Letting Sadness Be

Aleph, Paulo Coelho

For some unknown reason, I felt a great sadness weighing me down part of the day yesterday. It's a moveable feeling. It shows up every now and again, as though I have lost something or someone recently. Grief. And yet not quite to the defined extreme as grief can be.

When I came across this quote, it was amazingly applicable to what I felt. Most specifically, Tears are words that need to be shed. Something inside me, deeper than I knew possible at the moment, needed to be shed. Needed, even called, to be released.

I know people who believe that we continually need to keep our energy and perspective at the highest vibration or level possible. If we continue to focus on the positive and the best outcomes, we draw that to ourselves. That's the Law of Attraction. Although I agree with the principle, my experience is that For me personally, I must let the emotion be. I must call it by name, not to focus energy on it, but to acknowledge it. If and when I do that, I release the emotion into the Universe, into the hands of the Divine, to be transformed. If and when I do not acknowledge it, it continues to knock on my inner door, disturbing my stability.

That brings me to the final sentence of Coelho's quote: Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end. In my life, I have kept tears at bay. I have swallowed them before they ever left my eyes. I have walked away from situations so I would not let the tears flow. Without the tears, and the ensuing words that create and embrace them, dullness takes over. In my experience, I cannot call it sadness because its texture is different. Sadness has emotion and power that arrives with it. What I feel is dullness. As though nothing can penetrate and touch my space, my mood, my being. I would rather let the tears come, let sadness be, know that tomorrow will bring another chance for joy.

What do you do when you feel sad? Do you ever feel a general sadness, without a reason? How do you handle that? How does it feel when you act as though sadness is gone (and it truly is not)? What do you do to work through that feeling?

Retrograde and The Empress

From the guide:

The Empress signifies the female and chaotic power of the universe. She guards the powerful and vulnerable life force, which delicate balance should be protected but not constricted. This sensual and loving archetype teaches us to love and cherish ourselves as well as the world around us. A mother's true love means granting freedom for change and growth, protecting without smothering. As all mothers she juggles many tasks and she succeeds because she draws her energy from the love within her.

Today begins Mercury Retrograde. We're also experiencing Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn Retrograde. We spend much time blaming Mercury Retrograde for everything from our mood to losing a shoe as well as using it as an excuse to avoid certain activities. So what precisely does 'retrograde' mean in our lives? It could possibly have an inverse effect or create a reversal of situations, change of feelings or activities, alter our communications, or affect our ability to discern information positively.

As I knew we were beginning the oft dreaded Mercury Retrograde, I drew a tarot card with the focus question of: What do I need to balance and stay strong during this time? The Empress showed up. What I especially love in the passage from the guide is that She is the female and chaotic power of the universe. So that's the balance and strength I need for this time? I would suppose it is. Even though that is a strong and powerful part of Her, She is also the Mother. She embodies both the universal chaos with its implicit movement and disruption and the eternal mother with its calm, embracing steadiness.

As I read about the other Retrograde companions, I realized The Empress was even more perfect for this time. Looking at this particular image of The Empress, She is strength, love and vulnerability. She's without clothing ~ symbolizing being without guile ~ in Nature. She has an intimate, loving relationship with Her child. She holds a spiral shell of stars over her midsection which symbolizes the fertile, ever-expanding universe. The Empress understands Nature, is free within it, and shares it with Her offspring. I am safe with Her by my side.

How do you experience Mercury Retrograde? What have you heard about it? Even if you don't personally follow astrology, are there times when things go askew multiple ways or times at once? How do you balance yourself during these times? What do you see in The Empress? How could She guide you through your off-balance moments?

Stepping into the Abyss

Quote by Edward Teller

On various occasions in our lives, we find ourselves at the edge of an abyss. Going forward forces us to step into the unknown. Going back is simply not a choice. There is no back.

We arrive at this edge from a variety of paths. Death, anger, divorce, loss, illness, or a wide swath of other possibilities, all of them carrying moments of pain and passages of darkness. Not simply the darkness of a room when the light is turned off or a moonless night or when we throw the covers over our heads. It's the darkness of the deepest jungle at night, the water a mile under the surface, an unlit cave in heart of the earth. A dark we can't comprehend until we are in it.

At this point, with wide blind eyes, we feel our way forward, hear the pebble skitter over the edge and wait to hear it touch ground. It never does. That's the darkness of the abyss. We know it when we hear it or feel it or sense it. Our intuition does not err. So what do we do? Is there a safe way forward? That depends on the definition of safe. Going forward is the only option. So we stand at the edge of the unknown and take one more step.

Where will this next step take you? How far have you come to get here? What lies behind you? What do you feel? hear? sense? Where are you headed?

Choosing Who to Be

Over the course of our lives, we live through multiple opportunities to choose who we want to be. We also have the option to remain stable ~ stagnant, some may say ~ and not alter our way of being in the world.

I've been fortunate to have gone through several of these times, these incredible opportunities. Some of them have been painful. Some have been exciting. Others have arrived because it was time. All of them have stretched me.

When I went away to college, I chose to attend a university several hours away from home. More than that, I'd only looked into that particular university because my best friend wanted to go there.... and never did. The irony of that choice has never left me. That change ~ from high school student, living in my parents house, roaming around a major city where I grew up to a college student in a small college town ~ was bittersweet. I was growing up, as I knew I needed to, and leaving others behind.

Getting married presented me with yet another opportunity for changing who I was in the world. I followed that age-old path only to find, a few short years later, that it was not the path for me. That change was painful ~ yet, like the girl choosing to be a witch ~ I knew things. I learned much about myself and about life. I had the remarkable opening to recreate myself ~ and so I did. Stronger, more secure, more confident. Yet still trusting and innocent. My choice could have been different ~ I could have remained hurt, living in fear of encountering pain again, living small and knowing less.

Life allows the availability, the presence to make these choices on an irregular basis. Whether or not we choose, who we are reveals itself to everyone we encounter.... even if we believe otherwise. Personally, I like being a witch.....!

What has life put in your path? How did you choose? Why? Are you aware of any changes coming in the near future? Do you use any particular process to make your choice? Are you happy with being "a witch"?

Power and Love

I could live on Rumi poems..... then again, I could live on many poets' writing. Something about the brevity and clarity of their words.

Personally, I have total belief in Rumi's commentary. I've experienced the power of travel over and over again throughout the course of my life.

Most recently, I took a three-day journey to another part of my state. Another person traveled with me; we met another at our destination. It was a very low-key time. We did simple things: shopping, walking around, a hike through a local park, a play, shared meals. In the context of travel and being together in a shared environment, we did these things with more consciousness than if we were at home, even performing the same acts. We noticed the beauty of our surroundings. We left the mundane behind. We enjoyed the rain, the chill, the sun, each and all in immediate and different ways. We talked about mundane as well as significantly important topics. At various times, I breathed deeply and spoke about how enjoyable and wonderful our shared time was. All of us agreed. It felt refreshing, invigorating, empowering. As we shared time together, we also felt the gentle spirit of our love.

Could we have experienced that together at home? Perhaps. Yet the effort it often takes to be fully conscious, fully present can feel heavy and interfere with the uplifting power when in a place where our responsibilities are reduced and shifted. Travel is a gift we give to ourselves and that, too, is loving and powerful.

How do you feel when you travel? Where have you traveled most recently? How are your interactions with others different when you travel? How does travel empower you?

Hair-pulling Stars

From the time I was a child, I would go outside alone at night to listen to the stars. Although some may have considered it odd, no one ever denied that the stars sang. Somewhere along the line, I simply stopped telling people why I was wandering alone in the dark staring up. It was becoming a common practice for many people. Enough so that people stopped questioning it. When sitting with a friend in a hot tub late one night, I shared with that I was listening to the stars sing. She sat quietly for several minutes, looking up at the stars. Eventually, she asked how she could learn to hear the stars. It was only then that I realized the stars didn't sing for everyone.

When I read this quote from Anais Nin, it brought those memories quickly to mind. Its words reverberate in a language I recognize. I'm restless. That's so very true. It's a restlessness born from the wild calling of the stars. I feel closed up after a time of being inside. Like a bud reaching for the light so it can to bloom. Things are calling me away.

The line that nearly brought me to tears was the final one. My hair is being pulled by the stars again. I love the terminology, the imagery. I can see the hair-pulling stars. When I wander outside, it is almost always at night. I am forever looking up, taking pictures of the moon, watching the planets gather and pass. For me, it's not my hair being pulled. It's the call of the stars and the planets echoing in my ears. It's my personal symphony; my music of the spheres.

What part or parts of nature call to you? How does that call happen? What sense experiences it? How do you respond? What happens if you don't?

Life and Courage

Great gratitude to the tea companies that provide me with Teabag Tarot! This one arrived attached to a my tea yesterday. It resonated deeply with me.

Despite the words, I do not believe this is truly saying life itself doesn't matter. It's the details of life, the day-to-day stuff that happens, that is less important. In the long run, it won't matter if your work colleague took credit for your idea or if your lawn was mowed every weekend or if you had the highest gpa in seventh grade. What makes a difference is what you bring to the adversity you face. How did you respond when someone put you down? What did you do when the doctor gave you a worrisome diagnosis? How did you face the rapids when you were whitewater rafting?

Courage is a force within each of us. It shows up in different ways. Sometimes it's the moments when we break down, weep and wail over what's been lost, and continue on. Or the times when we find we need to turn our backs on a painful situation and move on. Or the times when we step in to fully embrace a new situation. Courage comes into our lives in times of change, whether radical or subtle, desired or resisted, adventurous or mundane. It does not reveal itself the same way in each person or in each situation.

We value strong shows of courage ~ and the people who exhibit them. We often don't recognize the less flashy kind. The mother whose child is born with a disability, whose courage is a daily movement and coupled with love. The youth whose dream is to be an artist and continues his art, no matter what. The surgeon who leaves her practice when she realizes her hands are no longer as steady as they once were. These are courageous moments too. They are the day-to-day decisions we make about how we will go on. Courage comes from a deep place within us, a wellspring we often don't know we have until we need it.

In what situation has courage arisen in your life? How do you recognize it in others? What kind of practice might cultivate courage for you?