We’re deep in the process of altering how we take in information and navigate this world. The triple conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune, which is in a growth aspect to Uranus, is opening each of us to stimuli from sources other than our physical senses and conscious mind. For some people, the process is happening easily, with information simply dropping into their consciousness. (This is probably the case if the triple conjunction is trining a major point in your chart.) For others, it’s been disorienting, as if their minds have dissolved into a fog. (This is happening to people with a major point in hard aspect to the triple conjunction.) This sensitivity to influences outside the self is not new. It has always been available to us, though some people have acted on it more than others.

This week three events signal a new stage in this process. The first is Jupiter turning retrograde, which happens a few hours into Monday EDT. All three members of the triple conjunction are now retrograde and will remain so into autumn. Their dance partner Uranus follows suit in July. The combined retrogrades will give us a slow, gentle review of what has opened up for us this spring, particularly involving healing, attuning to higher guidance and awareness of community, and breaking free of limiting concepts of what’s possible in life. All but Jupiter will travel back only a few degrees. Jupiter will return to 17 degrees of Aquarius, where he was near the end of March. Between now and the middle of October, we will be revisiting matters that have undergone expansion since the end of March. Use this time to re-envision the matters that have come up in your life since then, as well as the areas of life associated with where the mid-to-late degrees of Aquarius fall in your chart. Whatever you have been considering for your life, dream bigger. Open yourself to inspiration and guidance. Open yourself to physical and emotional healing greater than you have allowed yourself to believe is possible. Don’t worry about being grandiose or over-reaching or impractical. Simply allow a glorious vision into your consciousness, and be open to the probability that what you are inviting into your life may take a grander and different form than your wish.

The second big event in the process involves Uranus, the door opener and awakener, who is running with the Aquarius cluster in a growth aspect. This week he stirs things up with each of Mars and Venus, who spar with him on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. The friction keeps the cosmic lovers from settling complacently into the sign that prefers just that, Taurus, which wants nothing more than to be surrounded by and enjoy physical comforts. Instead, they get a jolt that knocks them, and us, out of taking relationship and money matters for granted. Our internal drive leads us to a development that doesn’t sit right, and then fractiousness erupts that affects our sense of our own worth. The disconnect is a reminder that we’re perceiving everything differently now — and that we don’t have to react the way we always have before. The events of Tuesday and Wednesday will probably be minor, but they will bring insight into our ambitions and attitudes, likely by startling us into looking at situations with fresh eyes. Use and exchange of energy will somehow be involved, and relationship or financial dynamics are likely stages for the playing out. Whatever happens will rivet your attention to what you really want. The charge these aspects generate will increase the excitement and desire that builds over the week as Venus and Mars move into their second conjunction of the year, in the middle of Venus’ home, on Saturday, about which more in a few paragraphs.

The third big event glides us into a new phase of assimilation, which happens on Wednesday when the Sun trines the members of the triple conjunction and squares Uranus. The ego effortlessly takes on the help and guidance inherent in the mingling of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune. All the influences of the Aquarius cluster — the transcendent information we have been receiving, the healing we have been undergoing, the expansion of our vision for our own lives and understanding of our place in a greater community — channel directly into our selves and become part of the fabric of our existence. Another round of chains breaks away in the Sun/Uranus square, which opens our definitions of ourselves even more than we have allowed. Let go of anything that crumbles midweek, and welcome every flash of brilliance and understanding that lights your path. You are receiving a sharper vision of yourself and the place in the world your soul wants.

Emotional processing follows on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. All of Thursday’s aspects involve the Moon, who bounces her reactions off every major body but Venus. By the time she meets with Venus Friday morning, we know what we want tangibly, in the here and now, and embrace our entitlement to experience it. Don’t be surprised if that desire has quite the rosy tint to it. Venus contacts Neptune by declination before dawn Friday EDT and treats us to sweet fantasies, at minimum, in dreamland. Their concoctions permeate the day and put a soft glow into interpersonal dealings that carries late into the evening, when Venus contacts Jupiter by declination. You might feel more lovingly inclined toward a person in your life, as if you’ve been through something special together but can’t quite put your finger on it. Depending on their nature, relationships take on a heightened sense of romance or compassion. We could spend the day seeing through the eyes of love, though some people’s filter will be closer to infatuation or wishful thinking, Regardless, the Moon/Venus conjunction at the outset bodes well for starting the day feeling safe, secure and nurtured. By mid-afternoon Saturday, which has very few major aspects, longing gazes won’t be enough. A Moon/Pluto inconjunct offers the choice of a profound and powerful emotional experience.

Processing continues in the night between Saturday and Sunday, so put writing implements out before you go to sleep. Before dawn the Sun moves from mental, multitasking Gemini to nurturing-focused Cancer (at 1:46 AM EDT; happy summer solstice!), the Moon conjoins Mercury and the Sun spars with Mars. Dreams teem with messages about our own needs for nurturance and emotional sustenance. These needs play a greater and more acceptable role at this point than they have previously in our lives. Since the Sun’s last time in Cancer, we have experienced the merging of heart and mind, body and spirit, and male and female. With Saturn’s retrograde in Virgo for most of the year, we have grown into a healthy focus on the self. The state of our heart and emotional security has thus become a fundamental issue, no longer something that we can rationalize into being ignored. This summer, as we water, nurture and watch over the projects that we have planted or set in motion, we will also afford the same care to ourselves.

The Sun’s brush with Mars adds another frisson to the cosmic lovers’ second embrace of the year, which happens at 9:10 AM EDT Sunday morning. Venus and Mars merged at the last degree of the zodiac on April 22, a meeting with notes of sorrow, sacrifice and connection with all of existence. Now they are in the middle of the fixed earth sign of Taurus, planting their union fully and firmly on the ground. The multilevel alignment of polarities that has been going on all year now locks into physicality. Mundane, daily life is where everything of importance happens. Heart and mind work together here. We create and enjoy relationships, resources, talents and possessions here. Spiritual guidance and artistic inspiration find expression here. Boring? Hardly. Excitement and passion are on tap as this union occurs today, with sparks coming off the Sun’s predawn tension with Mars before the conjunction and his tension with Venus as evening falls. The cosmic union is both thrilling and stabilizing, like the wedding night of a longtime couple that has never lived together and knows existence will never be the same again.

The thrill comes from the agitation building in the next few days between the lovers and Pluto. The grounding comes from their trine on Monday to Saturn, who is finally, finally moving a degree forward for the first time all year. Add Monday’s Cancer New Moon, and the weekend takes us to the brink of a new phase in nurturing.

Look for multimedia on the Aquarius/Pisces traveling party and the Saturn/Uranus opposition at Kathy’s site, FortunaWorks.com. Now available on mp3: Kathy’s guided visualization for assimilating and working with the energies of the Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune/Uranus cluster. The visualization aligns your inner and outer senses and opens you to reading information and energy from anyone and any place. Order it at FortunaWorks.com, which also offers her overview of 2009 and Saturn/Uranus talk. To join her mailing list, send e-mail to kbiehl@fortunaworks.com.