One of the challenges I run into often with clients who  come to me for Visioncrafting® work is a complex combination of emotions relating to success in our chosen field.  On the conscious level we want to be successful writers, business people, artists.  But lurking in the subconscious are old patterns and belief systems that keep us from bursting out and claiming the sense of accomplishment that rightfully belongs to us.

Fortunately, we can address those patterns and change the tapes that continually reinforce those belief systems once we can identify them, but digging them out of the subconscious isn’t always easy.  Fortunately we have a map in the form of a birthchart that helps us to discern where these patterns likely originate but then the rest is up to us.

I was just selected to speak at the United Astrology Conference 2012.  This is the biggest astrology conference in the United States – members of several different organizations convene every few years to illuminate each other.  This conference draws the best of the best so when I received the email informing me that my application to speak was accepted I was shocked.  Like other astrology bloggers I consider myself an outsider in the world of astrologers.  I don’t hold a certification, I haven’t published an astrology book … yet!!  Those of us who blog instead of publish books are renegades – we seek our own path to public recognition.

My friend April evidently also was shocked by her being selected to speak at UAC:

I’m not a big name, I don’t have a gift for schmoozing influential people, I haven’t spoken for a lot of astrology groups. If you have any two of those things going for you, and you keep at it, I’m willing to bet your odds in the future will be much better than mine were. As for me, taking nothing away from the hard work I’ve done in the last 20 years to establish myself in astrology – my progressed Sun is trining Jupiter this year, and to be honest, I think I just got lucky. That’s not to say I haven’t worked to earn it; it’s just that a lot of the people who didn’t get chosen have worked hard, too.

This is one thing I hate about competitive sports.  A team can work hard all year, have a great season, and then in one game lose everything.  But I digress…

I have the Moon in Leo, so you know there’s a big part of me that longs for fame.  My fifth house Sun echoes that need to seek experiences that will enlarge me and give me greater self-expression.  However, Pluto conjoins my Moon, which has a tendency to make one afraid to peek out the door of one’s secure space, and Saturn conjoins my Sun with its relentless pressure of inadequacy.  I’ve been an astrologer since the mid-1980s, yet it was years before I felt confident  enough to put myself out there with any real comfort.

For some reason this isn’t true of my life in real estate.  Perhaps it’s the Saturn component, and the fact that my Mars is in Capricorn, but I have always felt comfortable achieving in my real estate business.  I have practiced what I call Visioncrafting® for twenty years now and it has helped me to create great success in that world.  It is only recently that I have been able to unlock my fears around success in astrology.

I like to think that I’m perfectly happy in my small astrological world, where I speak occasionally at the local NCGR chapter and write my blog where face it, I am pretty much an anonymous face.  But SOMETHING made me send in my application to speak at UAC, and I suspect it was the part of my soul that knows without a doubt that practicing astrology is my true path and it’s time to stretch out of my comfort zone.

Like April, I have some guilt around having been chosen.  To renew the sports analogy, lots of other astrologers have played an excellent game all year and my winning one of the coveted 30 spots for new speakers means that 210 others did not.  But guilt is one of the major monsters that can prevent us from living the life of our dreams.  It encourages the idea of scarcity and keeps us from continuing to expand and grow.

Chiron and Neptune have been transting back and forth over my midheaven for the past two years or so.  The midheaven is the point that refers us to the calling that we feel from the soul to impact the world.  Typically this is considered to be the career, but it is not always the job that we hold.

In the early days of the Chiron/Neptune conjunction I wrote:

Chiron facilitates this aspect of soul work by uncovering any wounded places that have been left unresolved so that we can be freed of the blocked energy that our unreleased wounds hold within the body/mind/spirit system. Neptune assists by reminding us that there is a world of experience that lies beyond the boundaries of the material world.

As Chiron and Neptune complete the passage over my Midheaven, it appears that it is time for me to start opening those doors to that world of experience and walk through them.