How Personal Development & Shadow Work Can Change Your 2020 with Divine Harmony

“One of my favorite quotes is, ‘Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a battle.’ It’s true! Everyone has got stuff going on. And a lot of intense interactions with people, it doesn’t even have anything to do with us, it has to do with whatever they’re struggling with. So, it’s just bringing that compassion and awareness when you’re doing this deep work is like required.”

INTRO:

You’re listening to Harmony, our special guest on today’s episode of the podcast. Harmony is an astrologer, writer and teacher with a Master’s Degree in Depth Psychology. Over the past decade, she’s built a successful online membership site centered around all of her different astrological offerings.

I attended a training she recently offered where she went into great detail about what we can expect in the coming year. I was so intrigued by what I learned from those sessions that I invited her on the show to share some of the things that could be useful to all of us as we prepare to head into the new year.

Harmony and I have a really engaging conversation where we explore many interesting areas such as what’s on the horizon for us in 2020 as we enter a new decade, what shadow work is and why it’s so important for our personal evolution, and how our unconscious blind spots can massively impact our lives, relationships and businesses, and what to do about it.

If any of these things resonate with you, I have a feeling you’ll enjoy our conversation. We don’t waste any time and dive right into things. So, please join me in welcoming Harmony to the show.

As always, I’m your host, Eric Turnnessen, and this is Episode 137 of the Subscription Entrepreneur Podcast.

Eric: So, what are we going to talk about? There’s two options as far as I’m concern. There’s the approach we can take, which is like us having high tea English style where we’re basically like adhering to all the social paradigms and all that stuff. Or there’s like the opening to The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers, where it’s just like within the first 30 seconds, like Gandalf with a sword, diving down a chasm, like attacking a demon on fire.

Harmony: Well, I’ll tell you the second is typically more my energy, I don’t think I do high tea. I’m also very like, I’m able to honestly flow with most things, but my natural inclination is to just get deep first.

Eric: Yeah, me too. So, this should be interesting. I read one of your Instagram post recently and I’m just going to quote it real quick right here. So, you said, “We have a big year incoming. It’s not just a new year, it’s a decade. A new 33 year, Saturn-Pluto cycle, and an even rare Pluto-Eris Square. I highly recommend you be intentional as you close this year out. What are you ready to let go of? Like really let go of. Material things, attitudes, beliefs, relationships, karmic patterns and old paradigms. Anything and everything that weighs on you, hold you down, hold you back and keeps you small. Let that shit go.” So, can we go into this a little bit?

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: In preparation for the new year?

Harmony: So, 2020 is a really, I mean as I said in the post, it’s a new decade. So, we’re not just ending a year, we’re ending a 10-year cycle, and we have some very big kind of conjunctions of planets that when the planets come together, they’re considered the start of a new cycle, and Saturn will align with Pluto, which is a 33 to 38 years cycle. It depends on where Pluto is in its orbit. This time it’s 33 years. So, we’ve only seen you and I, one of them in our lives, I think it was ’82, in 1982, and this is the second one. And so, it’s brand new energy coming in, but this year 2019, has been specifically about confronting anything that’s blocking us from the new cycle that wants to be seated.

It’s all intention, it’s all choice, right? Because sometimes the universe forces us to get rid of things, usually after repeatedly trying to get us to choose that on our own, but then there’s also something to be said for, “Yeah, you have an opportunity to let things go right now. If you don’t, you bring them with you as in baggage into the next cycle.” And however much you’re holding onto that’s not meant to go forward with you, that’s not in the highest, I guess maybe is the better way to put it, whatever you hold on to is going to go into the next cycle.

One of my favorite hermetic maxims, I think it was from Hermes, but it’s something like as above, so below, that type of thing. One of them is as you start, so shall you finish, and as you finish, so shall you start. So, these endings and beginnings, these times, and then the liminal space between the two are really important because the consciousness you bring to endings informs the new beginning that’s going to happen on the other end. If you’re super unconscious with the way you end things, you’re carrying that with you into the new beginning and then that’s going to inform how that new beginning unfolds.

And so, this year we’ve had Saturn and Pluto, actually it was Pluto first in late March, early April. Pluto was on the karmic south node, and then from May to September, Saturn was on the karmic south node three different times. And the south node is, it’s called the karmic south node, it’s the past, it’s what we carry with us. It has good qualities to it, it can be things that we’re really good at, but it also is where we were stuck, stagnant, rigid, holding onto the past, resisting change, repeating karmic patterns, and this year has been a massive confrontation with wherever we’ve been stuck in karmic patterns and rigidity and old paradigms and patriarchal consciousness. It’s been hugely up in our faces collectively, we can see that. But personally, where ever Capricorn is in people’s charts.

Eric: When I hear you talk about that, I visualize basically like we were prodded these three times when the south node came into perspective, like prodded three times with a cattle prod. In like, “Hey, there’s a thing. Hey, there’s a thing. Hey, there’s that thing,” you know?

Harmony: Exactly.

Eric: And so now we’re coming to the end of the year. We’re going back to what you were saying is like, you’ve been shown where these things are now the question is, did you let it go the first time? Did you let it go the sec- you know, now is it going to be the choice to let these things go now? Do you see a common way that people approach this in terms of their level of recognition of these things that need to be let go? Is it generally people recognize them like, how can you know what the thing is? Are there general kind of personal tricks to seeing these things?

Harmony: Well, I mean usually whatever’s really crazy intense in your life is kind of like a sign. You know, it’s not usually the areas of life where they’re going really great because those are aligned, those are fine. But this is the hard part because there’s this psychological thing called denial and it’s really easy for us to deny when things are out of integrity, no longer working, toxic, stagnant, stuck.

So, first we have to kind of wake up in our suffering and our pain. We have to bring consciousness to the fact that like we’re not happy in some situation, if it’s a marriage, if it’s a career path, if it’s a dynamic in a family relationship or whatever, so we have to like wake up in it first. So, it’s kind of hard to say, what’s the trick? Because if you’re conscious and paying attention, it’s really obvious because it’s whatever’s been in your face this year that’s been intense, that’s been dragging you down, and that’s been like… you know?

Eric: Yeah.

Harmony: But I know some people in my life and clients who this year has been about kind of taking off the glasses of delusion to first just be willing to see that something’s not okay. And I feel like 2019 has been this preparation for 2020, and the degree to which you’ve worked with this astrology this year and really did the purging, releasing, letting go, that prepares you to start a new profound cycle in 2020. If you’ve been avoiding it all year, then you know Jupiter actually just moved into Capricorn December 2nd, and he is going to join and he’s going to co-join the south node the first week of January and he’s going to align with Saturn and with Pluto, Saturn very end of the year in Aquarius, a new energy, but throughout the year with Pluto three times.

And Jupiter’s the planet of expansion, abundance, opportunity, and you know positive Jupiter and Capricorn can be exceptional for business and career success, especially if you’re really intentional and setting solid foundations upon which to build because that’s the Capricorn awareness, and you not like doing it in a moment and expecting to win the jackpot. Like you’re earning it with your blood, sweat and tears. And so that’s the positive side though. The shadow is if you’ve been avoiding facing the shadow all year, Jupiter comes in and he brings more fuel to the already hot and heavy fire. He’s like, he can be great and beneficial, but he can also be too much. He can turn the heat on too much. He can explode things metaphorically in our faces if we’ve been like spending the whole year going, “No…”

Eric: Yeah, but it’s not necessarily his fault. It’s like if you haven’t cleaned your pipes an increased pressure is basically going to put more pressure on that blockage, which ultimately is a good thing, but it could have been avoided if there was more maintenance going on.

Harmony: Exactly, and so like the image I get is like metaphorical, literal, spiritual, emotional colonics.

Eric: Great.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: This is the bumper sticker for 2020.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: It’s got them printed. Going back to the glasses of delusion because say we take off our glass of delusion, I know I’ve ended up in this situation before where I take off those glasses, I see the thing, but then I’m like, “Oh, I see that I can fix that. Here’s all the things that I can do to improve that or make it better.” Or, “This is only this way because there are these issues, I’m not doing this thing. That person’s not doing that thing. This thing isn’t the way it needs to be.”

Harmony: Yeah, I know that one well.

Eric: It’s like multiple glasses of delusion.

Harmony: Yeah. And you know, I really believe that there’s a timing for everything too. You know, so like the key is to just wake up in every moment to not beat ourselves up when we didn’t wake up before, when we should have seen it, but then we didn’t or we chose not to. And I, I do a lot of like relationship readings and consultations, and I’ll consult like marriage partners who are really going through it and some make it through, some don’t, but it’s like they’re in the middle of it and there’s something to be said for, let’s say you’ve been married for 10 years and this is the first time you’re having issues like really trying to work through it or if it’s a work relationship, a business partner of 10 years, whatever, and try and work.

We can go too far on either end of the spectrum. We can either go, “Ope, it’s not working, I’m gone.” And then we can go, “Ope, it’s not working, I’m staying forever until I get this to work.” And both of those can be massive reactions to actually either staying to do the work or deciding to leave. Obviously, it’s different for everybody’s situation. But I’ve known a lot of people, clients and friends who’ve been in partnerships or their marriage or business and they go through rough times and they work really hard and then half of them make it through and the relationship survives and the other half eventually get to a place where they realize it’s time to walk away. But sometimes you need to just, you need to know you’ve done everything that you could do, working on yourself, showing up in a particular way, whatever it is. You know, obviously everybody has different situations.

Eric: Yeah, and part of the acceptance angle is that we can’t sit here and say that one outcome is the right one. It’s not that you should stay, it’s not that you should go, it’s there is this aspect of observation and listening and then making that choice. Because ultimately, I wonder this a lot, can we make a wrong decision?

Harmony: I think the answer is yes and no.

Eric: Right.

Harmony: It’s like a paradox because ultimately from the soul and the spirit, no, you can’t do anything wrong because it’s all learning, right? It’s eventually we’re going to get where we’re going no matter how many lifetimes it takes us. But then on the small self like perspective, there is the higher path and the lower path, there’s the path of integrity and the path of no integrity. There’s path of honesty and the path of dishonesty. And obviously karma, people kind of… karma isn’t just like bad stuff, karma is the fruit of your own actions in the past, whether it was yesterday, a week ago, 10 years ago, or 10 lifetimes ago.

So, karma can be good. Like you do positive things, you’re in integrity, you’re honest, you help people, whatever, and you help the planet, and then you have good karma or you have positive rewards coming to you. And then if you in the past have done crappy things, then that’s also going to come as a result.

Eric: But of course, you can never really know that for sure because you may enter into a situation and say, “I’m helping here,” and based on everything that you know, you may be helping. But really from a larger perspective of which we can’t have any insight into, maybe it wasn’t helpful, maybe it led to something, or maybe you did something you felt in a moment just compelled to do something that ultimately you felt bad about after the fact, like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.” But maybe that set off a chain… and that’s why it’s so tricky. It’s like, who’s in –

Harmony: It is very tricky. It all ends up serving our growth, so that’s why it’s all good. And I don’t know about you but I look back on my life and I see many turning points where I would have made different decisions because I now have a different level of awareness and wisdom I didn’t have. I didn’t make that decision.

Eric: Right. But would you have that wisdom without having made those decisions?

Harmony: No, I wouldn’t. But like if I were put in that situation now, I definitely know what I would do, and it wouldn’t be what I did. It’s fascinating though, and this gets really difficult, like this kind of topic when you start talking about people who get sick, who get cancer, especially children. I’ve had a few friends recently who’ve been dealing with their kids getting sick like that, and it’s like, “Yeah, I guess on the big picture it’s all for evolution and growth.” I get that, and small level little self, like it sucks, and it’s not okay. And my background is also shadow work. I’m an astrologer, but I also study shadow work and weave that into what I offer.

Shadow work is very kind of like tantric. It’s like embracing it all. So, not just spiritualizing and going, “Oh, you know, it’s like, yes, this illness is good for me and maybe I caused it to myself or whatever.” Shadow work is also getting into the anger and the rage and the grief and the anger at God for why does this happen? Like to really go into all of that and move through it, as opposed to just kind of floating up from heart chakra up…

Eric: But not creating it, right? Like you go into them if they’re coming up.

Harmony: Oh yeah. Yeah, if they’re coming up, but there’s something to be said. It’s like shadow work’s like peeling an onion. I’ve worked with people where they think that… they’re like, “No, I’ve got no anger, dah, dah, dah, dah.” And then we like go deeper and then, oh, there’s anger. It’s just there wasn’t awareness of anger, you know? And so, it’s not about creating it, but it’s also about bringing more awareness to where it actually could be hiding and operating behind the scene.

Eric: Yeah. That type of activity takes a very surgical hand on your part because I think of psychology which may have certain approaches to dig into things, and it can end up doing more harm than good based on who’s directing that knife, discernment, in terms of what to go into and… there may be a projection there at a deeper level.

Harmony: Yeah, it’s really true. And that’s why it’s so important to have a skilled person assisting you. Like I don’t do full on shadow work, group work, or anything, I’m still studying with my teacher. He actually, I consider him like a precise psychic surgeon. He’s amazing. And I’m still in training because he does. It takes quite a bit of finesse and awareness, and honestly, I think years of experience. He’s 72, so he’s got a lot of years of working with people.

Eric: It makes you think of inception, right? Like the deeper level of the dream you’re in, the more of an impact a second has. A second at level one, it relates to like what? 70 years at the fourth level. So, like the impact when you’re dealing with those more deeper levels within people, the precision just has to be that much more on point.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: Because impacts can be great, and that’s the thing about tantra. That it’s always like if you’re going to take a tantric path, you have to be very conscious of how you lead your entire life, everything that surrounds it. Because everything comes so precise.

Harmony: Yes. I kind of consider, I have this theory and like it’s astrology based obviously, because I’m an astrologer, but the sign of Scorpio, I consider it the sign of the eye of the needle and it relates to tantra. Like if one sign was going to govern tantra, it would be Scorpio. The reason I say it’s the eye of the needle is I feel like we get given many lifetimes with power, charisma, money, sexual magnetism, whatever, and what do we do with it? Do we abuse it? We take advantage of it? Do we abuse others with it? Well then, we’re given many lifetimes where we’re given no power, no money, we’re not beautiful or attractive or whatever. These things that can be like magnets. We don’t have them. What do we do with our life?

And after so many lifetimes of learning how to be in the middle, whether you have it or you don’t, are you living in integrity when you’re very powerful and you have no power? Are you being honest when you have billions of dollars and you’ve got nothing? How are you treating the person on the side of the road no matter what your station in life is? And then when you finally get to the place where you’ve learned how to find that middle of the road, which is what tantra I believe is about, it’s about experiencing everything, the extremes of all of life and how do you stay centered, not disconnected and detached because that’s not what tantra is about. It’s about really engaging with all of life, but not getting sucked in by it, not getting clutched in the grasp of desire, but also not ignoring, denying, avoiding desire.

Eric: Yeah. Because there’s this hurdle that’s at the very forefront of entering into this process and because when I hear you talk about this, to me it’s about true observation and perception of what is, and then response. But before we even get to the point where we can truly perceive what is, have we even thought about why we look at things in a certain way? There’s conditioning that we grew up with where we didn’t choose it, so we don’t question it because it just feels like, “Oh, it’s a part of something that feels just like part of the woodwork.” It’s not to be questioned because it’s just the way things are. But is it the way things are?

Harmony: I was literally just talking about this with my friend because, it’s a long story, but where I live, me and my daughter live with my best friend and her godmother and we all have two cats. She has two cats. We have two cats. And sometimes hers and ours don’t get along. Anyhow, so sometimes hers will hiss but they never scratch. They’ve never like hit them. But Lila, my daughter, will go into a state of panic and she will totally freak out because she thinks that the cats are going to attack. What she doesn’t remember is when she was two, she saw a cat attack our cat, a different cat. It’s like rooted in her unconscious, this massive fear, because literally like we had adopted another cat brought it in and it like full on attacked our current cats. So, we got rid of it, and it was intense, but it’s like her level of anxiety is beyond what’s normal for what’s happening in the here and now. It’s just the one cat’s hissing, the other’s walking away, it’s fine.

But my daughter freaks out, and it’s because in her unconscious, when she was two she saw like a cat fight. And so, it activates this fear and that happens throughout our lives. Like stuff happened when we were little. Maybe we saw our parents fight and now we are afraid of expressions of anger. So, we repress our anger and it’s because we actually saw arguing in our household when we were young and it really upset us, or some of us go to the other end of the spectrum and we argue louder and harder and more intensely because we are trying to dominate because we were getting dominated. That’s what shadow work is about. It’s about going into those early dates to really understand like where did this come from? Is this even really me or is this learned behavior?

Eric: You said understand where it comes from?

Harmony: Yeah. Explore, or you know, maybe not understand because it’s usually in the first seven years, especially in the first couple of years it’s pretty cognitive. It’s more like your adult self finding some understanding, but it’s not going to be your like child self.

Eric: You shine a light on it. So, it’s like this murkiness. It’s like the common vision that comes up in a lot of scriptures, you know, the snake. A rope in the dark looks like a snake, but when you shine a light on it you see it’s rope.

Harmony: Yeah, it’s deep work.

Eric: But it’s essential.

Harmony: I think it is.

Eric: Something of this form, I mean it doesn’t have to be full volume level 10, but there’s some level maybe is 20/20, about there, there’s some level of people starting to look closer at things.

Harmony: Yes. I mean this is one of the things I love is that the words shadow work and shadow are becoming more common place and understood. This year, 2019, in May, June, I did an Astrology & Your Shadow, six week course, where I taught people how to use their chart to see their shadow and then shared embodiment exercises, practices, guided meditations, and then journaling reflection and how to work with what they see, and I’m actually going to re-offer that in January because I had so much positive feedback around that class. People that are ready to do this work are chomping at the bit for guidance to go deep into themselves and to understand their triggers and why they keep repeating these patterns and why this thing keeps getting passed down in their lineages, and they swore they would never be like their mom and then all of a sudden they get to be 40 and they’re just like their mom and it’s like, “Why is this happening?”

And I really feel this kind of work is necessary for the evolution of humanity. All the wars that we’re seeing and just the destruction of the earth, it’s because we’re disconnected from our own bodies, which is earth, the elements of earth, and our emotions, which is the elements of water. Earth and water in astrology are the feminine elements. We’ve defaulted to air mind, and fire spirit, and we’re disconnected from our bodies and our feelings. And that’s what shadow work is all about, exploring.

And I think in order to really tip the scales in the right direction as a humanity for our planet and our survival to be honest, I think this work is necessary. And you know, it starts at the micro level, people doing this work, but then that starts contributing to the shift of the collective. I remember… who was it? Some leader, I’m not going to remember who it was. It wasn’t necessarily an amazing leader, but some leader was reading Carl Jung. He was on some vacation and they had a picture of him reading, and I was like, “We need more people reading Jung and getting to shadow work and getting into this level of awareness. And that’s going to help.”

Eric: Isn’t that what the things that you’re seeing for the outlook of 2020. Isn’t that what’s happening and going to happen?

Harmony: Well, I mean, so again, there’s two modes here. There’s the people who do want to do this and are ready and either have been doing it already or are ready to take the first steps. And then there’s going to be the people that are still very entrenched in denial and avoidance, and I’m not forecasting a collective, everybody waking up to this anytime soon, to be honest, it’s like a trickle effect, but there’s definitely a lot more. It’s hard for me to gauge because my circles are people that are interested in this work. You know, like those are the people that I surround myself with in my life, so sometimes it’s hard to assess.

Eric: The collective is always dictated by the micro. Even the way things look now happen that way.

Harmony: Oh yeah, for sure.

Eric: It has to transform at the personal level. And to make it really simple, it’s really about, I think more awareness of ourselves and responsibility for ourselves and less about the external. And the interesting thing is you’re looking at yourself and becoming more self-responsible too, which will then have an impact on the external. But if you focus on the external and you have no awareness of yourself, then that’s going to perpetuate this sense of needing to find your solace and your peace in controlling the external world, which is never going to happen.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: And it leads to overconsumption of everything from material to emotional to whatever, then which leads to imbalance and all that. So, as long as there’s the need to satisfy what’s happening internally with some external props, then it’s going to continue the way it has been, which is where we are.

Harmony: I get it too on some level, because it’s scary to really go inside and turn towards some of this stuff. It’s much easier to externally focus and be social and go here and go there and buy this and buy that and –

Eric: Is it though?

Harmony: When you first start doing shadow work, I mean you remember when you first got into this? It’s a confrontation with everything you’ve been avoiding.

Eric: For sure.

Harmony: It’s not a walk in the park.

Eric: I’m not talking about the transition point. I mean obviously transitions are always uncomfortable, but once you kind of, you don’t arrive somewhere, but once you start living that way, you realize it’s actually a lot less stressful.

Harmony: Oh, for sure. But I’m speaking specifically to people who haven’t gotten there yet.

Eric: Sure.

Harmony: And often the motivation comes when life completely falls apart. I’ve people that come to me and they’re like, “I just can’t take it anymore. I’m done with my own bullshit.” And then when you finally get to that place, then I think like the angels sing. It’s like, “Yay! They’re ready. They’re done with the pattern. They’re done with repeating them. They’re ready. They’re ready to be led somewhere new.”

Eric: They’re ready to start peeling the onion.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: Does this stuff have a particular relationship to what people end up doing for work? Whether it’s they’re working for somebody else or they’re running their own business. Is there a reflection that we can see in these things that can help guide us?

Harmony: Well, one of the first things that shadow work really helps with is interpersonal relationships, whether that’s your boss or your co-worker, the person that works for you, or your partner, or your children. This level of work and understanding yourself and your triggers and your emotions, makes you more emotionally intelligent and able to relate to people, not from a facade or a persona or an ego, but from the soul and the spirit, which totally deepens connections and transforms relationships or ends ones that aren’t healthy and can’t go there.

So, just simply on that level, because almost everything is relational. I mean even, yeah, I’m an astrologer, I work for myself, but I have clients that I interact with, I have a daughter that I raise. I am constantly in relationship to someone or something around me.

Eric: Even you’re in relationship with the charts.

Harmony: Yeah, and with the stars. Because for me the thing about shadow work is, it’s all about the relationship between the parts of yourself, your unconscious, your ego, your super conscious, your shadow, your autonomous, your whatever else, these archetypes constellated within you. And so, you are like this whole universe of pieces, beings, I don’t know, whatever you want to call it, and this level of work is about getting all those parts of self to relate. And so, it is a deeply relational work, and then it impacts when you’re really doing the work on the inner level, it affects all your outer connections.

And then I would imagine, I mean as an astrologer it totally informs my work because I weave this into what I do. But you know, I would imagine like a school teacher doing this work on themselves, it would make it easier to understand children and their emotions and their acting out and how to deal with them. And I would imagine working in Wall Street in finance, it could influence the understanding of people’s personalities and why they’re acting certain ways and how to communicate in an effective way. I can see it impacting everything to be honest because it’s all about first your relationship to yourself and then your relationship to everything around you.

Eric: We’ve been assuming a lot so far in our conversation. Like we’ve been throwing all sorts of things all over the place. I just want to make sure that people listening to this like have a level set. Shadow work, let’s just cover the basics. You touched on it a little bit, but because this seems to be the theme that’s coming out here, the importance of it –

Harmony: Yeah. I’ll describe what my definition or explanation of shadow work is. For me, it’s all about turning towards what you’re not aware of in yourself. In Psych 101, they’ll show you this image of an iceberg, right? And the tip of the iceberg is above the water and that’s the conscious self or the ego. And then underneath the water, which you wouldn’t know unless you’ve dove down, actually the iceberg is two thirds or more larger underneath. And that’s like the image they give of conscious, unconscious, collective unconscious at the very bottom. This work is all about going under the water. What’s down there? What’s down there that I’m not aware of but it runs me, it controls me? It’s that unconscious conditioning you mentioned.

It’s like, I remember reading, this was years ago, and I don’t know if this was an accurate percentage, but I feel like it was like it said like 95% of the decisions we make in life are run from our unconscious. So, we may think we dress the way we dress because we want to, or we eat the kind of food we want to eat because we want to, or we date the kind of person we date or marry them because we want to, or the career we chose is because it’s what we want to, but actually it’s all these unconscious factors and motivations that are driving the ship, steering the ships, so to speak, until we go down there and look at that.

And so, there’ll be like, I’ve had a client who has been a lawyer all her life and she was a lawyer because her dad was a lawyer and her dad’s dad was a lawyer and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And she’s got the mentality for it. I mean, she’s got a smart mind, but like she just woke up and realized like, “I never wanted to be a lawyer. Like that was actually my dad wanted me to be a lawyer.”

Eric: Right.

Harmony: You know, she’s starting to go, “Oh,” and then of course everybody’s seen this play out in relationships where the dynamic you had with your mom or your dad that was very wounded, you seem to repeat over and over and over again. And maybe these people you date don’t look like your mom or your dad, but after you date them for a while, you realize it’s the same thing you’re dealing with that you dealt with in the last relationship, and the last relationship, and this is all that unconscious conditioning like we think, “No, no, I’m in love with this person. I’m attracted to their soul and their spirit.” And it’s like, “Wait, actually, they fit your wounding.” They trigger your stuff.

So, for me, shadow work is turning towards that which we’ve been in denial of, disconnected from, not wanting to see or look at, and part of this is turning towards our pain, turning towards all of our emotions. Sometimes it’s spiritual circles, there’s like elevation of joy, bliss, love, happiness, and then God forbid you’re angry, then you’re not spiritual. That’s not a depth psychological perspective at all. Like we all have anger and we all want to be in healthy relationship with our anger. And actually, anger can be really important. It’s an emotion that will trigger our need to take action and to set boundaries. Sometimes you’ll see very spiritual people who are very passive and maybe even codependent and they won’t access their anger and so then they won’t get themselves to a place where they will take action and leave the toxic relationship, because they’re always there trying to help, trying to heal, trying to understand, and really anger on top would help them go, “Whoa, this is not healthy. I’m done.”

Eric: That actually touches on something. I got into my last podcast episode talking about words which I feel like is beyond our own tip of the iceberg. There’s a tip of the iceberg on top of that, which is the words that society uses to describe something which we should just accept. Like for the word spiritual for example, means absolutely nothing. If you call and identify yourself as spiritual likely from a fundamental standpoint, you may not be spiritual because you just don’t know. You can’t determine it based on these labels. But we like the convenience of labeling things because if something’s labeled then we can put it in a box, like the “spiritual person” and that story would have an emotion arise, perceive it as anger and be like, “That’s not part of my definition of spirituality. Let me put it over there.”

Harmony: Yeah, that’s my definition of Satan.

Eric: Right. Whatever it is.

Harmony: The Devil, evil, bad. Yeah, and you know, everybody has their own resonance with a word. Like for me, when I say spiritual, I can feel in my being what that means for me, and I know it’s very different than like a fundamentalist –

Eric: Right, and therefore when you say the word, it’s going to feel different to the person hearing it than if somebody else says the word. Because when you use it, it’s not the word.

Harmony: It’s all of me coming through.

Eric: What you’re putting through it.

Harmony: Well, the ancient Egyptians knew this one well because… and the Hawaiians actually before, I’m part Hawaiian, and I’m also very connected to Egypt. In Hawaii, they never had a written language because it was all about how it came through your voice, your HA, your breath, and your tone, and your intention, like all of that came with the word. And so, they did not want written language, they had no desire for written language, but then the missionaries came and kind of made them create one.

Eric: Right. Because written language is good for propaganda.

Harmony: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. And then in Egypt also how you spoke, like your words are spelled, and that’s part of why it’s called spelling. So, you bring, by speaking with your words, you are creating spells in your life, you’re creating energy with whatever it is you’re saying, and you’re attracting that towards you as well, depending on the nature of what you’re saying.

Eric: Right. And again, it’s a word, so people may have a different relationship to spell, but basically another way to look at it is speech, is sound vibration. This is a more scientific terminology, but we’re talking about the same thing, it’s sound vibration. And there have been many studies done like the famous Emoto studies where he did the water crystals and he took photographs of the crystalline structure of water when he would say certain words to water or play certain music around it.

The giveaway is that when you say I love you with intention or I hate you with intention at water, crystalline structure of it changes. And also, I think there was experiments done with just intention and no words and the same impact happened. This is just to loosen the gravel a little bit of like, maybe something more is going on than we actually think. But the thing is the vibrational energy of speech and intention has impact. So, we have to recognize the sword that we’re wielding and be more conscious about how we do it and not just like casually flail it around, you know?

Harmony: Yeah, which is also why I study the tarot. I don’t do it professionally or anything, but I’ve been studying it for years. And if you know the tarot, there’s four elements. Well, it’s connected to the elements, but there’s the Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. The swords are connected to air, which is the mind, and it’s also the voice and communication. They’re the most intense cards in the whole deck because it is such like literally your words and your mind is like a sword and it could cut, it could destroy, it could create war within and without –

Eric: Create trauma for people. If you say something to a child, like you don’t know the impact.

Harmony: Oh my God, yeah. I can think back to my own childhood the little things said to me that I remember and I remember how they impacted me emotionally and psychologically.

Eric: And as a Double Scorpio, I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes in that area.

Harmony: I have too. You find yourself in the heat of the moment and you say something that’s like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just said that.” It’s part bringing awareness. This is also really important for shadow work by the way. It’s part about awareness, but it’s also you really need to have a high level of self-compassion when you’re doing this work, and if you don’t, you need to cultivate that first because you don’t want to shadow work so you can go, “What else is wrong with me? I need to fix before I’m perfect.” Sometimes that’s what’s motivating us to do this work initially, you know? And it’s like, “Wait a second, we need to be conscious and kind. We need to understand that we did the best we could in the level of awareness we had then, but now we have a higher level of awareness. And with that, what choice are we going to make? How are we going to do this, relate to people, speak, whatever?”

And you know, to have that level of compassion for others as well. One of my favorite quotes is, be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a battle. It’s true, everyone has got stuff going on and a lot of intense interactions with people, it doesn’t even have anything to do with us, it has to do with whatever they’re struggling with. So, it’s just bringing that compassion and awareness when you’re doing this deep work is like required. Otherwise, you’re just like self-flagellation.

Eric: What happens with somebody when they reclaim or integrate a previously unconscious aspect of themselves?

Harmony: My experience is I get more of my power back because a lot of times these things, when they’re unconscious, they’re plugging in to other things, they’re leaking out, they’re kind of stuck energies, but when you go and confront it and work with it and then integrate it, all of a sudden it like freeze up dark energy. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a visceral embodied feeling.

Eric: Yeah, because there’s a lot of energy it takes to hold the story around something and to keep it trapped… and not express.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: The feeling of the rise of an emotion is so powerful, but there can be a habit of not even being aware that it’s there and then suppressing it before you even know, and that’s such an intense power of rising energy that it can lead to all sorts of challenges.

Harmony: And then also when you do this work, it really clarifies things in your life. You know, I mean I’ve seen this time and again with friends and clients, it’s like doing this deep work and then all of a sudden really waking up and realizing the life I’m living right now or some aspect of it is not working for me and I need a radical change. You know? And then people get divorced and they leave jobs and they leave places they lived and all of a sudden, it’s just like it’s freed up the energy to make a decision in life as well.

Eric: I haven’t practiced the same exact method… the methods that you’re going through with this, but I feel in the experience that I’ve been going through, one of the first things that happened over a period of time is that distractions would fall away. And I didn’t even know, I didn’t call them distractions before that, but I realized I was engaging in activities unconsciously to distract myself from things that I didn’t want to pay attention to. Common distraction would be like watching something. And again, this is the absolute wrong thing to do with shadow work. You don’t look at the action itself and then say, “Oh well I shouldn’t do that.” No, it’s about, why are you doing it? Being aware of why you’re doing it.

Harmony: Yeah. Are you using the checkout? You know, it’s funny because I hadn’t really thought about that, but I don’t watch stuff. And occasionally, like I had surgery a couple months ago and so I like had to lay in bed for a while. So, I watched a few things. But I remember just going, “Okay, I’ll indulge this right now, but this isn’t like the best use of my energy.” But I’m just laying in bed. So, it was great. But, yeah, now that you’re bringing it up, I’m seeing that that’s definitely like the things that become addiction, because everybody has addictions. So, whether that’s having your wine or beer or watching things or shopping or addiction to relationship.

Eric: Going out, exercising –

Harmony: Addiction to meditation, even actually. You can meditate in an addictive way as a means of escaping. I’ve found over these, especially these last like four or five years that I’ve been doing the really deep work with Robert, I’ve found like a lot of these things that would have previously been things I would maybe default to, have fallen to the wayside.

Eric: You and I are having this conversation, which is pretty, I would say, par for the course for us. But the thing is we’re doing it on a podcast called the Subscription Entrepreneur Podcast. But to me, I’m an entrepreneur. The fact is we have businesses. We’ve been successful in creating our businesses and finding out how it will work. But I find that my relationship with my business is not like a separate thing for me.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: You know, whatever is happening in my business is happening in my life and so working on my business is working on me. So, the question is, how does all this relate to what many people may be trying to do? They’re trying to start businesses, they’re trying to achieve something in their life.

Harmony: Well, I will tell you Jupiter moving into Capricorn yesterday, December 2nd, it’s a year-long transit. Is really good. Like Capricorn is the sign of business success, career, professional standing, life purpose, mission, and Capricorn is ruled by Saturn and Saturn governs the root chakra. It’s all of the grounding foundations. It’s like yes you can climb the ladder of success but let’s make sure it’s solidly anchored on the ground first and then you take one step at a time and build.

So, Jupiter and Capricorn is exceptional for that, especially in December because Jupiter trines Uranus, I think it’s the 15th, any new ideas, inspirations, connections, opportunities for collaboration or whatever that come in this month, can be amazing for you. For people in general, work-wise, career-wise, abundance-wise, Saturn’s very aware of like all the work it takes to get there. Saturn and Capricorn – and the signs they rule – are not about like flash in the pan. Like I do one thing and I’m expecting everything to be boom. It’s more of like a marathon, and understanding you got to pace yourself. And so, we’ve got that kind of activated.

And then in terms of the shadow work, for me, I see, I don’t know, I’ve seen my own inner work informs because of also what I do. Like I’m a teacher, I’m a healer, I’m a sort of like a counselor or whatever, I don’t know, I’m an astrologer, and the level of work I do on myself informs how I can show up for my clients and my students. And for me, it’s constantly about going deeper and also learning more. Like I’m also constantly studying or reading more about astrology because I don’t believe you ever get to a place where you’ve got it. Like, oh, you know it all now, or you’ve figured it all out, or you’re done with your work. I think it’s, again, it’s like that onion, right? And there’s always more layers to peel, but I don’t do that from a place of obligation or expectation, I do it because it genuinely feeds me.

Eric: So, what you’re saying is that the energy of the planets, of Saturn, Capricorn sign, for this coming year is very supportive of these types of endeavors?

Harmony: Yeah. And really like taking what your vision is, but then practically applying it, doing the groundwork to make it be something that can be incredibly successful. That’s like the positive part of this astrology that’s unfolding all throughout 2020.

Eric: A thought just occurred to me that I think underscores, again, the importance of shadow work or looking at yourself is… Even, I think a lot of people, I shouldn’t say a lot because I don’t know what the numbers are, but certain set of people want to start businesses maybe out of a place that’s not an authentic desire of theirs, and maybe if they looked at themselves for a little bit they realize, “Oh, this isn’t actually what I want to do,” or, “I’m doing this because I actually want security and I feel like the way to get it is to start a business because I can’t deal with this or that, other thing that I’d have to do in order to make money or whatever.”

Harmony: When you talk to anybody who’s built something like… Yeah, I’m a full-time professional astrologer now, but when I first got into astrology, this was not paying the bills. I was doing other things. I was also in grad school and I was like slogging away doing other things that I could find value in and that I liked. I wasn’t like, “I hate this. I don’t want to be doing this.” And then I got to a place where now this can support me.

Eric: Yeah. The first six years in MemberMouse, I didn’t make anything.

Harmony: Yeah. Well that way, and I feel like it might’ve been the first… Well, let me see. I have to check it now. I started doing it professionally in 2000… was it eight? I think. Yeah. And so, like 11 years. I don’t know if it was the first six years.

Eric: Well, keep in mind when my situation, I kept reinvesting to hire people. So, it’s different for my business than –

Harmony: Yeah. But there’s something to be said with a six-year cycle because it’s half of a Jupiter cycle. Jupiter’s a 12-year cycle. So, six years previous you planted a Jupiter seed and six years after it was coming to full fruition at the opposition. So, it may actually be around six years for me to, I’d have to go look at it.

Eric: That’s probably a good rule of thumb. I mean, you’re starting this journey now and you may be doing it because you think you want some of this fruit that’s going to come at the end of it, but really are you willing to walk for six years to get it?

Harmony: It’s like raising a baby.

Eric: I don’t know specifically, but I’ve said that before.

Harmony: I do know specifically. This is one of my babies, and my child is my other baby. And those first years they need everything from you, and as they get older they get more independent, they can do their own thing. Parenting takes a lot out of you and so does birthing a business. It’s very similar.

Eric: You may birth it for one reason, but then ultimately, it’s not up to you what you’re supposed to learn from having that in your life.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: So, it tests you in all the ways that nothing else can.

Harmony: And that’s exactly what happens with having kids too.

Eric: Cool. So, I don’t know, I feel like we’ve come somewhere. I don’t know if I have any other trains of thought to go down at this point. And what about you?

Harmony: No, I feel complete.

Eric: Okay.

Harmony: Yeah.

Eric: So, then let’s just do the thing where I ask you… Oh, I know what I wanted to say. You did a webinar on the whole stuff about 2020, which I attended, and I’m not an astrologer, but I still got an immense amount out of that, out of attending that.

Harmony: Thank you.

Eric: I just want to tell people who’ve been listening to this and may be interested in more of the specifics about 2020, like what is that thing? Five hours, six hours of you and this other astrologer going through precisely all the different dates and all the different energies and some of the things to expect. And also, you show people how they can look up their own astrological influences and how it may affect them personally. So, we’ll put that in the show notes.

Harmony: Oh, that’d be great. Thank you. I had a lot of fun with that. I just love teaching. You can see it in my chart too. It’s definitely part of my dharmic path, and that was a lot of fun to put together because it is. 2020 is such a pivotal year. It was two days of workshops or webinars. The first day I think was almost three hours and I think the second day was almost three hours. The first day was about the political, social, environmental, collective impact of the astrology that’s incoming as well as looking at the historical cycles. Remember I said we’re starting a 33-year cycle? So, we explore, what are these cycles? Why are they important? In a bigger picture way. Day two was all about the personal.

Eric: I keep trying to remember from it, but you talked about how there was a certain period of time we’ve been in earth and at the end of next year we’re switching to air?

Harmony: Oh yeah. These are the cycles. So, John, my co-host, did a couple slides on these specific cycles and how the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction goes through the elements and that we’re actually shifting into air. So, it’s not just a brand-new cycle for Jupiter-Saturn, it’s actually, I think it’s… did he say it’s two or 300 years of conjunctions in air? Yeah, it’s big. That’s one of the things that’s fascinating about astrology too because there’s cycles, there’s small cycles, a year long, year and a half –

Eric: A month of the moon.

Harmony: Yeah, the month of the moon, the 24-hour cycle in the day, and then you’ve got these 12-year Jupiter cycles and these 29 to 30 years Saturn cycles, and then you have these 84 year Uranus cycles, and you can get really out there. You can go hundreds of years, thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, and you just see that like life is about this like dance of the planet and the universe and there’s never any moment in time that is precisely exactly like some previous moment because it’s always the unique way that all the planets are showing up in the sky and you know in the heavens right now. But then there’s times where it’ll have energy as something from the past. It’ll be like a touch point into something from the past. It’s really interesting when you dive into studying astrology at that level, it’s mind-blowing.

Eric: Another part of the conversation that I appreciated in that webinar was when you were talking about the discovery of planets and how at each point in time a different planet was discovered that it coincided with some effect on the collective consciousness or the collective activity, whether it’s an industrial revolution or some other big movement. That was really fascinating.

Harmony: And especially because we have a new body that just got discovered in the 21st century, and she’s huge next year – Eris – and we talk about her a lot. I’m really into the goddess and the divine feminine and so I did a lot of bringing that into the conversation in the workshop. I’m glad you were a part of it and that you liked it.

Eric: Yeah, it was fun. Okay, so tell people where they can learn more about you.

Harmony: My website is, Divine Harmony, D-I-V-I-N-E, Harmony, H-A-R-M-O-N-Y.com. I’m an astrologer, I’m a writer, I’m a teacher. I write a lot of free content, and then I have a membership service on my website set up with MemberMouse, and I have content that’s just for members like horoscopes and one to two hour calls on the lunar cycle and the solar cycle with guided meditations and shadow work exercises. And then I teach a lot of classes, astrology, astrology and your shadow. I have new offerings actually coming in this year. I’m really going to be teaching a lot more. It’s definitely my zone of joy.

Eric: So, much to learn from you every time that I talk to you, so I appreciate you taking the time to join and have this conversation.

Harmony: Well, thank you, and I really appreciate you and what you created with MemberMouse because it’s really helped me in measurable ways. I am a full-time working astrologer, which I’m not entirely sure of the statistics, but it’s like not a lot of astrologers can say that that’s all they do. A lot of them will have other jobs and you know, but this is all I do and a big part of launching me into that was when my friend was like, “You should have a membership service.” It was his idea. I didn’t even think of it. And then we found MemberMouse and created that.

Eric: The rest is history.

Harmony: The rest is history, exactly. So, thank you.

OUTRO:

That’s a wrap for this episode of the Subscription Entrepreneur Podcast. I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to Harmony for coming on the show today, and to you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed our conversation and are walking away with some useful insights that will help you prepare for and navigate the new year.

Be sure to visit subscriptionentrepreneur.com/137 for the show notes, links to all researches mentioned, and a full transcript of today’s episode. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or Stitcher, for more interviews with successful entrepreneurs, authors, and experts.

We’ll be taking a short break here at the podcast over the holidays, and we’ll start things up again in the new year. We’ve released a ton of valuable episodes this year, and encourage you to go back and check out some of them that you’ve missed. You can see a full list of our episodes at subscriptionentrepreneur.com.

I hope you have a wonderful and restorative holiday season, and we’ll see you next year.