Leo Your Sun Sign
August 2003
By Life Positive
In this series, in each issue we feature the sun sign of the month. it is extracted from Your Sun Sign as a Spiritual Guide by J. Donald Walters, New Age Books, Walters is a spiritual teacher. He was a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda.
Leo is the sun’s own house. Second of the three summer signs as well as the three fire signs, it reflects the sun’s position in the solar system, suggesting the essential consciousness of the sun.
Coming at that time of the year when most forms of vegetation have attained their full maturity, Leo is also the peak of personal focus, a trait that begins with Cancer. This makes possible a confident self-expansion in Leos, along with a heightened sense of authority.
The Sun in Leo
If your sun is in Leo, you seek to exert your authority over others by simply being yourself. But you do so by ‘shining’ rather than by coercing them. You assume that others will be impressed by your views. If anyone is not, you may become distant and withdrawn, like a star, reminding yourself that you can’t expect those who aren’t close enough to you, to enter your orbit. This tendency to affirm people’s distance from you by becoming distant yourself is a fault, for it brings you unnecessary pain, enforcing an isolation that you really don’t want. Fortunately for you, however, most people do find you impressive.
The influence of Leo tends towards noble, or at least calm, impressive actions. Just like the sun, a Leo too tends to be the centre of his world-not in the absorbing way of a Cancerian but in an outwardly radiating, life-giving manner. Leo natives, like those of Aries, are often leaders of men, but in their leadership they have the self-possessed majesty of a king. Their authority is central, unchallenged and secure.
If the inner energy-flow of a Leo is not in proper balance, he may explode outward like a star-nova, consuming life instead of nurturing it. Such an imbalance of energy produces egotism, and an inclination to prefer gaudy show to real substance, and a tendency to concentrate more on the effect of one’s outward radiance than on the true source of it within.
It is important for all Leos to know that there are others who receive and appreciate their light. To be bereft of this feeling is to be bereft of his own sense of mission. Such a Leo becomes lost-self-pitying, suspicious, resentful of every imagined slight, rejecting a world that he believes has rejected him.
Though they have a natural sense of personal authority, Leos’ human aspect urges them to seek extra support. Since authority is so vital to a Leo, he may try to bolster his own sense of it by claiming some even higher authority, human or divine. Used insensitively, this tendency can make him ruthless and dictatorial. The unfeeling bureaucrat, or the proud instigator of religious persecutions, or simply the sort of person who tries to win people over by presenting his own views on the authority of someone else, are examples. Used sensitively, however, the sense of ruling as an instrument of some higher power can give one a gracious mien, a natural dignity that instinctively draws others up to the level instead of impressing them with the relative insignificance of their own positions.
A Leo’s focus is on giving, not on receiving. On a higher level, this can mean a warm, generous spirit. On a lower level, it can simply indicate a tendency to walk serenely but roughshod over others.
We all have something of the Leo in us. It is reflected in our need to achieve a sense of personal worth. At times all of us go begging for approval or sympathy. Then whether from rejection or from a sudden sense of dignity, the Leo in us asserts itself and we say: ‘‘How foolish of people to think I need them! I am complete in myself. If others need anything from me let them come to me!’’
And then we face within ourselves the essential struggle of every Leo: whether to emphasise our own worth by setting ourselves above or apart, or to emphasise it by generously sharing with them the inner strength that we now feel. The one path leads towards emotional isolation, the other towards a sense of genuine personal fulfilment. Unfortunately, human capacity for self-deception being what it is, some people get bogged down in a middle ground. In trying to give others their ‘strength’, they only succeed in boring them to tears. (Many Leos are classic bores!) The way past this mire lies in developing a genuine interest in other people. One needs to develop other inner qualities, particularly the most un-Leonine qualities of listening and receiving.
Practice for meditaion
If you are a Leo, your progress lies in a genuine self-offering in the service of others. You need above all to realise your inner affinity with the sun, your ruler, whose gifts to the solar system are its rays of light and energy. Your giving too, should be expressed less in the form of things, or deeds but by a kind of sympathetic and strength-giving radiation.
In your search for truth, you must allow your own sense of authority to make you all the more appreciative of authority itself as a principle. Open yourself in calm understanding to the rays of wisdom and grace flowing into your soul, in meditation, from the supreme sun, the spirit. And then-still in meditation-radiate your love and blessing outward to all mankind.