Your Heart Magic

Libra Season: Finding Balance, Empathy and Beauty

• Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright • Episode 140

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Libra season becomes a guide to balance that moves, empathy that doesn’t erase your voice, and a daily practice of beauty anchored in grace. We share three ways to work with the Libra archetype—rethinking balance, expanding perspective, and cultivating gratitude—plus a Harvest Moon reading that brings it to heart.

• core Libra traits: balance, fairness, appreciation of beauty
• gifts and challenges: empathy, people-pleasing, indecision
• balance as a long arc, not a moment
• journaling prompts to locate personal harmony
• partnerships and healthy give-and-take
• mindset flexibility and the observer perspective
• grace as an equalizer when life feels lopsided
• beauty practice and gratitude as regulation
• Harvest Moon passage on returning to reverence

Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light
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Your Heart Magic is a space where heart wisdom, spirituality, and psychology meet. Enjoy episodes centered on mental health, spirituality, personal growth, healing, and well-being. Featured as one of the best Heart Energy and Akashic Records Podcasts in 2024 by PlayerFM and Globally Ranked in the top 5% in Listen Notes.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright is a Licensed Psychologist, Spiritual Educator, and Akashic Records Reader. She is the author of Small Pearls Big Wisdom, the Award-Winning Lamentations of the Sea, its sequels, and several books of poetry. A psychologist with a mystic mind, she weaves perspectives from both worlds to offer holistic wisdom.

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SPEAKER_00:

Aloha, and welcome to Your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality, and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. Bethane Kapansky Wright, author, psychologist, and spiritual educator.

SPEAKER_01:

Aloha, everybody. Welcome to Your Heart Magic. This is Dr. Bethane Kapansky Wright, and it is Libra season. And so today we are talking a little bit more about the archetype of Libra and how we can work with the energy of Libra season to support our past at this time. I was laughing as I sat down and was putting together notes for this podcast because I'm actually a Libra rising in my astro chart. And so I have a lot of Libra characteristics. And as I was writing out some of the key characteristics of Libra, like appreciation of beauty, finding balance, seeking harmony, being a peacemaker, I felt like, oh my goodness, this is like every episode of Your Heart Magic. So much of the things that we talk about on this podcast are very Libra vibe-ish. So talking about Libra and the archetype of Libra feels like such a natural segue for myself. And I actually had to think about it a little bit to ground the topic because I feel like last week's episode, which was celebrating the equinox and finding balance, could almost be synonymous with the Libra archetype. And I actually love that Equinox Falls right as Libra season starts. Libra season begins on September 22nd and it runs until October 22nd. And Libra is an air element. It is represented by a set of scales in the zodiac. And as mentioned earlier, some of the key words associated with Libra are balance, harmony. The scales also bring in the energy of justice and fairness. Libra is about appreciating beauty as an air element. And so those who have a lot of strong Libra energy are often very good diplomats. They can be excellent at seeing both sides of something. The more that I have understood about Libra and working with it as my rising sign and just understanding astrology and how my own star chart reflects characteristics in me, I often think, well, no wonder I became a psychologist, because I think one of the aspects of this particular profession, my profession, is the ability to meet people where they're at and understand something and empathize from their point of view. And one of the weaknesses of Libra or the challenges, I should say, is decision-making fatigue or indecision because of that ability to see all sides and to try and find fairness and please everyone. So sometimes the shadow side of Libra might look like people pleasing. When I was younger, I was very much a people pleaser. It's something that I've really had to work with throughout my adult life. But when I was really young, like back in college, I remember not so much the people-pleasing aspect, but it seemed like whoever I was having a conversation with, I would agree with them and I would see their point of view. And I used to wonder back then if it meant I didn't have a well-formed opinion. Like it was a little bit confusing for me why some people seemed to really know their mind and they know what they believed and they had this sense of conviction. And I felt like was I wishy-washy? Because I could see all sides of the issue and would find myself agreeing with people. And as I started to learn more about personality types and different personality characteristics, I realized not at all, that it was actually a gift and the ability to be sensitive and to empathize with others and to understand their point of view. And as I've developed, I obviously have beliefs and convictions and things that I am passionate about that form my own point of view. But I now see that Libra, part of myself, can understand things from multiple perspectives. And so sometimes that might translate for me being less rigid about something and more open-minded. But the flip side of that is having to really work, especially as an empath, to come into my personal space, my energy, and ask myself, well, what do I think? What do I believe? And to find my voice and my perspective and what can feel like a great sea of voices and perspectives when I really start to open up and look at things from multiple sides. So I love Libra. I'm very familiar with the archetype. Your heart magic is very Libra-esque, as I said. But I do want to talk about today three ways that we can work with this archetype and work with the energy of Libra season at this time. One of the first things that the archetype of Libra invites us to do is to seek balance and harmony in our lives. And last week we were talking about balance and equinox and finding balance in our lives. And I threw out the idea that sometimes I think balance can be really hard to achieve in a given moment. I think that with change being a constant and our lives being so in flux, the minute we think things are perfectly balanced, something is bound to come along and knock that out of orbit. Or maybe we get things into alignment and it feels really balanced. And then our soul starts to hunger for growth and we get a little bit restless, a little bit discontent with having everything be just so. I think we are called so often towards movement when we've been in a season of rest, or rest when we've been in a season of movement. And so the best way that I have to understand balance is in terms of the bigger picture and believing that if we can tune in and listen to ourselves, that life has a way of moving things along and moving us towards balance. And if we can trust our soul cycles and trust that voice inside of us, that we might not always feel perfectly balanced in a moment, but we can trust that in the bigger picture, if we're tuning into our soul, we are moving towards harmony in our lives. And so even if balance feels unobtainable in a moment, life has a way of bringing things around and helping us find a more harmonious path if things get a little too out of whack. I do think it's helpful in Libra season to ask the question where in my life right now could I use more balance? What does balance look like for me? What comes to mind when I think about living in harmony? And how does this apply to my path? There's always really great information that we can come up with when we look at those questions and ask them in a non-judgmental way and see how this apply to me at this point in time. What balance means to me right now in this Libra season of 2025 might look really different from where you're at in Libra season this year. You might have a completely different definition of what you need for balance or what energies or themes in your life might feel out of balance. And so I love this as a journaling prompt and think it's a great one for Libra season to see what kinds of things we might want balance with. If we've been really busy or about other people, maybe balance is coming back into ourselves and listening to our soul. If we've had a lot of downtime, a lot of alone time, and we feel like we need some energy stirred up, maybe balance looks like finding ways to connect or finding places to plug into. Libra often seeks partnership. So another characteristic of Libra is partnerships in some shape or form. So sometimes balance in our lives might apply to our relationships and apply to areas in our life where we could do more give and take, more compromise. There's so many ways that we might answer that question. So it's a really good self-exploratory one to ask yourself this Libra season. Something else that Libra invites us to do is to see things from multiple perspectives. As mentioned earlier, Libra is about fair-mindedness. It is about justice. And so it's about the mind, thoughts, how we think. And so right now, this is a really good time to work on expanding mindset, to try and see something from another point of view. I think when in doubt, if we feel stuck in something in our life, we could always try saying, well, how would an observer see this? If I was a narrator or I was just observing my circumstances or observing the situation without judgment and without having to interpret it, but just making an observation, what might that be? What's the observer's point of view? How might I narrate that if I was writing a story? I think it's really interesting to play with mindset because it helps keep our mindset flexible. It allows us to think in an adaptive way. It allows us to consider others' points of view in an adaptive way. And I think when we're open to expanding our mindset and seeing something from a different point of view, it helps us loosen our attachment to being right, to feeling that our position is right or our perspective is right. It helps shake things up a little bit mentally and invites us to consider what if, or how might I flip this and look at it differently. And it allows us to take something that maybe has felt really stuck or we have felt really confused on and find a vantage point to look at it from that might feel unique or fresh or different. So something that we can always do to help expand mindset if we are feeling stuck in our lives is to ask ourselves the question: how could I look at this through the eyes of love? How could I look at this through universal grace? How can I bring joy or levity into this situation? What might love have to say about this? Anytime we're able to draw on our spiritual principles, our heart-based principles, and apply those to how we are seeing something, it's usually a fun way to find a unique viewpoint and to help us shift perspective. For example, I was thinking about earlier when I was contemplating balance and was writing down that first talking point as seeking balance and harmony. That what does somebody do if their life is really out of balance and they feel like I'd love to have a more balanced life right now, but it's just not feasible for me. Maybe somebody's really taxed in terms of time or demands, or something is happening that their life is just in a lopsided place at this time, and they haven't had what they need to fill themselves back up or fill their energy back up, or they really yearn for being able to do things that would slow life down or bring it back into balance, but it's not the season for it. And I was thinking about how grace and love are always these equalizers when we bring them into the equation. And so even when our life doesn't look the way that we want it to, and it might feel really out of balance, grace can come in. The concept of grace, the universal energy of grace, love can come in. And by love, I mean that universal life force, that cosmic flow of love can come into a situation and it can soften it. And grace, our love might say, take a deep breath. It's all going to be okay. This is just a season, nothing more. Life is going to help move this along. You won't always be in this place. You will find your way through. Be still in this moment. You are safe. You are okay. Grace would ask us to forgive ourselves for being out of balance. It might ask us to forgive ourselves for whatever we might feel stuck with or whatever we're struggling with. Grace would take the whole situation and it would flip it upside down and it would find a way to help us find our rightness, our alignment, our balance, even in the middle of circumstances or something that felt out of balance. And that kind of a mindset shift, that kind of an opening of the heart, opening of perspective, opening of ourself. It's a wonderful illustration of that idea of what would love have to say about this? How could I look at the situation through the eyes of love? So when in doubt, go back to love and grace and bring those into the equation and see if those concepts can help open up your heart, open up your mind, and help you move towards a space of breath and balance in your life, no matter where the circumstances are. The last thing that I wanted to talk about today is Libra's role with appreciating beauty and noticing beauty. And again, I talk about this all the time on the podcast. I really was laughing when I sat down to do this archetype because I think that sometimes some of the archetypes are a little bit different than topics that I would usually choose to talk about. And so it's something that is a fresh challenge to me to bring in a new idea, a new topic. But when I was looking at Libra, I thought, oh my goodness, probably three-quarters of the podcast that I've done over the last year, maybe even more than that, could all fall under the umbrella of Libra virtues, because those are the kinds of things that I'm always interested in talking about on here and noticing beauty, appreciating beauty, finding an eye for beauty is such a big one. And finding a way to find gratitude, find something beautiful, find something sacred each and every day. And so Libra season invites us to appreciate the beauty in our lives, to create beauty, to see beauty through the lens of love, to see what's already beautiful about our journey, about our path, about our life, to see what's beautiful in the world around us. That's a wonderful challenge right now at a time where I think it's really easy to see what's not beautiful in the world around us. And Libra asks us to look at something through a slightly different gaze and see, well, what's beautiful about this? If there is a room full of people disagreeing, can I see any beauty and the fact that everybody's perspective or vantage point is a unique reflection of a color in the greater web of life, the greater kaleidoscope of life that's made up of so many shades and hues? If I'm out in nature and I see something that is about death or decay or something in nature that's not my favorite element, can I take a step back and see from a bigger perspective and see nature symmetry and how nature uses everything, every insect, every tree, every flower, everything that is growing out there as part of a greater ecosystem? And so everything has a place. Can I see the beauty in that? And so Libra invites us to see things from that more holistic perspective of what is beautiful, what is lovely about this, how can I appreciate the symmetry, the harmony of the whole? I wanted to share a passage with you today from Revelations of the Sky that speaks to the idea of appreciating beauty. And I wrote it at a time in my life where I'd really been struggling. And I was trying to come back into a space of gratitude and noticing beauty and appreciating what was good in my life. And so I felt like this passage, which I actually wrote in Libra season right around this time, multiple years back when I published this book, but it's called Harvest Moon. And I wrote it in September of that year, and I thought it might illustrate some of the concepts that we're talking about today. Harvest Moon. It was a strange kind of summer. The kind that came with a few roller coaster twists and turns, which felt like they went against the grain of what should have been easy, buttery days. I'm coming to learn that's just life. Last summer we were grappling with losing Sam. This summer came with its own challenges. A lot of growth has happened within the pages of these two summers. Now it's fall. Well, it's fall in my heart. We do live on an island, which means autumn is not the same for us as it is for most in the northern hemisphere. It's not usually until November that we begin to see temperature drops. I can feel the crisp breeze in my interior, anyways, as if some rugged wild Alaskan part of me will always roam the cranberry tundra this time of year. Peer down at ochre fairy tale like mushrooms, delight at the first gold touch of the leaves. Even if those experiences only happen now in my spirit and mind. The trade winds are coming back to the island though. The guava berries are ripe and will begin to sprinkle the trails with crab apple red and banana yellow throughout September and October. The harvest moon is coming soon, denoted by the full moon closest to autumn equinox. For anyone living in tune with nature cycles, it's a natural time of the year to take stock and receive the bounty of the seeds you've been planting in your life. It's also time to think about the seeds you want to plant in the next cycle. I'm still sifting through what that is for me, but I know I want those seeds to feel lighter, more gracious, and more appreciative. I never expected to struggle so much on this island and to be stretched, challenged, and grown so some of those challenges have robbed me of the lessons of my younger years, and I feel the call to return to my heart's roots and reclaim any territory I've ceded. There was a time somewhere back in 2012 that I think of as my post-divorce, single in my early 30s, finding myself again years. In this season, I was reconstructing life and learning what it meant to fall in love with my life. To be in a love relationship with life itself. This was the time in my life where I learned the more you appreciate and value your life, the more your life will appreciate and value you. My heart center was wide open, and I suddenly felt connected to the world in a way I never had before. I was coming to a deeper understanding I was in a relationship with myself and the world around me. I'd often go to the park, sit on a bench with my loyal elder pep Peppy, and talk to the sky in my heart. Simple things made me happy. Books, candles, sandwiches. I began to see myself as a creative being who could bring a sense of artistry into my days by wearing playful clothing and developing an eye for finding beauty and extraordinary and the ordinary. My feelings became gateways that led me to intuitive truths in myself. My art journal and blog became ways to process my experience as self, understand my waters and flows, and tell my stories in a way that brought depth, color, resilience, and truth to things, no matter the topic. Mostly what I learned during this time was a deep sense of self-love, the importance of valuing my life, finding joy in the everyday, and being a practitioner of appreciation and beauty. Hard things happened during this life season, but I'd poured so many truths of light into the soil of my soul. I was able to navigate them and still maintain reverence for my life. Here it is, eight years later, and I feel called to take a few lessons from my younger self and bring back the wisdom I discovered in those years so I can release and transform the bitterness, pain, and emotional suffering I've been feeling. Allow myself to return to the basics of tending a happy heart and a happy life. Relax into an even deeper level of patience with whatever I'm creating in this phase of my life on Kauai. Redevelop a gaze of thoughtful joy and fairy tale wonder. Those are the seeds I want to plant this fall. I still have creative and prosperity goals, but I know those material things won't mean anything if the immaterial isn't anchored in grateful reverence. Grateful reverence, like anything else, requires careful tending and energy, lest it begin to weather and wilt. So with that, I asked myself a question this morning. What would happen, Beth Ann, if you made it your goal over the next few months to look for all the gratitude you can? What if you returned to the beauty way and found all the beautiful moments you could in each day? What if you made it a point to appreciate even when things don't go as you thought? Falling in love with your life is the only way to find peace and the change. This is when you're most connected to yourself. This is when you're most wise. This is how you return to the heart of where your true wealth resides. I love that passage. I wrote it back in 2018, and I think that is the bigger lesson of Libra season. It is the focus of returning to the heart, returning to gratitude, returning to appreciating beauty, finding joy, noticing what is good, finding the path of peace through being open-minded and open-hearted, being willing to shift our mindset when we're stuck or rigid or getting into negativity, seeing things from another point of view, valuing the people in our lives, even if we struggle with some of them, and valuing how our partnerships help us grow and transform and change and learn lessons and deepen our heart wisdom and remap our boundaries, finding the perfect beauty and the imperfection of the whole that is our life. So, with that, happy Libre season, everyone. I will be back next week with an all-new Your Heart Magic episode. In the meantime, have a beautiful week. Welcome to October. Here we are. And as always, be well, be love, be you, and be magic.

SPEAKER_00:

You've been listening to Your Heart Magic with Dr. Bethane Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.