This article's content includes contributions from astrologer Gina Ronco

The Nodes of the Moon hold the secrets to your soul's evolution. In your Astrology birth chart, there is a South Node and a North Node. The sign the South Node is in shows where you've come from and the lessons you've learned along the way. The North Node, however, is uncharted territory for you -- it's your soul's path forward.

When you're feeling stressed, angry, or off-balance, you tend to play out the negative traits of your North Node. That's why it's so important to understand what your North Node is trying to teach you! It's about overcoming your shadow side to adopt a more intentional, holistic way of handling what life throws at you. Your North Node wants you to take the high road.

Keep reading to learn about the potential pitfalls of your North Node, and what you can do to turn things around!

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North Node in Aries

Seeking interpersonal harmony, cooperation, and togetherness, and desiring to please or appease other people is very natural for you, so much so that you accommodate them at your own expense. When you are under stress, you tend to look outside yourself for approval or answers, and you lean on others too much.

You are often tempted to be less than completely straightforward about your intentions or desires, and you can become enmeshed in a swamp of little white lies and evasions. Radical honesty with yourself and others is the only way out! This, however, leads you to confront some of your most deeply ingrained fears, such as "what if they don't like me?" and "what if I have to do it alone?"

Your North Node advice: Developing self-reliance and the courage to look to yourself for answers, to forge your own path through life, is a key factor in your development. Cultivate your ability to be assertive, take initiative, and act on your own behalf. Directness and self-reliance are keys to your soul's evolution.

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North Node in Taurus

You gain by becoming more aware of the rhythm of the seasons and the natural world, learning to slow down and allow life to unfold in its own time. Nurturing a garden, a child, or some other living, growing thing gives you a sense of inner balance.

You have a tendency to be deeply suspicious and not take anything at face value. You see hidden agendas and dark motives even where none exist! Life does not have to be conflict all the time ... learn to accept things as they are.

Your North Node advice: Develop patience, peace, and stability by grounding yourself in your daily work and acting in a consistent and reliable way toward others.

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North Node in Gemini

You need to take what you have learned (either through formal education or your own questing and life experience) and share it with others -- communicate it, express it in a way that others can benefit from. There is little value in knowledge when it does not enhance your quality of life or others'. Putting your understanding, philosophy, and convictions into practice in your daily interactions with people -- and in the multiple small choices you make every day -- will enable you to really test your belief system and discover more about life.

Your North Node advice: When under stress, you are apt to seek refuge in imagining that the grass is greener elsewhere, rather than working with what is at hand. Cultivate your ability to live in the present!

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North Node in Cancer

When you're feeling stressed, you tend to close off the flow of your emotions, ignoring your needs and feelings in order to do what you perceive as your duty, or simply do what the practical realities of the situation require. This can lead to a certain rigidity and hardness. If overdone, self-control, self-discipline, or an exaggerated concern over what society, family, or others expect of you makes life more a burden than an adventure.

Your North Node advice: Developing tenderness, caring, feeling, and the feminine, nurturing aspects of yourself is an important step in your unfolding. You need to learn how to nourish and lovingly attend to both yourself and others. Letting yourself be taken care of sometimes is OK!

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North Node in Leo

Your path lies in developing yourself as an individual, discovering your own strengths and joys, giving expression to your uniqueness, and letting yourself shine and stand out from the crowd. This involves becoming a leader, even though your instinct is actually to be one of the pack rather than the big boss. When under stress, you are apt to seek safety in numbers, to go along with the group. Also, you may believe that striving to do your personal best and to excel is wrong or selfish, but you should let go of this notion.

Your North Node advice: Finding your own center and doing what gives you delight and energy is the most worthwhile contribution you can offer the world at large.

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North Node in Virgo

Your natural instinct, especially when under stress, is to passively flow along with whatever is easiest, not clearly analyzing or assessing your situation. You may even try to escape seeing your situation clearly by indulging in fantasies, intoxicants, and the like. You cope with tension by dropping into a world of dreaminess and impracticality where you can be unfocused and undefined. You also have trouble setting boundaries and saying no.

Your North Node advice: Your path of development lies in cultivating discrimination and clarity, becoming more precise, and developing technical and practical skills that will enable you to function more efficiently in the world. Finding a way to be of practical service is also important.

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North Node in Libra

Instinctively, you are a fighter and an individualist who can stand alone when necessary. Very often, however, you stand alone when you don't need to, not realizing the support, assistance, and resources others have to offer. You have a tendency to reinvent the wheel -- that is, to feel that you must be self-reliant and that only you can come up with the answers you need. Implicit in this attitude is a kind of arrogance as well as a rather competitive approach which, at its worst, can alienate you from others or make you feel like it's you versus the rest of the world. Social skills and graces are not really natural to you.

Your North Node advice: You need to learn how to share and join with others, and how to negotiate and resolve conflict with others in a cooperative way.

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North Node in Scorpio

You are capable of withstanding outside influences and remaining constant and steady on your path. However, when under stress, you become downright obstinate and implacable, resisting any change no matter how necessary or desirable the change is. Tenaciously trying to preserve the status quo and hold on to what you have, you are apt to ignore the subtle signals you receive about needing to do something differently, which often leads to some sort of crisis.

Your North Node advice: You need to learn the limits of your ability to control life, and to accept and even embrace change and loss of the familiar, in order to allow new life and growth to happen. Letting go is a major life lesson for you.

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North Node in Sagittarius

It is easy for you to become distracted from your purpose by the multitude of interesting choices and possibilities available to you. You need to develop single-mindedness and focus. Until you direct your attention to some of the big questions, such as "What is my life's purpose?" and "What is really important to me and essential to my happiness?," you are apt to dabble, to scatter your energies in many directions, engaging in activities that are entertaining but, ultimately, are not fruitful or nourishing.

Your North Node advice: Having an overall vision for your life and aligning your daily activities so that they support rather than detract from your larger purpose is a significant step in your personal unfolding..

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North Node in Capricorn

You have a great capacity for sympathy, tenderness, and caring, which is a gift that you are apt to overdo at times. When under stress, you have a strong instinct to retreat back into the nest, to be a child again, or to become overwhelmed with feelings and longings to be taken care of. You may even encourage others to depend upon you emotionally (and otherwise) to an unhealthy degree.

Your North Node advice: You need to learn how to set limits and to turn off the flow of support when necessary. Developing mature self-discipline, self-control, and personal responsibility are keys to your soul's growth.

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North Node in Aquarius

When under stress, you are likely to become overly focused on yourself and your own little world. Therefore, your path to growth lies in cultivating idealism and humanitarian feelings and being concerned with how your actions and choices impact the world at large. Becoming active politically and participating in organizations that support your ideals are ways to do this.

Your North Node advice: Instead of "How will this benefit or hurt me?" your focus needs to shift to "How will this affect us all?" You need to strike a balance between doing for yourself and doing for others by discovering how your unique gifts can contribute to the good of all.

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North Node in Pisces

Cultivating the qualities of empathy, gentleness, and compassion will help counterbalance your deeply ingrained perfectionism and critical nature. When under stress, you are apt to try to rigorously analyze and to focus on what needs to be corrected or improved. You can become so \problem-oriented that you lose sight of the big picture and what IS working.

Your North Node advice: Learn to relax and surrender to the flow of events without having to figure everything out all the time. Let your feelings and intuitions flow more freely, be more flexible and fluid, use your imagination, and let your dreams emerge!

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