Are you fearful of taking risks to achieve your dreams? Unfortunately, many of us are fearful of risking our current security instead of taking risks that could potentially bring even greater happiness to our lives. Fortunately, you do have a choice.

The fear factor in astrology is expressed most directly by the planet Saturn in our astrology birth chart. This planet symbolically represents the highest mountain peak of our soul where we must courageously undertake the rigorous journey to the top. Saturn issues typically appear cold and forbidding to us at first-glance.

Ultimately, though, this planet holds the key to our greatest growth and consequentially our greatest potential.

When we aren’t properly facing our Saturn issues, the area of life ruled by it presents itself like a ball and chain. Sometimes we drag around this tremendous weight in our lives and sadly grow accustomed to its burden. When we avoid the issues that we must face, Saturn’s presence is felt all the more intensely in our lives. We begin to feel fearful, overly cautious, and have a noticeable lack of faith in ourselves in that particular area. As a result, we begin to feel sort of dull and flat.

Unfortunately, repressing our Saturn potential comes at the expense of the tremendous personal growth that it offers us if we can just stop running long enough to face our fears.

After all, we don’t have to climb the entire mountain in a single day, but we do need to take those important first few steps in order to build our confidence. Saturn wants to see us get a concrete plan for our life, get organized, and then make solid efforts to achieve our goal(s). This planet also teaches us to cultivate an enduring patience in the process and in ourselves. The people that we admire most didn’t achieve any measure of success by just giving a short burst of energy over a small period of time. Instead, they accomplished their goals by committing themselves for however long their success took them. This is exactly what Saturn teaches us that we must do. We must be prepared to stand firm in our resolve and stay committed for the long-haul. Honoring Saturn’s energy in our lives means that we have entrusted ourselves to stay the course no matter how cold and discouraged we may be feeling on our way up that mountain.

The question remains, however, of why should we endure such hardships and frustration. What is the point of dealing with all of this pain and heartache for anyway? What’s so damn special at the top of that mountain anyway?

Well, we can choose to keep on living our life the way we always have. After all, it does indeed look pretty daunting from the bottom as we look up. We can always choose the easier path in life. No one is going to force us to climb up that mountain. If any of us are content with living a life of comfort and ease we certainly have the power to do just that, but here is the catch. We’ll never really be happy. For the rest of our life we’re going to have to endure wondering what would have happened if we would have given 100% of our passion, time, and commitment to our dreams. We’ll always wonder about the great things we could have achieved and experienced.

The simple fact is that both paths are equally difficult. We can choose the seemingly easier path of just going with the flow and avoiding that mountain, but still having this nagging sense of guilt that we’ve let ourselves down. On the other hand, we can decide to climb that mountain slowly step-by-step and day-by-day. We can choose to believe in ourselves. We can choose to have faith that we can make this climb while realizing that this is what we were born to do. If we can do these things, I can promise that what we find at the top will be well worth the effort and sacrifices that we must endure. The journey alone will be worth its weight in gold, but the truth is that the greater sacrifice is choosing not to climb the mountain at all.