I usually write my weekly blog on Saturdays. Yesterday I decided to change my schedule and start writing my blogs on Fridays, so that I could have my Saturdays off.

I wrote a beautiful post about harmony, peace, and spirituality. As soon as I woke up today and got the news from Israel, I knew this post was not relevant. Yesterday, I wrote from the perspective that our world is in a more peaceful and harmonious place than it has even been before.

Even though it is true from a global and historic perspective, it is not true for Israelis who just went through the darkest day in the country’s history. Today in Israel hundreds of children, women, and men were killed or taken hostage by the terrorist organization Hamas.

Libra is the sign of harmony. How can I write about harmony when there is a vicious war going on? When my homeland is on fire and my people are locked inside their homes with fear and worry? Who cares about astrology, new moons, and solar eclipses at a time like this?

As I walked in nature, torn by the unbearable dissonance of the beauty that surrounded me, and the darkness that my family and friends were experiencing, I realized that I had to write. The coming new moon and solar eclipse in Libra is an opportunity to cultivate more peace and harmony in our world, and we need it now more than ever.

We all deal with chaos, fear, and worry in our life. And we can all use help in cultivating inner peace during such times.

Libra is ruled by Venus, the goddess of love, peace, and harmony. In times of war, we need to call on her, and connect with her energy. We need to cultivate our feminine power that seeks peaceful resolutions.

Venus teaches us that to cultivate inner peace we first need to accept what we cannot change. There is hatred, there are deep, old wounds that are beyond healing. There are awful memories of terrible things that were done, and no one can take back. We cannot change that.

We can only look forward and ask, what can we do with it? Do we continue to fuel the hatred, or do we try to bring peace into it? This is why Libra is the sign of the future and not of the past. Libra is the sign of advancement. We need to evolve to find peace.

Another important teaching of Venus is that by cultivating inner peace, we bring more peace to the world. Even if we influence no one but ourselves, we still have the power to increase the level of harmony around us.

But inner harmony is not what we think it is. For years I thought I was cultivating peace by being a yoga teacher and a peace activist. Instead, I embodied the ideal of peace, while inside of me I was in a constant struggle. I expect of myself to be happy, so when I was not, I pushed my unhappiness away. I expected of myself to have pure thoughts and feelings. Whenever I thought or felt something negative, like anger, or jealousy, I repressed them or ignore them.

The low road of Libra is idealism.

When someone hurts us or our loved ones, it is instinctual to hate them. If we do not allow ourselves to feel and think what arises naturally in us, if we push our thoughts and feelings away, we create inner struggle. Idealism only takes us away from peace and harmony.

To bring long lasting harmony, peace, love, and beauty into our lives, all of which are Libra’s faculties, we need to look at life in the eyes. We need to accept what is and be honest and authentic about it. We need to admit hurt, pain, jealousy, and hatred. We need to embrace our darkness and everything in us that is completely opposite of love, peace, and harmony. This is the only way to bring more harmony into our lives.

If we do not admit what we truly feel we can’t work with it, we can’t heal our wounds.

While admitting what we truly think and feel, we also do not want to get paralyzed by the pain or get overwhelmed by chaos. Today, all I wanted was to fall into a deep sleep and forget about the unbearable reality. But I did not. I went on a hike, I attended a neighborhood event, and now I am writing you.

My husband asked me how I could go and socialize with people at such a hard time. For me socializing with people is a medicine, a distraction. For an hour today I could almost forget about the war.

I already mentioned here once the concept of negativity bias. We are drawn to bad news. I find myself digging in, looking for the horrific headlines, looking at the pictures of young people who were attack by terrorists while dancing at a rave. It does not help anyone that I do that. It does not help me for sure. But I still do it. To bring harmony I need to also do other things like playing with my son and writing to you. These are the things that help me find my inner harmony.  

On Saturday there is a new moon and solar eclipse in Libra. Right now, all I can think of is use this day to pray for peace. Pray for evolution. Pray that today’s events will never repeat themselves. Cultivate Venusian energy. Let’s rise up to peace, beauty, and harmony, by facing everything that is not. That is what I am going to do all week. I hope you can join me.