There is nothing like this time! Everywhere I turn there are structures dismantling. It’s happening so quickly that it’s very obvious. It’s in our face! When it happens fast like this, it looks like turmoil and chaos. It’s so disruptive that it seems impossible to live my life. It’s very much a time of… “Ok, put one foot in front of the other” and…”one breath at a time”. It used to be “one day at a time”…. Nope! Not now! Right now it’s “one breath at a time”. The intensity of it is forcing me to turn inward and get really real with myself and to look deeply and bravely at all that still exists in the shadow.
I’ve often said “Shadow work doesn’t have to be scary. Shadow work is just shining a light on things that usually don’t have light shined on them”. Yeah, I still stand by this for much of shadow work. But it is true that some things are put in the dark where light won’t be shined on them because they are so fucking scary to look at! I’ve been baffled at my ego/brain’s ability to successfully hide things from my view. My brain says “Nope…don’t look at this. Nothing good will come of it”.
The truth is…nothing good can truly come until I look at it.
It’s been scary. I had to start small. And even that scared the shit out of me. I created a blank page to type on and I told myself I could just delete it as soon as I was done typing it. I put on the page everything I was scared of, everything I felt shame about, everything I didn’t want anyone else to know. It was just me, alone with my computer…writing on a page that I knew I could immediately delete… and it was still so scary to face these things about myself.
To write them.
To write them was to acknowledge them. My heart was racing, my blood felt like it was boiling as it jetted through my veins. My throat constricted. All that was still hiding in the shadow came up and out.
There are many awake and magical people that are speaking now about how the last of the stuff that we haven’t dealt with must come out now. We can not bring it into 2020. I can see that now. The stuff that’s been coming up for me is the last of it…the stuff I was protecting with an iron shield. I thought I had hidden it at the bottom of the drawer. I thought I had buried it deep enough. But now….all will be found. All the ‘dead bodies’ will be found and dug up. All will be plucked out.
All will be plucked out.
I mean, you can’t make this shit up! In that space in-between sleep and awake the other morning I kept hearing that… “all will be plucked out. All will be plucked out”. Then when I went to leave my house later that morning, there were a pair of tweezers in front of the steps by my back porch. I had never seen them before. They weren’t mine. It hadn’t been insanely windy, it wasn’t garbage day….no reason for random tweezers to be sitting right there in my path. But there they were!
But I knew! I heard it again as I stared at them “All will be plucked out”.
I put them on my altar for the day….to acknowledge “Ok, I hear you. Message received”
This all sounds scary, right? And it is. It IS scary. I’m not going to sugar coat it for ya…it is scary!
Until it isn’t.
The only way out is through. And really right now we’re at a time where this is no “out”. So, there’s only through.
One step at a time. One breath at a time. One moment at a time. One truth at a time.
The good news (yes there is some) is…there are such treasures underneath all of this. There are amazing treasures in this dumpster fire of a time. Really, in going through that….typing out all my shame, secrets and fears… that is what set me free. I realized that I have been in a prison. A prison of my own making. And the walls of this prison were built of shame, fear & secrets (and the belief that I should suffer... but, we’ll get to that another time). I couldn’t see that until I named those things. Then I could release my tight grip on those things enough that they could show me where they came from and what needed to be done to release them. This isn’t easy. It’s a tangled web… each thing overlapping the next. It’s not linear work. It’s very spirolic (and it continues… I’ll be doing it for a long time). But it’s easier than living in the prison with no room to breath or grow.
That’s how it usually is, right? This work isn’t easy (hell no!) but it’s usually easier (even if slightly so) than remaining stuck. I don’t know who I’m trying to fool when I try to keep myself small. When I try to keep my life small & stay in these [perceived] safe spaces where I don’t have to try for things or be seen. It always (and I mean ALWAYS) ends up festering when I try to stay in that space. Then I get sick enough of it that I must take the first step out of that hell. I feel that I have no other choice. And I mean it literally when I say “I get sick of it”. It always shows up as “Ok, I’ve had enough migraines for enough days in a row. I can’t take it anymore. Time to take a real look”…. Stuff like that.
These times! Ahhh, these times! There’s nothing like this time! It’s actually possible to end cycles (and for REAL this time), but no one guaranteed it would be easy or contain promises of comfort during each step of the process. But the good news is…it does change. These things really do change. Things move along and energies shift. There is at least one guarantee … the way I feel now is not going to last forever. No matter how hard something is or how obvious it’s screaming in my face right now, at some point it will change. I will feel differently. It won’t be like this forever. The sun will rise in the morning and I’ll feel like I’ll be able to take a deep breath again.
I’m a medium, right? So, I am one that works with Death. This is such a Death time. I’ve been pulling the Death card from my tarot deck a lot lately. Even nature shows us Death right now. The trees shed their leaves and they don’t apologize for it. I was on a walk the other day and I saw this tree that was completely bare. Not one leaf on it. Its bare branches waving proudly in the wind. The leaves of this tree were all at it’s base in a huge pile. The tree seemed to say to me “What? These are my bare branches. I shed. That’s right. I shed. It’s natural”. It was so unapologetic. And it made me laugh that I even thought for one moment that it would be miraculous that a tree wouldn’t apologize for shedding it’s leaves so naturally and waving its bare branches so openly. But in the moment… I don’t know… it just seemed so bold and brazen! I wanted to be EXACTLY like that tree.
Death doesn’t apologize. Nothing grows without death happening first. What amazing things fertilizer does for our garden! And fertilizer couldn’t be possible without the death process. It’s compost. Death composts the old that no longer is needed and uses it as fuel for the “What’s next”. It then becomes alchemy. Using old shit to turn something into gold. And then it occurs to me that it’s pointless to feel shame about the past…about the old. It’s more than pointless. It’s the opposite of what I should be doing, which is…honoring the lessons that brought me here. When I remove the labels from those lessons (like “embarrassing” or “pathetic”) and look at what they’ve allowed into my life, it’s almost impossible not to honor those “embarrassing” things I’ve done. After all, we’re all just stumbling through this life the best we can. No one is doing it better than the next person. We’re all in this together, right?
All experiences turn into bridges to get me to the next thing. Then the next thing. Then the next thing. Each cycle deepening and growing in power. I have had SO many times that looked the equivalent of me doing the windmill thing with my arms while trying not to trip while running downhill with over-sized untied shoes on! But…okay! So be it! I’m trying. I’m moving forward. I’m daring to TRY. And that’s all magic wants from us…that’s all that Spirit needs to begin the process of magic and transformation.
If you haven’t had an existential moment this month, good for you! (no, but seriously… good for you). I however, have had many of them. Moments where I question why I am here, what is the point (like what in the actual fuck is the point of all of this?!!?), etc. In the hardest of times, a gratitude practice has saved me. That, along with Spirit….Who continues to stand by my side, stroke my hair while I lay in bed and is willing to patiently teach me.
Hmmm… as I’m getting ready to wrap up this post, it seems to me that I might have made this one a downer. Is it a downer? After writing it, I somehow feel more empowered and free. There are treasures in the muck. There is peace in the refusal to run. There is power in facing all aspects of self. That is, in fact, where all power comes from. And it baffles me. It continues to baffle me… just what amazing things are coming through at this time! I’m continuously in awe of the GLORIOUS treasures that are hidden in the most unexpected of places. It makes me want to explore everything. Leaving nothing off the table (an idea that once frightened the shit out of me).
I don’t know everything (the more I go along, the more I realize I actually know nothing), but I have experienced that each and every time I decide to just keep going for it, it always seems to blow back blessings, joy and peace on me. I might look horrifically ungraceful while doing it. But hell, at least I’m movin’! Stagnancy always looks like migraines to me. And movement just feels better. Sometimes I have to use that movement to grab the pooper-scooper and clean up after myself around life. But it’s still movement.
So, on I go. One breath at a time. One moment at a time. One truth at a time. Following the breadcrumbs.
With Death by my side patiently teaching me.
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