Sunday, April 15, 2018

Aries New Moon 2018


Sometime between the evening of April 15th and the morning of April 16th depending on our location in the world, Lady Luna will be New in the sky. She will grace us in the sign of fiery Aries. Even so, this is a less challenging New Moon than the previous two.

Every New Moon is perfect for new beginnings. This one is particularly good for connecting with our Spiritual Self and Whoever or Whatever we believe in.

The Aries New Moon opens space for our questions about our beliefs, our attitudes and our actions, forcing us to define ourselves and to face what may no longer be working in our lives. Those questions may demand that we step beyond our comfort zones, something Aries both supports and calls forth. The intent is to provide more balance and gentle harmony in our lives.

Our relationships may also come under a new scrutiny with the influence of the Aries New Moon. Parts of those relationships may need to be redefined or issues within them may need to be addressed. Perhaps most importantly, this applies to our relationship with ourselves as well. We may be called to commit to a personal goal or to take positive action. Perhaps to move forward in confidence on a new project or simply to take charge of a part of our life that has slipped our notice until now. Aries brings a positive forward-moving action to all we begin during this New Moon.

What needs to change in your relationship to yourself? What attitude or habit do you want or need to change? What practice is being called into your life to connect your with your Spiritual Self? How will you take better care of yourself?

Monday, April 9, 2018

Finding Our Mythic Voices


Coming Waves ~ ©2018 ML Monroe

Myths are bigger-than-life stories filled with beautiful symbols and strong characters. They provide lessons about life, creation, and existence along with a sense of community, belonging and wonder.

Myths are also beautiful, subtle lies. They create magical auras of superiority and difference. As much as we may deny it, we are culturally, and some would say biologically, programmed to accept and believe this too. We want to be important, significant, recognized, acknowledged.

The false side of some of our most precious myths still flash with diamond-sharp light. The Crusades were a result of believing one group was Chosen and another was Heretic. The Holocaust. The Islamic State. The Armenian Genocide. We understand those big ones. Most of us do not subscribe to them.

Some myths are more subtle. Black males as inherently violent. Women created to be subservient. Racial/ethnic/cultural purity as important. Poor people as lazy. Rich people as arrogant. They may even be individual or family myths. Even though these myths may have some flash and sheen to them, they are significantly cutting, damaging and maybe even dangerous. The subtlety of these myths sweeps over us like an ocean wave. We feel its presence and even some of its power. Until it builds to the point of knocking us over, we often don't recognize the full force of impact.

The upside is that we have agency. We have the ability to change the stories, to rewrite the myths. The #MeToo movement is doing that. As is the #NeverAgain movement. And #BlackLivesMatter. We have the opportunity to reach within ourselves and rediscover the truth. Both our personal truth as well as the cultural and communal truth.

In the arena of personal myths, many have been passed to us by the community around us. We believe we are important or unimportant because that's what has been imparted to us. We believe we have control over others ~ often a myth inadvertently passed to the eldest child. We believe we are only popular if we are the captain of the football team or the mathletes. We believe we will not amount to anything or we have the right  us because of where we were born. Individual mythologies are numerous.

We have agency over these too. When we discover them and name them, we own them. They no longer own us. It takes focus and work after that to use our own mythic voices, those inner whispers that pointed out the fallacies in the myths, to rework and rewrite them. Doing so gives us a renewed strength with the bonus that it also bolsters our creative, mythic voice.

How do you know what myths have influence over your life? What personal myth have you believed that no longer serves you? What communal myth have you believed that no longer serves you? What steps will you take to change those myths? How loud ~ or quiet ~ is your mythic voice?

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Discovering Truth in Mythic Voices


When it comes to mythology, we have diverse views concerning what it is, how to interpret it, who gets to define it, and why many of the myths echo each other. We also have differing ways of comparing our personal myths with ancient/traditional ones.

It is generally accepted that myths provide us with stories and symbols which shape our beliefs about ourselves, our community, our world, and our humanity.

Over time these stories and symbols grow into myths. Once that happens, we no longer question them. They structure the meaning and direction our minds use to define the way things are or are meant to be. As with so many things, myths are at their most powerful in our lives when they are so deeply ingrained, we don't name them. We believe we don't have to define them because they simply are. At that point, we generally have little awareness of their power over us.

We see this everywhere around us. Every day. All of our most noxious isms grow out of one or more of these unquestioned, deeply ingrained myths. And yet....many of our most cherished myths are also about change. Siddhartha Gautama sat under the bodhi tree until he reached enlightenment. Jesus preached about and shared all he had as an example of change. Kwan Yin choose to stay on the Earth plane to continue to be a compassionate source. Boudica, as queen of the British Celtic Iseni tribe, went to war to free her people from Roman rule, uncommon for a woman. Hercules. Mulan. Moana. Even Disney retells our myths. Sherlock Holmes. Lyra Silvertongue. Tom Sawyer. We find mythic characters everywhere. We listen to their mythic voices.

We have choice. We have agency. We determine which myths we will believe. Which we will follow. Which we will question.

Which stories live within your life? How do you determine what is myth? Are there beliefs you have about yourself that grow out of those stories or myths? What symbols are significant in your life? Where did you learn about those symbols? Why are they important?

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Teabag Tarot: Light and Dark


I take my tea seriously. Well, maybe not my tea as much as the Teabag Tarot which accompanies it. This one was especially poignant since I've recently gone through a rather dark moment.

Dark moments happen. Our reflection seems a bit dingy. Our minds quietly turn toward melancholy. Our hearts feel too heavy for breath. These moments last however long they last ~ days or weeks or years. We may tumble in for an extended period or cycle in and out as the moments capture us.

When we're in the midst of them, we struggle to believe in, much less see and feel, the light. No matter. The light is there. Feeding us. Supporting us. Reaching toward us. As we emerge from our dark moment, we recognize that. We may rage against the light, howling about its desertion of us. Again, no matter. The light moves toward us, surrounds us, nurtures us. We breathe it in and move on.

Details of my dark moment stacked one upon another, consisting mostly of watching friends going through painful transitions that ranged from an unwanted move to significant health issues to the beginnings of dementia. As I slid from one to another of my friends' issues, rest eluded me. I slipped into an anxiety of my own, compounded by juggling connections and too much busyness. Little things that normally would glissade past, now crowded onto the stack. I watched sleep pass further out of reach. Sound familiar?

The four charges in this Teabag Tarot resonate like proverbs in my ear. We hear them, maybe even say them, with increasing frequency. Live light. Keep your life as simple as possible. Open yourself to the beauty around you. Travel light. Don't take or take on more than you can carry. Be ready to give up whatever doesn't serve you. Lighten your own load. Spread the light. Share the beauty within you. Listen to others. Give of yourself. Be the light. Live with self-understanding. Be an example of vulnerability and courage for others. When I remember these charges, when I actively practice them, they don't make the dark moments go away. They simply remind me of the balance of light and darkness in my life, our lives and our world.

What dark moments have you gone through? How did you get through them? Where are you now in the movement from light to dark? What practices help you find balance? What practices do you want to increase? diminish? maintain?

Monday, April 2, 2018

Hiatus Return


My four month hiatus from this blog was a remarkable adventure. No travel or significant life changes. Simply the allowance of what is to be.

This quote, from the unlikely source of Mel Gibson, struck home. I chuckled aloud at my Starbucks table, then looked up to find people glancing over at me. Some grinning, others curious, one perhaps perturbed. It didn't matter. Finding this quote was a continuation of the adventure.

Mid-November, I stopped writing in this blog. I don't know why. I simply couldn't focus, couldn't motivate myself to put fingers to keyboard and type. No prominent reason to explain it. Was it entropy? Was it inertia? Was it depression? As far as I can tell, it was none of these. Life itself stepped in front of me and we began a slightly different dance.

Every person I know is on an artistic journey. Every. Single. Person. It's part of our human nature to create, to nurture, to nourish. All of those are art. Our definition of "art" can be as narrow or as broad as we want. We can define it with characteristics, such as it has to look like Gauguin painted it or sound like Etta James sang it or move like Bob Fosse or Adele Astaire danced it. The fact that we know these names, that they conjure up images, is a tribute to their individual talents ~~~ which each of us has.

In my search for an aptly descriptive word, I came across cynosure ~ defined as: 1) something that strongly attracts attention by its brilliance, interest, etc.; 2) something serving for guidance or direction. Perfect. The reason for my hiatus was to reconnect with my personal cynosure. Whatever it is in my soul that calls me to write. To do any kind of art.

From what have you recently taken a hiatus? Conversely, what in your life would benefit from taking a hiatus? What is the cynosure in your artistic journey? What do you do to nourish it? to keep it alive? How does it nurture you?