New moon ramblings

It’s the new moon in cancer tomorrow, my star sign as it happens and so I know only too well how sensitive the cancer moon can make us feel, emotional too with all that water element.

However after a rather turbulent previous moon cycle, I feel strangely calm on this dark moon day and I know others feel the same. Many of us have been particularly emotional as we have been forced to see (or perhaps better to write, we haven’t been able to ignore!) more of the shadows, often mirrored to us in others, since the full moon, and as uncomfortable as this has been, majorly testing many of us, I know that in some strange way i actually feel better for it.

In fact there’s this quote from Rebecca Campbell that sums it up perfectly from my side at least:

“Be open to being cracked open. Wide open. It is the difficult times that help us grow in leaps and bounds, and in ways we could only dream possible. But first they have to crack us open. And sometimes it hurts like hell. It’s nature’s way. And, whether you let it happen or not, it is going to happen. So surrender to the process and let life do its thang. It’ll be worth it. It’s how the light gets in”.

These last few weeks have reinforced in me how much our thinking patterns and core beliefs create so much disharmony and suffering in our lives because we think our reality should be different to how it is. This causes us to excessively ruminate about the past or to obsessively stress and imagine a future, all of which takes us further away from the present and this moment with all its messiness and humanness that allows us to know what it feels like to be truly alive.

I’m always surprised though when this pattern reveals itself to me, and I realise how much I have been buying into an illusion of life being a certain way and measuring myself up against it, as if that ‘certain way’ is an absolute truth; that love should look a certain way, for example. I mean on one level I know that there is no one way, but that doesn't stop me buying into it from time to time as the conditioning is subtle and runs deep. I’m a romantic at heart and us romantics sometimes have a hard time of it because we have a tendency to romanticise life, we believe in the fairy tale and of course the fairy tale looks a certain way an involves endless happiness!

But in truth it is never about what it looks like on the outside, and when you are trying to live consciously, then it can get really bloody messy. It also ends up being very different to how you thought it might be, because of course thoughts are based on the past and on conditioning and this is now and this present moment and like I said, it is never as we imagined it might be! Sometimes it’s surprisingly joyful in its unexpectedness and spontaneity, when we let go of our control and just go with the flow of things, from an intuitive nudging.

This happened yesterday when the boys and I joined Ross, Star and Willow on Portlet for a BBQ and one of my friend’s came along with her son and then another joined us and another came down with her daughter by chance and friendships were formed and the sun came out and the high tide collected us all in for a swim and I certainly left feeling joyful in my present moment experience of an unexpected Monday evening on Guernsey.

In fact I’ve also become aware how serious we can get on this path of heart, and how much we sometimes need to literally lighten up and allow more heart - the irony! I’ve come increasingly aware how much I value family and friends and a soulful community. I’ve been blessed this last six months to make some really deep friendships with some lovely real women, the ones who don’t pretend to be anyone than who they are with all their rawness and edginess and earthiness and to also have my beautiful soul sister swim friends.

In these changing and shifting times when the light dims these friendships can make a huge difference, holding space for all that is felt, for then tears and anger and the moments of intense vulnerability when all seems so shaky that you wonder how you might make it through the day. But you do, not only because you have to, but because there are those souls holding you, maybe not literally, but a message here, a flower there, a moment of being present to your anguish as you work through whatever needs to be worked through, as the darkness ushers in the light but takes you on an inner journey to do so.

I mean these times are needed. I relish the discomfort of them because I know that they are bringing gifts. They always cause me to deepen into practice, to shift the practice, make changes on my mat, step up the chanting, carve out more time for meditation or at least for silence, get out walking, feel stones, be quiet and still. And after a time, when the storm has passed and the emotional intensity has eased, then the light returns and with it a rush of inspiration, creativity and passion for what now needs to become more of a reality.

This moon cycle has especially made me eqnuireinto the notion of stability because of the shakiness of life this year with all the many changes happening in my personal life as much as out there in the bigger world and vice versa - we are the micro of the macro of course - and my concluding that it has to come from within. This was confirmed to me today on this dark moon as I practiced with my teacher and felt the joy of being truly in the presence of the breath in the moment in the body, and it was there that I found my stability, not somewhere external to me, not in my external reality, in the usual places we might seek stability such as bank balances and homes, but in the very centre of my being.

I realise again that so much of our experience of life is about our perception, and how we interpret what is happening to us and the thoughts that we allow ourselves to think and buy into as if they are a very real truth. And how we also assume that other people think the same way when they really don’t, how we all have different backgrounds and experiences that shape our impression of reality and the way that we then interpret what happens to us.

Elijah reminded me of this only yesterday as he ruminated over a throw away comment someone said about him being as bad as his brother, and as he already, at the tender age of 8, developed a fear of being perceived as bad, thus already orientating his behaviour in a way that he feels will be perceived as good (sigh), he got upset, because he thought the person’s comment confirmed that he was indeed bad. The relief he felt when I confirmed that there really is no such thing as good and bad and that he’s the most wonderful little soul I know (well and his brother), was palpable, i even heard him telling E at bed time that he was relieved he could let go of worrying about being bad.

Obviously he’s not bad. No one’s truly bad. I mean Eben’s behaviour isn’t always easy, but he’s not a bad child, but can easily get labelled so, because we are so conditioned to think this way - that we should be good, and therefore if we’re not good and our goodness is not frequently validated, then we met be bad. But it’s more than that, it’s the fact that we can convince ourselves of something, simply because of the way we have interpreted what has been said, simply because of our sensitivity to a particular subject or our inherent vulnerability and shaky self worth.

Somewhere along the line, not only do we have to learn to not care, but we also have to learn to catch ourselves with the story we tell ourselves, about our unlovability, our lack of worthiness, our unattractiveness, our loneliness etc., because essentially, it's not what happens to us that defines us, but how we interpret it - it's a choice! Furthermore, it’s so important to let the unexpected open us up to being fully present in our lives so that we can be embodied and immersed in all our feelings (those we define good and bad for example!), rather than shielding ourselves from them and trying to seek/control a particular outcome.

So here’s to another fruitful and enlightening moon cycle, albeit a gentler one would be most welcomed! Thank you to all you beautiful souls who read this blog, because without you there would be little point writing it and this brings me much joy as I process and try to make sense of my experience of the world - and let’s not forget that this always changes, so please take everything I write with a pinch of salt as I might feel differently by the next cycle!

Happy new moon!

Love Emma x