Last week the provincial government here announced it will do away with vax passports as of 1 March, after bringing them in the day I returned from Wilderness Solo in early September 2021. (Getting rid of masks as well, on 15 Mar.)
I can feel my brain reframing my whole experience, now that there’s an end date, an end point, a threshold.
eg. “It was only for six months that I had to live this story of separation. Six months doesn’t seem that long, really. So glad I didn’t sell out on myself or my values or my kids, to ease an intensity that was only there for 6 months.”
I feel like we all have been immersed in a spiritual test or a spiritual opportunity (which is what Life is all the time, I guess!). As as always, the requirements were different for each one of us.
Somehow, in approaching the end of the test, I know already that I passed, and passed well!
In writing a list of ‘wins’ and gratitudes for the week, I realised I’d hit not just a weekly win but a yearly win, a highpoint that will be a standout moment of my 2021/22 experience:
I wrote: I am so excited and grateful to reach the end of this time (for now) with my integrity intact!
At no point did I sever off a part of myself in order to reduce the intensity of being uniquely and exceedingly Grace in this strange and estranged world.
And for that – for this evidence of my privilege, and my soulful effort, both – I am deeply grateful.
I am emerging on the other side with greater self-knowing, deeper roots, increased power and a stronger sense of purpose and direction. Blessed be!
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RECLAIMING CENTRE-STAGE
The last six months have invited me to become more self-centred.
ie. To become more centred in my Self.
To become more oriented to myself and my values, warmed by my inner fire, my own actions and the power of my soulful alignment (hello, Leo).
Actually, the last six months invited me to continue this work that began when I was a teenager, making sense of the faith I had inherited, and when I was becoming a mother in my early 20s, listening to the inner promptings that put me on the path of three joyous homebirths.
I’m musing on this word-idea – self-centred – because it’s been arising organically at the moment, and it’s one that’s often associated with the sign of Leo, where our Full Moon is occurring this month.
Obviously it’s a quality that’s gotten a bad rap, at least in my upbringing. Something to obscure and minimise within myself. A quality I can easily feel triggered by when it is mirrored to me by others!
It’s a quality I project onto others and reject in myself.
But through my disillusioned eyes – these eyes that have had veils drawn away, seeing anew a world where so much seeks to separate us and draw us away from our distinct, unique, local, embodied wisdom and intactness – when I hold this quality of self-centred-ness up to the ‘light’ of the last six months, it sings like gospel.
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SPECTATOR OR PLAYER?
The last two weeks I have become even more aware of the incredible draw of “other people’s stories” as a distraction away from my centre, my story, my own small actions and efforts.
Already, I have been totally ignoring the media for months – there is no truth I can easily discern there; the only guarantee: incredible bias and distortion.
I should delete most of the feeds off my Telegram, cos I’ve been ignoring them too (much bias and distortion there as well, of course!).
But the visuals of people gathering in Ottawa and Canberra – the videos of truck after truck and car after car of people rolling into these places, the sense of movement and momentum and solidarity – I felt how these stories could so easily grab my imagination and dominate my attention (not that I let them, my alertness to distraction is running strong at the moment).
I’ve become clearer that when I’m taking in someone else’s words, video, insta feed, story, art or creation, at best I’m a participant, but more likely, I’m in the role of spectator.
I’m not an active player on that stage.
Why is it – at a time when I most need to dream, envision and act, when I most need to make art, get playful, and offer myself courageously to my people (hello Leo!), in order to continue birthing the world I want for future generations of precious children – that I can so easily get distracted by what other people are doing??
(I know, I know, it’s human nature… Just tune in to your thoughts for a minute: are there any conversations or ideas there that you’ve got running on repeat? Or perhaps there’s something I’ve said here that was an irritant? Maybe there was something perturbing you heard on the news? I’ve got one: a tiny segment of a convo that my husband relayed to me – I wasn’t even there! But it’s going round and round in my brain, fuelled by my indignation and hijacking my creative energy! My point is, this is all a distraction! This is all someone else’s story! None of this helps us do the work we are here to do!)
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SOULWORK ASSIGNMENT
This week, I channeled all of my (active, non-spectator!) efforts into completing my soulwork assignment that is a culmination of the last six months: to write and send a Notice of Conditional Acceptance to my son’s school, clarifying my position, seeking more information, and setting up a shared understanding about what we are and are not willing to do, now and in the future (cos like I said last time, I think some of these pando-vibes will be back later in the year – happy to be proved wrong about that!).
If I’d been scrolling Telegram, or even if I’d focused on my paid work, I wouldn’t have gotten it done. I was practicing conscious neglect, a concept a friend shared with me years ago!
I sealed and sent the NOCA yesterday to the two school principals, registered post. Ironically, it took five months of inner spiritual growth and one week of writing, to get the job done.
It’s my Full Moon in Leo prayer on paper, in action. A brand new way of speaking up for what I want and need, of being seen, of standing up for what I feel is right, for not caving in to my resignation in the face of the Machine, the System.
Remember, I showed up to push an 8lb (ish) baby through my tiny cervix and out my amazing, flexible vagina, without any access to pain relief, not once but THREE FUCKING TIMES, and paid thousands of dollars for the privilege, just so I could avoid dialoguing with these institutions that bring up such a strong sense of disempowerment within me!
I spent years and years ‘home-schooling’ my kids, restricting my creativity, my career, my freedom, my time, (none of which I regret one bit, but that doesn’t mean it was always easy!) to continue this avoidance, and to keep my kids intact for as long as possible, buffered from having to acclimatise at too young an age to unyielding, uninspiring institutional ‘education.’
I spent years and years avoiding and postponing this particular soulwork!
So I recognised it when I saw this assignment in front on me. It had a familiar face. And this time, there was no wriggling out of it, I had to speak up this time…
And so this is big, this prayer of words, of saying what I want and trusting I have a right to be heard.
And in this completion moment, I’m riding a high similar to when I gave birth, the high that comes from fronting up to something scary, and finding a way through it, with integrity and body intact. Yesssssss!
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MORE JOURNAL QUESTIONS
This Leo Moon is bringing up a rich array of questions ~ here’s some:
- Where did your loyalties lie, the last six months?
- What stories did you give your energy and attention to?
- What stories of ‘what others were doing’ were so sticky that they distracted (or ARE DSTRACTING YOU!) from your own work and intentions?
- Why were they sticky for you? And how wonderful to see this and learn from it!
- What relationships were burned by your stories and beliefs?
- What creative efforts of the last six months are you proud of?
- What are you committing to, now? What deserves your loyalty?
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THREE THINGS
Three things I’ve felt inspired by this month!
One:
Stephen Jenkinson riffing on eldership – you want some fire? You want some excoriating personal wisdom?? Listen here!
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Two:
I just finished reading the graphic novel V for Vendetta, created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd in the 80s. It’s set in a future Fascist England in 1997 and explores this society of domination and surveillance.
The anarchist revolutionary main character, the mysterious, masked ‘V,’ takes over the controlled media and broadcasts this message, along with an ultimatum to the people to change their ways:
“You don’t seem to want to face up to any real responsibility, or to be your own boss… what are (the children) to make of your bullying, your despair, your cowardice, and all your fondly nurtured bigotries?…Who elected (these embezzlers, frauds, liars and lunatics)? It was you! You who appointed these people, you who gave them the power to make your decisions for you!
“While I’ll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate.You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have make your life a shambles.You have accepted without question their senseless orders.You have allowed them to fill your (life) with dangerous and unproven machines.You could have stopped them. All you had to do was say ‘no’!”
Fark! Kinda relevant, it seems to me! Highly recommended, though don’t just hand it over to your kids without being up for some conversations ~ multiple adult themes…
Looking forward to rewatching the movie now (in a spectator role, taking it in as the pure entertaining distraction that it is! 😂😂😂)
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Three:
And in the spirit of Leonine play, we enjoyed playing Dixit on the weekend, with its encouragement of right-brained, lateral connections and beautiful creative images on the playing cards!
(And yes, when I drew that card at the top right corner, my phrase was ‘V for Vendetta,’ haha! 😊)
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BURNING WOMAN
Sooooooo….. in all that is shifting and changing…. in the fierce fire of this Full Moon…. I seek to burn up the parts of myself that seek validation from the external world.
🔥 I burn to ash any loyalty I ever had to the System. You lost me, well and truly. My commitment to reeducating and decoupling myself from you is steadfast.
🔥 I burn to ash the shrill voice of political correctness. I reject your attempts to manipulate me with ‘shoulds’ and your expectation that my genuine questions can be shut down cos they don’t fit your worldview, whether about Co-vid or transgender or anything else. I’ll keep asking them.
🔥 I burn to ash my fear and procrastination. If my artful living terrifies me (let alone you, haha!), I call on Life to gift me with the courage I need.
🔥 I burn to ash my investment in your opinions of me. I trust that as I become more self-centred in this way, I’ll be able to be more present and loving towards you.
May I be set aflame.
May Life burn me incandescent.
May all that no longer serves be stripped away.
May there be no holding back, now.
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This is the voice of my Self under this Leo moon, at 28 degrees, right next to my North Node at 29 degrees, inviting me deep into my uncomfortable, cutting-edge of growth, challenging me to shun my old ways of staying safe by hiding, withdrawing and eschewing the mainstream (South Node in Aquarius)…
But I can also hear the strong Virgo contingent within me, urging caution and ‘small steps’ and ‘there’s no need to burn everything to pieces, is there?!’ and ‘do you really think you can live up to this stuff?’
I hear my Aquarian Sun self attuned already to this solitary, revolutionary path, fiercely committed to independence and freedom of thought.
And my Taurean Moon self, having walked this very path, many times over, deeply trusting my embodied process, my earthy, robust Becoming.
And ahhh, my blood comes today, with the Full Moon! My joyful womb speaks. All is right, all is well. This emptying can be oh-so-easefully…
And so, the inner dialogue continues! Everything is ever-changing, from one Moon cycle to the next…
I needed to hear this fire today! In a sense, I wrote for myself – I probably always write for myself – self-centred!
But I hope there was something here for you too, something that warmed you or set you alight.
I send my love and respect, as we slowly navigate our way in this liminal space between stories, before the time of Reunion…
💛 💛 💛