Recently I had an opportunity to attend free of charge a weekend seminar geared toward helping holistic healers take their practices to the next level. I thought, sure, I’m open to learning more about marketing and talking about my work, already a recent area of focus.

What I encountered was, in essence, a fake-it-til-you-make-it party. It was run by a motivational speaker clearly instructed to, before anything else, sell the attitude and other seminars and products the company offers. My process in my own time of confronting why I don’t have as large a practice as I might wish has involved (in what ways and why I keep myself where I am) a choosing of increased awareness of my thoughts and beliefs. I see this as serious work that anyone can choose to do, and I found myself in what felt like a cheerleading camp atmosphere. I knew within the first ten minutes that I wasn’t going to be able to muster enough oomph, pizzazz, verve, enthusiasm or juice to get any of the spirit awards that might be coming later.

I found myself unwilling many times to take in what was being said, and I repeatedly took time to ask myself why I was resistant. Natally, I have a retrograde Saturn in Gemini in the 9th (trine my Mars-Uranus in Libra in the 1st, sextile retrograde Chiron in Aries on the Descendant, quincunx my Scorpio 2nd-house Sun, and opposing my Sagittarius 3rd-house Moon-Mercury-Neptune). This in me can be a voice that’s sure that it knows best (or, sometimes, everything), so I’ve learned to be very clear about why I have resistance to new ideas when I do.

My resistance, as it turns out, had to do with the fact that nothing that was being said had any basis in reality. It was geared toward appealing to the latent greed in the holistic healers in the audience, not toward guiding them to understand why they have resistance to taking their work to the next level. What can be found sometimes among healers is the perception that offering the service is important, and receiving money for it is not. And, as it happens, the next level according to this company and trainer is a six-figure income. I have nothing in principle against six-figure incomes, but the reality of being a healer has taught me that people need to be healed and to learn how to heal themselves when sticky things come up, not to be pumped up by a cheerleader quoting the astronomical hourly rates of those either running the company or available for consultation three times monthly during a conference call for not $97 per month, but a mere $47 per month.

Thinking about this astrologically, it’s all about a misunderstanding of Jupiter: Fake it til you make it. Jupiter is about belief and risk, expansion and imagining a better future. Convincing others, selling, is Jupiter/Sagittarius work, and I walked in there practically embodying Saturn (in addition to Saturn in the 9th opposing my Sagittarius planets, I have Jupiter in Capricorn, Saturn’s sign), in many ways the opposite. In my work on my beliefs and thoughts in my personal practice, I’ve had to introduce discipline in order to choose awareness of what’s going on. Sometimes I’d much rather be watching things blowing up (...in an action movie), or scurrying out to the beach for a bit, grabbing snack, calling a friend – anything but sitting down with myself to understand myself more.

I don’t advise that Jupiter be shelved and Saturn installed as king. I do advise that Saturn energy be called in to discipline and structure after the vision of the better future of Jupiter is grasped. I’m reminded of two dear friends of mine, both Sagittarians with Neptune conjunct their Suns, who spent several years working with the grandest visions they could come up with, but without solidifying their foundations in order to achieve them. After these years of frustration, they began to get real and realer about what was really happening, and why, and how they kept themselves where they were. Each undertook several new ways of viewing themselves and committed to honestly working with what they might see. Bigger things have begun happening for them based on this foundational work, and neither of their Jupiterian natures had to be wrangled, forced into an antithetical mold or exchanged for store credit; they simply needed to do some work to get themselves where they wanted to be.

This is how it will happen for each of us. Jupiter is the visionary, the risk taker, and Saturn is the task master, the actual doer. Nothing of import can happen without the two working together. While our stereotypical notions of the two energies have them being absolute opposites and not possibly friends, the reality is that each of them benefits greatly from the partnership: Jupiter can’t build a better thing, and Saturn can’t envision it. Each of us needs to give air to each function in order to get where we’re going. And the process needs to be iterative. After Jupiter offers the plans, Saturn might return info on the reality of circumstances that requires revision of the plans. A back-and-forth is completely normal and, in fact, the healthy way to go about it. And if cheerleading somewhere along the way is called for, great. I might request leave to bring forth a modified form that makes no noise, doesn’t involve clapping inanely or blowing kisses to others in the audience, or standing up with a flourish after I make a mistake and announce to the room how sexy I am. Hey, wait a minute...given that one voice of mine thinks it knows everything, that might come in useful....