The Illusion of Unworthiness

I have been thinking a lot lately about worthiness. What it means, where it comes from, what it feels like, and why it's so damn hard to believe that I am worthy. True to human form, I struggle to know my own worthiness. I'm sure that I have always struggled with this since I was very young, but I am only now beginning to realize, as an adult, that my inability to truly believe in my own worthiness impedes just about everything that I try to build and become. Why does our perceived unworthiness keep us from being able to fling open the doors of true growth in our lives and walk right through, like nothing is stopping us? Because unworthiness tells us that we don't deserve those doors and that, if we walk through, we will be stopped and thrown out. Unworthiness tells us that we don't belong.

Unworthiness is like an invisible prison, one that we don't even realize we are being held captive by. It can deter our wildest dreams from alchemizing into our reality, seemingly without our consent. Feeling unworthy is something that comes naturally to us humans. Our egos are prone to judgment and fear, which places us in our woundedness and inflames the pain of separation that we feel as human beings. We perceive our inner pain and fearful judgments as being exterior to us, compounding a painful illusion: we fear that we are not enough.

There is much to be said about why we are so addicted to subconsciously viewing ourselves as unworthy. It comes from the ways in which we experienced our entry into this world (gestation + birth) and learned about ourselves and the world from our caregivers and roots. This branches off into a whole other conversation but basically, we are hardwired to feel somewhat inadequate and less deserving than others. It is an innate human struggle to see our own brilliance, compared to the ways in which we so freely interpret worthiness outside of us, such as in those we love.

Our existence in a physical world, where everything we do, feel, and perceive ourselves to be is completely separate from others, is starkly different than the spiritual world that we come from. In spirit form, free from the physical dimensions that limit us and the heaviness that exists here, we are all interconnected by love and we share in the harmony of our collective existence and movement. Here in the physical world, we perceive ourselves to be alone and separate from others because we have our own bodies, our own minds, and our own realities, in which we are the sole creators. That can get so lonely and challenging for our souls to do alone while we are here, which is why we have relationships. It is because of our connections with others that we find mirrors in this world, moments when another human reflects back to us our divinity and our humanness, reminding us that we are all one in the same and in this together, despite what the logical mind decrees.

So, as you can see, it is natural that we feel separate from time to time. It is okay and valid that we are prone to feeling unworthy of what is outside of us, because at times we are blinded by the perception that we are separate from and not connected, on deep energetic levels, to what is outside of us. It is not because of who we are that we perceive ourselves as unworthy, but because of who we struggle to see ourselves as. 

If only we could see ourselves fully as the beautiful spiritual essence that we are. As the being that is a ball of pure loving energy, a beautiful iridescence shining outward like the stars in the sky. But, my friends, it is not our fault that we cannot see ourselves fully in that way! We are part human, remember? We have an ego and human instincts, such as logic, designed for this world and the dangers it inhabits. That part of us may always struggle to fully live in the light, and that is okay. That is why we are here, for the contrast and the challenge that our human journey entails. The harder we have to work to make out our spiritual essence in this world, the more important and true it becomes.

We may never fully believe, forever and ever, that we are worthy. We may always have our human moments when we naturally fall into a pattern of viewing ourselves as unworthy of that which we need or desire. Becoming a perfect human cyborg that never feels wounded is not the goal (or reality) here, at all! Rather, the goal of healing is to wake up every day and commit to the awareness that you must remind yourself you are worthy to believe it, and you must believe it to see it all around you. It is important to actively remember that you must treat yourself as worthy to receive what you want to be worthy of. And the ONLY person, being, or force that gets to decide how worthy you are of anything is you. Because it isn't about deciding whether or not you are worthy, it is all about remembering that there has never been a nanosecond that you were not.

This is easier said than done, of course, just as everything truly is. But that doesn't mean it is out of your reach by any means. Finding and committing to a perspective of self-worthiness is a journey of peeling back layer upon layer of the negative experiences that have reinforced your perspective of unworthiness and the deep-seated beliefs that are so quick to support doing so. It's about having the awareness, bravery, and compassion to be with yourself in the moments where you perceive unworthiness and shame within your being and decide to see your innate worthiness instead of what your fears and wounds are trying to convince you of. It's about holding yourself in such unflinching love that even the deepest pools of shame within your being will eventually dry up.

The first step to healing an unworthiness wound is to always hold yourself in loving compassion, especially when you find yourself unconsciously treating yourself as unworthy. This is perhaps the most important part of worthiness healing because it is the simplest way to prove to yourself by being and doing, just how worthy you are. If you see yourself as worthy and deserving of being held in love and compassion, especially when you perceive yourself to have 'dropped the ball', well, my friends, there is nothing outside of you that is going to argue with that. This is true because the way that we love ourselves and hold space for ourselves to make errors and blunders opens up precious space for others to love us the same way. Including the universe and the physical reality around you!

So, I am here to tell you that it is possible to heal these wounded parts of your being. Find small ways to truly believe in your own worthiness today and I guarantee that the universe will start to reflect it back to you, tenfold. Because not only are you innately worthy and deserving of all things loving, joyful, and wonderful, but I am learning that those things are always way closer to you than you think. 

May you find the safety and courage to see yourself as worthy of all you desire and more, and may your own love for yourself grow deeper and deeper with every passing day! Something tells me it already is.

Photo by Casey Horner via Unsplash

Things That Heal Me: Love

 There is this idea in spirituality that everything revolves around one thing. It's the answer to every ailment, the truth of every experience, and the very fabric of our reality. The center of our universe has long been speculated to be love. Not just the romantic notion of being in love, but the aspects of feeling safe, cared for and nurtured. Love is the reason that we exist and when I was navigating the first six years of my own spiritual journey, I thought that was a load of bullshit.

I lived for quite a few years understanding that love was important to our existence as human beings, but believing that saying love is the reason for, and answer to everything is a toxic escape from the truth of reality. From my perspective, I saw that we lived in a world with different dimensions of suffering. This world is not made of sunshine and rainbows, although it does have them. That was my take on love! To my younger eyes, this world contained love and we could experience love here, but it was not, by any means, made of love. If it were, such ugly, dark, awful things wouldn't happen and would not go unseen by the universe (god, source, etc.). But that's what it felt like to me. I honestly believed that if love were the center of our existence, the reason for our seasons, this world would be a little bit more reflective of that love. It never occurred to me that life might reflect back to me the very reality that I believe in.

At that point in my life, love didn't feel entirely safe or guaranteed. Love felt like perfection and thus was wholly unattainable in this world, to a certain degree. Sure, there are moments and pockets of love for us here and there, but to me, there just simply wasn't enough to prove that this universe was made entirely of love. Life was imperfect, therefore so was love. Sure, I believed that the universe loved me but I also knew that I was suffering in many ways that didn't feel like love, which made all of this even that much harder for me to grasp.

 If you can't tell already from reading this far, I am a bit skeptical for someone who has devoted her young adult life to studying mediumship, death, the afterlife, and spiritual existence. I am not entirely woo woo as I do tend to lean toward logical reasoning, but I see skepticism as a chance to further deepen my beliefs and logic. The way I see it is that if I can prove to the parts of me that are innately logical that there is a much grander, more perfect, and intelligent force supporting human life, then I will be someone who can believe with her entire being. So, to me, a little bit of open-minded skepticism is healthy because it gives us the opportunity to strengthen our faith. 

At some point in my mid-twenties, my skepticism got unhealthy and I became a bit disheartened thanks to some really awful relationship experiences. A part of me always wanted to believe that love was the fabric of our universe, knowing on some theoretical level that it was true, that perhaps my soul wouldn't let me forget! But the events in my life kept reinforcing the opposite perspective. Why did I continue to reach for love, only to end up with mere crumbs? Why were my biggest dreams and aspirations so far away, every attempt to reach them feeling futile? I clearly had a bone to pick with love.

Fast forward to now, as I am currently experiencing what I can only see as an awakening to the truth of love. It is no longer just a skeptical idea, but an emerging truth in my reality. One that is supported by my willingness to see it. But it wasn't just my willingness that altered my perception of reality and the fabric of it, it was also a lot of patience and trust. You see, I had to build a new relationship with love. I had to rewire myself and rewrite the story through new experiences that only time could grant me. I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that I was on a journey and it was important I continue with hope.

This is where something deeper and more innate kicked in. I believe that because the fabric of reality, existence, and the universe are made of love, that means we human beings (spirit + physical hybrids) are also made of love and if we are, at our very core, made of love, then it is merely something we must learn how to become more of. That's it! If we, within ourselves are love, then the journey is one of leaning deeper into that part of our being and experience. In other words, we don't have to learn how to become love because we already are. We just have to create the space within us to understand that we are naturally love and that our journey is one of uncovering it within ourselves.

This opened me up to the hefty realization that all those years I spent perceiving my reality and the universe as punishing me or being the authoritative figure that decides whether or not I am worthy, was just a reflection of the conditions I grew up in as a human in this one life, not a reflection of the conditions I was created from as a spiritual being. When I began to realize that my view of the universe as the ultimate authoritarian parent of my reality had led me to taint my experiences with fear and defensiveness, I also realized that life didn't need to prove love's existence to me. I just needed to adjust my perspective so that I could see it in the infinite ways that it shows up. It was time for me to repair my relationship with the universe and to fully trust that it can love me more than humans can.

That's where my need for time and patience showed up. The human brain and psyche are very complex and it often takes some time and consistent practice for such fundamental shifts to be made within. Once I began to realize that the universe was indeed made entirely of love and that I was innately worthy of it, I then had to allow myself to witness those truths in any and every way that I could. That's mainly why I decided to write on this topic today. Because there is no single moment when I truly began to believe that everything was happening to bring me closer to love. It was many tiny moments and some big ones when I saw the opportunity in the shadows of life. Opportunity to bring me that much closer to love by choosing to see, experience, and operate through the lens of love rather than the lens of fear.

This is by no means an easy task. As humans, we are hardwired with instincts that are anchored in fear, and quite often these instincts protect us. But in modern times when a lot of our threats are internal, the fear only perpetuates a point of view that does more harm than good. Fear that keeps us from experiencing the truth of the universe, which is that we are incredibly loved and worthy, simply because we are here. Simply because we exist. When we feel deceived by the universe because something challenging or devastating falls on our doorstep, we are perceiving the universe as intentionally hurting us, which does not feel like love. But when we train ourselves to trust that the universe is only coming from a place of love, that all of the happenings in our lives are rooted in the intention to create more love or bring us closer to the love that we already know, we begin to shift our energy. We begin to allow more space for love to be trusted.

This isn't me trying to convince you that everything that has ever happened to you, no matter how awful and traumatic, was out of love. That was my original problem with this line of thinking and operating. It goes against my bones to invalidate the human emotional experience and suggesting that someone's pain was sent to them out of love has the potential to do so. That is why I am adamant that everyone must get here in their own time, by working through their own unique experiences and learning how to hold both human emotions and the spiritual truth of what they have gone through. Our human emotions deserve to hear that the horrible things we have gone through were horrible and that we didn't deserve to suffer in any way. Acknowledging the disappointment and suffering of life is what validates the human psyche. Finding a way to hold space for deeper, more profound spiritual truths without invalidating your emotional needs is true enlightenment, in my opinion.

My journey of giving up fear as a compass and leaning into love has looked a lot like trying to kick an addictive habit. Seeing life and the universe through the lens of fear is like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for me. At the moment it satisfies so I can turn a blind eye to the harm, but eventually, it builds up and affects my health. Operating from fear as my default setting has also made it harder for me to appreciate and lean into the love that is already in my life, not to mention my desire to expand that love in new directions. My goals in life involve trusting that love is at the center of it all because my goals involve experiencing the most beautiful, magical, and loving life that I possibly can, and the only way that I can believe that I am allowed to ask for that (let alone receive it) is by believing that some intelligent, loving force greater than I wants that for me and wants to help me get there. 

As soon as we start to see the universe as an authoritative force, we lose the loving, benevolent force that can help us truly get to the biggest, most loving versions of our life. Not because it won't help us because we believe in fear, but because our fearful perceptions limit the flow of love in our being which makes it harder for the loving universe to move through us and into the creation of our reality. We lose the loving power of the universe just a little bit when we struggle to believe in it, simply because we are not creating a loving environment within ourselves to anchor into its true power. 

In order to truly benefit from the love that surrounds and is us, we must be open to seeing it everywhere we go. We must focus on its existence, even when it's challenging or damn near impossible. Especially when it feels impossible. Because that is how you prove it to yourself! By finding the moments when it is most dark, trusting in the rising sun, and staying present to watch that sun show up and prove the dark wrong, showing us that it was only a moment of darkness with a purpose of its own, not the truth of the universe. You learn to trust love and the universe by allowing yourself to see more and more miracles that blow your mind. By holding space for those miracles to show up and prove the part of you that assumed defeat wrong. Every single moment that you realize you are operating from fear or pain is an opportunity to shift to love and, if anything, to just give it a shot and hope for a better outcome. 

As I wrap up this piece, I am reflecting on the feelings of release that it brought me to say these words. I have been on a journey of discovering and advocating for love since I was born, but I have only recently decided to do so with conscious intention. Several books and pieces in which others describe similar thoughts and journeys have found their way to me recently, almost as if the universe knows that it is time for me to be more conscious of love and how I work with it. Or rather, how I allow it to work for me. Why is the universe helping me to guide myself even deeper into love? Because the universe loves me and wants me to feel more at ease. It wants me to feel more supported and loved, and it wants to inspire me to create more love for myself and others. The universe wants these things simply because it is love.

We only discover and know what we know when we are most ready to consciously receive that knowledge. My journey of love is only beginning, although it feels like it is bursting open in a way it never has before. I believe that there will always be more ways to hold, experience, and understand love. Perhaps even infinite ways! For I know that the universe is made solely of love and intends only to create and nurture love, and the universe is infinite. So, my dear friends, doesn't that say all we need to hear? To me that says that love, just like the universe that vibrates only with love, is infinite. Making my ability to bring it even more into my existence, well, just as infinite. All I have to do is see it that way.

So, I suppose that they were always right when they said it. Love truly is the answer!

Photo by Roman Kraft via Unsplash

Mercury Retrograde in Capricorn: The Great Restructuring

 Mercury + Mercury Rx: What the Heck Does it Mean?

It’s that time of year again! Mercury is slowly making its way to a standstill and total turnaround of our mental body and communications, easing us into the new year on a note of stillness, followed by a complete restructuring of our understanding of a certain area of our lives. About three to four times a year, the planet that serves as a giant megaphone, amplifying and messaging our thoughts, ideas, and communications, appears to stop and change directions in the sky. This may not be more than just an optical illusion in space, however, it is much more than that for us energetic beings here on Earth! When any planet stations retrograde, it takes the outward moving energy and turns it inward. In other words, with Mercury, a retrograde means that the emphasis is taken off of outward communications and expressions, and focused on our own inner mental landscapes and communications. 

Perhaps this is why Mercury Rx has a loud reputation for causing so many disruptions and confusion, especially with technology and communications. Mercury, as a planet, rules over the small webs of interconnection and movement that we have within humanity. Think city highway systems, local transit and routes, interpersonal communications, and technology that helps us post, broadcast, or display our thoughts, ideas, and communications as well as receive that of others. On a regular day when Mercury is direct, it oversees these complex yet incredibly important systems, helping us to connect our individual minds to one another through verbal, written, and sometimes even physical communications (body language, facial expressions, etc.).

When Mercury ventures into its retrograde period, it does a complete 180 on these energies, and instead of moving energy smoothly between individual people and small groups, it focuses its energy and efforts on moving the mental energies around within our very own, personal inner systems. While it isn’t necessarily working against us during these short periods of retrograde, it definitely drops the flow of outer movement and works to bring us into flow with our inner mental movements. This has been widely observed to challenge interpersonal communications, technology, and even the ability to clearly express your thoughts outwardly and have them be received as purely as possible.

Mercury Rx, depending on what energy (astrological sign) it is retrograding through, has a tendency to put such an emphasis on our own thoughts, inner voice, and personal mental workings that it is almost as if we are all in our own bubbles of perceived reality, bobbing around, bumping into one another. Mercury Rx is the time when our thoughts and expressions have the potential to be misinterpreted or received in a way that was unintended, due to the simple fact that everyone’s own mental perspective is drawn completely inward, making it slightly difficult (but never impossible) to get on the same “wavelength” mentally, so to speak.

Mercury Rx in Capricorn: All Systems Reboot

December 29 - January 18

Wait… haven’t we been here before? Mercury retrogrades are very typical and regular, meaning that Mercury Rx has worked its way through the capricorn area of our charts before! In fact, in the last 7 years, it has touched here about 3 separate times, mostly concentrated around the beginning and end of 2016 and into 2017. So, while it has occurred a few times in the last decade, it has been quite some time since this specific flavor of Mercury Rx has visited us in this way the entire Rx being in only capricorn) and we won’t see a drop of this specific Rx energy again until the beginning of 2029 (however, Mercury will continue to move direct through this area of our charts, reinforcing and making use of the revisions we’re about to make). 

So, what does that tell us? We are clarifying and anchoring into an always-evolving structure that we started to redesign back in 2016-2017. We are completing the remodel of this structure so that it can carry us through the rest of the 20s. No pressure!! But seriously, don’t sweat this. The extraordinary thing about astrology is that it is the mirror for how our energies are organically moving and evolving. There is nothing that you need to push or force to get this work done because it is naturally going to move you no matter what. Simply staying aligned with yourself, your energy, and your life journey will help the energies move organically and through the simple power of awareness, you will be led into transformation with ease. This goes for ALL astrological happenings. Cool, right?

So, let’s get into the nitty gritty of this specific Mercury Rx, and then I will lead you lovingly into your personal horoscopes for this transit! First, let’s talk about capricorn. Capricorn is a cardinal earth sign, meaning it is all about forging new paths, initiating movement, and leading forward. With it being an earth sign, it focuses its energy on the material and physical realms, making capricorn all about the long-term life path and building the structures that create sustainable growth along the way. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, the planet of tough love and hard knocks, who also rules time, tradition, boundaries, discipline, authority, responsibility, and our life-long learning and evolution. Saturn teaches us all about the challenges and restrictions that we come up against on our life journey, for the purpose of cultivating resilience and helping us sharpen our life wisdom here in the physical world. 

Capricorn and Saturn both represent the harrowing mountains we come here specifically to climb, and the tremendously satisfying yet difficult journeys and lessons that help us climb to the top. Capricorn is all about our life’s work from the perspective of a soul who came to the physical world to be challenged, stretched, and grown into the next level of its capacity. While we're here and young, this energy can feel relentless and unnecessarily challenging in some ways. The older we grow, if we live our lives with self-awareness and conviction, the more this energy turns into the satisfaction of wisdom well learned and the hard work that got us there!

This retrograde is all about accessing the heart of certain structures in our lives that are going to be extremely pertinent over the next 6 years. This retrograde will open these structures up and ask us to consider the parts that will not assist us any longer, once moving us forward but now holding us back. It will replace these outdated systems with new structures that, over time, will move us forward in growth tremendously. 

In the area of your chart/life that is overseen by capricorn, there exists a building whose foundation has become a little dilapidated. While that is part of the life journey and certainly okay, this retrograde has major blueprints and plans to reinforce the structures of this building and spruce it up indefinitely, so that it can house a powerful energy for you moving forward. Remember, capricorn is always looking to the long-term and wants to build the structures that will serve our aspirations, goals, and journeys ahead to bring them to fruition. You can trust that the area of your life that gets reworked by this retrograde was not only in need of some restructuring and reinforcement, but will also greatly benefit from the work done now in the years to come.

Mercury Rx in Capricorn Horoscopes

*For best accuracy, please read horoscopes from your rising sign. If you have a late-degree rising sign, read for the rising sign that proceeds yours! If you are completely lost when it comes to your own astrology, visit redrosereadings.com and book a session with me to learn the sacred secrets of your very own stars!

Aries

This Rx, you can expect a total reworking of your perception of your long-term goals, and professional aspirations, as well as the ways in which you are publicly perceived, especially as it relates to your life’s work. While this may translate to a few bumps in the road when dealing with co-workers or work-related communications, know that the frustrations are trying to point you toward the systems and structures that have formed cracks and may be keeping you from truly taking off in a meaningful direction. This moment asks for you to get curious about the snafus that keep you from feeling connected to the magic of your long-term goals and aspirations. Are there some structures here that need to be reworked to carry you even further or is this Rx asking you some bigger questions about whether or not you’re on a sustainable path forward? Either way, this moment wants to help you settle even deeper into a clear perception of your path ahead, especially as it pertains to the personal and professional successes you’ve had your eye on. In order to do so, however, Mercury Rx needs to point out the bumps in the road that might be keeping you from trailblazing forward and finding your very own definition and reality of success. Take any professional or work/public setbacks as redirection and know that keeping an open mind will benefit you greatly here.

Taurus

This Rx has big visions for you! It wants to bust open your bigger-picture understandings and restructure the ways in which your beliefs and inner wisdom serve you as you expand forward. There likely has been an immense amount of messy inspiration happening in this area for you recently, perhaps even leading you to the threshold of the exciting yet daunting woods of the inner unknown. It is important for you to allow any discomforts or contractions you may feel during this Rx to guide you to the structures of belief within your being that want to break free and reach new heights. This moment may feel a little like the outside world is gently guiding you to examine your inner belief systems or perhaps even put certain beliefs to the test. This Rx is trying to help you take the larger pieces of wisdom within your being and rework them into daily, applicable guides for navigating your moment-to-moment internal perceptions. This transit is all about embodying truer perceptions and beliefs, especially when it comes to the bigger, wiser, and more existential questions within your being. During this time you may feel called to explore new authors, genres, cafes, or even countries, intuitively searching for inspiration and perspective. While this Rx is primed to cause hitches and delays in any type of long-range travel plans, every frustration or bump in the road serves as an opportunity for you to see it in a more expansive way. What at first glance might seem like a plan-shattering delay or cancellation may turn out to be the path to a deeply magical and transformative conversation. Keep an open mind and follow your whims, wherever they may lead – or delay you.

Gemini

This Rx is all about reconfiguring the structures that connect you to and sustain what you share and receive from others. While the last few weeks might have revamped the ways in which you collaborate with and are affected by others, this moment will ask for you to have a little patience and to look at your boundaries. Any shared projects, journeys, or energies may give you pause for a moment or two, giving you the opportunity to rework your end of the deal. Is there something that you need to ask for more of or delegate? Are there any energies leaking into your life and draining what you have to work with, especially when it comes to shared resources and projects? Check out the structures that help organize what’s yours vs. theirs and note that this time is especially ripe for hiccups that involve an immense need to reconfigure what boundaries keep your affairs – and your energies – organized. If you are feeling constantly intruded upon or like your magnetism has gone haywire and is just drawing any and all energies in, take some time to be with yourself and to parse out the ways in which you might have your wires crossed with others. This is an especially ripe time to reconsider the people and energies you want to collaborate with or bump up against so note that any disturbances or messy shared energies are guiding you to the places to look at with curious, self-empowering eyes. Chances are, the word “no” will be your super tool over the next few weeks. It’s okay to bow out of the hustle and bustle of group work and slide silently into your own inner wells. Boundaries are your best friend!!

Cancer

This Rx is here to help you restructure the more important relationships and connections in your life, especially when it comes to the ways in which you communicate your needs and understand the needs of others. For you, this moment is placing an emphasis on the structures in your committed partnerships, friendships, and connections that sustain you in this world, particularly the structures of communication and understanding that help harmonize your relations. While this may translate to some minor mix-ups or misunderstandings, know that any frustrations are presenting themselves to show you where the cracks are slowly forming. Because we are dealing with Mercury here, you can bet that communication will be the center of any snags, but also the center of any solutions moving forward. But before you can smooth the road, this Rx is asking you to get clear on how you understand, communicate, and advocate for your very own needs. Chances are if you run into any challenges with those you are closest to, the first solution is to examine your own end before pointing the finger. Any and all snafus here are, by design, showing you where you could stand to strengthen the ways in which you communicate not just what you need, but also what you want and where you’re headed. Any shared goals or long-term plans are especially in the spotlight right now, giving you ample opportunity to reconfigure the ways in which you understand and express these things to your precious others.

Leo

This Rx hits a more personal note for you, bringing the focus to your inner workings that keep you grounded in your routines and self-care, especially as it relates to habit, health, and overall wellness. Chances are you go through phases in this area, creating a structure that sustains you until you evolve and it begins to block your progress forward. This moment for you is all about taking the habits, daily routines, and health-inspired actions that have served you up until recently and tweaking them to better fit what’s evolved in these areas for you. The first part of this journey, however, may involve addressing the cracks that have formed and the ways these structures have begun to sag. It is wholly possible that you don’t need an entirely new way of being, as much as you might just need to recommit to the methods that have already been proven to serve you greatly. This could be a great time to go back over health and wellness journey’s from the past, especially around this time of year. In what ways have you revamped your routines upon past new year transitions? What goals and journeys have you vowed to take but lost your umph as the years unfolded? Wherever your daily structures and habits may be lacking or causing more work than they’re worth, are up for renewal! Take a deep breath and know that finding what fits your current self best is not something that can be rushed or implemented without reflection. This moment wants to help you fine-tune the ways you care for yourself and your health so that when we leave this Rx behind and get going into 2023, your foundation is ready to carry you far.

Virgo

This Rx has the potential to be a great breath of fresh air for you, so long as you are willing to give yourself the time and space to prioritize what feels most pleasurable and true to you! Happening in the area of your chart that focuses on pleasure, creativity, joy, play, imagination, the inner child, and self-expression, this specific Rx is asking you to seek out and reform the structures in your life that emphasize the rightful importance of refilling your own cup. This energy is the epitome of ‘putting your own mask on first’ so that you can have an impact on others. Self-expression is a huge way that we share ourselves with others and move others in ways that only we can. This moment is asking you to get very clear on the ways in which you may have been blocked here before, leading to never-ending cycles of burnout and unhappiness. While it’s true that capricorn energy is all about hard work and discipline, being a virgo rising means that this energy is dedicated to the area of our life that involves a much less serious vibe. During this transit, ask yourself what mental ideas or perceptions have kept you from prioritizing pleasure, fun, and free-spirited creativity in the past. Then, determine how you can reform and restructure these perspectives so that they work FOR this part of your existence, rather than against it. It’s true that creativity and joy happen most freely when they’re not scheduled, but having capricorn in this area of your chart means that perhaps your greatest method of giving yourself some time off from hard work and serious life IS to plan it out and adhere to what will get you there!

Libra

This Rx is looking to change the structures of your home, whether it's your internal home, your physical, external home, or a mixture of both! When it comes to your external home, this moment may be bringing to your attention the little (or big) projects that are beginning to reveal themselves as important. Whether there are physical cracks in the foundation, or just a need to rework the inner space within the structure you call home, this time is less about jumping on home improvement projects and more about scheming up the changes that you want to take place eventually. Slowly but surely these projects will find their way into your reality, but for now, use this moment to recognize and sit on what isn’t just right. Spending time in the space of what could be done may prove to bring you to not only the ideas that will serve you best but also the steps that will get you there! Gather ideas, and create a Pinterest, but keep the tools in the toolbox for now. The time to build will come organically and right now, your focus lies most powerfully on all of the different ways your dream space could take form. If this energy is hitting more internally for you, replace the idea of reworking your physical space with the notion of reworking the ways in which you build and bring home with you, in your heart space, wherever you may go! This moment could be asking you to rework the ways in which you find the people, places, and energies that feel like home or, on an even bigger scale, the very root of what you consider home to be. It is possible that this moment could bring you on a journey deep into your roots and the people you came from, helping you to understand the cracks in your internal foundation and the ways in which they may be preventing you from finding true belonging in this world. However it unfolds, this Rx has big plans for adjusting the foundations you come from and rest within, with the end goal of giving you something strong and loving to anchor yourself into so you can explore this world and always know where ‘home’ is to come back to.

Scorpio

This Rx is here to give your ideas, thoughts, and inner/outer communications a total cleansing! Happening in Mercury’s favorite astrological house, this one is a double hitter for you, in the best of ways. This moment is asking you to reprioritize, reprocess, and reassess the ways that you understand, think, and speak to yourself through your very own inner voice. Having capricorn in this area of your chart means that you organically work with your mental body in a way that favors the long-term and sustainability. This moment acts as a moment of release, a brief time for you to get out the thoughts that most need to be moved to create space for future percolation. Chat up with your besties, type up that email you’ve been waiting to send, and write down the stories and ideas that have been on the tip of your tongue. Note that your communications and expressions may be far from perfect, but this isn’t about perfection. This moment is more focused on helping to free the flow of what’s been lying dormant or what’s been clogged up. The whole manuscript will not see the light of day quite yet, but putting pen to paper may get you well on your way. If there is anything you have been waiting to think about, say, express, write about, or exclaim from the rooftop, now is the time to open your mouth and get curious about what wants to come out and get the ball rolling. Again, this is not necessarily the time to edit and publish, but don’t let perfectionism keep you from brainstorming and throwing some ideas around. Keep a running tab of all of the thoughts and ideas that squeeze themselves out of you during this time; once Mercury stations direct, who knows what could take off and grow into something ready to be received by the world!

Sagittarius

This Rx wants to help you reassess all things material and financial. When it comes to your resources, this might be a time when they are scant or having a hard time flowing to you. This moment is wanting to teach you about what you value and consider to be a non-negotiable resource that you need. If any frustrations or limitations come up in regard to your wealth, finances, or resources, know that they are pointing you in the direction of limiting perceptions of worth or availability. Can’t find your favorite skin care product? See if you have enough to last you at home and accept that if it can’t find its way to you, you aren’t being left empty-handed but rather you’re being asked to tune into your very own resourcefulness. This moment is asking you to decline any part of your being that feels like your own worth is the root of any financial or material misfortunes or lack. On the surface, Mercury wants to help you break down and restructure your finances, expenses, expenditures, and budgets. Deeper below that, Mercury wants to rework the way you perceive your very own value and worth. While it is true that hard work and glamorous systems will take you far in the material realm, it is even more true that the ways in which you view and label your own worthiness will either limit or free you from the cycle of hard work and nothing to show for it. If you have been struggling in this area in any way lately, use this time to cleanse yourself of any self-limiting beliefs, thoughts, or perspectives around money. Restructuring the ideas of worth, value, money, wealth, and resources so that they work in your favor, releasing any blocks or limitations from the past, is key to this transit for you. Get curious about how you work with your money and resources and the ways in which it may be working against you, and then use that wisdom to implement new structures so that 2023 can bring you all that you need and desire!

Capricorn

This Rx is an important one for you! Happening in the area of your chart that is all about YOU, your expressions, your magnetism, and how you are broadcasted out and received by others on a very personal level, this moment wants you to reinvent yourself – or, at the very least, reinvent the ways in which you allow yourself to be received by others. During this transit, Mercury is holding the microphone up to you and asking you to get curious about how you view yourself, how you understand your personality, and the ways in which you put yourself on display. Is it possible that there are parts of you that feel like a work in progress, parts that you may want to keep hidden or unavailable to others? This moment is asking you to unveil the ‘works in progress’ and show the people who you are, even when you are under construction. Like viewing a house before its build-out is complete, this moment gives you a rare opportunity to let beauty be in the eye of the beholder and leave some space open for others to perceive you as you are, not just as you aspire to be. This moment holds great power for you when it comes to curiosity and exploration… allowing the unfinished parts of your being to ring out across the kingdom could instill a sense of wonder in you, giving yourself the ample space and creative empowerment needed to rework not just the way that you view yourself, but also the ways in which you allow yourself to be received by ‘the other’. When it comes to your big, bold visions for your future self and how they will get to express themselves, know that this moment is a pivotal point where YOU get to envision a truer version of yourself and lay down the groundwork to unveil the you-est you yet!

Aquarius

This Rx is all about the rich, hidden, sometimes messy world inside of your precious little being that never sees the light of day! Mercury is here to emphasize and hold the mic up to the parts of you that struggle to find awareness or consciousness during the buzzing of your day-to-day life. While this area of the chart is most certainly a mixed bag of beans, you can be sure of one thing: whatever is unearthed and comes to the surface will be transformational for you as you make your way into the midst of 2023. Honestly, this isn’t an easy area to broadcast to your consciousness, BUT it is such an amazing place to start the year at. You are going to be walking into 2023, post-Rx, with an awakened sense of self. While this moment is asking you to get cozy with the parts of you that usually go untouched on the regular, what better way to start a new year than to be in cahoots with the parts that could easily hold you back if they continued to go unnoticed? We’re talking about the grief, the depression, the anger, the sadness, but also the profound poetry within your being, the joy of your freed inner child, the sensitive and intuitive parts that understand others on immortal levels, and the part of you that feels limitless and transcendent, all making their way into the known. This moment screams breakthrough because what happens when our dormant parts rise to the surface? We break through what holds us back in such powerful ways. While this moment is certainly asking you to bravely spelunk your way into your very own caverns, it does so with a touch of magic. For what is seen by the surface can be released, and what is released no longer holds you back from what is ready to become! Both in your being and in your life.

Pisces

This Rx is taking you into the heart of what it means to be a part of the whole. When it comes to your friendships, collectives, co-ops, communities, and groups, you are redesigning the ways in which you find and fit into larger societal structures and social gatherings. Is there a certain way that you would like to see yourself when it is placed against the backdrop of humanity and community? Restructuring the ways that you fit into a whole can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be! Instead of focusing on what makes you too different to fit into common shapes of society, allow this moment to redirect your thoughts and perceptions to the more organic shapes, groups, companions, and communities that present themselves. Sometimes it’s not a matter of fitting in, but rather molding our communities to fit our very own, unique shapes. If there are any social groups or communal settings that served you once upon a time but have since ceased to evolve you and carry you forward through this world, perhaps it’s time to reprioritize, reprocess, and reassess your needs when it comes to group dynamics and social constructs. This moment wants to deliver to you, the ideas and inspirations needed to help you remold the many different structures of social support in your world to better support the ways in which you want to revolutionize yourself, your life, your community, or perhaps even the collective humanity at large. If something pulls at your heart, you’re on the right path. Let it unfold and remodel itself to fit the bigger picture of your journey through this world. 

Image by Marc Kargel via Unsplash

Things That Heal Me: The Benevolent Universe

The fabric of our universe is not as neutral or negative as you may think. In this physical world, we are the alchemists of our existence, meaning that we are responsible for creating the tone of our experience based off of our perspective and attitude toward all that we encounter. While we are here to achieve certain fixed destinies, such as crossing paths with those we are meant to intertwine with, falling into the right opportunities, and so much more, the magic of each moment lies in our interpretation of what we are experiencing and why.

The interpretations and judgments we make from our experiences in this life paint our path as it unfolds before us. A blown tire may only mean three things: it happened at random, an unknown force threw me off course with a setback to punish me, or a known and trusted force intervened to serve me. Those are your options for perceiving a simple yet frustrating experience such as blowing a tire on the road and having to deal with it. So I bet you're wondering, how on earth would a blown tire serve me? How would being late, stressed out, and dealing with something so unexpected and urgent be helpful to me in any way? That is where the wisdom lies, my friends! Not in understanding or knowing WHY but in trusting that there is a reason, that that reason is benevolent, and that you don't have to understand for it to serve you. 

You do not have to be aware of every little intricacy of your life experience for it to be exactly what it needs to be. Why you may ask? Because of the benevolent universe, of course! Because there is a divinely perfect intelligence underneath all that is and all that moves. A beautifully spun web of silk that catches you, holds you, supports you, guides you, and connects you to all of the things you are meant to know, be, and experience. This web is part of you and all others, as you are a part of the whole of the universe. The fabric of the universe is this web and this web is all that is: the universe and all it contains!

Wild, right? It will take a lot of time to grasp this and integrate it as it goes against our instinct as human beings. As physical earthlings, we must always remember we are dual beings, and we must ALWAYS honor both parts of our being. With that being said, it may feel very natural to your spirit to believe in and trust the benevolent universe. With tools like meditation and divination, our spiritual parts are able to connect to their home state which is spirit and feel infused by this all-knowing, all-connected benevolence that exists everywhere around us and within us. 

The tricky part is when we ask our human parts to trust in this concept. Our bodies are biologically hardwired to separate ourselves from the world around us and do what must be done to survive. This adds a layer of challenge to our experience as dual beings, as the very instincts that keep us alive also separate us from our true life-force energy: spirit. Our ego is designed to keep us alive and separate, while our spirits are designed to move us and connect us. We need both, but balance is key and so is prioritizing what needs to be our anchor to survive in this world. That is the journey from fear to love, from unknown darkness to blind trust; we must find a way to go against a certain part of our instinctual human being and decide that there is something bigger than us that needs us to step aside and let it lead us. That is the ultimate task for the human/spirit hybrid here on earth! To step off the ledge of what we know instinctually and open up to expand beyond our wildest comprehension. To take leaps of faith and watch ourselves be caught by all that is.

So what does the benevolent universe want for us and why does it bring us such pain, heartbreak, and destruction? That's where we have to take our human caps off as much as possible and see the bigger picture: the hard things are for our highest good. This is a really challenging idea to discuss because how do you tell someone who has endured unthinkable violence and abuse that it was for their highest good? How do you convince a mother who lost her child that it was for the highest good of both her and her child? You don't. Our human hearts and minds, for the most part, aren't going to be able to accept this as universal law because it contradicts our emotions. That is okay! That is part of being human and part of the learning curve of navigating this world from both a human and a spiritual perspective. Part of us may understand, especially later down the road, what was brought to us from certain negative or traumatic experiences, but that still will never justify or satisfy our emotions from the painful experiences themselves. 

This is the paradox of our being! Part of us may always feel like it is unfair and horrible while the other part of us acknowledges this and also knows what it did for us. This paradoxical phenomenon of trying to digest heavy life experiences from both angles is actually what I would call grief. The understanding and holding of both immense pain and suffering, but also incredible love and universal support is grief. The act of trying to process and digest all of these contradicting pieces is the act of grieving. 

It takes a lot of courage, a lot of self-love, and a lot of existential juggling to be able to hold both aspects of your experience. It may often feel as though you are swinging back and forth between the two. Immense anger and pain from your experiences may slip into moments of understanding and gratitude for what it has brought you spiritually, without invalidating any of the heartbreak or denial that you are experiencing. You can understand what a loss has brought to you spiritually without forcing yourself to accept your loss in the first place. The heart can take its time to process loss, while our spirit feels antsy to understand it. You can feel gratitude for the perspective and the redirection loss brings without feeling grateful for what it has taken from you. You can also understand that the benevolent universe's job is not to please you 24/7 but to guide you forward, sometimes into and through excruciating experiences. The benevolent universe's job is ultimately to be a loving but helpful spiritual parent to us, walking us through existence, however beautiful and devastating it may be. The benevolent universe isn't benevolent because it protects us from what hurts us, but rather because it surrounds us with love and all we will ever need, it takes our hand, looks us in the eye, and says "you are not alone. You will be okay again and I know how you get there."

When it comes to the benevolent universe, it's all about learning to trust that it serves your highest good, from a place filled solely with pure love. The benevolent universe is not an authoritarian man, it is not the final judgment or the decider of all deeds, nor is it the backdrop for what is right or wrong. The benevolent universe is simply an intelligent love that seeks to bring us closer and closer to its rose-colored hues. The benevolent universe is a guide, not a decider. We are the deciders, the creators, and the alchemists of our experience and the universe is the biggest, most powerful tool we will ever have at our disposal! We decide everything about our life path, destiny, and experience. The universe simply helps us find our way once we incarnate and lose our conscious awareness (for the most part). The universe is our reminder that we are on a mission, one that we have crafted entirely of ourselves, for ourselves. One that is rooted completely in love. It remembers each twist and turn on our path plan, every tear and laugh, and especially the times we will need its guidance the most. 

The benevolent universe intends for us to grow. In our capacity to be ourselves authentically, express ourselves, feel and experience love, intimacy, creativity, joy, play, pleasure, and all that exists. The benevolent universe intends only for us to become more and more conscious and expressive through the energy of love. Beneath all that we experience and endure, is the intention to open us to more love. Therefore, beneath all that the benevolent universe holds and all of the webs it helps us spin and sustain, there is only love. Only the desire for us to become more of it. The benevolent universe has only one intention and that intention is for us to heal ourselves until we can feel all the love possible for our sweet human bodies to feel! 

The intention behind all that is and all that happens is divine love. Give your human parts the space they need to grasp this without invalidating the pain and suffering endured, but know that everything is ultimately pointing you toward the direction of love. You don't have to see it or understand it to benefit from it, but there is one thing I hope for with all of my heart...

At the very least, amongst all the pain and suffering you endure in this world, I hope that you feel it. 

Photo by Alexander Andrews via Unsplash

La Petite Mort: The Emotional Orgasm

 There is a French saying that is used to describe a few different things. La Petite Mort is translated into "The Little Death". One of my favorite translations of this expression is in reference to the orgasm. Although this expression actually is referring to the liminal space post-orgasm as compared to the peaceful slumber of death, it makes more sense to me when used to describe the orgasm itself!

I can't think of a single thing in life, other than death and orgasms, that requires us humans to surrender so wholly and completely. Think about it! We can accept life and surrender to how things are, but when it comes to our physical body and the sensations we experience (physically and emotionally) when do we surrender entirely to our experience more than when we are letting go? Letting go of our body and letting go of our control over it.  

When we die, we fully surrender our body and the identity we have attached to it. We leave this plane of existence and transcend this dimension. We must surrender entirely to the sensations of leaving our body and leaving our world behind. When we orgasm, we fully surrender our body and our control. We let go of controlling our muscles, our reflexes, and sometimes even what we exclaim or the sounds we let out. We surrender to the sensations and experience entirely; so much so that our body shutters and vibrates with pleasure. 

If you have ever experienced sexual or emotional trauma in a way that inhibits you from intimacy (be it physical, emotional, or both) you may understand the opposite of what I am saying. You may understand the frustration of not being able to get to orgasm, no matter how hard you try or what you do. You may understand the sensations of being so close yet so aggressively blocked from the release that you can nearly taste it but your body remains stiff, contracted, and eventually, you give up or accept a less pleasurable experience. It may feel as though there is something missing there. Something aggravated or irritated, like an itch you just cannot scratch.

To orgasm powerfully and sensationally requires a certain degree of surrender. It requires that you let go entirely of attempting to control or restrain your body and the energy that courses through it during this experience. It requires you to opt out of being in physical control and to give that control up to something other than your own mind and body; to an experience and sensation that is bigger than you. It feels helpless and powerless, and for those of us who have endured sexual trauma, it can feel like there is an instinct engraved deep in our body and mind to not let go of control. One that may take a lot of time and conscious practice to release.

So that's why I like to refer to the orgasm as La Petite Mort: The Little Death. We are essentially dying and leaving our bodies without actually doing so, letting go of all control and letting whatever electric currents swim through our body do so organically and powerfully. We take a step back and we just let it happen. We relax our bodies and we welcome the pleasure and the experience of release. That is exactly how I imagine dying to feel. Or rather, the process of leaving your body as your physical body dies.

Now that you understand La Petite Mort, I would like to stretch this idea just a hair further and tie in emotions and our physical experiences of feeling and processing emotionally charged energies (feelings). When emotional energy is triggered and begins to move through our body, it has a path, a course, and a plan. This plan involves us giving certain pathways permission to open. The energy moves through the body and bounces around until we feel it and open our pathways up. Feelings are energies created within us from our thoughts and experiences that are essentially energy in motion. E-motion! 

When we feel an emotion, such as grief or pain in our heart space, that emotional energy begins to move and bounce around because it wants to leave our body. It was brought to the surface or created by our systems to alert us to whatever triggered us (a person, a thought, a situation, etc.) and once it is created in our body, it needs to move through it and be released. It has served its purpose by communicating to us that something inside of our being says, "Hold up! Wait! There is information here for me to examine, something needs to be known to me." But after we feel the emotion stirring and we are alerted to something within us or in our experience/interaction that is calling for our attention, we don't need to keep that emotion around anymore. It is moving and fluttering and beating on the inside of your body because it wants to leave. It has served its purpose and directed us to the information we needed. 

A lot of people miss this next crucial step in feeling and processing emotions. It's the part where you, you know, actually feel it!! This idea of "feeling emotion" has always been so abstract to me. I have always approached my emotional experiences through the lens of intellect. That was my way to cope with emotions and how I tried to understand what they were telling me. But I was never truly feeling them, at least not in my body, not all the way. So they were never really going anywhere, they just kinda bounced around, creating anxious energy in my body until they could be stored in my physical tissue (dis-ease).

When my first love died and I was suddenly drowning in grief, I relied on sad music and old memories, pictures, and videos to awaken me to feeling my pain and move this energy out of me. I found that if I listened to Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb (specifically the 2nd guitar solo) I could move an immense amount of emotional energy and pain out of my body. Something about the instruments and the sounds of the electric guitar helped me to surrender and allow the emotions to run their course.

Now, I do want to say a quick note on grief and heavy emotions/pain before continuing. I fully believe that the human experience delivers us more emotional triggers and pain than our physical bodies are capable of processing in a single moment or even a season of time. I believe that things happen to us and we experience things in this world that are just plain too big to move through and process at once. I believe that many emotions we have are stored away in our bodies until we are emotionally and physically ready to move them, feel them, and release them. 

With that being said, not all emotions will be ready to move in the moment in which you feel them. In fact, I pretty much store all of the emotional energies that are triggered and created within me while I am out in the world interacting with others and I move through them and process them once I am in a safe space, alone and able to allow them to fully wash over me. I believe that certain types of emotional trauma such as neglect or abuse can also cause us to feel the need to obscure our emotional reactions and feel emotions in private spaces. 

So, once you are in a space where you feel safe and open to feeling your emotional energies (or you are in the moment and feeling those emotions organically) it is time for La Petite Mort. This is where I love using that expression to describe the orgasm because what would happen if we relaxed our body and received the flow of emotional energy as it moves and exits our body, just as we receive orgasmic pleasure and let it organically move through our nerves and muscles and reflexes? 

What if we compared the orgasm to feeling emotions? Sure, it may not be as pleasurable and it might actually feel painful or uncomfortable to our physical body, but if the point of emotional energy is to give in to the sensations and feel them in order to release the energy, isn't that what we do when we orgasm? We give in to the energy and the pleasure that moves through our body and then it leaves us. Just like emotions. Different motivations are required however I am here to argue that the sensations left in our body once we let the emotions out and we calm down physically are not disimilar to the sensations we may feel post-orgasm. A strange calmness, a lack of thoughts, words, or detailed expressions, an inclination to avoid forming complex ideas or thinking too much. Some might call this "relaxation" after sex. Feeling grounded in the body and present in the moment. When it comes to emotions, however, I experience a similar version of this phenomenon after release as well. To me, it is a form of homeostasis or balance. A moment where the physical body has purged itself of the emotional energy and stillness within can be found once more. 

In my perspective, I see emotional energy move through the body in the same way that orgasmic energy moves through the body. My theory here is that if we were to greet emotional energy the same way we greet orgasmic energy, with a certain openness and willingness to surrender to the process and sensations (knowing that we are safe and open to it) then we would be doing exactly what the emotional energy needs us to do: feeling it. Without hesitation, without inhibition, without turning it down or numbing it out. We would essentially be surrendering to riding the waves of emotion just as we would ride the crest of a wave on a surfboard. We would ride the wave of emotional energy as it moves through us and then it would leave our body and we would find stillness once more. We would be accepting our emotional energy and giving it what it needs to be felt and released from our being entirely. 

Of course, for most, being able to surrender to something entirely means needing to be able to trust the process you are surrendering into. Perhaps some humans (me) have a difficult time surrendering to this process of feeling and processing the emotional energies in the body because we feel unsafe or unsure during that process. This ability to surrender entirely to our emotions as they move through our bodies means that we need to understand what is happening in our bodies during this process. We need to build trust in this process and know that we will be okay when it is over. 

Personally, I began building that trust by finding ways to feel safe and try it anyway. Sometimes it meant wrapping myself up in a fuzzy blanket like a swaddle. Sometimes it meant whispering to myself that I am safe in my body, over and over. Sometimes it meant praying for an Angel or two to stand by my side and wrap me in their love. Sometimes it meant asking a friend to sit by my side and hold my hand. However you get there is unique to you. Whatever you need to do to build trust in your physical body and in the emotional sensations that you feel, whatever you need to do to feel safe in your body as you surrender to these emotions, do that. Do it over and over again until one day, you feel an emotional energy charging through your body and you trust. You know that you will be okay so you let go and you surrender entirely.

The next time you feel emotions rising up within you, think of La Petite Mort, the little death. Surrender your entire body to the sensations you feel moving through you like waves, with strength and trust that you are physically safe and will find equilibrium very soon. Treat your emotional energies like an orgasm moving up your body and out through your throat, for that is the path that the energy takes and that is all your emotions want to do: move up and out. Surrender your muscles, your nerves, your reflexes, and your entire being to these energies, and know that within moments they will leave your body. Within moments you will find a whole new sensation! The sensation of relief, of calmness. 

Let yourself die a little and give in to the emotional energies that move through you. Let them run their course and exit your body and know that even the heavy, gigantic ones can be released. They may require more time, more patience, and more trust but they will eventually move up and out of your body for good, creating the space necessary for integration and growth. 

Emotions serve a very important purpose in our body, just as the orgasm does. Both seek to release us energetically and create space in our bodies for more life to expand and more things to grow. Channel La Petite Mort the next time you are feeling emotional energy in your body and see what happens. Let your emotions wash over your body like a warm, intense orgasm. Surrender your body to the experience and let that energy run its course. Feel yourself. Free yourself. Repeat. 

Grief, Love, and All the Above

When people use the word grief to describe their emotional experience, it can mean many different things. We grieve, as humans, when we lose something - or someone - that we love. We grieve when time moves us forward and we feel scared about letting go. Sometimes we grieve when one moment passes and turns into a new one, for the moment we knew so well is now gone, replaced by the unknown. We can grieve when we finish projects, jobs, or classes. We even grieve when we reach new heights in our lives, recognizing that a part of us in the past went without what we now have. Maybe not everyone actively grieves every time something comes to a close or changes, but at some point in our life, we will all absolutely feel grief in our bodies.

Grief is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death. I feel like grief is a much more broad word, though, and since we have the word bereavement to describe the experience of processing the death and loss of a loved one, I think it's only fair that we let grief break open for us and mean something more nuanced than just the sorrow caused by someone's death. To me, grief is the sorrow caused by change in general. Grief is the heaviness, the bittersweetness, and the lack of permanence that we bump up against in life quite often. Grief is the empty space in our heart where something that no longer exists in our world used to live. Grieving is one of the most human experiences we can have, just like love!

I have a hunch that even when we aren't consciously aware of it, most of our emotional experiences involve or beget grief. We are not linear beings, we are cyclical and our emotional state is one of flow and connection. Our hearts are layered with gradient slabs of love and grief from all we have held dear in our precious hands and watched slip away or transform before our very eyes. The more we love in this world, the more we will meet grief face to face. For as we love so deeply, our human ego begs us to find security and settle into the illusion of permanence. We don't ever want to give up the love that we feel! However, life is ever-changing right before our very eyes. The ground shifts and people move forward still. We lose moments, experiences, relationships, and people and along with those things, we perceive the loss of love or comfort. On some levels, it is true that we have lost. But in the grand scheme of things, the love is just displaced and it finds us again, soon enough, through other moments, experiences, relationships, and people. We eventually learn not to expect things to remain constant, but when the tide changes we still can't help but feel the grief of that change deep within our bodies. That's natural to us and will always be, no matter how accepting we are of change. The grief is what makes us human!

Grief is a word that continuously comes back to me. Round and round we go, tangoing through life together. Every day that I live and breathe, my understanding of grief deepens and expands. I remember when I first actively experienced grief. I was processing the death of someone that I loved very much. I was 20. I had never lost a person that I loved before, not in terms of life and death. I'd lost best friends that I loved dearly to the consequences of growing up and growing apart. I'd lost a cat that I loved and cared for, but even then I wouldn't allow myself to feel the loss. It didn't make sense to me, the emotions I was feeling. It was far too much for me to move through so I stuffed it away, deep in my body. 

I didn't truly know grief until the man I loved died. We were so young and without truly realizing it, I bet my entire future on the surety that he would always be in my world. When he died suddenly and without warning, so did all of the versions of my life and my future that I had ever known for myself. When he died, I was suddenly alone in this world. Two months after he died I celebrated my 21st birthday feeling like a newborn in this scary world. I was still on my journey through life but somehow it felt entirely different. Everything had changed.

Obviously, I grieved. For two years I remained tightly sealed off from the world, from dating, and from opening my heart to anyone or anything. No love in, no pain out. A simple yet effective equation! Even when I crossed paths with someone who stirred the dust in my aching heart, I could do nothing but panic and suffer. I fell into a cycle of polarization: first would come the isolation and then I would push myself severely out of my comfort zone to try to balance it out. Repeat. In both places, I grieved. I still grieve, although, my ability to grieve has deepened and with that, so has the pain. But just as my ability to grieve has deepened over the last six years, so has my ability to love. 

I'm sure that I always continue to dig deeper into my grief because even though I'll marry one day and build a life with another man I'll love, nothing in life can erase what I've been through, what I've felt. In me there will always exist at least two versions: the me who is frozen in time in the memories of the past that can never be resurrected, and the me who was born from that death and will forever be on the other side of those memories. For as long as I live going forward, there will always be a man who I loved more than life itself and he will always have died at the age of 20. I will always have been reborn at the age of 20, no longer as naive to life as I once was. I will be much older one day, my hair gray and my body aching from a life well lived and he will always be 20, frozen in time. Therefore, every moment of my life, even the most joyful, happy, love-filled times will always be that - full of love and grace - while simultaneously reminding me of what I have lost and the version of my life that died at 20. The layers of love and grief will forever spill into each other as the two parts of myself sway back and forth, together but always separate.

As I build new layers of love in my heart, they will always be surrounded by grief. Just as the grief in my body will always be held by more love. I'll either feel so much love that it hurts in some places and reminds me of what's been lost, or I'll hurt so badly that I'll feel cradled by love once more and be soaked in gratitude for what I have at this moment. One leads to the other, back and forth, but the two do not cancel each other out. Not by any means. We are built from love and grief and we will always oscillate between them, for they are two interconnected halves of a whole, rotating around and around with endless fervor. While they dance they also strike an impeccable balance within our being. One that contains all of the shades of existence, showing us the full potential of our being in all directions.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is about this phenomenon exactly: "The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater." said by J.R.R. Tolkien. I love this quote because it gives me the space I need to understand the paradox of life. I believe that love and grief are a cycle, just as life and death are a cycle. On grand, devastating levels as well as throughout the day-to-day of life and all of its teeny tiny moving pieces. I've heard grief described before as all of the love within our bodies that no longer has a place to go. For where there is life, there is death. Where there is love, there is grief.

Grief is evidence of profound love and resonance. It is what remains behind when all is lost - or different, showing us the truth of what we once had in our little universe. Oftentimes grief reveals to us that which is most sacred and important to our hearts, simultaneously bordering us off from ever going back. It is information we wish we knew before, words we wish we had said, love we wish we had shared, and feelings we wish we had expressed. It is the moment of reckoning after the tides have shifted and the tomb is forever sealed. We are grateful for what we now understand, but we are lost to the purpose when what we now understand would be most divinely paired with what we have lost. There is no going back, only forward in the strange new ways of what we now understand but cannot change.

So that, my friends, is just a snippet of my beliefs and thoughts on grief. It can be rather morbid and heavy at times to talk of such suffering but know that I view my sorrows more through the lenses of poetry than despair. Although despair will find its way through the cracks from time to time, those moments are fleeting and the poetry I feel in my heart from the infinitely colorful emotional experience I have here in life, well that is worth it to me in the end. For it is the poetry in me that wrote these words for you today and it is the poetry in me that will continue to help those around me to understand and process their versions of grief. 

Grieving may hurt, it may involve pain like you've never felt before, but in due time this pain that weighs you down can make way for the love that lifts you off of the ground! If only you'd be so wise as to feel what hurts, slowly and gently within your heart, well, then you would have more space for the love that you fear you've lost to find its way back to you. 

The same love, a fresh journey. YOU are reborn!

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Things That Heal Me: Meditation

Welcome to a new blog segment on Let's Get Metaphysical. It's called Things That Heal Me and is intended to help us explore different earthly and spiritual modalities for healing that are (hopefully) accessible and available to most people around the world! 

Some Things That Heal Me that I highlight throughout this segment may be more obvious things that others have long used for healing and general well-being, while other things may be a bit more outside of the box. My intention with these blog pieces is to look at healing from a more organic, creative perspective since healing is not linear or logical but rather a journey of personal art, destruction, and creating more space and love within our being. I also want to highlight how healing is self-made, no matter what privileges some may have over others in this world. Even when you do have the resources to add more tools to your life or pay to have specific external healing modalities or professionals at your disposal, you still have to face your own inner pain and walk yourself entirely through your healing. While fancy gadgets and expensive resources may at times make this process more cushiony and earthly, you do not need anything other than yourself to find healing in your being. You do not need anyone, or anything, outside of yourself, your community and the spiritual world to guide you on your healing journeys.

Without further ado, let's dive right in and see what healing we can inspire together!

To kick it all off, I want to talk about meditation. I'll be super upfront with you: I have absolutely no official knowledge of or training on meditation. I barely even know anything about the roots of meditation, where it comes from, or how different religions and cultures practice meditation in their own styles and for their own purposes. All I know about meditation is that I have spent my entire life (26 years) missing it and my whole conscious spiritual journey (since 2016) feeling salty about it.

There, I said it! I am far from a "zen" individual and I can't even express to you how much shame I have felt about struggling in this area. So, not only is this (hopefully) healing for you to receive, but it's also very healing for me to write. 

Meditation, for me, has always given me this icky feeling. You know, that feeling that you get when there is something you expect yourself to fall into naturally or be good at, or even just understand yet you feel entirely on the wrong page. You constantly feel as though others expect you to understand and just embody it, which only adds to the pressure you unconsciously put upon yourself to flow into whatever it is you are trying to do, learn, or understand.

Well, that is my relationship with meditation in a nutshell. I am a medium and have been consciously learning and developing for over 6.5 years. Every teacher and practice that I've turned to, every book I've read, and all of the techniques I've studied on my journey thus far spoke on and strongly encouraged meditation. My entire journey has been filled with messages and markers, trying to bring my attention to meditation. I sort of have always known this and understood why, I mean, if meditation is supposed to teach you focus and stillness, it makes total sense that it would be a most crucial and helpful base of metaphysical development and spiritual practice. But what didn't make sense to me was HOW to meditate. Until now!

Up until this very moment, no words or explanations of meditation have clicked for me. Up until now, I thought meditation was about training the mind, and in some ways and perspectives, I suppose it is! However, meditation is not the same for everyone. It is not an act that can be explained or behavior that can be demonstrated. There is no one particular way to achieve and practice meditation because it is not a behavior or action, but rather a tool. It may look mostly the same to everyone on the outside, but we all hold the tool slightly differently and we all use it to accomplish different goals. One moment we may need it for one thing and in a certain way, and in another moment that changes. 

I never understood how I needed meditation to show up for me because it was always something I was trying to figure out from someone else's understanding. "Teach me how to meditate. Tell me what to do." I'd say. No answer I ever got, be it from a person, a book, or a religion, ever made sense to me when it came time to try it myself. All the answers I sought only left me with more questions. I even began to say that I wasn't built to meditate and that it just doesn't work for me. That may have been true for me back then, but now everything has changed!

Recently, I read a book that fell off of my bookshelf in a most synchronistic fashion. It was called To Love and Let Go by Rachel Brathen (Yoga Girl). I won't get into this book because that's a whole other thing, but you should check it out if you feel led to do so! So this memoir-style book found its way into my life and as I read Rachel's story, I began to hear her talk about meditation quite a bit. It appeared that it was the root of her spiritual and emotional journey. "Lucky" I scoffed at first, noting that I felt slightly envious of the ways in which she described her meditation experiences and the ways in which her practice moved her. I wondered what that was like. I ached for it.

By the end of the book, her words had moved me to a place that I hadn't been before (in many more ways than just meditation). I cried so much while reading her words and listening to her journey. It was powerful. Without even realizing it, I suddenly understood what meditation was for her! Through all of her trauma and pain, throughout her challenging and beautiful life journey, she committed to her practice of meditation in order to FEEL. She used meditation as a means of channeling her own spirit/energy and as a way to anchor into the love of the spiritual world (universe, god, source, etc.). When she felt uncentered, she'd meditate. When she felt uncertain, she'd meditate. When she felt powerful, she'd meditate. The regular practice of yoga and meditation was her bread and butter that kept her fed and moving daily, no matter the degree of paradise or difficulty in her world.

As I read her story, I began to feel an urge in my body to find that place within myself. It felt deep and intelligent, unlike anything I have ever felt before. While my mind felt insecure, almost certain that it would lead to the same wall I've always hit in this practice, my body felt like it suddenly knew something I did not. So, I took the bits and pieces I've observed about meditation through my years of asking questions and googling keywords and I set myself up in my favorite Papasan chair. I used a pillow to prop my back up to achieve a straight spine, I set a timer on my phone for 12 minutes, and I used my fingers and hands to create the hand symbol, Gyan Mudra.

Once I was ready to begin I allowed myself to have no objective vision for what I was doing. I felt like that was the point. I was just feeling curious and allowing my body (and my spirit) to lead. I was unaware that what I was doing with my hands was a well known intentions symbol and was helping me to focus my energy until I looked it up afterward. I discovered that there are many symbols you can make with your hands while practicing, called Mudras, and they all have their own purposes and intentions. I felt like a whole world was opening up from within me!

I've been practicing meditation irregularly ever since then (this was only a couple of weeks ago) and what I've discovered so far has blown my mind! Meditation has always been there for me, my spirit and my body have always known what it is and what to do. Maybe it's a tool we are born with and must rediscover as adult humans with each incarnation. Perhaps our spirit helps us to remember how to move energy through the body and channel it. All I know is that after years of "trying to figure it out" and feeling like I'm forcing the experience, I finally discovered it when I was ready to receive it. When I was ready to FEEL it.

While I can't tell anyone for certain that this is how their journey of meditation will be born, I can tell you that you'll have to discover it for yourself. That very well may be an entirely different journey than mine. You may read a book and it clicks. You may jump right in, try for days, and then suddenly it clicks. You might even give up on it, like I did at first, only to shift something within yourself and return to the practice with a deeper understanding. 

I suppose what I'm saying is that I still don't know how I discovered the embodiment of meditation, I only know that it suddenly became available to me when I opened myself up to understanding it in an entirely novel way within myself. If anything, start there and be open to receiving direction from both the spirit world and your own soul.

As much as I wish that I could hand you my own discoveries, the esoteric world of spirit and meditation is not as simple as that. That is why it took me so many years to figure it out within myself; I had to discover it in my own way. But now that I'm here, I hope to inspire others who feel called to discover meditation in their own way because the ways that it has moved me, the ways that it has helped me find truth and balance is what I would call a spiritual awakening! It feels that important to me. It has opened so many doors within myself and my life, and so far has proven to be the greatest tool I could have on this life journey.

Meditation helps me to feel the energy of divine love, within me and all around me. It brings me to this space, outside of my physical boundaries and outside of my ego, where I can witness the energy of love being stitched into the fabric of the entire universe. When I am in this space, I can feel every molecule, every atom, and every particle within me and around me breathe in peace and breathe out love. 

Meditation, to me, feels like a method of focusing on any specific energy, vibration, or frequency that I need so that when I am out in the world and present with life, I can orient myself based off of those energetic frequencies, in any given moment. Sometimes I need to feel loved and held by the universe, which really helps my body and nervous system to relax and helps me to form trust in spirit. Sometimes I need to feel worthy and confident within myself which helps me to navigate my interactions and my value. Sometimes I need to connect to and feel the underlying current of unconditional love between me and those in my life so I can forgive them, appreciate them, or even let them go. Sometimes I need to feel into the flow of the universe and of destiny so that I can trust the twists and turns, and embrace the learning curves I bump up against, with grace.

Meditation has become a moment in time for me where I pause my human existence and I submerge my being in an energy that I feel led to marinate in. Sometimes I even let the spirit world bring me on a journey and show me what I need. As I lean into trust, I feel a new energy settle around and within me as it becomes known. As I receive. 

At times, my mind is heavier and wants to be loud. In these moments, meditation becomes a workout, strengthening my awareness and my ability to switch back to intentional energies when my focus has wandered. It helps train my energy to root in my body and be focused intentionally, even when my monkey mind runs away from me on the regular. It trains my consciousness to be in the driver's seat!

Throughout my discoveries and practice, I have observed for myself that meditation helps to condition one's focus. This focus can be used to grow and deepen an energy or to receive it entirely. Focus can be mental, through the mind, or it can be energetic, through the consciousness (which I feel more in my body, near my solar plexus). The latter requires us to let go of our minds and drop completely into the body. The mind is only part of the structure of reception in our being, not the source. While our mind and our bodily senses work together to create a structure for spiritual/energetic reception, they are simply just that: a structure within our being. The source of reception is our spirit, or our energy. This structure works best when we learn how to move out of its way and just hold space for that structure to exist and for reception to occur. 

While meditation is a training of the mind in a sense, it is not FOR the mental body. Sure, the mind really benefits from practicing conscious focus and from the stillness it receives when we drop down into the body. However, as energetic beings in a physical reality, meditation is the ultimate tool for tuning our physical body and energetic body into alignment with one another. It's extremely helpful for us dual beings to have a gateway to the spiritual frequency we come from, while we live here in a physical world with much heavier, lower frequencies. That, in itself, makes meditation a very powerful tool for both personal wellness and metaphysical development.

When it comes to meditation, this thing heals me because every part of my meditation practice feels like medicine for my being. This medicine ensures that I learn to create my experiences and inhabit my entire being from the frequency of love and spirit as much as possible. This aligns me with myself, the spiritual beings who guide me, and the very fabric of the universe. That alignment slips me right into the flow of life and gives me the balance that is needed to navigate my life journey, find joy in the process, and remain present with myself during challenging experiences.

Meditation exists so that we may root ourselves and our experiences entirely in love, as often and as much as we can.

Meditation exists so that we may heal ourselves!

Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash