Mars, Gemini and Our Little One
Linda Carmicheal
I was in my early twenties, sitting inside a training program, totally enthralled by the speaker, as he relayed that these deep existential secrets. Unlocking so many hidden chambers in my mind. I felt like I’d been let in on a secret. He said…
At some point during our development, our life becomes a response to three distinct realizations.
1. There is something wrong here.
2. I do not belong.
3. I am on my own.
Then we go on to fashion our life in response to these.
We get married because there is something wrong, we choose our profession because there is something wrong.
We develop weird relationships full of hooks and distortions in response to feeling as though we do not belong. And bizarre coping strategies to numb the pain of being on our own.
If we sit with it long enough we can see our entire life is a response to our agreements. Until we become conscious of them.
Only these beliefs, and the agreements we made out of these core distorted beliefs that come online during development, are not necessarily true. We have it that they are already, always, true.
And we go on to bully, and dominate ourselves and others because of them.
Mars is a planet and archetype of action.
Gemini is the planet of youth and young dynamics.
Mars Retrograde in Gemini may reveal to us how we fashioned both our inner and outer world based on the beliefs that came on line during development.
The thing is, that “we become”. We become our beliefs. So instead of there being something wrong here. We become “I am something wrong” and continue to build our lives based on that distortion.
We enroll in endless self work. Take pilgrimages, and lie on therapists couches because something is wrong.
We continue to measure our levels of satisfaction with life, from the very lens that I am something wrong. Leading to the already, always, foregone conclusion that satisfaction is elusive, because “I am something wrong.’ And it won’t be until I am something right, that I can have, be, do, “enough”
We become “I do not belong”. It’s not that belonging isn’t on offer in some areas.(truth) It’s that we inherently do not belong.
We become “I am on my own”. It’s not that we are sometimes on our own, and responsibility is simply mediating when we need support and following through. It’s that adequate support could never be on offer because “I am on my own”
Use this period of Mars Retrograde in Gemini to sit with these agreements.
Ask yourself, what age was I when I realized that “something is wrong here”. It could be as simple as Mom being late for school pick up that brought that belief online. The “What happened” is not important. It’s the response that we are looking for. What we have done in response to “I am something wrong”? If we pull the thread far enough out, we can see an entire life infrastructure built on that agreement.
Because it’s true, there was something wrong. However, it became that WE are something wrong.
It’s true, belonging isn’t always on offer in every space we show up too. But we became “I don’t not belong”. What did we DO in response to becoming “I do not belong”?
It’s true, we are sometimes on our own. It’s part of being alive. But it’s also not ever as true as the belief, “I am on my own”. What did we “DO” in response to believing, I am on my own.
How did we get our needs met in response to being something wrong, not belonging, and being completely abandoned?
Landmark is my first lineage. And in Landmark, we call the responses to these three core beliefs, “winning formulas”.
They are the strategies we employ to get by in life. To get our needs met.
I remember doing this practice in my first training, and realizing that to get belonging, I developed a strategy of lying to make my life “seem” more interesting. It wasn’t until my mid twenties that I stopped embellishing for the sake of belonging.
Or I’d lie to “not get in trouble” so I didn’t lose belonging and connection in relationships because I didn’t want to be seen as “bad”.
Some people start fights, some people fawn, some people freeze. Some people rescue, some blame. You get my drift.
These strategies go deep. And even though I’ve been in this work, and I know that life, and all of our petty dramas are essentially empty and meaningless when we are operating from this level, I can still see where I get hooked by these.
Note: This is not an invitation to bypass. It is an invitation to clean and clear. To pull apart thread by thread, then have the emotion if it’s necessary. Or to see, if perhaps, we are being hooked into emotion where it isn’t necessary.
It’s an invitation to learn to hold our little one in these sticky spots. It’s an invitation to transform these tender spots into something more grown up. It’s an invitation to not hook to get connection. And, it’s an invitation to see where we are, and love ourselves. To give ourselves a ton of compassion in these spots because we all have them.
