36: The Astrology of Flow State - Writing Alone With Your Chart

Hi everyone, but I'm just gonna let her rip. So this is the first ever solo episode of parts and charts, obviously with KP. That's me. Chelsea Owens, the other co-host of this podcast is on summer vacation. And I'm not gonna disclose her whereabouts or her do-about app, but I'm very excited for her to experience what she's about to experience. So because we couldn't get together before she went off on her pilgrimage, I thought I would share what's on my mind. So in my daily life, I am an instructor for undergrads in college writing and research or critical thinking depending on the course. And so I'm in this mindset of thinking about how to make one of the hardest things a human can do accessible and bite-sizable, which is writing. I was thinking before I started recording that I do believe writing is hard for every single person, even if you have a talent for it or an interest in creative writing or what have you. And I would like to talk to you a writer who disagrees with me that it's easy for them because it just is one of those parts of human life that takes all of us and it's process oriented. It's just, it takes so much of us. And I think it's interesting to talk about in the context of a podcast related to astrology and internal family systems. So I'm gonna give a disclaimer first and chase this is not your jam and you want to go to the next episode. I will be talking to people who are interested in working with their birth charts, their astrological information in order to get into flow state easier or to get into the writing mind with more ease. And also I think this would relate to people who work with their parts in conversation with each other in order to get to a place where you can express yourself clearly in a way that feels authentic to yourself. If this is not your jam, I will take no offense if you're like, okay, click next because it's a little bit of a different topic for us. Okay. So again, I'm just gonna let her rip and share what's been on my mind. A few days ago, I was talking to my dad who is a pastor. So he writes sermons fresh every week. And he also has been an athlete to the point where he's talked about flow state when he was like playing basketball in a game. And he said a lot of the other players that he knows have gotten into that state of just like peak experience. Like you are, you're really just flowing with the energy and you can do anything that you decide to do. It's just so natural to you. And I have honestly never had a physical flow state experience. And I am excited to figure that out for me in my life. But it, it shows up for me when I'm writing or when I'm in session with people where I just feel like the energy is moving through me is my body, my life is the vehicle for energy to work. And it's, it's so exciting. It's exciting enough that I want to recreate it as often as I can. So if you're listening and it's not writing for you or it's not being in conversation with a client for you, like maybe there is, no, not maybe every human has access to this. So I'm just, keep that in the back of your mind, what your activity is that gets you into that flow state. So I'm thinking about how writing requires some level of flow in order to truly get to the bones of what you want to say. And I'm thinking about that term paper that you have to write when you're 18 years old in college or that email that you really don't want to write to the boss you're about to express that you want to quit, like that kind of stuff. And I'm also talking about writing novels. I'm talking about writing essays and how incredibly important it is to exercise that type of thinking and that type of activity. But how do we use astrology to help us? So in the same conversation with my dad, I was talking about how I approach astrology, kind of from the philosophical framework that are foundations that we all have an energetic natural state. The moment we were born, the conditions of our energetic patterns were set in place. And every moment of our life in some way is working with that energy, the energetic blueprint, what do we want to call it? Or we're working against it because we're taught to do certain things in a certain way. And hopefully we all get to the point where we realize how we do the same thing in our natural way that feels good to us. And hopefully also we get to the point where we can stretch what's natural to us and balance maybe what is out of balance in our nature. So that's where I'm going, coming with, coming at this with in thinking about astrology is that we have these skills and talents built into us. We have these deficits as well. That we're working with against, you know, massaging all of this. So keeping that in mind, I may say something like if you have a venous placement in a certain house, then you really should listen to that natural energy in lean in and maybe discard some of the good quote-unquote industry knowledge or practice. But maybe in your learned experience, it has been more helpful for you to lean against your nature so that you are more well-rounded. So use your discernment, of course. But I want to talk about first is there are two planets in everyone's birth chart that can give us some information on what we have a lot of natural energy for. And that's where our sun is placed and where our Mars is placed. So if we think about the sun, the sun is consciousness, the sun is our like natural luminescence. It's where we view the world from a certain perspective, a certain set of desires and focus. And so if we're thinking about someone who was born with a Virgo Sun, there's just generally a predisposition for looking at the details of things, getting close and understanding how things work, making things work in a more adaptive and careful way. That's just the predisposition of someone who was born during Virgo Sun. This in the way that we can think about energy is that there is more of a capacity for a focus and lifetime level of interest in something. And so if you see that you have, let's say, a sun in Taurus in the ninth house, we can assume that you have endless, in very strong terms, endless energy for thinking about the philosophical, that's ninth house stuff. Thinking about God, that's ninth house stuff, travel, ninth house stuff, other people's cultures, other people's philosophies. And also you may have endless energy for the body, for essential pleasure for art, that's Taurus stuff, where maybe you don't have as much endless energy for other archetypes and kind of kinds of human experiences. So that's one thing that we can look to in our birth charts to give us some clues as writers, as artists to work with it. So for myself, I have Alie Brisson in the tenth. I have endless energy for thinking about other people and conversations and relationships, especially when it comes to the external world of effort. I am so endlessly interested in how people can work together to make change, to positive change, hopefully. Neutral to positive change is what I care about. I'm endlessly energetic toward thinking about how we can cooperate toward making a better future. Is it another way to freeze that? And that has helped me as a writer of like, okay, if I'm having a hard time with the scene or this chapter or whatever, okay, I'm going to remind myself, how can I make this endlessly interesting to myself? It has to do with people, it has to do with effort, it has to do with the external world. Okay, now about Mars. Mars has so much more to do with actual energy, like, passion, the kinetic flow of energy in our body. It's more of a physical energy, unless of a consciousness energy, but it definitely has that kind of sense of like, you can go for hours in this part of your life in this way. So for example, let's say you have Mars in Capricorn in the second house. Second house has a lot to do with skills, talents, developing skills and talents, the physical realm, material realm, trust, safety. It's very, it's a very physical house in that it's everything that supports our life, and that can include income as well. So we could say, as a writer, if you're losing interest in your project, you need to get back into that like, that oomph energy, the Mars energy. Maybe it's time to like physically move your body. Maybe it's time to think about writing with the physical realm or maybe you are really really interested in finances and how that relates to whatever you're writing. You just have endless energy toward thinking about working on doing something with the material realm. The Capricorn energy would add more of this like long term thinking. So maybe if you're thinking about finances, it is like stocks, bonds. It's like long term investments, types of things. If you're writing fiction, maybe you really want to focus on the historical implications of actions of your characters, that kind of thing that have to do with material realm. So I'm going to repeat that a little bit. If you're feeling a little bit exhausted or you're losing interest in your writing, or you're 18, you're 20, you're in college and you are having a really hard time writing your term paper that you just have to crank out and you have that second house Mars. Move your body, talk about the body, something with material realm. Make it interesting for yourself. You probably don't want to write about something that is super, super conceptual unless you can apply it to the material realm, depending on what else is happening in your chart, of course. Okay, so that's about energy. I also just want to say this is like, I say this to everyone all the time about writing, you can't sit down and focus and put words on the page unless you have moved your body. And if someone wants to disagree with me, comment me in the comments, but I am someone who naturally sits still, I've sat in the first house. I sit still and I look at the window and it was so hard for me to write, but novels I wanted to write in my 20s because I didn't move my body before I sat down, meditated and wrote. So since I've learned, I have to run, I have to yoga, whatever it is, I have to in some way physically massage my experience before my mental space can open up. This may not be related to Mars, it's very related to Mars in my chart for reasons I don't have to get into, but I think it's such a human thing. So I just want to mention that. And also your Mars placement gives you a lot of information about how your body likes to exert energy, likes to move kinetic energy through your life. If you have an air sign Mars, that's Gemini, Libra or Aquarius, you probably want to do something that is like a study, like you want to study yoga while you're doing yoga. That's how I translated my Libra Mars is. I like to learn and converse about movement. And so I often do walk-in talks, I often do exercises that help me learn about muscular systems because it's just, I just had to accept it has to be in some way intellectual or mental in order for me to care to move my body. And that has been a journey. Okay. I want to move on to Mercury. I think I want to do a whole thing on Mercury soon. I spent the spring really deep diving on Venus and I just feel called to talk about Mercury a lot right now. So Mercury, especially if your writers is very important, but we can talk about Mercury in so many different ways. And I in lieu of spending literally three hours talking about every single thing with Mercury. I'd like to focus just on the way that Mercury is a filter, a mental filter for all of us. And so back to the idea of that we have these natural patterns in our birth chart, the moment we were born, there are things that are happening with Mercury that will always be true for us as individuals, even though the world and our environment is constantly shifting and changing. We always have this kind of baseline filter. And so with your Mercury placement, the sign your Mercury is in, gives you a really good idea of how you are translating all information given to you through the billions and billions of bits of information that you get every second. So let's say you have a Mercury in a fire sign that's Aries, from Sagittarius and Leo. There is going to be this filter of energy, of inspiration, of maybe philosophical or spiritual light and excitement. There's this penchance for fire sign Mercury is to go for what is inspiring first, as opposed to what is practical or all those other adjectives that we can use. Going from there, this is something to think about too. If you're teaching or you're writing something for someone else to read, doing the work of trying to anticipate that person's filter, I think makes you a much stronger writer because you're adding all of this different facets to the mix. And that's where like really interesting conversation and synthesis happens when you are aware of your own filter and you're aware of your audience's filter. And you can never, ever, ever understand what is happening inside of someone else's mind. But the work that you do, the imagination work that you do, of trying to anticipate that person's filter makes your writing more interesting and more useful and helpful, you know, inspiring, whatever it is. The thing to think about with the filter of Mercury is when you're in relationship with someone, let's say you have a child and their Mercury is in a very different sign than yours. The more you get to know that your child's filter, the more you can speak more clearly to them and the more your filter expands as well. So where am I going with this? I only really know my own experience. So I'm going to say that I have Mercury and Libra in the 10th house. I have a lot of Libra energy in the 10th house. So what I know about my filter is that I, every time information is given to me from my environment, from the external world, it is filtered through this assumption of Libra energy, which is fairness, justice, the intellectual, the beautiful, the graceful, the conversation partner, the intimacy, the connection point. But when I'm writing, I'm currently trying to write war scenes with lots of murder and all these things that are actually really difficult for me with my filter to write because my filter wants connection and grace and peace. So I'm finding that when I'm writing war scenes, I'm writing it kind of in like a Jane Austen way. Like I'm writing about the interpersonal experience instead of the necessarily the violence and the war armor and that kind of stuff. And so I'm trying to train myself to be more maybe Martian in my Mercury's filter and it's difficult. But I think that is interesting to me as I'm embarking on this pretty strange project for me, which is very bloody and very, there's just almost all of the topics are awful and seedy and really difficult to write through for myself. Because of my filter. Okay, but I didn't think I didn't complete that thought. I think it's interesting to have someone with my filter write about these really difficult things. I'm hoping that's true for whoever reads this in the future. So applying that to you, maybe you're you're approaching a project, a writing project that feels so beyond your filter, but also maybe your Mercury sign makes you a really interesting person to be writing about that stuff because of your perspective. I feel like there's more there that I wanted to share, but it's passing. So I'll leave it there. If you're listening, I'm curious if you know your Mercury sign and if you feel connected to that archetype as the way that you you make sense of the world, that's Mercury does a lot of sentence making for us. That's one way to think about Mercury is that like we have to put this information together in a way that we can understand it in order to make decisions and move forward as humans. And so that's what I mean my filter is like, okay, this your Mercury is going to filter it in this way so that we can keep moving forward making memories, making connections to people. I think that I think what I wanted to do is give examples of other types of Mercury filters and how that might look, but it is it's it's an almost impossible task when you have everyone has one Mercury sign. You can't have two. Your Mercury can have influence from other planets and other archetypes, but your Mercury can only be placed in one sign. Just something to think about. Maybe on that topic too is that what has really helped me understand my Mercury in Libra as a filter as a writer is reading the writing of people who have Mercury in Libra. And so many poets that I loved, I didn't know had Mercury in Libra and I think it's because I feel like they're kin to me, but I also discovered I really resonate with poets and authors who have Mercury in Cancer and I don't know why that is, but it's significant, there's a significant number of authors with mercury and cancer that I've read enough for me to be like, I think there's something here. I think there's a pattern. And it might be because my moon sensing cancer, maybe there's something with that, maybe my emotional epithetic self really resonates with that filter, the cancer filter that mercury, that writer who has mercury and cancer is using to convey a story. So something to think about, maybe if you know your mercury sign, looking up authors who have that mercury placement, that might be something to get to know your own writing style by reading theirs. If you're feeling stuck as a writer, I'm thinking about those really difficult things to write, like those research papers or you're in a class where it's not your expertise, but you have to demonstrate your knowledge by writing like an exam essay or something like that. Thinking about your mercury sign will help you. And also like you can translate that to the house placement. I didn't really talk about with mercury, I talked about with Mars and the Sun, but you can find energy that way to help you understand what is going to help you make sense of things. So your mercury is in the sixth house, maybe the success is a lot to do with wellness, illness, labor, and also feeling like your insurvitude to something. So you have a lot of duty, maybe obligation. So maybe your mercury thrives when you feel a little bit like you're chained to your project. Maybe that's true, or maybe that's very untrue, but there's a potency to concept because you have mercury placed in the sixth house that you can contemplate in order to lean in instead of feeling like you're banging your head against the wall, right? Okay, moving on from mercury, Venus is another personal planet that can give you a lot of insight into how to get into your writing project, how to get into flow state. Mercury is your filter, so Mercury is your just how you make sense of things. Venus is oftentimes what you care so much about, that you're willing to learn about it and write about it long enough for you to become an expert or you to become, well no, experts are good words. I don't mean expert as in like you have to be a scientist or something like that, but you are so intimate with a topic or subject that you can write on it. So I have Venus in Scorpio. I talk about this a lot on the podcast, but again, this is my only, this is the only experience I can speak from my own. So Venus in Scorpio has a lot to do with emotions, things that are hidden, there's Martian energy too, so there's there's some strife, there's some anguish. I do care, I mean it makes sense to me that I'm running a war novel, to be honest, it's difficult for me to write it because of my Libra filter, but it's not difficult for me to learn about war and fighting and difficulty and spiritual deception and stuff like that. There's in my novel there's a lot of lying being done politically under the guise of the church, which might be a little cliche, but that's part of my story. So I have endless fascination with the subject of spirituality and war because of my Venus time. My Venus time is also in the 11th house of like-minded individuals or large groups of people, so I also have a lot of care. I care so much about learning about communities and groups in history and movements. I'm learning a lot about like revolutions or rebellions made because of lack of food or lack of shelter for the people, that kind of thing. That is endlessly interesting to me. I think because of my Venus in Scorpio in the 11th house, like specifically the 11th house placement brings in that history element or that maybe activist or collectivist thinking elements. So thinking about the house where your Venus is in can give you some good ideas about what you want to write about the subject matter. If you have Venus in the first house, you're probably really good looking. Number one, tell me if that's true, send me a picture. Yeah, you're pretty. I didn't want to say that. Anyway, if you have Venus in the first house, the first house has so much to do with the bodily experience desire life choice has so much to do with yourself or just the concept of selfhood individuality as it makes sense to you. So maybe if Venus is in the first house for you, you really want to write a memoir. You really want to write about yourself. Memoirs oftentimes also come from people who have 4th house Venus' or 4th house placements, 4th house sons. The 4th house has so much to do with contemplation of origins and memory. So that's just an aside. I've been studying writers who write memoirs in their charts and that seems to be a pattern. What else? So actually on that, I've tried to write memoirs. I wrote a 200 page like lyrical memoir and it just didn't feel right. And I think it's because I don't have much going on in the like personal houses. Like I have so much going on in the houses have to do with another person or a group of people. Something to think about. Like if you have a lot of energy in the houses that have to do with friendship, maybe you're the person who needs to write the book that is similar to the sisterhood of the traveling parents or something like that. And it's it's oftentimes you know what your subject matter is because you've just been fascinated by these things, objects, concepts, since you were a child, since you were a year old. Like maybe you've always been a tractor kid and a tractor adult. And you know, it's not a question of I don't know what I want to write about, but maybe Venus gives you information on oh yeah, like that that is why I'm writing about this and that gives you more clarity about the edges of your subject possibly. Where do I want to go from there? Okay, so I think I've touched on all the personal planets except for the moon. I think the moon, the moon is a whole episode. The moon is our capacity for empathy or or how we experience empathy, how we experience emotions, how we experience our internal landscapes. So that's obviously going to give you some good information. The moon also shows you how to take care of yourself. And if you are not taking care of yourself in the way that your moon would like you to, it's almost impossible to write because you're out of sorts. So think about that. So those are all the personal planets. That's the Sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars. We have Jupiter, we have Saturn, we have the modern super super outer planets, which is Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto that we can talk about. But I want to be a little more general about that in order for this to be at least a little bit digestible as an episode. Okay, so with these outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, if they are making aspects to your personal planets, that complicates everything I just said. And this is good because we are all complicating beings. And if you are called to be someone who is taking the practice of writing seriously, you most likely have the outer planets aspecting your personal planets. Because that makes things more alive, more electric, more complex, right? So let's say your Mercury is aspected by one of these outer planets in a quote unquote positive or quote unquote negative wave. That energy of the other planet and the sign that planet is in the house that planet is in is being pulled in to your filter. So let's say your Mercury in Aries is squared by Pluto and Cancer. I don't know if anyone is alive that has Pluto and Cancer at this point. But let's say that's the stream. So you have an Aries Mercury and there's this tense aspect with Pluto happening. I can assume that there's going to be some like explosive or intense things, especially emotional, especially bodily that come up in the way that you process information, the way that you share information. You're probably someone who's really fascinating to listen to because you have that potency of the difficult transit, not transit, difficult aspect, the square. And also Pluto. Pluto is the planet of power and the unconscious. And there's just there's so much that we cannot express about Pluto because it's beyond human comprehension. And imagine that energy connected to the planet that helps us make sense of things. So there's just like it's just so potent. To me, that sounds volcanic. That's exciting. Where if you didn't have Pluto in play with Mercury, it's not going to be your filter is not going to be as volcanic or intense or exciting to watch. Right? So think about that. If you don't know how to see your aspect patterns, what's the best way to do this? Come talk to me, message me, I can help you. Or you'll see there's lines inside of the circle chart of your brick chart. All of those lines are aspects. And you can look up what the lines are to get more. information about that. Personally, I told you earlier in my 20s, it was really difficult for me to get to just sit down and write like I always wanted to write long form things. I wanted to write plays and novels and screenplays like if I'm just a long form person and I don't know why. I have some suspected suspicions because of Vesta and Saturn and Capricorn in my first house, but I don't have clarity on why that is just what my soul wants. And also it was so hard for me to sit down and focus and yeah. So I was a poet. I wrote the one-page poems or sometimes the 10 pages poems, 10 page poems. And I think that's because I had the energy to go fast and hard for a page. And it wasn't until, like truly, it wasn't until I looked at my birchard and I saw what was happening with my mercury, what was happening with my Mars. My mercury and Mars are facing each other off one degree apart. Until I understood that, I didn't really understand how to get into flow state long enough to write a novel. So I just feel really passionate about this is really getting to know personal planets and the outer planets and how they're corresponding. They're speaking with each other. I think this is where I'm going to leave it. I want, I wish that I was talking to someone because it's so much easier for me, mercury and Libra, to be responding to what concerns are, what's working for you when you're in a writing state. Well, there's one last thing I want to just say. I interviewed a lot of artists this year. I'm still going to do it, but I'm taking a pause right now about how they get into flow state, how they create their artwork and all these questions, like, is it in the birth chart? Can we see it? I do think that there are two places in the birchard that give us good clues, but I'm not fully sold on them yet, but I'll share. The third house, I think, is one way we can get information on how to get into a flow state. So the third house is two houses away from the first house. The third house has a lot to do with our cognition. It has a lot to do with how we process information, how we learn is our environment. It's how what we absorb around us without maybe fully understanding it, but still being really important to how we make sense of the world. It's also the house of the ritual, the house of the goddess or the house of the ritual. So thinking about that, your archetype and the planets, if you have planets in the third house, the planets in your third house and the archetype, the zodiac sign of your third house, can give you some clues on how to get into flow state. This comes from talking with some other capricorn writings that have also done self-ipnosis, have also used music and trans state to get into the writing mode. And that's what's been working for me in the past four or five years is meditating long enough and chanting long enough where I feel like I'm in this kind of rhythmic pulse. And then I can, like, it feels like I'm channeling the character's voice. I'm channeling the character's memories. I have a placey's third house. So it's one of the the water houses. It's it's flowy. There's not a lot of boundaries, right? So think about your third house. What is what is an activity? What is emotion? What is something you can do in that archetype that might help you get into flow state? So if your third house is in areas, maybe you really need to punch a wall. Aries energy, maybe you really need to like just get sweaty. If your third house is in Virgo, maybe you really, you really need to do research, maybe you really like outlines, maybe you like physically putting note cards next to each other and making sense of the order of things. That's Virgo energy to me. Virgo energy also loves hand writing, hand, hand energy, and like physically writing. I'm not going to say all the signs, but that's one thing to think about. The other house, I think, is related to flow state and creation. Still the jury's out, but is the fifth house, which is a little more obvious because the fifth house relates to creativity. And that's been one of the ways the fifth house has talked about for centuries, literally, literally centuries. It's creativity, it's play, it's art, making, it's personal development, it's fun, pleasure, speculation. So whatever the archetype is of your fifth house, that zodiac sign can give you some idea of how you create what makes it feel fun, what makes it feel pleasurable to you. And oftentimes, if you're in a project that feels really stuck, it's because you lost the pleasure, you lost the play. And so getting back to the pleasure of it is the greatest way to find momentum again. So third house is more flow state, fifth house is more like, well, why am I even doing this if it's not pleasurable? That's the energy. And I have tourists. And if I am not, if it's not like beautiful to me, if I'm not like actively using my life and my body to create something, I don't know why I'm doing it. So I always have to remind myself, get back to my tourist energy. That is ruled by Venus in Scorpio. So another way that I access my artistic life or my creative life is I remind myself that my spiritual practice, my Scorpio Venus energy and being in the body. So yoga, it's really important to me in chanting is really, really important to me. It helps me get back to it. But that's a lot of synthesis work that I've done literally over decades in my life to make sense of. So be playful with it. Maybe you have Mars in the fifth house. So maybe you need a little bit of fight, maybe a little bite to your your creative process. That's the way to think about this. Just be loose and experiment. And it'll be more enjoyable to relate your birth chart to your writing, your artistic process. And that is where I'm going to leave it. And thank you so much for listening. If you have less listened this far and you want to bounce ideas back and forth, like I hope you know this is my greatest passion in the world is talking to other people about their creative process. So shoot me a DM, my man Instagram or sub stack follow me on sub stack, send me a message there. And we can brainstorm or you can just tell me like what's working and then I can get ideas for myself as well. I'm not just saying this. I am here to make friends. There's no other reason for me to make this podcast. It's not to make connections. So please reach out. And also send some good energy to Chelsea who's on some revocation. I spent my summer vacation living with her for a week. So that was that was my sabbatical last month. And she's spending hers in an unknown location basically paradise. So sending her some good energy. And we'll be back together in a week or maybe two. Yeah. Thank you for listening. Bye. Thank you for joining us for parts and charts the IFS and astrology podcast. If something sparked insight or resonated with you, we'd love to hear from you. No really, we're here to make friends. Reach out to us, leave a comment, subscribe. And if you feel called, share this episode with someone you care about. Or if you want to work with us one on one and go deeper with this work, check the link in the show notes for how to find us. Until next time, may all of you feel a part of the family.