I want to share a vision I have been holding for the last year, for the School of the Widely Open Heart!
The recent New Moon in Virgo did my head in. I felt stripped back, abraided at a soul level. Unmoored from aspects of meaning and identity. Beliefs I’d built myself on.
The energy of the monk, the ascetic, was very present for me, which of course, links us to Virgo and its themes of service and self-denial.
I needed to act out a form of ‘sackcloth and ashes,’ in that ancient way humans have always visually communicated to each other and to themselves that ‘it’s not business as usual right now, folks, I’ve lost something precious…’
So I shaved my head as part of of a rebirthing ceremony on Treaty 1 land (according to the wisdom of an indigenous elder from thousands of miles away). Just as I did once before on different country.
It felt right, and I trust that this act roots me here more strongly than ever. I need to be grounded in order to pull off what is being asked of me.
Dream of the School of the Widely Open Heart
On New Moon day, I recalled a (literal) dream I had this time last year, where I dreamed I was part of The School of the Widely Open Heart (SWOH). Those words strung together, the idea that such a place could exist, gripped me, this New Moon.
It planted itself firmly as a seed that demanded my attention and facilitation.
Not sure about you, but I’m more conscious of my closed-heartedness, in general, and the ever-present gap between how I’m showing up and how I could be showing up.
Given the impossibility of staying open all the time, the SWOH is obviously a school for failures. That’s me there, first in line there!
But on the other hand, the idea of the SWOH is so potent because I, like many of you, journey through life with a heart that is constantly broken, a heart and body that somehow missed the part in the soulful assembly line where we got handed our armour, or at least our ‘feathers’ to help the hard things just roll off (like water off a duck’s back).
I feel things. I feel so many things. And a whole bunch of them I’d rather not feel at all.
So, the SWOH is also for us misfits, those of us who’ve been told we are too sensitive.
Who’ve been ridiculed for crying over “small” things.
Who’ve had to squish their natural feeling ‘way’ just to survive in all the social institutions that make up so much of modern-day life: schools, workplaces, etc.
Who never got over being energetically or literally abandoned as a child.
Somehow, the call is to stay open, to stay feeling, even in the face of emotional whiplash disappointment and betrayal.
Especially the ways in which we disappoint and betray ourselves.
💜
Pain as Purpose, Pain as Power
At the FQ Moon, I made a video and uploaded it to IGTV, about the SWOH and what it might mean.
It seemed to strike a chord. The shared conversation grew the idea… and there is so much more to write about this, but here’s the raw essence:
Your Pain is your Purpose
Your Pain is your Power
What does this potent collective wisdom mean for you today?
Where is your pain leading you?