Self-Helped

Mercury stations direct in Aries

I love self-help books.

There is something so magical about browsing in a sea of white block letters on brightly-colored covers, and I can feel the simple, straightforward and inspirational messages wash over me like gentle waves of wisdom. I especially love surfing through self-help books at airports, perhaps because they are inherently places of transition. As I awkwardly thumb through pages with a pack of peppermint gum in my palm, I know that I am very literally preparing to take off to a new point in space and time.

My favorite kind of self-help book is the kind that gives it all away in the title. For example:

You don’t have to wonder what this book is about. You get to experience the full brilliance of its wisdom in an instant, and you can then choose to spend time soaking in as many of the poignantly personal anecdotes as you need to convince your rational brain that it will work for you, too.

I love buying these books as much as I love never reading them. In fact, my brilliant best friend

Rachana Bhide

and I have an imaginary library that is filled to the brim with scholarly tomes of self-evident self-help. We publish new titles with reckless abandon as our lives deliver perfectly-tailored morsels of pithy comical insight, and our launches are inevitably greeted with guffaws. We laugh because it is ludicrous to think that a single sentence could meaningfully shift our perspective on life, and we laugh even harder because it does.

These past weeks have left me brimming with so much greater awareness of how I think and communicate that I can no longer keep my self-help to myself. So without further ado, welcome to my very first public book launch:

Everything about this title feels so resonant with my present life experience, and what I love most is that I don’t have to explain it to you. In fact, maybe the deeper message of this book is that you don’t ever have to explain to someone else what you already know to be true. After all, the only person responsible for living your life is YOU. No matter what anyone else says, feels, does or thinks, you have the final word on what you do.

Because of the different roles we play in relationships and the blinking blind spots in our perception, the people around us are operating with necessarily incomplete information about who we are and what we do. So they may not always understand our choices, and sometimes the clearest path forward to our destiny is to let their chatter lovingly fall by the wayside. If you know that you are living in alignment with your own individual version of the truth, then you have every right - perhaps even every obligation - to move forward with it.

It strikes me that the cosmic weather is perfect for this book launch. As I am writing this (now yesterday for you), our cosmic mouthpiece Mercury is concluding its three-week journey backwards through the audacious sign of Aries. Planets that are stopped in the sky have a much bigger imprint on our temporal experience, and their messages are are momentarily blessed with energetic exclamation marks. In this case, Mercury is now emerging from a period of intense internal reflection and primed to broadcast its insight into the cosmos.

Aries is a place of no apology, and it offers Mercury the chance to assert self-knowledge without hesitation. This month’s retrograde has brought Mercury into communion with both Venus and Chiron, respectively sweetening the sharpness of the Aries sword and adding a soulful, maverick quality to the boldness of the Aries spirit. So after so much time revisiting, reassessing and repatterning how our words connect with our deeper truth, it is no wonder that Mercury is chomping at the bit to reveal its learnings in a flash of brilliance.

Maybe my book title was born from this flash. As I say these words - I know what I’m doing, and I’m doing it - they fill me with clarity and confidence. I remember that it’s okay for me to go my own way, that I don’t ever need to say I’m sorry for singing the unique tune of my destiny. And I want to share this feeling with those around me. I want to reassure them that there’s no need to hold onto any concern or chagrin about my actions, even if they cannot see or understand how my next move makes sense to me.

So I invite you to add this title to your own mental catalog, to pull it down and massage its spine whenever you need to remind yourself that you’ve got this. And if you’d like to get more in touch with your primal power, remember that you’re also invited to join me (live or later) for the next (free) Energy Clearing for Empowerment on Tuesday, April 30 at 8:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Eastern / 4:30 pm UK / 5:30 Europe. You’ll find the Full Details below, along with the latest Weekly Oracle.

Love,

Patrick

PS: Extra special thanks to my friend (!) and favorite self-help author

❤️ Jenny Blake

! I have bought more copies of your books than I can count, and your brilliance never dulls.☀️

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Energy Clearing for Empowerment

Tuesday, April 30 @ 8:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Eastern / 4:30 pm UK / 5:30 pm Europe

It’s fascinating how we learn to fear our own power, and how readily we can accept - even cling to - beliefs that limit our inherently infinite ability to choose how we experience our lives. This month’s Third Quarter Moon comes to us from the sign of Aquarius (check out this Aquarius primer video), where we have the chance to see how rigid mental structures shape our worldview. Pluto’s presence in this heavily emphasized sign gives us a chance to pull back the curtain even further, and invites us to open ourselves to greater trust in the darkness of the unknown.

I’ll identify an energetic block to release for all who sign up, and the group effect will magnify our experience. Register to clear and join live or watch the recording later - you’ll get the full benefits either way. All are welcome; it’s free of charge and donations are always accepted to support the work.

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Weekly Oracle

This week, we pause to integrate our Mercury retrograde experience. We look at the ways that confident self-assertion can help us to release fear, doubt and mocking, and we embrace the power that compassion and compliments have to change lives. We also reflect on where we can be a catalyst for healing, and we connect with our inner spark to do just that.