Working with difficult transits can take us beyond the limited and limiting ideas we have about ourselves and our reality. We may know this, but when we’re in the midst of it words like this don’t mean much. What we need are practical tools to bring ourselves into alignment with ‘what is’, to release the tension and distress and get back into a place of clarity.

So ask your higher self: what do I need to do right now to be able to rise above these challenges and be at peace. When I ask myself this question the answer is always ‘Let go…’

Surrender is your friend when working with difficult transits

As a child I had this recurring dream I was floating in space on a huge honeycomb structure. As I walked around each comb, gradually the edge became narrower and narrower until eventually I was down on my hands and knees clinging to the razor sharp edge as I gazed in terror into the darkness below.

Inevitably I’d lose my balance and begin to fall and this was where the dream always ended. The fear of falling into that darkness was so great that it would wake me, and I would lie in the dark shivering with relief that it had only been a dream.

Then one day when I was eighteen I had the dream again after many years, but this time I became lucid just as it reached its terrifying climax. When I realised I was dreaming I lost my fear of falling and simply allowed myself to slip off. I let go and fell.

What occurred next was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Instead of falling I floated. I remained motionless as the paltry thing I’d been clinging to became smaller and smaller, finally disappearing into the distance. The feeling that came over me is impossible to describe. It was a feeling of weightlessness, of spaciousness, of pure joy.

Since then I’ve had glimpses of this experience: in meditation, when singing from the heart, when I’m still and silent in the garden, watching as a small bee lands on a flower. It always comes when I am completely present in the moment.

What my dream represents for me is this: when we let go of what we think is our security, we disentangle ourselves from the tethers that hold us, that constrain our being. Everything I attempt to hold onto, to grasp or to identify with only limits the potential of the creative universe within me.

When working with difficult transits we are often called upon to let go of things we’re very attached to. It may not seem like this at first. You may think life is being unfair, that someone or something is screwing you over. Your first instinct is probably to fight for your rights, to push on through.

Coming from a place of resistance is exhausting and most of the time it doesn’t change the situation much, if at all. In fact as Carl Jung pointed out, “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” I personally know this is true. When I resist the reality of my situation I find myself extrapolating, imagining dire future possibilities that are ridiculously far from reality!

When I surrender to what is and let go completely of any control I imagine I have over the circumstances of my life, I free up the mechanisms of the universe so that the blessings that await me are able to flow freely into my life, unimpeded by my limited ideas of how things ‘should’ be.

For in reality the only thing we have control over in this life is how we respond to it. Never is this more clear than when we are working with difficult transits!

What are your strategies for working with difficult transits?

Are you up against a seemingly endless series of obstacles, tangled in a web of confusion, stunned by sudden changes in your life that leave you wondering what the hell was the point of everything you worked for?

Are you struggling, resistant to the changes that are taking place, hanging on for dear life to the way things were? Or are you coming from a place of surrender? Please share your experience working with difficult transits in the comments below.

If you don’t have one yet, you can get a free birth chart at astro.com. To understand how to read your birth chart, and follow the transits in your own life, download my free ebook The Language of Astrology.