You would agree with me that everything is a mess, seemingly imploding and exploding at the same time. As you read this article, we won’t even know what can hit us in the next couple of days because of the speed of the news of things happening all around us. 

I watch the drama of our world now with a deeper sense of understanding and deep respect for the way the cosmic energies interact and affect our lives. Everything but everything will need to be dismantled, broken down and lies and hidden worlds brought to light. 

I watch the drama because they who have chosen the ways of the ego’s desires, materialism, power, all the shadows, darkness, hidden truths, are dramatically being brought to light. I watch governments and people imploding; with such swift changes, it’s dizzying.

There are moments when everything seems to undergo some mysterious process we cannot yet name. I would call this period we are in a chrysalis moment — when we are stuffed inside a shell we are all trying to break up: Personally, our own limiting patterns, and nationally, a political and social system that needs to transform. 

Deep inside the container of our lives, something is rearranging itself at breathtaking speed. And outside, our chrysallis sways precariously in a hurricane of chaotic changes. No doubt, we are unmistakably inside such a moment now. 

Five planets in retrograde

Here’s to sharing what’s happening in the cosmos today: there are five planets in retrograde this month, pulling us inward, backward, downward, into the unseen caverns of our psyche and our collective national soul. 

Retrogrades are defined as a time of review, reflection and reorientation. But with five planets moving in this apparent backward motion, the energy is amplified. Each planet brings its own flavor of introspection, its own invitation to strip away illusions.

Mercury, the planet of communication and thought, asks us to examine how we speak, what we say, and the truths we either reveal or hide. 

Jupiter, the planet of expansion, is asking us to look deeper in our own spirituality rather than over-extend ourselves outward, to re-assess even where we want to expand to. 

Saturn, the stern teacher, forces us to revisit karmic lessons, responsibilities, and the structures we depend on. 

Uranus, the disrupter which continues to shake us up through chaos so we release the past, see the truth and awaken. 

And Neptune, the planet of illusion and spiritual truth, draws back the veils, asking us to see clearly through the fog, illusions and half-truths we’ve been willing to live with. 

Each energy digs its hands into the soil of our being. Together, they shape a powerful inward spiral, a kind of cosmic excavation. If we are honest, it feels like we are collectively being emptied out.

Like a caterpillar

This movement inside is like being in a chrysalis. We imagine the cocoon as a quiet, gentle place of metamorphosis. But the reality — both scientifically and symbolically — is far more dramatic. 

Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves into a kind of nutrient soup. Its entire form breaks down. Everything it has ever known itself to be turns into formless possibility. The speed inside is astonishing. Cells replicate, reorganize, and plot a destiny that has nothing to do with crawling and everything to do with flight. 

This is what is happening to us. Individually. As a nation. And as a global collective.

No wonder the pressure is intolerable at times. No wonder it feels like everything around us is collapsing, dissolving, breaking apart. No wonder the truths of corruption — personal, institutional and systemic are oozing out like the pus of an infected wound. The wound must surface before it can heal. The infection must be acknowledged before it can be treated. The light must enter the dark pockets of denial.

The five retrograde planets are forcing us to look at the muck inside us — the stories we cling to, the wounds that have not healed, the beliefs we inherited without discernment. They push us to confront the personal lies we tell ourselves and the collective lies we’ve tolerated for too long. The collapsing structures around us are reflections of the collapsing structures within us.

It is tempting to think the retrogrades are slowing things down. Externally, perhaps. But internally? The opposite is true. The real metamorphosis is happening out of sight, within our energetic interiors: Emotionally and mentally. And when speed and chaos enter the cocoon with us, we are pushed not just to transform but to transmute. Chaos, when resisted, becomes destruction. Chaos, when embraced with awareness, becomes evolution.

Who we are becoming

Let us take the metaphor of the cocoon again. The caterpillar does not resist its breakdown. It does not fear the dissolution of what it once was. It simply allows the process. If it fought the decomposition, it could never transform. The real tectonic shifts are happening in our inner worlds. And for what is happening outside, let us watch the drama play out. If we must engage, then let us do it with a clarity of purpose from a solid base of our authentic values.

This is the uncomfortable truth: transformation is never graceful. It is rarely peaceful. It asks everything of us. It demands honesty, courage, humility. It strips away what is false. And so as we cross over to 2026, this will continue the process of endings — purging all that is not necessary for our growth and our spiritual evolution. When the retrogrades loosen their grip and the cosmic pressures ease, when 2025 completes its cycle of purging, we will emerge — lighter, clearer, more aligned with the truth of who we are becoming.