This month you can look at what you have maintained and for what purpose, what you are maintaining, what you need to continue maintaining, where you need to let go, what you need to start maintaining better, and what you can do to maintain balance through these times.

Let’s start with “what you have maintained, are maintaining, and for what purpose”.
Look at your physical environment, your household, where you live, where you work, your investments, your image, your “career” or work, your relationships, your practices, your habits, your “position”, your beliefs, your grudges, your resistances, your addictions, your illusions and self-deceptions, your efforts, your desires and dreams; the list is long.
This is your opportunity to evaluate whether the energy you are putting into maintaining what you have and who you are is worth the effort or not. Much of what is being maintained is being maintained out of habit without being with the process in present time.
After the burst of creativity, expression and a bit of chaos in January, this month is about sifting through the activity and reworking the patterns that maintain your life. You will need to be somewhat ruthless in your decisions regarding the maintenance of old structures, ideals, attachments, environments and image, perhaps even identity. This process can be terrifying to the ego and should be managed gently with patience and compassion. It may be eye opening to realize the amount of effort you have put into maintaining a certain aspect of your life simply out of habit. Good examples are the maintenance of a large family home years after all the children have left, or the maintenance of a personal image of being the one with all the answers, or the one who doesn’t know anything; or the maintenance of certain yearly traditions out of habit, or maintaining a relationship out of the habit of a long past completed agreement or responsibility.
The key is to ask yourself if the energy and effort you are putting into the maintenance of a thing is worth it or not. For what purpose have you been maintaining this thing? Does it inspire or make you feel good, alive and joyful, satisfied in some way or energized? If not, re evaluate its place in your life and let it go if you need to. The physical environment and possessions will be the easier category to evaluate. The relationships a bit harder, the habits harder yet, and the psychological category of image, identity, grudges, beliefs, illusions etc. may be the most difficult and will take some time. This is not a task that can be accomplished in one months time, however it is important to begin the process as this is what is in the way of your freedom to access and express your creativity.

Next let’s look at “what you need to be maintaining”

This category includes the structures that will support your life rather than take something away. For example, if you have been maintaining habits of procrastination, a poor diet, believing yourself to be inferior or persecuted, putting yourself last, doing things because others think you should, etc., those are habits that do not support you. Hopefully you will have already been able to identify these as energy leaks. The idea is to replace them with what does support you and to structure the maintenance of healthy habits and a healthy environment for yourself.  Ask yourself what your structures of maintenance need to be for your mental, spiritual and physical health? For you to maintain your boundaries, your true desires and visions, your need for personal growth, peace and quiet and nurturing relationships?
The most important structures you need to be maintaining in a way that supports you are your personal health on all levels, a healthy living and working environment, and the container for doing your life’s work and study. This includes the categories of relationships, partnerships, projects, home, vehicles, wardrobe, etc. Perhaps there have been areas that you have neglected the maintenance of that you need to pay attention to. Go through your home and look with fresh present time eyes at what may need a little maintenance so that it may better support you and resolve to put some energy towards it.
The other area requiring maintenance this month will be the details of anything you began or initiated as a new project in the last couple of months. With the creative explosion of January, most likely there is great movement in some area of your life that requires maintenance. Pay attention to those details and do what you need to do to maintain the flow of energy on the right direction even if it feels tedious at times.
The sub-themes of the month are discipline and responsibility. You are responsible for maintaining what needs to be maintained and this will require discipline and focus on your part.

Now let’s look at the “balance” part of maintenance for these times.

February is a month of learning how and practicing maintaining balance in the throws of chaos, uncertainty, disruption, change, passionate enthusiasm, extreme disappointment, mood swings, and confusion about how you feel. The key is to establish disciplined practices that maintain personal support; to lower expectations; to not take anything personally; to put one foot in front of the other on the path you know is right for you, and to be patient and compassionate with self and others. Some of this month may feel a little flat for some of you drama junkies and that’s OK. This is more about maintaining rather than bursting forward. If you do not establish solid structures around the maintenance of the important aspects of your life, you will easily be swept under and away by the next tidal wave of explosive energy.

Personal Growth and Well Being
This month offers a great opportunity to get your personal maintenance structures back on track. Be careful not to overdo it by overextending your commitments even if it for personal growth. Remember that growth-gone-bad translates to exhaustion, confusion, and ultimately to something that does not feel good. Keep checking in with yourself asking if what you are doing is giving you more than it is taking from you and that if what you are putting on your plate is compromising some other important part of your life.

Relationships
A huge territory this month, as relationships are often the point of growth. All relationships require maintenance. It will up to you to decide which ones are worth maintaining and which ones are not. You will also need to evaluate which relationships are worth a little more maintenance than perhaps you have been giving them. Often these fall in the category of long term ones taken for granted. This is a great opportunity to be re inspired.

Business, Finance, Projects, Partnerships
Maintain what has already been started, pay attention to the details. In some cases you may feel there is no progress or movement forward. Use the image of a lake that has just recently been filled with floodwaters. The task now is to maintain the lake. Stock it with fish, make some rules about use, fortify the edges. A good month to put a budget into place, put some energy into important partnerships, take charge of your finances, do your taxes, all your filing, get rid of old baggage and files from previous or already completed projects. For new projects, put the details of the infrastructure into place.

Physical Health and Well-Being
Perhaps, the most important category this month. If you do not have your health, you have nothing. Be ruthless about eliminating your maintenance of poor and self-destructive habits. Put into place instead a disciplined maintenance structure that will support your health on all levels. Reduce your exposure to negativity in the form of news, people, and toxic environments whenever possible and step up your energetic hygiene.

Climate, Weather and the Environment
Maintaining balance amid chaos is the theme here so that regardless of what may happen in the area of climate and weather and earth phenomena won’t throw you off balance. Be prepared for anything and accept what is. There will be lessons around maintaining balance amid extreme cold, extreme wet, extreme dry, extreme hot. On a larger scale look for a focus on the theme of how better to maintain the global environment.

Government, Politics and Global Issues
This month look for those in power trying to maintain their platforms at all costs both nationally and internationally. This goes for the economies, positions on policies, personal idealism, etc. Oppositions may be prone to impatience and passion for change. Patience is the answer. Remember the river only flows one way and carves its own course.

Important dates:
February 1: Full Moon at 10:45PM Mountain Standard Time. This is a good time to stop everything and reflect on what is important to you, truly important. Be ruthless about telling the truth to yourself about what is not so important. As a self reflection, and in terms of the theme of maintenance, evaluate how much energy you have put towards those things that come up as not so important.

February 1-10: This period of time is for evaluation of your maintenance habits, structures, deficits, misplaced efforts etc. Be careful to evaluate more from your heart than your head. Your intellect can give you some clues as to the purpose of maintaining but the final decisions regarding what to discard or pull your maintenance out of, and what to put more of your energy into maintaining will need to be made from the heart.  There may be times when you don’t know how you feel. It is OK if the mind does not know. You are  in the process of creating new emotional definitions for the mind to recognize and this may take awhile. Be patient. If you feel lethargic, stuck, depressed, irritated or unfocused, just do the next baby step whatever it is. Maintenance is laundry, washing the car, organizing your closet.

February 11-17: A time of movement. This could signify movement or change in your or another’s life, earth activity or chaos. Keep your nose to the grindstone and focus on your own maintenance. Be careful not to get distracted by other peoples’ drama, impatience, martyrdom, chaos. Maintain your own boundaries and “only go straight”.

February 18: New Moon at 12:56 AM Mountain Standard Time. Celebrate who you are, who you have become, all of your creative potential, your talents, what you have accomplished and the endless possibilities of where you can go.

February 19-23: This is a time frame for something fabulously wonderful to emerge due to your diligence, discipline and balanced maintenance structures. It could be the realization of a dream, a new relationship, better health, cure of a disease, or simply a sense of well being such as you never experienced before. If you are feeling exactly the opposite, you need to go back to square one and re-evaluate “maintenance” and how it applies to your life.

February 24-March 4: Either your life will feel wonderfully balanced and ready for the next burst of creativity, or you will feel anxious, burdened, despairing and scattered. If you are feeling the latter, you probably did not let go of enough dead weight or old responsibilities and are still putting large amounts of effort into maintaining something not useful. Identify what that is, ask what the fear or attachment to holding on to it is, and then take the steps to let it go. You may need some help in this from a friend, a therapist or counselor. It’s OK to ask for help. It is truly now or never.

Have a great month!
Jose and Lena