New Beginnings!

(BLESSING) FOR A NEW BEGINNING 

John O'Donohue 

In out-of-the-way places of the heart, 

Where your thoughts never think to wander, 

This beginning has been quietly forming, 

Waiting until you were ready to emerge. 

For a long time it has watched your desire, 

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, 

Noticing how you willed yourself on, 

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. 

It watched you play with the seduction of safety 

And the gray promises that sameness whispered, 

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, 

Wondered would you always live like this. 

Then the delight, when your courage kindled, 

And out you stepped onto new ground, 

Your eyes young again with energy and dream, 

A path of plenitude opening before you. 

Though your destination is not yet clear 

You can trust the promise of this opening; 

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning 

That is at one with your life's desire. 

Awaken your spirit to adventure; 

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; 

Soon you will home in a new rhythm, 

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

----

New Moon in Virgo

The New Moon in Virgo, occurring on September 6th, invites us to fall in love with the inner-workings behind the scenes. Virgo reigns over the realm of meticulous choreography. The Virgo new moon slots into place in an invigorating trine with Uranus; our value systems, markets, production chains, and relationship to the Earth are all subject to its upheavals.

Saturn in Aquarius will not allow us to sweep reality under the rug.

With the Virgo New Moon plugged into this dynamic, we enter the practical readjustments of navigating alarming realities. This New Moon helps us to be flexible and rapidly transform our systems of organization.

Though Virgo is more comfortable with graphs, spreadsheet columns and empirical evidence, the Moon’s subsequent opposition to Neptune asks us to tap into earthen magic. The gods in mycelium, flower essences, and the spirits of the land itself have much to say when we care to bring our ears to the ground.

And care we should.

Venus’ ingress into Scorpio on September 10th will help us be brave in severing the relationships, resources and value systems that no longer serve the gravity of this moment.

What fabulous new frontiers are you mapping in the Virgo corner of your chart? How can you hold space for the uncertainty of this transition, while you take a calculated leap of faith?

Show resistance through art, joy, trust and love

From Hopi Indian Chief White Eagle

This moment humanity is experiencing can be seen as a door or a hole. The decision to fall in the hole or walk through the door is up to you. If you consume the news 24 hours a day, with negative energy, constantly nervous, with pessimism, you will fall into this hole.

But if you take the opportunity to look at yourself, to rethink life and death, to take care of yourself and others, then you will walk through the portal.

Take care of your home, take care of your body. Connect with your spiritual home. When you take care of yourself, you take care of everyone at the same time.

Do not underestimate the spiritual dimension of this crisis. Take the perspective of an eagle that sees everything from above with a broader view. There is a social question in this crisis, but also a spiritual question. The two go hand in hand.

Without the social dimension we fall into fanaticism. Without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and futility.

Are you ready to face this crisis?  Grab your toolbox and use all the tools at your disposal.

Learn resistance from the example of Indian and African peoples: we have been and are exterminated. But we never stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire and rejoicing.

Be free of guilt for feeling blessed in these troubled times. Being sad or angry does not help at all. Resistance is resistance through joy!

You have the right to be strong and positive. And there is no other way to do it than to maintain a beautiful, happy, bright posture.

Has nothing to do with alienation (ignorance of the world). It is a resistance strategy.

When we cross the threshold, we have a new worldview because we faced our fears and difficulties. This is all you can do now:

- Serenity in the storm

- Keep calm, pray everyday

- Make a habit of meeting the sacred everyday.

Show resistance through art, joy, trust and love.

Giving Meaning

Micro, macro, and the unknown
All of the layers in between
All the things we assume about the world
While the natural world simply exists
The struggle to understand, give meaning to things
The meaning we inscribe to community, humans, 

to feel better about not knowing

Ground: shaken - Vision: blurred - Future: uncertain

There is only the illusion of control - as if I could protect myself through knowing I've organized, planned, figured it all out down to the last box of provisions or gallon of paint - but underneath all this false preparation are constant unknowns. What-ifs. But-hows. Then-whats. Security and stability are not safe words to utter in this new reality; I think we are all learning this while living through the ambiguity of a never-ending pandemic. Social and ecological climates come to a head and now truly highlight existential risk, so now we scramble. I am sensitive to this collective consciousness - now ridden with anxiety and despair - as there are no specifics, no ground to stand on, no one to go to for answers, no trustworthy source of information. There is no other way for me to handle the intensity than with presence, trust, and simply learning to be still and feel the feels. Turning inward for solutions. I think this might be the most useful list of "skills", above all other types of illusory physical preparations for the unknown and inevitable.

I am content, find happiness and joy in most moments, and I feel loved... but I also feel powerless as I witness the world crumble and our freedoms fray, as if I were bound in chains and my chest couldn't expand fully to take a deep breath. Ultimately, I am indeed bound; bound in this 5'something box of a human that is limited and vulnerable and so very much dependent on everyone around me to live this good life I am living. I am living a good life, such a good life it seems fraudulent and frail. I watch the life I am living slowly filter through the shredder, from an out-of-body perspective, and my heart - the only thing keeping me tied to the living earth - is beating faster and faster as this machine's teeth approach my feet.

A day of connections at work

One after another, the folks came by and interacted with me. I suppose I had an inviting charm, even just sitting there, facing a wall, holding a paintbrush and focused intently doing my thing. Today I welcomed them in, starting conversations and asking deep questions about their lives. I am not sure what they are thinking in those moments of disturbance - in that time when they say something aloud to me - but some days I appreciate the distraction away from the work, and others I am irritated and annoyed. It oscillates between the two, and I imagine it is because of an imaginary (but very real) reserve of energy, from which one day I pour myself fully out and the next I pay for leaving myself not a trace of it. The dry spell of the next day slows me down and leaves my skin and eardrums extremely sensitive.

Yet I live for these moments. Connection with strangers, doorways to sameness, to relating, to understanding, to being seen, to perhaps change someone's life with one smile or one word of encouragement. Cyril was a friendly indigenous man who started speaking of his adult life without a partner, raising children and believing that "to be a man, and to have anything worthwhile to give a woman, he must be well off and have something to give her". The whole story of man as provider. Then there was Lee, a retired insurance broker with a tiny dog who explained that now that she has moved here post-retirement from Toronto and her sight has diminished "first 20/20, then 20/40, then 20/60", she is waiting for it to get bad enough to claim her horrible sight on her insurance to get "New Eyes", a new technology which looks like goggles but gives the blind new eyes! She also mentioned her investigative nature, reading crime sci fi novels - 5 a month or so compared to 5 a year - and her love of solving problems and finding solutions. I also met Jimmy, a man on a bike with a helmet full of rainbow stickers, who saw my attention to detail and asked me for my information as he'd like me to airbrush his motorcycle. Yesterday Clay showed up, a man living in Tiny Town, appreciating and really connecting with the artwork, with such a good understanding of colour and line and composition and theme and meaning, it blew me away. 

It's nice to write their stories. It's nice to focus on others.

Nectar

Today I witnessed a bee retrieving nectar from dainty little white and red flowers - sexy little danglers - which I have discovered after the fact are called "Salvia Hot Lips". It reached deep into every center, the flower's curves and contours seemingly asking for the intrusion. I thought to myself in that moment, I wonder what it feels like to be a flower, a Being possessive of such Godly golden dust, always vulnerable, open, ready to be devoured at any moment, giving selflessly... 

Would it feel ecstatic and orgasmic, to be suckled and tickled by every desiring visitor?  

On trusting myself

Yesterday my thoughts charmed me into wanting to do the opposite of what I am instinctively drawn to do. So far I have found that - if I tally in some strange way - when I am drawn to, say, an impulse such as going in the direction of an attractive man (whom in that one moment I have made into my future lover), it mostly turns out not "working out". They aren't attracted to me equally. I am not interested in them afterall. They are unavailable. They are this. They are that. I thought perhaps I should let go of such nonsense and change direction completely when I am under that influence. Yet today I realize that everything that is seemingly "unfruitful" - in the way that it was unsuccessful for partnership - has led me to the insights I am now blessed to be having. I have had the most beautiful spiritual openings the past two days, after a hard crash of the ego self from feeling rejection by someone who I was hopeful about, someone who sent my senses for a spin and made my thoughts go to the future. It was a brief encounter, and I managed to build a whole world around him (no wonder I went crashing).

So I thought: I must never crash again! What uselessness to involve myself so deeply in projections of the future with a man whom I don't know! 

But might this be the wrong way to think? What if I love these circumstances more than getting to settle and getting what I imagined? What if my growth is relative to the amount of fear I experience? It is scary to embark on quests such as romance, either with a complete stranger or with a friend I have known for years. Ultimately, they all lead to the same place: here.

What I am unsure of is what I "should" or "should not" be following. My instincts, my guts, my inner voice, my wisdom, this stuff that drags me to one direction or another, that allows me to choose, are unruly and untamed. Morals have a slight say in which is preferable,  but naturally I will act on a personal code that gets me what I think I want. Now, what is to say that one event is more or less successful than another? How can I rate my success of having listened to my inner chatter or my heartbeat in hindsight when everything has lined up perfectly to this moment? Who am I to say that being here is not as good as being there? Walking does not require careful examination and choice of every step, and yet we end up at the grocery store to buy the necessities. Does choosing the next move really depend on weighing options so diligently and carefully so as to not go in the wrong direction? What if there is no such thing as the wrong direction?

So many questions this morning. I haven't questioned in a while, not really. I mean, there are always questions, but not ones that shake my foundation and the way that I live my life. This one might be one of those.