#6 - Develop This!

In this talk we learn about the 6th house, the house of Virgo, and the dynamic way in which we refine and develop who we are through the lens of self-improvement and a desire to do better. This is not the time to worry about being perfect, that is just a Virgo shadow. What the 6th house brings to the table is an ability to observe what needs changing in order to bring our best selves to the world!

Transcript

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Hi, welcome to the Sage of Stars podcast. This is episode number six. Develop this. So the sixth house, I think, is very misunderstood. I think a lot of people reduce Virgo and the Sixth House to chores, work, obligations, schedules, boring routines, endless amounts of labor. But it's not really what the sixth house is about, right? The sixth house is about perfecting through practice. So it does have repetition, but the idea is that you're repeating, not necessarily practice makes perfect, but practice makes perfecting. Practice makes things better, right? Development, development of a skill or a particular way that you have of being through consciously examining how it can be improved. We've been talking about in our first few episodes the houses of astrology. And the first is I am, I exist. The second is I value. That's based on what you believe about yourself. The third one is think, I think. That's based on what you think about yourself and what you value. The fourth one is I feel, because how you feel about things is based upon what you value and who you believe you are and what you think about those things. And then the fifth house is the second fire sign, again becomes a way we go out into the world and it's I express. How did I take what it is that I came to know about myself and what I value and how I think and how I feel about myself, and then bring that out into the world? So if you remember, we found that we brought that out into the world and we did get kind of an immediate response back. Is who we are in the world well received? Is it we're rejected? Do people seem to um enjoy us? Do they like who we are? Do they are they somehow benefited by who we are, uh, or aren't they? And then do we make subtle shifts and changes in our behavior in order to be able to get the kind of feedback that we'd like to get? Once that feedback becomes more substantiated and more consistent, we move into the sixth house, which is about I improve. How do I take what I already know about myself and process it? Really, this is where processing begins through a lens of what can I do to help other people, right? Virgo is considerably very helpful. And most people would process the sixth house as how can I be of help to others? Can I make them laugh? Can I be a carpenter? Can I be a painter? Can I be a writer? It's not all about our career, certainly not all about those identities, because it could be I am a husband, I am a wife, I am a son, and the way in which we take that identity and those values and then develop that, develop our relationship, let's say, to our parents through being a son by perfecting what it is that we know works or doesn't work. So the sixth house is actually a complex earth-based, because it's an earth sign, so it's very tangible navigation through what is actually working in the world, and how am I being productive or efficient or on target or what what in what way is who I am making some kind of a meaningful result in the world around me? So that's where we get develop this as the title of this episode, because develop this means develop what it is that you've discovered about yourself, not punish yourself, not become perfect, but develop, improve, refine your capabilities, right? And revisit the self through the actions that we take and then make adjustments based on outcomes. It's a fascinating sort of fifth house, sixth house continuum. I often say, you know, um, it's so exciting to have a baby, that's the fifth house, and then someone's got to diaper it. That's the sixth house. But what we really mean by that is that the process of diapering the baby actually makes you a better parent because you continue to see who you are as a parent in relationship to the task of maintaining the creative thing that you wanted to do, right? Have a baby, that's a fifth house, very fifth house thing to do. It it could simply be, right, like we talked about last time, um uh making a Thanksgiving dinner, presenting that to everybody, and then the maintenance of it is really doing it every year, perfecting it, having it get better and better, um, participating in the cleanup, um, inviting other people to bring in their own their own things and and incorporating that into the event so that that becomes a continued part of your legacy, which is the fifth house. But the sixth house is the refinement that happens through the feedback and your own experience of what it is that you've put out into the world. So this is where the sixth house is where the self really enters a process. In the fifth, it's about creativity and individuality and performance, right? It's like this is me, you know, here I am, right? I've I've made this baby, I've I've made this Thanksgiving dinner, or I've done this talk, you know, like whatever, whatever it is. Remember, it can be small. It can be small. It doesn't have to be something grand like having a baby. It could be something smaller. It doesn't have to be about launching a new business, right? The fifth house is a continuous way that we express ourselves in the world. But eventually we have to say, can I take what it is that I find about myself and my creative talent that's naturally occurring inside of me and develop it into a skill, right? Musicians practice, writers edit, right? Golfers practice and train, actors rehearse, right? Healers study, healers practice. And the fifth house starts to become a refinement, a method, a technique through repetition, a development of what's working, about who we are and how it can be improved. Any oldest child will tell you that the children that come after got parented differently because, of course, the first child was like the guinea pig. The parents don't really know what they're doing. So, even in that realm of parenting, the sixth house is the opportunity to refine, to say, oh, I won't do that again, or I learned something about that, and I can modify that and correct that. That's the discernment of Virgo, right? The sixth house, interesting. I was thinking about this, and I I thought it's like a mercurial learning loop. It's Mercury, because Mercury rules Virgo, and so it's like a Mercurial learning loop. We we we look at um um what it is that we've done. We refine, we observe, we change, and then it gets put back through the lens of the fifth house, back into creativity again, and then we learn again. So we don't want to confuse Mercury and the sixth house and Virgo with Saturn, even though there's that feeling of similarity because Saturn rules Capricorn and Capricorn is also an earth sign, Mercury's ruling Virgo, also an earth sign. So there's all this earth, but the sixth house is not as Saturnine, right? It's not just a burden and endless work and obligation like Saturn sometimes demands of us. It's Mercurial, where Saturn is saying, okay, we have to maintain the structure. Virgo is saying, how can we improve the function of it? How can we improve the way that it works, the way that it comes across? And that distinction is what changes the idea of the sixth, not as drudgery, but as what we're doing to observe and analyze and correct and pattern recognition, and then the way we respond, and like again, like a feedback loop, right? The idea that actions become observations which create adjustment, which reapply, right? We reapply through the adjustment that we made what it is that we observed back to a new action. When we were talking about the fifth, you know, I said I think there's an immediate feedback in Leo, right? Certainly you can think of it as like stand-up comedy, right? Stand-up comedy, you're out there on the stage. Are they laughing? It's immediate feedback. Is your creative thing like landing boom? You know, if it's not, yeah, there's a lot of really on the fly, very fast modification. So I do think to some extent the Leo fifth house part is also feeling a response. It's observing a response. The sixth house is saying, oh, that didn't work. Why? What can we do with it? Or that actually did work, how can I, what, what can I take from it and then make it even better? There's um, you know, that's why I think that Virgo is constantly accused of perfectionism, right? Because it it it is always trying to say, like, okay, well, how can this be improved? And in human life, that's been very important. The function of Virgo and the sixth house has been extremely important, right? We were traveling on horses, how can we make that better? We made an engine, how can we make that better? You know, we make electric cars. All of that is the discernment that Virgo places upon the world. So there's a consciousness that exists in the sixth house, right? It's noticing inefficiencies or weak points or imbalances or places that need improvement. And this is why the sixth house shows up as health, because it says, okay, you know, like, okay, you you want to um be healthier in this way? Is this working? Did this work? Uh let's just say something very specific like weight loss or whatever. It seems like a very general thing. You want to lose uh 10 pounds. Did this work? Did the exercise program work? Did this diet work? Did seeing this therapist help? Did confronting you know darker issues about your parents help? What helped? What communication, what technique, what spiritual practice, right, helped you to be able to view what was and wasn't working for a desired goal of self-expression? The fifth house, we're always trying to self-express. So the sixth house, did I adjust my diet? Did I refine timing? Did I edit language? Did I change movement? Did I reorganize a system of the way that I'm running my business or my life? Did I observe parenting and self-reflect on how that could be better? Learning through feedback. It's so intense and amazing, right? Because Virgo is ruled by Mercury, so it's in a constant communication. Again, the sixth house is not about being perfect, it's about keep refining, keep developing, develop this now, right? We continue to adjust the mechanics, we continue to practice the scales, we continue to study performance footage if we're an athlete. Those are all Virgo sixth house processes that help us be better, right? If you don't study, you won't get as good of a grade on the test. So there's a process of refining study habits, even. It's not about punishment, it's about an intelligent development of how we work in the physical plane. Again, on this physical plane, it's an earth sign with what it is that we've discovered about ourselves and who we are as motivated beings and having a desire to express ourselves. There's some shadow side here, perfectionism, as I discussed, also anxiety, right? Because what if I don't get this right? What if I, you know, like Virgo can be very self-critical. There can be obsessive correction, hypercriticism, and inability to rest, never feeling good enough. It's a part of you know, Virgo's wanting things to be better and better. There's a very good answer to that, which is life isn't perfect. There is no achievement of perfect. So the search for an improved method is not the same as the search for perfection, right? Every time we reach a stage where we've done something better, it doesn't matter what it is, if it's the umpteenth time that you've made chocolate chip cookies, and each time you make a little note and say, Oh, maybe I'll add a little bit more of this, less of this, chill the dough a little longer, whatever, whatever modifications you make, if the cookies come out better to you, then you've made an improvement based on your observation. That's the sixth house, right? If your desire to improve becomes an inability to stop correcting and like that's endless, unfinished edits, then that's not good, right? So the challenge of the sixth house is learning how refinement, right, the development of the self supports our growth. And being aware of how correction could become self-punishment, right? So if we're looking to judge ourselves, then we're definitely going to find continuous flaws in what it is that we're doing and what it is that we're working on. Sixth house is amazing development of the self. It's the last house below the horizon. So next week we're going to talk about the seventh where the energy breaks above the horizon and we go out into the world. We really go out into the world in the seventh house, which is Libra, and we develop relationships based on who we are, how we express ourselves, and what we know we can actually offer in the sixth house way as a very tangible, practical, earth-based result of our understanding of self, right? Talent becomes skill. What was an expression becomes a capability, a capacity, right? Our actions become tangible. The first six houses are the discovery of self and the development of self into someone that will go out into the world. So it's not asking for perfection. The sixth house is asking you for participation in your own development and your own meaningful offering to the world. I'm Craig Martin. You've been listening to the Sage of Stars podcast. You can find me at SageFstars.com. And it's always lovely. I hope you have a really great day.