Thursday is Groundhog Day. Will the groundhog see his shadow and return to his burrow? It’s also Candlemas Day, a day of astronomical and religious significance that represents a time between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In the Catholic Church, Candlemas is 40 days after Christmas. The holy child and Mary are presented in the Temple. Beeswax candles are blessed.

Friday, Feb. 3, after 14 years in Aquarius, Neptune enters its own sign of Pisces (after 164 years), remaining there until 2025. Neptune was last in Pisces in 1947 ushering in the romantic era of art, literature and music.

Neptune esoterically is a subtle new state of Soul (Christ) consciousness. Neptune will be in Pisces for 14 years, thus bringing forth a phenomenal change of consciousness for humanity. Changes in healing, the arts, creativity, the uses of water, vibrational medicine, alleviating suffering, spiritual groups seeking deepened spiritual knowledge and understanding.

The emphasis will be to “save the world.” From the heart of the Sun, Neptune streams forth Ray 2, Love/Wisdom, to the world. And we are changed.

Tuesday is the full moon Aquarius solar festival. Saturn in Libra turns stationary retrograde in the early morning. During the night, Venus (economics, money into precious metals) enters Aries (all things new) as Mars continues its retrograde in Virgo (new reality is forming). It’s a busy planetary week. Saturn retrograde means we examine all structures, disciplines, rules and boundaries, assessing their function, usefulness and purpose. What prepares us for the future? We reconsider commitments and responsibilities, reorganize and renegotiate previous agreements. New business opportunities should not be initiated during Saturn retrograde. However, preparations for the future must accelerate. Saturn provides the discipline and structures to accomplish this. We have until March.

The full moon is the Full Snow moon. The Aquarian seed thought is “Water of life poured forth for thirsty humanity.” We are to be the “waters of life” pouring forth our service to uplift, educate and support “thirsty humanity.” Let us accomplish this task together. The two weeks of Chinese New Year festivities ends at the full moon Lantern Festival. Who is having a Lantern Festival party this year? (Read more at www.nightlightnews.com)

ARIES: Slowly, over the next many years, all that is within you, often unknown and unheeded, will surface. So much is buried within. All these, like Vesta, are the “found objects” of ourselves, waiting for the right time and season to emerge. It will surface in dreams, symbols, omens, and talismans. The mystery of yourself will be revealed. You will see unseen worlds. Faith and trust and hope become your guides.

TAURUS: You will enter into a newer and wider group of people: like-minded, socially conscious and spiritually aware. You will all be artistic, creative and quite unusual. You will create, build and form a community that is the template for the new culture. You have yearned for this. Continue to imagine it. You will lead it.

GEMINI: Should you feel uncertain about your work in the world, know that this is part of Neptune’s function, attempting to refine you into the new ways of being in the world. Neptune is slow, but its watery ways slowly undermine any old ideas that you can act like everyone else. You can’t. What you’re left with is your imagination. What do you imagine would make you joyful?

CANCER: There will be an emphasis on entering deeper into mystical and/or esoteric teachings. It will be good to read Rumi. You will also seek places that are far away from home.  In order to learn new ways, enter into new places of knowledge and gather ancient wisdoms. You will also be called to teach. Humanity is thirsty for real knowledge. You understand humanity.

LEO: There may be explorations, deeper and more profound, into issues concerning death, sex, rock-and-roll, and everything else transformational. Taxes, too. And freedoms. And money. Questions like what is death and what is the function of sex? Am I sexy? What’s sexy to me? And how do we want our money to be used to create the new paradigm shift? The world is calling us to be sharing responsibly.

VIRGO: You will see others through the lens of everyone and everything as spiritual. You will see and recognize the life force. Some will see the actual angels (devas) building the kingdoms. You will discover what unconditional love means. First by seeking it. Then by providing it. A sacred contract. You will make new connections. Love will be released. Different than before.

LIBRA: A new authenticity will come forth from within, and your lifestyle will change. Forgiveness will continue. Begin with yourself first. What can you forgive? All daily routines will focus on creating and sustaining vibrant health. Become very careful and caring with health. Unusual allergies may arise. Stay with homoepathics and homeopathic practitioners. As forgiveness comes forth, you become more authentically of service to others.

SCORPIO: You are the master of illusion. You will meet others who also have your gift, protecting themselves against all emotional intrusions. You will come to a point when feelings of aloneness must give way to making true contact. Romance may find you. You can be “romanced” by ideas, by a rare coin or flower, one of the kingdoms calling to you. You will become “intimate” with new ideas.

SAGITTARIUS: There will be a great return to family of origin, family stories, history— the successes, disappointments, strengths and yearnings. What sacrifices did your family make? And how do you hold all of these for your family? What wealth (not necessarily money) did your family build? You too yearn. For closeness and care. Let’s pray for it together.
CAPRICORN: Gradually you will notice the many forms of nonverbal communication and expression surrounding you. It’s as if you can hear (and see) the angels building form out of substance. Read the Findhorn Garden (the picture book) again. Your intuition discovers all the subtle signals no one else sees. This stimulates your imagination. Community, gardens and greenhouses are your keywords.
AQUARIUS: Make sure to be careful with input and output of money. It may feel that the outflow is greater than the inflow. And perhaps it is. Eventually your ideas about money will change. New values will replace previously accepted values about money and how it’s made. A new spiritual reality comes forth and you enter gladly into the new sharing society. Watch for this.
PISCES: You may become a bit more subtle, refined, changeable, whimsical and elusive. You may feel the need for more rest, reflection and contemplation. You may experience Oneness, the Love of God. Your identity may shift and lines may blur around boundaries. You become mysterious and reflect the needs of others. You “save” others by inspiring compassion.

Shove thy Neighbor

My commitment-phobic boyfriend of several years is also my neighbor. I resolved to make it work with him and then caught him on FriendFinder exchanging numerous messages with some woman in Tijuana.

He claimed he was just being friendly. I asked if he’d correspond with a guy. He responded, “No. I’m not gay.” Humiliatingly, I’ve let him use me for things he can’t afford. (He’s been unemployed for two years.) He sometimes showers at his tiny apartment but basically uses it for storage.

He refuses to move in with me so we could pay expenses with money his grandma gives him for his rent, but he spends all his time at my place (where I pay for everything). He partakes of my cable TV, Internet, food, beer, and he even eats food I buy specially for my 9-year-old son.
Well, he’s now my ex-boyfriend. As he’s been many times before. What’s with him? Is talking to some random woman on the Internet worth losing everything over?

— Fuming

Feminists have hammered into us girls that we aren’t supposed to sit around dreaming of being rescued by some prince. Somehow, I don’t think the alternative’s supposed to be opting for the mooch neighbor who eats your kid’s food while using your DSL to talk to some chiquita in Tijuana.

Reality, like angry little dogs, often bites. Every day, I wake up wishing for home-invasion housecleaners. But, as much as both Nature and I abhor a vacuum, at a certain point, I have to pull one out, lest my rugs provide shelter to a lot of little things with a lot of little legs. You, likewise, can pretend you’ve found Prince Charming, but that won’t transform your Parasite Charming (not even if you throw both hands into the air and say “Poof!” six or seven times, very energetically).

Why do you keep taking him back? You’re probably engaging in “future discounting,” an econ term explaining how we’re prone to forgo big benefits down the road for a small immediate reward.

It helps to recognize that you’ll be tempted to go for the quick fix. You’ll be lonely some night and want a snuggle, rationalize all the reasons he isn’t so bad after all, and before you know it, there’ll be a familiar barnacle attaching itself to the beer tap on your hull.

To avoid backsliding, don’t rely on yourself to gin up self-control in the moment; use tricks like “precommitment” to your goal, a strategy originated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling and recommended by Dr. Roy Baumeister and John Tierney in their book, “Willpower.” Precommitment involves setting things up in advance so it’s hard to cheat.

Research suggests that two of the most helpful measures are recruiting others to monitor your progress and establishing financial penalties for relapse — the higher, the better.

It also helps to give yourself small rewards for daily good behavior. Maybe put aside $5 on each day you don’t call him and give yourself occasional lump-sum rewards (like at the two months loser-free mark). The website stickK.com can help. (You can configure it to forfeit your money to a cause you hate if you fail.) Research from Baumeister’s lab also suggests that practicing daily self-discipline unrelated to your goal (say, making yourself a weird green health shake every morning) increases overall self-control.

This should increase your self-respect. Which should increase your chances of having a man in your life who sings your praises — stuff like “your lips are like wine,” not “your Wi-Fi’s, like, free.”

Idle Worship

I’ve been delighted and humbled by my interactions with this girl who goes to my favorite coffee shop.

She is in a band and probably has lots of dates and fans, but I keep picturing us together, and not just sexually — making dinner, going on hikes, doing little couple-y things.
I’m not sure why she’d want to go out with me, but I can’t stop thinking about her.
— Fixated

It’s the teenage fan-girl approach to being a man. (Are your bedroom walls plastered with photos of her that you took while pretending to check your phone?)

Here you are imagining this woman running slow-motion through a field of daisies into your arms. The reality: She’s walking out of the coffee shop, probably without giving you a second thought. Yes, she might be out of your league. There’s a way to know for sure in seconds, and it’s by asking her out.

Pining over a woman transforms her from a person to an unapproachable ideal. The more you grow your fantasy girl, the more impossible it’ll be for you to speak to the real deal.

If you want an imaginary something in your life, have an imaginary goldfish. Should things go badly, you could make it die an imaginary death and flush it down your imaginary toilet.

Need more advice?

It’s Advice Goddess Radio — bringing you the best people from science: fascinating, fun professor and therapist guests who will nerd you out of your love, dating sex, and relationship problems. Listen live every Sunday — http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/ — 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, or download the podcast at the link. Call-in during the show: 347-326-9761 (NYC area code).

THIS WEEK: Advice Goddess Radio: Evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon cuts through the political correctness on sex, porn and “gender.”

Code Goo

I’m a 33-year-old nurse in a five-month “friends with benefits” thing with a doctor co-worker. I am only 18 months out of an abusive 10-year relationship and wanted something fun and light. We get along well, but he rarely asks me ahead of time about getting together. I know he has a busy schedule, but this bothers me. He will do anything I ask (give me a ride, buy me a coffee if I work late) but doesn’t make kind gestures without being asked and doesn’t talk about his feelings or inquire about mine. My biggest issue is that he doesn’t compliment me. He once said his friend asked him how he got such a beautiful woman. But that’s it. The crazy thing is, he doesn’t even possess the qualities I want in a partner! Are my feelings here simply because he’s here? Can I learn to separate my feelings from what we really have?
— Help, STAT

I bet the doc doesn’t have patients show up at whim: “Hi, I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d have a physical.”

It’s understandable you’d like a little more formal scheduling to your casual sex, but remember the guy reads X-rays and MRIs, not minds. When you need medical attention — or certain attention from a certain medical professional — you need to make that known, same as you would with a friend: Don’t be so available on a moment’s notice and also ask him to make advance plans. (Enough with this “Undress and put on a robe; the doctor will be with you shortly.”)

Although the reasoning department of your brain keeps telling you that you should be friends with benefits, there you are jonesing for girlfriend benefits (flattery, little prezzies and all).

Anthropologist John Marshall Townsend explains women evolved an emotional alarm system to read whether a man would be a good provider and to compel them to seek cues of commitment. Some women feel especially emotionally connected to their partner following orgasm, probably due to the release of the bonding hormone oxytocin, although the most conclusive research is on rats and prairie voles, and your ability to send email suggests you are neither. Regardless, Townsend’s surveys on casual sex showed even when women fully intended to use and lose some himbo, many would wake up the next morning and find themselves longing for more from a guy they knew they wanted nothing more from.

An apple a day … mainly keeps the creditors away from the apple growers. To keep this doctor away, let on you’re longing to use him as a boyfriend instead of just for sex. The thing is, this seems like exactly the right time for you to have exactly the wrong man. Having your sex life staffed up can help you avoid any temptation to get into a relationship, and you can instead figure out and fix whatever led you to be in a 10-year emotionally abusive situation. You may ultimately find casual sex too upsetting, but understanding where your feelings are coming from might help you intellectualize your way out of letting them rule you. Regularly reviewing all the ways this guy’s wrong for you is another way to put the meaningless back into meaningless sex. Remember, the only aisle you should be walking down with him is the one between your bed and your dresser. As that jewelry commercial (doesn’t) go: “Every kiss begins with K-Y.”

World Wide Web Of Lies

Why do men OFFER (as in, announce unasked) that they aren’t dating anyone when that’s a lie? I’m a busy 30-something woman, meeting men almost exclusively online. A guy will often tell me right away (on the first date) that he isn’t seeing anyone. I stumble on the truth by accident on Facebook and what-have-you, lose trust for him and stop seeing him.
— Baffled

The male brain is quick to note eHarmony could be the ticket to eHarem. Even if a man’s looking for “that special somebody,” he may be dreaming of a stable of somebodies and feeling a little guilty about it. Or, maybe he’s dating a few somebodies but “there’s nobody” means “nobody of consequence.” Women evolved to seek commitment from men, and men co-evolved to understand that. Sometimes even an OK guy will engage in some duplicity to make the initial sale — waiting to see whether he’s into you before he ditches Helga, Svetlana and Amber. You likewise might consider going on a few more dates to see more of a man’s character (or lack thereof) before making your final decision. Then again, maybe the best reason to ditch one of these liars is stupidity: a guy telling you he’s all lonesome, he hasn’t seen a women in years — just hours after his last date was streamed live on the Internet from some bar.