Neptune and the Cosmic Soup–How Psychic Contagion Depletes Us

©12-19-2009 by Donna Cunningham, MSW

If you went out shopping, came home anxious, depressed, or angry, and couldn’t shake it for hours, then while you were out,  you may have had a hefty helping of what I call the Cosmic Soup.

The Cosmic Soup is the energy of the Collective, an immersion into the auric field that surrounds the earth and all the Beings on it. It contains the Spirit but also the emotions—good and bad—of everyone around you and of the world at large.  In short, it’s the very essence of Neptune.  

 The current batch of Soup has been split-pea level or thicker in recent months, since we’re in a phase when Neptune is very strong.  That’s because transiting Neptune has been closely conjunct Chiron and Jupiter at the end of Aquarius for much of the past year.  That pot has been bubbling on the back burner all year, but it’s being served up in huge tureens during  times when we’re more open and vulnerable.

There’s both good news and bad news for those of us who’ve entered the Cosmic Soup through a period of a spiritual growth  and psychic awakening of the sort that often accompanies a Neptune transit. The good news  is that you come to experience moments of knowing that all of us are one with All That Is.

The bad news is that you soak up more of the collective turmoil during trying intervals like these past several months.  Whether we’re conscious of it or not, empathic people can be deeply affected by it. If you have any current issues of your own that collide with the Cosmic turbulence,  exposure to other people’s suffering is  bound to intensify your own emotional turmoil.

Are YOU Susceptible to Being Immersed in the Cosmic Soup?

Here are some kinds of people who may be flooded by the emotions of others.  Will you find yourself among them? 

1) If your spouse, mother, good friend, or coworker is deeply depressed and you take a plunge into darkness after you’ve been around them 10 minutes or you’ve had a long, draining phone call from them, then you’ve just had another big bowl of Cosmic Soup.

 2) Also suspect that you’ve pigged out on that particular soup du jour if you come home from your job  zapped after a day of working with depressed, overwhelmed, and anxious clients, patients, or customers

3)  It’s especially true if you’re an empath, a heart-centered type of person, and your work is heart-centered. That would include an astrologer, psychic, healer, body worker, energy worker, or even an aide in a hospital, nursing home, or doctor’s office.

4) You’d be prone to a dip in the increasingly-murky collective stew if your psychic gifts are just opening up under transits from this Neptune-Jupiter-Chiron conjunction—or if you’ve had them a while but they’re growing stronger under this transit.

 Under astrological transits like these, you can be especially susceptible to psychic flooding, because most likely you haven’t yet learned sufficient psychic shielding techniques to handle it.

5) Or, you may have  a strong Neptune natally, and you opened up psychically a long time ago. You do  know how to shield yourself but are neglecting it to meet the needs of others.  It’s especially likely to happen at times when client demands are especially heavy and when life at home isn’t all that great either.

For anyone who fits into one or more of these categories, this is a heads up—take care of yourself and you’ll be better equipped to take care of others. With conscious work on shielding with tools like we’ll be talking about, you won’t soak up other people’s energies and emotional turmoil, which would prevent their triggering your own issues.  Furthermore, people won’t drain your energy, they’ll get what they need from Divine Sources instead.

What transits make a Dip in the Cosmic Soup especially likely?

Check for planets, the Ascendant, or Midheaven in the late degrees of a sign–that is, from about 22-29°–and you’d have been affected to some degree or another from early 2008-parts of 2010.  Watch for transiting Neptune aspects to the Ascendant (1st house cusp, AKA Rising sign), to planets in the 1st house, to the Sun, Moon, or Midheaven (10th house cusp). 

If you’re a beginner or consumer and you see a lot of planets in that number range in your birth chart, then to sort it out, you’re probably going to need a knowledgeable person—possibly even  a consultation with a professional astrologer.  (I’m retired and don’t answer questions about individual charts here, only general educational questions.)  

However, if you fit into more than one of the categories listed above and you’re STILL reading this,it’s pretty likely YOU’RE IN THE SOUP.

For those who are further along in their studies, the aspects most likely to produce an effect would be the conjunction (same sign and degree range), square (90°), trine (120°), and opposition (180°).  The range where you’d most likely feel to feel the effect would be from exactly the same degree to 5° either side of that number. Neptune spreads out to a wide range, not being a believer in boundaries. 

Remember, the 2009 signature has been the Neptune-Jupiter-Chiron triple conjunction in late Aquarius, so if you’ve had a Neptune transit this year, you’ve had what amounts to a daily triple dose for months on end. This article, the ones on the list below and the ones over the next week or so can help you keep a clear head.

So, Readers, how do you shield yourself? Share your favorite techniques and tools in the comment section.

The  links below are to previous posts on Skywriter that will boost your capacity to recognize when you’re going down into the Cosmic soup and to shield yourself against being a psychic sponge.

• Shields Up! Fight Second-hand Fear and Despair!
• The Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron Conjunction Hits the US Moon
• Red Clover Essence–A Gentle Antidote to Mass Hysteria, by Sheryl Karas
• “Catastrophobia: What Causes it and How to Heal it” by Diana Stone
• PTSD and Second-Hand Angst: a Healing Resource, by Michele Rosenthal
• EFT-Another Self-Help tool for Freedom from Fear
• Addicted to Anguish–a Sketch of one Neptunian Type
• Friendship, Equality, and Neptune in the 11th House 
• Difficult Neptune Aspects in Chart Comparison
• How to Handle Chronic Complainers
• People who Misuse Pluto and Saturn—Don’t be Fooled by Scare Tactics!
• Internet Find of the Week: New Resources for Healing Grief and Loss
• More Insights into Healing Grief and Loss
• Hope for Those in the Dark Night of the Soul

If this post was helpful, DON’T MISS THE NEXT INSTALLMENT IN THIS SERIES. Sign up for a subscription, and get a FREE EBOOKLET for Skywriter Subscribers Only: Mothers, Daughters, and the Moon, a 50-page excerpt from The Moon in your Life. Read more about it here: NEW: FREE BOOKLET FOR SKYWRITER SUBSCRIBERS! 

 If you’re already a subscriber and want a copy, forward the most recent email post to me at moonmave@spiritone.com. To sign up for a subscription, go to the top right hand corner of the blog and click on “Subscribe.”  Then send me an email with your subscription confirmation or an email post with a request for the booklet in the subject line.