How was your Jupiter-Neptune cosmic surrender party this week?!
I thought I might do some kind of ceremony or meditation on Tue 12 Apr, the day of this big astro event for 2022. Instead I found myself journeying with the cliché of a laptop that wouldn’t boot up, digesting the potential loss of all my data.
A small incident, in the scheme of things, but it felt destabilising, nonetheless.
Having drawn the Temperance card FOUR days in a row, I knew that losing my shit was not the way to go. That would totally miss the point.
In the absence of being able to do anything with my computer, I started purging, big time. Stacks of paper that have hung around for months, some for more than a year. (Maria, dear Virgo heart, tells me this is nothing! Try seven years of particular paper companionship!)
48 hours later, the Yoniverse handed my laptop back to me, good as gold. In the meantime, I had learned how to remove a harddrive, I’d shifted onto a new laptop, a task I’d been putting off, and I Iearned that a tiny Bios setting can change everything!
As I set up my email accounts again, I started madly unsubscribing from so many things. I figured, if I can’t back up even part of the work I am investing in every day, then I am clearly maxed out and don’t have headspace for all this content, no matter how amazing it is.
(The irony that I’m here, filling up your inbox, isn’t lost on me! Do always feel free to unsubscribe, I get it!)
Cosmic surrender party indeed! I can kind of hear Mercury laughing!
===
For others, it’s been harder. Single parenting while being down with cvid. Picking up the pieces in the aftermath of the floods. Navigating the headfuck of emerging from the pandemic with no one (it seems) wanting to acknowledge or talk about what just happened. Sitting with the loss of relationship. Witnessing chronic stress with a boss collapsing at work. Journeying with death.
It’s a watery Piscean workout, alright, and this week was the peak (astrologically speaking)… now the integration…
I’ve been appreciating this video sharing from Matt Licata, on the Wounded Healer archetype and “pain as path.”
Sending so much love. May you have all the strength you need to trust the process you are in, to trust your questions, to trust your heartache…
(This beautiful depiction of XI Justice ~ associated with the sign of Libra ~ from the Wizards Tarot deck, illustrated by Mieke Janssens.)
LIVING IN DEBT
Throughout this Piscean Pilgrimage (three months of deep watery upheaval and cleansing) I’ve been travelling with a soul query around debt and slavery.
Not only financial debt, but more importantly time-debt, and energy-debt.
Life has asked me to be more conscious of how I spend my money, on a small, personal scale. And it has also asked me to be more conscious of how I spend my time.
Do you like that: how do you “spend” your time?
Where do you “pay” attention?
The language points to the truth that our time is a resource, as is our money, as is our physical, emotional and spiritual energy.
As Venus travels through Pisces, she’s asking me to reassess my values and more consciously “invest” these resources. I’m calling it a “deep values cleanse”! Maybe you can relate?
.
(Art by Carl W. Röhrig)
VESSEL OVERFLOWING
I find it helpful to visualise myself as a container and my time/money/energy as water. Where is it leaking out?
Where am I feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to do?
Where am I living beyond my financial means, or living with financial stress?
Where am I leaking psychic or emotional energy?
Am I getting enough sleep, or am I living in debt that way too?
Am I even getting enough oxygen with each breath??
I have been enslaved, you could say, by my own beliefs, mindsets and choices, and by what is modelled as “normal” in my culture.
I am seeking freedom and balance (Aries-Libra). I want to live in the present, rather than indebted to past.
This is what is arising for me at the Full Moon in Libra moment as it punctuates this three-month Pisces wave of dissolution.
What is arising for you? What is your Full Moon prayer…?
.
DEBT SNOWBALL
In musing on my time-debt, and how I feel “behind” so often, I started wondering if I could tackle that issue the same way I’d tackle a financial debt issue: by making a list of all the debts and paying them off one by one, starting with the smallest. Creating what Dave Ramsay calls a debt snowball. Decided to test that theory!
Yesterday I made a list of my time-debts – the tasks and projects that I ‘owe’ other people, or have already committed to. I made an estimate of how long it would take to complete each one, and ranked them in that order. (Have also appreciated the concept of time-assets.)
I figure I am living at least 150 hours in debt. Basically, I’m a month “behind,” and not particularly unique in that regard, I believe.
My list didn’t include tasks I think I “should” do, like strategic PYL admin and a new website I’d like to create. My list was strictly the things that are already in motion, already committed to. It also didn’t include regular, recurring tasks.
As I sorted through my emails, I realised that, not only is there this month of outstanding work that I’m dragging around with me, every single day, there’s also hours and hours of lessons/emails/newsletters rolling through my inbox, and books on my shelves, that I’m somehow hoping to consume…
Like, honestly, when?? Get REAL, lady!!
Wrote in my journal: “If I’m not to continue getting stuck in my time-debts, I have to live in greater alignment with the finite resources of my body and time. I’ve been living beyond my means, beyond my capacity, for a long time.”
If I am a vessel, filling with water, Life flowing through me, it’s like the tap is turned on too much. I can’t actually hold all that’s pouring into me, I’m maxed out and the water is pouring over my edges.
The cost of this is I end up overwhelmed, in a freeze response when I look at the to-do list, immobilised right when I feel the need to be acting to mitigate this fullness.
I know I can’t control what Life offers to me 100%, but I do have a say in the matter, and there are things I can do to reduce the flow a little. Saying no to new ideas for now. Unsubscribing. Getting more effective at reaching completion. Avoiding social media. Keeping an eye on the part of me that wants to refine and perfect what I am doing.
Fundamentally, Knowing Myself and making conscious choices!
(Just found a brilliant article from Rescuetime.com on how to approach some of this…Declare time bankruptcy on your daily schedule, indeed!)
(Artist unknown)
FULL MOON PRAYERS
All of which leads me to a kind of Full Moon prayer or pledge…
To the small/young part of me that gets frozen:
Don’t worry. All this heavy backlog will come to an end, I am making sure of that now. I am not taking on any more new things until I have significantly lightened the load on us. I know this has been too heavy for you, too much for you, and for me as well. It sucks all the fun out of things. Please be patient with me while I reduce the flow, life is going to get simpler… 💛
And to the deep-diving ecstatic muse within me that either gets put off, or hijacks my agenda:
I absolutely marvel at all your ideas, you are so creative! I absolutely love being in the dreaming space with you. Sorry for how this backlog drags me down and makes it hard to say yes to you. I’m working on it. I long to enter each day with a sense of spaciousness and freedom, so I can dance and dream with you, without having to go into debt to do so… here’s to that!
===
Well, here’s to reading more of that RescueTime blog and continuing to focus in on what I most value! And all the best with your conversation with Venus and all that she’s inviting you into!
Sending love, and go gently…
Much love,