NOTE: audio file for the book chapter starts at 11:01.254 “The unexamined life is not worth living.” ~Socrates (via Plato, Apology ) Losing Friends. Does it hurt? This Saturday we have a new moon in Virgo and I want to share chapter 11.3 from my audiobook The Nature of My Reality that carries the title, Embracing the pulse of life: Losing Friends. Does it hurt? pages 144-150. I wrote that chapter very close to the Virgo new moon last year that happened on September 2nd, 2024. That lunation landed in my 8th house right on top of my natal Pluto at 11 degrees of Virgo, and it opened a cycle that unfolded through the long Venus and Mars retrogrades of this year. Those retrogrades shaped everything. Venus and Mercury retrograded from Aries back to Pisces in my second house back in April, reconnecting me to value. Mars in Leo retrograded to Cancer from the 7th to the 6th house and showed me how I use energy, how I work, how I embody, how I take care of the little things. Together they created the sacred ground for what I am facing now: anticipation of Pluto crossing my Ascendant around my birthday in 2026. Pluto across the Ascendant is a once-in-a-lifetime transit. It does not happen in one day, and it does not happen to everyone. It is a process of many years of shedding skin and becoming a new person. For me it began when Pluto entered my 12th house back in 2011. Since then it has been about bringing light to what lies in my unconscious, exposing hidden patterns, understanding the roots of relationships, and moving through individuation with integrity by embodying my own sense of value. It has been slow but it has been steady. This is why the last Virgo new moon matters so much. It was preparation. At the time Jupiter was conjunct my Venus in Gemini, Mars was about to connect to my North Node in Cancer, Saturn was transiting over my Chiron in Pisces where the North Node is right now in the second house, and Chiron was on top of my Mars in Aries in the third house. That structure of my chart was lit up: 8th house, 7th house, value, intimacy, wounding, healing, 2nd house. It was a threshold. Period. This year has been about relationship with the unconscious, with Pluto, and about preparing for the Ascendant passage. Pluto is also squaring my Jupiter long-term, and it started squaring my Sun and my Mercury. So this is going to be a few years of showing up as a new person with updated values and grounding myself in my own experience. Also very important has been the passage of the nodal axis on my 8th–2nd house axis, and Saturn and Neptune squaring my nodes have opened a window for me to deeply create an environment where outside feedback is no longer craved and outside validation is no longer needed. An inner space has shaped a vessel in motion that flows in trust. Yes, I know the image alone is vague and poetic, because I can only feel it. Now moving from that threshold into the present, I’m writing because tomorrow’s new moon in Virgo is the first one of this month, and the next will be on the 21st of September, and that will be an eclipse where Saturn is going to be in opposition at the last degrees of Pisces. I’ve been contemplating a lot this week what it means where I am and why I’m speaking of last year and the next—because I see time as a long-term arc. The passage of Pluto across my Ascendant is not going to happen from day one to day two. It begins with the first passage on my birthday in 2026, then it will hover back and forth on that critical point until finally entering fully into my first house in January 2028. So I’ve been contemplating longer arcs in my life to understand where I’m progressing. Uranus left Pisces, moving into Aries in March 2011. Neptune entered Pisces that same year, along with Chiron, which stayed until 2018. Jupiter did a brief stint in Pisces in 2022, expanding the themes there. The nodal axis was reversed approximately nine years ago, from November 12, 2015, to May 9, 2017: North Node in Virgo, South Node in Pisces. Neptune was joined by Saturn for the last three years, leaving briefly for Aries in the spring of 2025, only for both to return to Pisces for a few months this coming fall, until they finally make the much-anticipated conjunction at the archetypal degree of zero Aries—the reset where our individual potential can become more than just a dream. Pisces is the end of the cycle, the place where we all return to source, and that is what we are progressing to. So what am I talking about here? Well, one of the things I see is that this decade, that long decade, has given us a lot of pollution and lack of clarity, especially in everything that is labeled “spirituality.” I think there is a problem with that word. We all have a spirit incarnated in our body, so somehow we all live with spirit. What changes is the level of awareness. Calling yourself a spiritual person is an oxymoron. It is like calling yourself a physical person or a mental person, because in doing that you e
