I am OPTimist

About I am OPTimist

I am OPTimist. I am not willing to be defined by a few words—what I do is a living journey. I am a multidisciplinary artist, empirical polymath, writer, evolutionary astrologer, libertarian/Bitcoiner. My philosophy integrates Eastern, ancestral, and cosmological traditions with psychological inquiries, praxeology, and Austrian economics, emphasizing liberty, value, resources, and self-worth in the quest for individual and societal service. I create public art commissions and immersive environments, facilitate dialogue, and explore freedom, shadow work, myths, natural law, Bitcoin, and the architecture of time. This podcast is a reflection of my living and individuated journey. If you are curious, there is much more to explore in the About Me section.👇☝️ www.monikabravo.blog (https://www.monikabravo.blog?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Monika Bravo

Category

arts · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

1 Mar 2022

Latest episode

5 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

186 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   5 Oct 2026

   Property or Propriety ?

   Early this morning, I was scrolling through social media (more specifically Substack), and I found this quote from the Li Ji, the Confucian book of rites: “The superior man is respectful and reverent, assiduous in his duties and not going beyond them. Retiring and yielding, thus illustrating the principle of propriety.” “道德仁義，非禮不成；教訓正俗，非禮不備；分爭辨訟，非禮不決；君臣上下、父子兄弟，非禮不定；宦學事師，非禮不親；班朝治軍，蒞官行法，非禮威嚴不行；禱祠祭祀，供給鬼神，非禮不誠不莊。是以君子恭敬、撙節、退讓以明禮。 This passage is from the ancient Chinese classic Liji (《禮記》, or Book of Rites), specifically from the chapter "Qu Li I" (《曲禮上》). The text was compiled and edited in the 1st century BCE by the Han Dynasty scholar Dai Sheng (戴聖), collecting earlier ritual philosophies from the school of Confucius. The English translation used here is by the British sinologist James Legge (理雅各), originally published in 1885 in The Sacred Books of the East (Vol. 27). I was scrolling fast, and I actually read property instead of propriety. I started the inquiry with the wrong word. Only later did I realize the confusion, but it had planted a seed for this article. I had not even read the quote properly. My mind took the word somewhere else. So typical, lol. Then when I listened to what I was dictating, I realized that I was mixing them up, realizing that the word was propriety, and these kinds of mishaps are what I enjoy so much about my self-inquiry, because propriety, proper, and property are connected through the idea of what belongs to someone or something, what is proper to its nature, and what sits within its rightful place. The confusion was not itself a mistake, it was one of those intuitive leads that makes the inquiry so rich itself. I focused on the word “property,” deciding to take it apart. Within the Confucian way of thinking, conduct reveals character. behavior: the 君子 (Jūnzǐ) what we can call the cultivated individual, the sage, the one who knows how to behave, understands his or her position inside a relationship and acts according to its measure. He carries what belongs to him and is also able to recognize the boundary that belongs to the other. Therefore, knowing when his action has reached its proper limit. Let’s dissect the word “propriety.” Here is the part that made me laugh when I looked it up: propriety and property come from the same Latin root, proprietas, from proprius, which means one’s own. For a long time, the two words were kind of the same thing. Propriety could mean ownership, and property could mean a quality that belongs to a thing. The English language eventually made a difference between them: something that pertains to land or something that pertains to etiquette and behavior. Both still carry the idea of what belongs to someone or something, what is appropriate to its nature, and what sits within its rightful place. Property here becomes part of the boundary that assigns value to the action. Then there is li, the Chinese word that the English translation turned into propriety. Li is closer to the gesture of something behaving rather than the strict definition of a character: how you bow, who pours the tea first, which seat is yours, the way a family does things because the grandparents did them. It is a form that insinuates and inspires in you a very specific behavior. Proprius begins with the thing itself, with what is its own, and moves outward from there. We can see that the Jūnzǐ, with this gesture of bowing, is part of a ritual and is acting from the inside. Obviously, my mind wanted to immediately distill it from the Austrian economics perspective. Mises begins with the acting individual. As an individual chooses and acts, he assumes the consequences. Rothbard takes this structure into property rights, where the question becomes very concrete: what is mine to decide and what is yours to decide, and where is the boundary between us? I ended up thinking: this phrase, “Know your place in the relationship. Carry your part fully. Respect the boundary of the other, and know when to advance and when to withdraw.” The economic structure within those lines gives action to a boundary, and once this limitation is clear, responsibility arises with it, within it. I can act within what belongs to me, and you can act within what belongs to you. The exchange requires that each person recognizes the other as someone with authority over his or her own domain. A property is something one owns. A property is also a quality that belongs to something by itself. Its nature, integrity can be a property of character, and discipline can be a property of conduct. A foundation has properties that determine what it can carry or not. Therefore, the final question is: what are the properties of a character capable of recognizing the property of another? You see here: the character, the person, the noble man, the sage, the person who is awake and conscious, is able to recognize his own actions and take responsibility for them. As that happens simultaneously, he’s also capable of seeing the limitations between himself and another situation, person, or thing (or the properties of this situation, person, or thing) and giving value to that. Therefore, he knows how to act. Yes, the properties of one character are capable of recognizing the property and limitations of another. Character is revealed through conduct. Confucian ethics is deeply concerned with the cultivation of a person whose behavior expresses an internal order. The Jūnzǐ develops the capacity to recognize measure, relationship, responsibility, and the proper place of his own action. If we think of Aristotle’s ethics, character is formed through action and habit. Virtue becomes a disposition, a way of behaving that develops through practice. A person learns how to judge a situation and act according to its particular conditions. Ethics is a practice. The properties of my character determine how I exercise my own agency. They also determine whether I can recognize the domain of another person. If I understand my own action, I can assume responsibility for its consequences. If I recognize the properties of the person, situation, object, or relationship in front of me, I can perceive its limits and give those limits value. A material has properties that determine how it can be used. A structure has properties that determine what it can sustain. A human being also has properties that determine how he or she acts. Property rights make this visible in economic relationships because they establish a domain. They answer a fundamental question: Who has the authority to decide? Mises begins with human action because economic life originates in individuals making choices. Rothbard follows the implications of those choices into ownership and property rights. Once I recognize another person as having authority over his own domain, my own action acquires a boundary. The boundary in itself is not just serving as a limitation that separates, but it actually has so much information. It imforms me what belongs to me to decide also what belongs to another. It tells me when an exchange requires consent, when responsibility belongs to me, and when the integrity of another person, object, or situation asks me to withdraw. Then the original Confucian idea of propriety becomes surprisingly close to the question that started all of this for me. What is proper? What belongs here? What belongs to me? What belongs to another? And what properties of my own character allow me to recognize the difference? This is one place where ethics, conduct, and economics agree: in the quality of the person who acts and in his capacity to recognize the limits that give value to action. I hope you enjoy this short article. I recently became obsessed with Cameron Winter and his Band Geese 👇 enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe (https://www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   30 Sept 2026

   The Value of Commitment:

   I have been thinking very much about value because we are about to enter yet another Venus retrograde in Scorpio. Venus retrogrades about every 1.6 years, and over eight years it returns to more or less the same area of the zodiac. Looking backward through 2018, 2010, 2002, 1994, and so on, I wanted to see where I was, what I was doing, what I was committing myself to, and especially what I thought had value at the time. Economic value is a practice. For me, this Venus retrograde moves through my 9th house, and Mercury will also retrograde through the same area. The New Moon next week in Libra is also going to be around the same neighborhood. My natal Moon is in Scorpio, and it falls in the 9th house. It is in a closing relationship to Neptune in the 10th, and the Moon in my chart rules my North Node in Cancer in the 5th house. Of course, I am interested in perspective, in seeking truth, and in going deeper into the underworld. This is my descent. I am interested in how perspective changes what I value, value being one of the signatures of Venus. How I listen to my needs and how I value those needs changes the choices I make. The 9th house in my chart is where I metabolize experience into meaning. That is probably why I keep going back through old cycles. I am looking at what I believed then, what I was seeking then, what I valued then, and what my behavior revealed about all of it at the time. The interesting part is the distance between those versions of me. That creates another pattern ready to be deciphered. Like a spiral it shows long term evolutionary processes. What becomes very salient every eight years; as of the last one in 2018, I have been working on economic value for a while. As for Scorpio, it deals with shared values, merging, commitment, confrontation, and the places where another person or partnership enters your field and suddenly value becomes something you have to negotiate with one another. It is also the place of the underworld where we meet our own deepest fears. Going back to Persephone and how she came out of the underworld and what she brought: what are the goodies here of my realization? The descent to the underworld will provide a sense of value uncovering truths. When you are learning what you need, you are also confronted with knowing what you are willing to give and how far you are willing to merge with somebody or something else while remaining inside your own life. Commitment takes a turn here. It sounds romantic until we look at what it actually requires: our time, our attention, our energy, and the fact that we follow through. Our choices and the repetition of them will sometimes feel like a sacrifice or an offering. Sometimes saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else. Economics is fundamentally concerned with choices. Resources, time, attention, and energy are finite, therefore every decision implies an allocation. This applies not just to money, it surely applies to relationships. ROI, opportunity cost. Where am I putting my time? ROI means return on investment, a simple financial metric used to measure the amount of profit or loss generated by an investment relative to its total cost. Where am I putting my attention? If I am spending hours trying to get somebody to do something they already told me they want to do, because they want me as their accountability mentor, what am I actually investing in? At what point does accountability become me carrying somebody else’s commitment? In the past, I would sign up for that because I felt it was important to be there for others. Now, coming into this retrograde, I have been re-evaluating how I want to relate to the other. I have the South Node, Jupiter, and now Mars transiting my 7th house in Leo, so if my relationship to the other is not solar, there is no point in connecting. Some people speak about what they want all the time. I do it too. Then there is what I actually do every day. What time I wake up. What I postpone, what I practice; where the hours go. At some point, behavior starts telling the story more clearly than intention. At this point in my life, what interests me more is what unfolds in the present moment between two people, two points of contact. It could be situations and things as well. The shadow can surface there too. I just don’t want to enter the relationship through responsibility for somebody else’s process, or by carrying something that belongs to them. A person can sincerely want something and continuously choose actions that move somewhere else. What is the commitment behind the intention? Sometimes I am seeing a version of myself from 25 years ago through another person. I know somebody can eventually cross it because I did. The problem begins when, because I can see the route, I start investing in whether the other person will take it. I can care about their potential. I can understand exactly where they are because I lived there myself. Needless to say, I just do not want to finance that potential with my time anymore. Venus in scorpio retrograde through the years: In the fall of 1994, I had just moved to New York. My perspective was completely different because I had moved to a new city and committed myself to becoming an artist without even knowing how to do that. That was my wish, and I made it happen. Skip school, get a studio, absorb everything in the city hands-on. Become an artist by practice not degree, and so I did. Eight years later, in 2002, I had put a lot of effort into getting exhibitions, selling my artwork, getting representation, and attending several residency programs. I also noticed that I had become much lazier with personal habits. I was taking a lot of substances, barely eating, working in the middle of the night, waking up at midday, and living inside a rhythm that had become normal to me. One day I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked tired. I had black bags under my eyes. I was 37, and I remember saying: “I look like s**t. I must make a change.” So I did. I quit smoking cigarettes using a hypnotist. That was fun. I stopped drinking alcohol. I can do that with no problem. And I started the practice of meditation. Once I became serious about the Taoist practice, the biggest crutch I had was weed. One day I woke up and asked myself: “Do I want to have a smoke, or do I want to meditate?” The answer was obvious to me at the moment. That was more than intention, it was an orientation, I was making sure that this was the road I wanted to take. There is something very simple in that moment, I already knew what I wanted. The question was whether my actions were going to agree with it. Then, in 2010, after the economic chaos of 2008 and 2009, I came to the realization that I had a vault of value in my studio and my storage unit, and I needed to do something very different from what I was doing, change of compass again. Thus far, I had been expecting people to come to me, to find me, to invite me to exhibit, to buy my work, and so on. In one phrase, I was very comfortable being discovered. That was a beautiful fantasy until you start realizing that the hustle was a big thing in NYC. I did something completely unusual for me. In 2009, we had moved to a loft in Chinatown in New York, and I had a lot of space. I decided to dress all the walls with my work, sort of like having a retrospective in my home and studio at all times. Just seeing my work on all the walls was very educational to me. It was jarring and very disturbing for my ex-husband BTW. I am laughing here just with the thought of it. lol. Then I started inviting people to do studio visits. Poets, curators, museum directors, gallerists, friends, non-friends, artists, musicians, people I met socially. In New York, you can be a social butterfly every day. You meet people all the time. It was easy for me to ask: “Do you want to do a studio visit?” They would usually agree. As I kept extending the same invitation over and over, something interesting happened. We were looking at the work, and we were talking about the work. As I was talking about the work, I was listening to myself. Every time I spoke about the work, every time I explained something, every time I answered something, I was hearing my own relationship to the work. I was hearing my own voice. I have to tell you guys, this was the best education. The years 2010 and 2011 became a very important moment for me. I regained the understanding that the work I had created thus far had so much value, and I was becoming a full steward of it. I started expanding my vision of where I wanted the work to reach. The value was already there. I had to recognize it. Recognition and validation have nothing to do with creativity in my sense. Eight years later, life had moved again. I had gone through a divorce in 2015. I made very bad decisions with money in 2016 because I was so desperate to untangle myself from that relationship that I gave priority to cutting off the relationship rather than staying with resources. That was my opportunity cost. In retrospect, that was the price of freedom, a toll in the journey I happily paid… By 2017, I had started studying evolutionary astrology and Human Design. During the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 2018, I entered another very productive period. I started doing more commission-based work, I decided to leave the middlemen behind. I started reading a lot of astrology charts. I kept studying deeply and committed myself to one-to-one mentorships with astrological teachers for a period of four years. I also added other kinds of practices that shaped the way I do readings and tend to my needs these days. My commitment really paid off. I am already living inside the return on that investment now. Eight years later, I am returning to the same Venus retrograde family from a completely different place. In 2018, I was learning how to rebuild value after a period in which I had lost a lot financially, emotionally, and relationally. Now I am interested in where I place value. That changes the orientation. Let us talk about commitment. Commitment is where value becomes visible. You can say you value something forever. At some point, in your life the truth is not the same. Life gives us so many opportunities to orient ourselves toward our purpose, toward the intention and the desire that the soul has in this life to evolve. My father died on his second nodal return. I was not surprised that his cycle ended there rather than continuing into another orientation. In his natal chart, he had South Node conjunct Pluto. That does not mean death. Transformation and completion were deeply embedded in his evolutionary line, and other aspects were active when he died. His life was short. His absence became a presence in mine. Some things I have been able to understand in my later years: his absence actually gave me the authority I needed to become my own. During my own second nodal return in 2001, I was at the World Trade Center as part of a residency program. I have spoken about this video many times. I recorded there on September 10, 2001, and I left around midnight. The next morning, the towers were gone. I knew then that it was not my time. I got a new lease on life, and I did my best to use it accordingly. My third nodal return came the week after the lockdown in 2020, and I knew something had shifted again. My orientation, my purpose, was ready to find a home in my creative endeavors. I moved to Miami Beach. What I am watching now is another rhythm. Venus retrograde in Scorpio is followed, a 1.6 years later, by the Gemini Venus retrograde family. I have noticed that whatever perspective changes during the Scorpio retrograde, a few years later, when Venus returns through Gemini territory, I tend to make a very big shift in how I live it. In 2020, Venus stationed retrograde almost exactly on my natal Venus in Gemini. By the end of May, the idea of leaving New York had begun to grow. By the time Venus stationed direct in June, I had made the decision. On July 30, I moved to Miami Beach after 27 years in New York. the next venus retrograde will be between May 10- June 22, 2028. can’t wait to see what I cook.. Perspective had become behavior. Astrology has been one of the languages I use to understand my place in the universe. I have studied with extraordinary teachers. Over the last couple of years, I have been slowly untethering myself from the guru, the therapist, the other person who becomes the surface where I work out my own shadows. Those mirrors gave me something valuable. I learned how to create those chambers inside myself. That has changed what commitment means too. I can receive guidance and remain the author of my own experience. Venus has a lot to do with listening carefully to my needs. Once I know what I need, i can negotiate. I have leverage. I can enter a relationship and deal with the needs of another person while remaining connected to my own. That is also why Scorpio is bringing. Shared values require some form of merging, and merging requires a lot of clarity. What is my commitment right now? I am going through Pluto on the Ascendant, and that is going to take a few more years. I am observing that I need to see new pastures. That does not necessarily mean moving out of where I am physically. It has more to do with how I move around the city, who I meet, and how I meet them. All those years of being a mouse in a mouse hole since I moved to Miami Beach are gone. I regained a tremendous amount of freedom in those years, and I became very comfortable inside it. That freedom has a lot of value. The real fear is losing the freedom that I have regained. How would I know if I do not practice it? Trust. Trust has become less about waiting for confirmation and more about knowing that I can enter an encounter and remain inside my own value. The relationship is not the assignment. The encounter is the practice. So I am starting small. New activities. New empty rooms. Shooting ranges, Sailing, who knows…. Going somewhere because I am genuinely curious about what happens there. I want personal encounters. I want to see what happens when I enter a space and allow the encounter to have its own scale. I want to meet people where they are. This is how I felt a couple of weeks ago when I was in Framingham doing the research for my public art commission. I already wrote about that trip in another article. I was meeting interesting people with no connection to me whatsoever. In that meeting, in that lapse of time, what I enjoyed was meeting myself there too. What I have found out is that I do not have to agree with everyone. People do not have to vote for the same candidate or have the same ideology for me to encounter something meaningful. There is something else I am noticing through the work itself. Recognition and validation have nothing to do with creativity in my sense. This is the difference between being a creator and being a performer, and I finally released myself from the latter one. I care about the intention and whether the work carries it. Right now, while I am still designing the Framingham piece, I am thinking about how intention moves through color, shape, materiality, and the way somebody encounters the work. I am less interested in standing next to it explaining what I did. The work has to carry the commitment. The work stands. The intention is inside it. It is a silent validation of intention. For me, that is a shift. What I am finding right now is a synthesis of where I can find something meaningful in the encounter. 42 days as a practice of value I am going to use this Venus retrograde as an exercise. From October 3 until November 13, we have 42 days. For the first part, I want to write every day: What do I value the most today? Where is my commitment today? What am I willing to confront and let go of? This is the Scorpio part of the journey. Going into the underworld, looking at what I value, what I fear, where I am overinvested, where I have merged too far, and what I am ready to confront. On October 23, almost exactly halfway through the 42 days, we have the Venus cazimi. I want to use that moment as a point of reflection. Having gone deep into the Scorpio underworld, what have I found? What am I afraid of? What have I been willing to confront? What have I brought forth from that descent? In terms of perspective, what do I now see as a potential for becoming? From there, the exercise changes. Venus returns to Libra on October 25, and now I want to ask: What needs do I have to preserve? What gives me leverage in a relationship with people, situations or things? What am I willing to negotiate? What do I want to keep fully mine while I relate to another person, situation or thing? How do I remain inside my own value when another person, situation or thing enters the equation? Mercury also enters its retrograde process in Scorpio on October 24, reaches its cazimi on November 4, and turns direct on November 13, the same day Venus turns direct. So the whole process keeps asking similar questions through different functions. Venus is looking at value, needs, exchange, and relationship. Mercury is looking at how I understand it, how I name it, and what I have learned from going over the same territory again. Mercury finishes retracing its path on November 30, and Venus finishes hers on December 15. By then, Libra and Scorpio will have gone through the retrogrades, the direct stations, the shadow periods, and the New Moons. The exercise is simple: First, the descent, then the encounter, then I walk the same ground again and see what changed and where am I orienting myself. Look at where Libra and Scorpio fall in your chart. 1st house: re-valuing your commitment to your individuality and the way you inhabit yourself. 2nd house: re-valuing your commitment to your needs, your resources, and your sense of value. 3rd house: re-valuing your commitment to your expression, your voice, and the way you communicate. 4th house: re-valuing your commitment to your roots, family, ancestry, and inner foundation. 5th house: re-valuing your commitment to creativity, pleasure, authorship, and what you bring forth from yourself. 6th house: re-valuing your commitment to your daily practices, your work, and the way you tend to your life. 7th house: re-valuing your commitment to relationship, reciprocity, and the agreements you make with others. 8th house: re-valuing your commitment to intimacy, shared resources, trust, and the ways you merge. 9th house: re-valuing your commitment to meaning, truth, perspective, and the experiences that shape your philosophy. 10th house: re-valuing your commitment to your direction, your work in the world, and the authority you are willing to embody. 11th house: re-valuing your commitment to community, friendship, collaboration, and the future you want to participate in. 12th house: re-valuing your commitment to solitude, surrender, reflection, and the inner life that supports everything else. Journal it. See what you find. We're sailing on a strange boat heading for a strange shore We're sailing on a strange boat heading for a strange shore Carrying the strangest cargo that was ever hauled aboard We're sailing on a strange sea blown by a strange wind We're sailing on a strange sea blown by a strange wind Carrying the strangest crew that ever sinned We're riding in a strange car we're followin' a strange star We're climbing on the strangest ladder that was ever there to climb We're living in a strange time working for a strange goal We're living in a strange time working for a strange goal We're turning flesh and body into soul Michael Scott / Anthony Silvester Thistlethwaite Strange Boat (2006 Remaster) lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Ltd., Dizzy Heights Music Publishing, Ltd. The Waterboys !!! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe (https://www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   22 Sept 2026

   THE WHEEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS

   We are right at that point of equal night, equal day, the equinox. The cycle reaches the opposite point from its beginning. What initiated six months ago now exists in relationship to something outside of myself, in relationship to the other. Six months ago was the I AM moment. The beginning. Awareness. Instinct. Emergence. This year that equinox came with Saturn and Neptune together in Aries, already describing something about where we are heading. Three months later, at the summer solstice, the impulse had acquired form. Roots. Identity. Belonging. In the Northern Hemisphere the Sun reached its maximum declination. Now comes the descent. In three months we arrive at the winter solstice, where the outer movement reaches its minimum. Whatever survives becomes seed. We are at that moment the autumn begins at an opposition. In Evolutionary Astrology, the opposition begins the Full Phase. The subjective experience developed through the first half of the cycle encounters objective reality. Almost like a Full Moon. I was born under one. The equinox can be understood as: I meet what my anxieties have created. In spring: What wants to emerge? In autumn: What did that emergence become once it entered relationship with reality? Libra. We enter the descending half of the solar year. The biological world begins moving toward conservation rather than expansion. Energy goes inward. Leaves fall. The movement descends. Something shelters. Something gets released. Something remains. Evolution alternates between outward and inward movement, Yang and Yin, emergence and consolidation. The EA phase model describes that movement clearly. This is annual involution. We just moved through Virgo, discernment. Now Libra asks for equilibrium. What do I want? What do we want? How do desires and needs find a place of integration? The zodiac is its own book. Its own clock about space, time and reality. It shows. Past. Present. Future. Time as space. Cycles inside cycles. The equinox is a coordinate. A change of direction. Look at the four cardinal points and the architecture is there: beginning, culmination, descent, new beginning. And then, only a few days later, the sky repeats the story. The Full Moon on September 26 is in Aries, around 3°. Neptune is there too, retrograde, almost on the same degree. Saturn is retrograde around 12° Aries. Mars, ruler of Aries, is finishing Cancer before entering Leo. Pluto is at the beginning of Aquarius. Uranus is at the beginning of Gemini, Pluto and Uranus remain in trine; Neptune and Pluto in sextile, Neptune and Uranus in sextile too. There is soft geometry in the sky as the cardinal axis is being activated. Mars is also leaving Cancer and squaring Chiron, which has recently moved back into Aries retrograde. Mars rules this Full Moon. The vulnerability of being oneself, of showing one’s own desire, is at stake now, and Mars is doing this from Cancer, from the territory of family, ancestry, belonging and emotional inheritance. What happens when what I want begins to move in a direction that is different from what the family field wants, or from what I have inherited as a way of belonging? I do not have the answer to that. For me, the geometry is different. This Full Moon falls in skip-step with my nodal axis, it activates the cardinal cross around it. The South Node describes an established self-image. The North Node describes the direction of development. So the question for me is very simple: What direction has been trying to reveal itself all year that I can now actually see? It has a lot to do with ancestry. Capricorn. Inheritance. Legacy. Duty. Burden. Responsibility. Guilt. But also, it has a lot to do with opening my heart, pouring all that love into creative forms, and reaching out through my work without creating any expectation of being seen, just being solar all the way. I have Natal Pluto in the 8th house. Current Pluto is squaring my Jupiter-Sun-Mercury Rx in early Taurus. The perspective of my values, my self-validation, and how I internally communicate is being transformed from the inside out. How I meet value has changed. How I evaluate value has shifted. How I validate myself has gone full revamp. I recently surrendered this thought: I do not depend on the value of an inheritance/land to be a person of value. My value shows itself in what I actually meet, day by day. Meeting it means giving up something else, the opportunity cost of every choice made instead of another. That cost, weighed against my essential needs, is what I now call pure leverage. Aries says: I know what I want. I act from instinct. Neptune asks: Where did that desire come from? The desire I used to have is dissolving into something different, something never felt or performed. The beginning that started earlier this year is showing me another possibility, another direction that I am not so much in a rush to conquer, but slowly give shape to. At the same time Pluto is passing through my Ascendant in a three- to four-year cycle, and I am right at the eye of the storm. I am still inside it. I understand the storm while being inside it. I do not know yet how I leave it, but I know that leaving it begins with acknowledging that it is what it is, a storm, becoming aware of what is moving around me and what belongs to me inside it. What can be inherited without having to be repeated? And then, unexpectedly, I started watching Yellowstone. Actually, I became obsessed with Yellowstone, the television series created by Taylor Sheridan, beautifully portrayed in the state of Montana, with the cowboys, the cattle, the land, the families and the history underneath all of it. I have been binging it, and somewhere underneath all the plots I started thinking about preservation. What do we preserve before we innovate? How do we continue evolving without losing what gave us continuity? And at what point does preservation itself stop evolution? The word preservation has also been appearing repeatedly in another part of my life. I am preparing a new public commission in Framingham, Massachusetts, and during my conversations with the people involved in the new judiciary building, preservation kept surfacing. I have a presentation next week, and I am digesting the whole process, discerning. At one point, the architect told me that I had to be careful using the word preservation in the context of the building. I turned around and said, “Oh, really? Interesting. Let’s define preservation from the architectural point of view.”1 (https://www.monikabravo.blog/publish/home#footnote-1) It is interesting because I am going to restore and reuse part of the marble from the old building that was built at the beginning of the 20th century. It had multiple uses. It was a high school and became a museum, and now the site is being turned into a regional judiciary center. I do understand the idea of restoration, repair, reuse, and the value of a material, but at the same time, I understand the constraints that she was feeling during my conversation. While I was talking to many people in the community, I had a sense that they want to preserve something about Massachusetts, and then one of the judges said that they basically want something familiar, such as the landscape, or the seasons. Those two words go along with what I’m talking about, but if I define them, they both say that change is dangerous. That’s the tension that we are creating here, within the building, within the system What are the people actually trying to preserve? A structure? A memory? A civic identity? A way of using space? A sense of familiarity? And then another question appears, because familiarity can be supportive, stabilizing, even necessary, and it can become limiting when familiarity hardens into the values a society assumes should remain intact. So preservation is no longer simply about keeping something. It becomes a question of discernment. What deserves continuity because it carries life, and what is being preserved because it is familiar? Land. Survival. Cattle. Food. Territory. Property. Autonomy. Stewardship. The individual and the state. The individual and the collective. Who has the right to occupy and sustain a piece of Earth? Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn are cardinal. They create a tension between who I am, where I belong, how I am going to find harmony, and what eventually becomes institutional, protective, and supportive. The next axis, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, is fixed. What begins in the cardinal signs becomes established, held, and preserved before the mutable signs, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces, begin another movement of adaptation. Taurus is what I value.Leo is how I validate myself.Scorpio is how I share those values.Aquarius is how I liberate myself and become my own person. So yes, the land and the territory and the politics are there. Yellowstone is giving me something else to think about in relationship to what is happening in my own family. What are the right decisions? What leverage does each person have? What am I supposed to take from all of this? What am I moving forward with? I do not have those answers. I am in the process of a repartition of inherited property. I do not need to say much more than that. There is ancestry being continued through property and through other people, and the property itself is being divided. And sometimes these partitions create real divisions. Family dramas and grievances usually start much earlier than the property itself. They have to do with how each person perceived belonging inside the system, inside the tribe, and how each one experienced the love, or the lack of love, coming from one parent or both. If the impression was that there was never enough love, enough recognition, enough belonging, then dividing property after the parents are gone can trigger something much older than the property. Especially when there was no trust already created to hold the structure before death. The material division can reactivate the emotional division. That can be very painful, and it needs to become cathartic. Otherwise the grievance stays in the family system and moves into another generation wearing a different costume. I have made a commitment to liberation from that. Some days ago I made that commitment very consciously, and I feel good with it. I do not want to carry the grievance forward simply because it was handed to me. I surrendered all the burden I had carried, set myself free from expectation (Libra), and placed the accent on what really gives me value: my actions (Aries). That makes the question of preservation much less abstract. What needs to be preserved? What can continue through someone else? What belongs to ancestry and what belongs to me? What am I carrying because I choose to carry it, and what am I carrying simply because it arrived through inheritance? And then the cowboys. I love everything about it, horseback riding, the land, cattle, mountains, and relationships… The real cowboy story is much richer than the Hollywood cowboy. The American cowboy comes through the Spanish and Mexican “vaquero” tradition, through the Southwest, through cattle, horses, land, labor, migration and survival. Spain. Mexico. → The American West. Then mythology takes over. The cowboy becomes freedom. But freedom from what? And based on what? This brings me to homesteading. John Locke asked a very old question: If the Earth exists before private ownership, how does something become mine? His answer begins with the individual. The body. Labor. What labor produces. You work something. You transform it. You establish a relationship to it. Property begins there. Then government appears because now there are competing claims, boundaries, disputes, inheritance, protection. This is where the idea of property becomes very physical. Body. Food. Land. Labor. Shelter. Survival. Taurus. The EA material describes Taurus through the survival instinct, the resources needed to sustain life, value and meaning. Then the United States of America makes the idea literal. The Homestead Act. Settle the land. Live there. Work it. Cultivate it. Improve it. Stay. Eventually, a deed, -> a title. The relationship between labor and ownership becomes law. And immediately another question appears. The land was already inhabited. So whose relationship to the land counts? The person cultivating it? The person hunting across it? The person grazing animals on it? The person whose ancestors lived there? The government issuing the document? The person holding the deed? The person who improved it? The person who inherited it? This is why property rights remain unresolved everywhere. Different systems recognize different kinds of claims. Labor. Occupation. Ancestry. Conquest. Purchase. Inheritance. Law. Custom. The problem is still alive. And by all means I am not trying to solve it here. I am just observing it. Because Yellowstone keeps me asking the same question: Who owns the land? Who worked it? Who inherited it? Who has a historical claim to it? Who has a legal claim? Who decides? And what happens when several of those claims are true together? Land becomes political very quickly because land is survival. Food. Water. Shelter. Territory. Continuity. Inheritance. And politics is behavior between people. What happens when one person’s freedom meets another person’s claim? What happens when the state enters? What happens when violence emerges? What happens when the collective enters? What happens when the family enters? What happens when ancestry enters? There is paper. There are lawful/legal rights. There are percentages. There is property that existed before me. There was work before me. There was sweat before me. There were ancestors before me. And now all of it is translated into documents, signatures, numbers and divisions. Semi-peacefully. That alone has changed the meaning of inheritance/legacy for me. The inheritance has value. It does not determine my value. And now preservation enters here too. Ancestry can continue without everything remaining physically intact. Property can continue through other people. Something can be bequeathed, divided, transferred, transformed, and continue to carry ancestry. The question is what needs continuity and what has completed its cycle. The autumn equinox reflection reads: What am I harvesting from this year? What am I willing to bring forth into winter? How do I make sense of what was inherited from the past without becoming possessed by the inheritance itself? How do I receive what came before and remain free to begin again, and learn to accept it peacefully? A few days ago, I had this beautiful dream. I was in the middle of it, observing what was happening, outside of my body. My body was resting, and as my head was lying on the pillow and I was breathing peacefully into the night, a familiar face came through the dream and left some lamb chops by my night table that needed to be cooked. This familiar face also left a bottle full of spices. It also carried a letter handwritten with a seal on it. Last but not least, a bottle of aromas that could be seen as something that brings the perfume or the smell of something familiar. I woke up with a very beautiful feeling, and I understood something that I have never, ever learned: how to receive without having to give back. This dream with a familiar face allowed me to receive without creating any sort of expectations or any kind of equivalent. Inside the dream, I proceeded to cook the lamb chops, wear the aroma, read the letter, spice my food, and remain in the tangible feeling of what caring really feels. As part of the wheel, I have been researching why I am so tied to the history of the United States when I was born farther south on this same beautiful continent, the Americas. There are connections between my natal chart, the chart of the United States, and events across my life that I am looking at. My Ascendant sits at 6° 56’ Aquarius, and Pluto is hovering that same degree the next upcoming months, the same degree where Uranus was discovered in 1781. The same degree where the South Node of the USA sits. The Sabian symbols read one degree up from the placement, so the symbol governing this point belongs to 7° Aquarius, a child born out of an eggshell. New mutations arrive here. Fresh potential moves according to the great rhythms of the cosmos, not according to what I plan. This is transpersonal responsibility, moving past old, rigid societal traditions and into a reality that has not existed before. The egg itself is the cosmic egg, an inner matrix, a protection, the birthplace of something virgin and untamed, a life or a consciousness that has not been shaped by anyone else’s hands. What can be inherited without having to be repeated? That image belongs somewhere in this larger investigation because it says something very strange about continuity. Something is born carrying life forward without reproducing the ancestral form in the usual way. It may belong to the next article, because it opens the question of my relationship with the United States chart and with 7° Aquarius much further than I want to go here. That is another article. For now, I stay with the wheel. Autumn asks for discernment. What remains after expansion? What is ready to fall? What survives contraction? What do I carry? What becomes seed? And from inside this Pluto storm, perhaps I am learning what I can preserve, what I can inherit, what I can release, and what can be born without having to repeat what came before. And also, the most joyous of all: how can I actually learn to receive? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe (https://www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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