You have been wait­ing for this. Mer­cury has been “slow­ing down” for a few days now, and it begins mov­ing for­ward once again today. It was ret­ro­grad­ing from August 12^th until now, but it will take a lit­tle while to get back to its reg­u­lar motion. You may expe­ri­ence or observe that your per­son­al thought-forms and exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions may not com­plete­ly nor­mal­ize until Mer­cury leaves its ret­ro­grade zone on Sep­tem­ber 19^th.

The past three weeks would have been best spent in qui­et reflec­tion, con­tem­pla­tion and self-cor­rec­tion. But of course, in our mod­ern world life goes on, and hav­ing that kind of oppor­tu­ni­ty is rare indeed. Hope­ful­ly, you did find some time each day to bend your thoughts back upon your­self, and you were able to clear away some of the accu­mu­la­tions of mis­ap­pre­hen­sion, incon­sis­ten­cy and con­fu­sion that often cloud your consciousness.

Now, it is time to apply this clear­ing of your thought-forms to the world around you. While most of this ret­ro­grade was in Vir­go, Mer­cury is turn­ing direct in the sign of Leo. That brings the focus of your mind (and dis­pos­es oth­ers like­wise) to be most shaped by con­cerns regard­ing Respect, Hon­or and Love. These thought-forms and sen­si­bil­i­ties are in everyone’s mind and upon everyone’s tongue. Much like the phys­i­cal weath­er, it is best to be pre­pared for what may come by under­stand­ing what con­di­tions pre­vail at any one time.

You would do well to pause and con­sid­er how to approach any mat­ter with a true con­sid­er­a­tion of the respect you need to show to one anoth­er, always. Cer­tain­ly, you should have a keen appre­ci­a­tion for your own self-regard, which is found­ed upon know­ing who and what you tru­ly are, a self-aware spir­it whose core is formed by spir­i­tu­al love. From this, you should find com­fort and grace in endur­ing and healthy love and respect for your­self. You can stay cen­tered and true, with clear thoughts and inten­tions as you hold your­self with this knowl­edge of your ori­gin and destiny.

But you must equal­ly acknowl­edge, that any per­son who is before you is owed this same con­sid­er­a­tion too. Whether that per­son be friend or stranger, your “mas­ter” or “ser­vant”, that per­son before you is fun­da­men­tal­ly your equal, walk­ing the same path of self-awak­en­ing and self-ful­fill­ment as you. If you want their respect, you must earn that by show­ing them the same respect you wish to receive from them.

Think respect­ful­ly, speak kind­ly and lis­ten atten­tive­ly because it is how you wished to be treat­ed too. If you wish to under­stand one anoth­er, to grow in con­scious­ness which can only be accom­plished by com­min­gling your thoughts with one anoth­er, you must do what­ev­er you can to open your minds to one anoth­er by acknowl­edg­ing the fun­da­men­tal and com­mon val­ue you share; that each of you is a spark of the Divine, and each of you is ulti­mate­ly a lumi­nous being whose true nature is formed by Divine Love.

You have had time to reflect and make amends for wrong­ful thoughts and deeds.

Turn the page in the book of life, and face the promise of bet­ter days.

Your thoughts, words and deeds will forge your future.

Choose wise­ly, act lovingly.

And you will shine.