’s Real, It’s Risk: The Dark Night of the Soul and Transformation
Find more Spiritual Awakening, Tough Patch, Dark Night, and Underworld navigation inspiration in these Sophia’s Children Reader Favorites Series:
Spiritual Awakening & Transformative Experiences
Divine Feminine. Feminine Mysteries
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Big Love and Graceful Navigating,
Jamie
Featured Image Credit: A Tree Grows From Rock, Wittenoom Gorge, Australia. Image courtesy of Public Domain Images.

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Lots of love,
August 4, 2016 at 1:46 am
I do think I’ve experienced some of this lately– the sense of being pressed against a difficulty that dissolved in the act of choosing a more spacious view. Of course saying it so simply belies the organic difficulty of sifting through pain and doubt to reach a higher ground where things can be held in greater balance. What you described here does feel timely to me. Thank you for sharing this!
I was thinking, too, that the way astrology escapes the over-simplification into pop archetypes is when we feel the depth of the energies as they crash around in and through our own lives. Because it seems our experiences possess a richness and an immediacy that a purely intellectual scanning of the horizon can’t seem to contemplate…
Peace
Michael
August 5, 2016 at 4:19 pm
Beautiful, Michael. What you’ve shared is very much similar to my sense of it, from the experience of (and being present with and through) it. I also appreciate your perspective about the potentials of over-simplification — as happens with much ‘pop’ (fill in the blank); we find the more profound guidance or insight by digging below the over-simplified ‘surface pavement’ into the rich roots of the wisdom traditions (astrology included).
Thanks for stopping by; I appreciate what you’ve shared. Blessings, Jamie
August 4, 2016 at 4:41 am
Reblogged this on Laura Bruno's Blog and commented:
I have noticed this dynamic so often in my life and was commenting on this very theme to David last week. The times in my life of greatest restriction — my extremely isolating brain injury, the nine months post divorce spent in my Hyde Park (Chicago) ninth floor tower apartment with just me, my growing collection of painted portal doors and Lake Michigan, and most recently, this complete hermit mode in Goshen, a kind of voluntary house arrest in which I rarely leave the two houses or gardens due to the vibrational shock and hangover that arises unless when I leave the properties I completely leave town — each of these times has resulted in the most intense and delightful esoteric study and practice.
I cannot imagine my life without these rich periods of simultaneous restriction and expansion. The expansion clearly arises as a direct result of the restriction — a narrow portal to the Otherworld not unlike Odin hanging on the wind and storm swept tree only to discover the secrets of the Runes from his upside down position and altered state. Once he grasped them, he hopped down and claimed them as his own.
If you find yourself in a kind of Saturnine and Neptunian initiation, take heart as you Break on Through (to the Other Side): the water’s fresh and free!
Thank you, Jamie! ❤️
August 5, 2016 at 4:21 pm
Oh yes, Laura, I can recognize those patterns and byways that you’ve shared, and appreciate the way you’ve shared it. Odin is such a great example, too. Thanks, too, for reblogging this musing and sharing it out with your circles. xo Love, Jamie
August 4, 2016 at 7:13 pm
Love the photos!
August 9, 2016 at 3:58 pm
Glad you enjoyed them, Jeff. The imagery is always a good bit of the fun. 🙂
May 6, 2017 at 9:16 pm
Hi, Sophia, it is synchronicity that I find your article on the Saturn-Neptune square from last year. I was thinking about that square today and how I ended up in my current entanglement with a narcissistic housemate which started with the exact square last September (and was in effect prior to that). I was deceived by two people, actually.
And my healing has come from the teachings of Pisces coaches on YouTube. All three of them are Pisces, no coincidence. I’m also learning how to set boundaries (Saturn) with people who are emotionally unstable and mentally unbalanced. The planets speak to us in symbolism and then that symbolism manifest into concrete scenarios. Yikes!
By the way, I have that exact square in my SR chart from last June so I was ripe for a spiritual lesson, lol.
You mentioned that you were born with a Sat-Nep square. Were you born when Saturn was in Aquarius? I was lucky and got the Water Trine with Saturn and Neptune, not that it helped me much.
May 7, 2017 at 10:11 pm
Greetings, Patricia. Many thanks for stopping by. Oh yes, as you wrote, “The planets speak to us in symbolism and then that symbolism manifest into concrete scenarios. Yikes!” It can be a little bit alarming when that happens. 🙂 The Saturn-Neptune square (in transit) did coincide with a few challenges for me as well – ripe for spiritual lessons. I do have Saturn in Aquarius in my natal chart, so it squares that Neptune in Scorpio, though a lovely water trine between Jupiter in Pisces and Neptune in Scorpio … every bit helps, if only in theory. 🙂 Maybe the trine-Grace flows around less seen (I once heard a rabbi say that one of her favorite prayers was “Thank you God for all the horrible things that could have happened but didn’t.). The betrayals/deceptions in those Saturn-Neptune influences can be pretty heart-wrenching, for sure. I hope you’re seeing those influences wane along with the Square! Blessings, Jamie