Insights July 2025
July 2025
AWAKENING
“Our own inner wisdom is always our best guide.” The Insight Center
“When things get rough, we either develop more strength [belief in ourselves] or give a little of it up.” Tom Jacobs
“We are here to see our truth clearly and live a life aligned with it.” The Insight Center
“The higher you vibrate, the higher vibration of what comes to you.” Tom Jacobs
“When we know who we are, we have more clarity about what is not us and not for us, and we can let the “not you/not for you” debris go.” The Insight Center
“The general ability of discernment is a personal power. You know who you are (or how you vibrate) and you have clarity about what is not you and not for you (or what vibrates differently than you).” Tom Jacobs
“Pour qui veut mener sa barque, s’individuer nécessite toujours de batailler contre les vents contraires qui immanquablement se lèvent.”
Translation: “For anyone who wants to steer their own ship, individuality always requires battling against the headwinds that inevitably arise.” Felwine Saar, Les lieux qu’habitent mes rêves
Thank you, Stephanie Gervais for sharing this with me.
Ten THINGS
Do one thing at a time
1. Do it slowly and deliberately
2. Do it completely
3. Do less
4. Put space between things
5. Develop rituals
6. Designate time for certain things
7. Devote time to sitting
8. Smile and serve others
9. Make cleaning and cooking become a meditation
10. Think about what is necessary
11. Live simply
MIND JOURNAL
ASTROLOGY
Pluto is in Aquarius for all of 2025 (and for 22 more years.)
Eris and Chiron are conjunct all year – cultivate personal wisdom
“…limits only exist in your ability to perceive the unimaginable. Imagine well and imagine huge.” Philip Sedgwick
July 8 Uranus moves from Taurus to Gemini
July 12 Saturn retrogrades
September 2 Saturn retrogrades back into Pisces for the rest of 2025
October 23 Neptune retrogrades back into Pisces
Oct/Nov/Dec Jupiter in Cancer squares Chiron and Eris
Uranus moves into the sign of Gemini July 2025
Uranus is making one of the biggest transitions in the cosmos this July. Uranus, the planet of great awakening, will move out of the sign of Taurus, and into the sign of Gemini on July 8, 2025. Some of you may already be feeling this transformative air energy.
The planet Uranus holds a very important placement in your birth chart. Uranus is the great awakener. Wherever Uranus is in your birth chart, it is bringing you the energy and the information of illumination. This includes individuation, rebelliousness, and a strong, persistent urge for freedom.
Look at your birth chart and see where your Uranus is in your birth chart. Look at the sign to better understand the characteristics of how Uranus operates and then look at the house the Uranus is in and that is the area of your life where this Uranus energy wants to have this powerful impact.
Being aware of this powerful consciousness-shifting energy is transformative for your life. It is a persistent calling to wake up and be who you truly are. It can be the source of anxiety, because the energy of anxiety from Uranus is the powerful energy calling you to awaken. And when you see it in this way, it’s much easier to understand and manage from the perspective of anxiety rather than feeling like you’re being attacked in some way.
Respect this powerful activation of liberating energy in your birth chart and as part of your path of becoming you in this lifetime.
Next look at Uranus in your transit chart. A transit chart will show you where the planets are currently in the cosmos and where they are aligned in your personal birth chart - and you can see where the current Uranus power is impacting your life now.
You want to look at the current sign that Uranus is in and the current house placement that Uranus is in - the same way that you did for your birth chart - what’s the sign influence and which house is this great awakener energy activated in currently.
Uranus may also be on top of one of your birth planets or on top of your ascendant and if so, it’s also activating that planet or the ascendant so wherever Uranus is traveling around your chart, it is bringing this powerful energy of revelation, rebelliousness, individuation and a strong urge and calling for freedom. Again, there can be some anxiety. Because the awakening energy is not calm!
I find that it’s helpful to look at this with perspective - keep it in your sight and your view and realize that over a period of months and years the traveling of Uranus through this area of your chart is going to awaken you greatly. The important thing is to be aware of the activation of this energy. Don’t resist it don’t be afraid of it don’t fight it don’t question it unreasonably. Greet it as the awakener. When you’re nervous about it remember what the energy is and why it’s there. Allow the unfolding to take place.
It’s also important to understand that with a transiting Planet - any transiting Planet - it’s not exactly a linear process. It’s not exactly an exact science as far as the dates of when things will happen as planetary energy moves in - and the planetary energy aligns, and the planetary energy moves on. With a planet like Uranus, it is a long process of change – some quick changes may happen along the way – but the general influences lasts for years. Uranus moves very slowly, and this process of change can take years, so it’s important to stand back and view it as a longer process that is having a powerful impact on your life.
Side note: Uranus is the great awakener and can also activate quick and immediate changes. So be aware of this too. You may have a sudden job change, a sudden move, quick accident, and/or quick shifts in your awareness. Be aware of quick changes that can catch you off guard and the longer-term impact of Uranus’s transit through your chart.
Eventually, when the impact has shifted to a new place (sign and house), you will look back on this impact and be able to see all the ways that you were impacted. And if during that process of in that area of your life, you were aware and accepting the journey will be smoother. It doesn’t work to resist the powerful energy of Uranus. It does not back down.
VIPASSANA AND BUDDHIST MEDITATION
“This extraordinarily creative, almost miraculous aspect of impermanence is that life is coming into and going out of being moment to moment, instant to instant, quite miraculously. But if we’re holding on to it, we don’t see that it’s miraculous, and we don’t see the freedom in the movement of it.” Adyashanti
HEALING
“We can learn to move out old energy that is stuck in your mind, body, and spirit and make room for new energy to arrive and settle in.” The Insight Center
ENGAGED BUDDHISM
“I don't want wellness practices that teach me to be at peace with an inequitable world. I need practices that help me to stay sane while doing my part to fight against it. if it makes you compliant to injustice, it's not healing—it's sedation.” Michelle C Clark
“I allow myself the right to mourn, I allow myself the right to subjectivity, I allow myself the right to suffer. The Palestinian subject, if you will, what has contributed to dehumanizing it is precisely very cold political speeches.” - Rima Hassan
“During labour, women breathe through the pain. Amid excruciating pain and exhaustion, they cannot stop, they must push to bring life into this world.
Same is happening to Humanity.
Today we must breathe through the pain and push all together, till we break the siege on Gaza and on all of us. A new world is being born from all of us.” Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt •
@FranceskAlbs
“This is what we mean when we say Dharma must take sides. Not against people, but against harm. Not as political theatre, but as ethical integrity. Silence in the face of genocide isn’t contemplative. It’s cowardice.
But editorial choices are biased. What we don’t say is often just as consequential as what we do. Who we give our platform to reveals what we endorse. And silence is never neutral. It’s a stance with consequences.
So to those who say “we’re just not taking a side,” I would say: you already have.
When a Buddhist magazine or a Buddhist “peacemakers” organization chooses not to call for an end to the slaughter in Gaza while people are being killed for seeking food, children are buried beneath rubble, journalists are assassinated, that is not neutrality. It privileges which lives are considered worthy of protection. It privileges whose suffering can be watched in silence.” Alexandra Cain M.Div.
10 Ethical Expectations for Buddhist Institutions
Below are a set of ethical imperatives for Buddhist institutions that claim to center compassion, justice, and liberation.
1. Name the Genocide: Publicly acknowledge the mass killing, starvation, and displacement in Gaza as a genocide. Use the word. Use it clearly. Refusing to name it perpetuates harm and delays justice.
2. Call for an Immediate Ceasefire and an End to U.S. Military Aid: Issue a statement calling for a permanent ceasefire and the cessation of U.S. military funding and weapons transfers that enable mass killing.
3. Center Palestinian Voices: Publish, host, and amplify Palestinian Buddhist practitioners, scholars, and allies. Invite their teachings, grief, anger, and vision into Buddhist spaces.
4. Acknowledge and Confront Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Bias in Sanghas: Create clear internal processes for examining how white sanghas and Buddhist institutions replicate anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias, especially when masking that bias as “complexity” or “neutrality.”
5. Educate Sanghas on the Dharma Roots of Compassionate Action: Offer public teachings, panels, and reflections that clarify how Buddhist texts, from the Saleyyaka Sutta to the Bodhisattva Vows, explicitly link wisdom with action, and equanimity with discernment, not detachment.
6. Refuse False Balance: Stop framing the occupation of Palestine and the bombing of Gaza as a symmetrical “conflict” between two sides. The Dharma does not require us to be neutral between oppressed and the oppressor.
7. Practice Right Speech with Moral Clarity: Use platforms, including magazines, podcasts, dharma talks, and community newsletters to speak with honesty, timeliness, and care. Do not allow vagueness, euphemism, or both-sides language to take the place of Right Speech.
8. Organize Visible Action: Host meditations, rituals, and memorials for lives lost in Gaza. Organize dharma-centered protests, letter-writing campaigns, or fundraising efforts. Make compassion legible in the public square.
9. Recommit to the Bodhisattva Vow in Public and in Practice: If you have taken the Bodhisattva Vows to free all beings and to end all suffering, then act accordingly. Publicly revisit the vows. Use them as a guide for right action.
10. Engage in Reparative Action and Karmic Accountability: If Buddhist communities are to speak now, after months of silence while more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, they must do more than offer aid. They must examine the personal and institutional karma that enabled that silence. That means naming the fear, the attachments, the racism, the professional positioning, the donor appeasement, and the spiritual bypassing that led to complicity while a genocide unfolded in real time. Reparative action includes:
• Publishing curated lists of resources for study, action, and mutual aid.
• Opening platforms—not as charity, but as redistribution of visibility and power.
• Donating funds, visibility, and space to Palestinian-led aid efforts, organizing groups, and healing practitioners.
But none of this matters if it is not paired with public acknowledgment of what was repressed, and why. Without that reflection, the sangha is ethically bankrupt. True repair begins with truth. Alexandra Cain M.Div.