letting go

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Searching for the Temple

Modern Western culture is not good at dealing with grief.

We have these one hour funerals and then we go back to work.

We hide from the dark shadow of death, reaching desperately for the illusive light of immortality.

I lost a friend a few months ago, and while the grief was intense then, and I took time off work, and I cried and cried… it eased.

Now, these past few days it’s back.

Back, with the grint of Saturn conjunct Pluto and i’m noticing some things.

I’ve hurled myself into this series I’m writing – a lucid dreaming fantasy series for young people. Saturn has been squaring my MC and I’ve been determined to keep trecking up the hill towards publication.

When the grief came back I realised I had been carrying this emotion along with me, through the ambitious grind towards publication, and perhaps my determination was also avoidance of facing the emotion of grief and guilt and despair – not that it’s clear what else I would do with all that emotion…

I used to be heavily involved in organising our local regional Burning Man festival, and one of the things I loved about it was the Temple.

The Temple started years ago at Burning Man when a guy lost his close friend just before the event. He contemplated not going, but decided instread that his contribution to the participatory festival would be to build a temple – a monument to his friend; a place for grief. Others joined him and together they created a sacred space, beyond the bounds of religion: a space for grieving, for letting go, for hope and dreams and blessings. People sat, they shared, they wrote on the walls and left old journals, ashes, gifts. They cried. And then, at the end of the event, they burnt it, silently watching. Releasing all that pent-up emotion: a cathartic release.

Don’t go into the Temple if you don’t want to feel. I tended to avoid it for most of the festival, until I really needed Temple time, and then I would go and write and cry and sit with the feelings and have my own time to let go of whatever emotion or trauma I needed to dissolve.

I wish there was a temple in my everyday life, for when I need it. I have a computer to face, emails to check… thing after thing after thing… but sometimes I need Temple time, and a place to release my grief.

Chiron Rising: empathy, connectedness and metamorphosis
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Chiron Rising: empathy, connectedness and metamorphosis

Lately I have been feeling unsettled… actually this has been going on for quite a while. We have moved four times in the last year, living in different temporary places, without having enough information to make decisions or plan out what to do next.  A few months ago I gave away all the furniture I still owned, and most of my other possessions and packed my little car with the things my daughter and I need (mostly clothes). We drove to Wellington, stopping on the way to visit my step sister and to play in the snow on the mountain. I have been doing my best to be guided by intuition. The uncertainty has been so challenging. I’m leaning into my fear and vulnerability, and letting go… and letting go.

In my natal chart Chiron, often called the wounded-healer archetype is ‘rising’ in my twelfth house, in Gemini. My life has had a massive focus on emotional and spiritual healing, both for myself and for other people… and for society and the planet (at least in terms of intention if not effect). This call has dominated my narrative and my life, but it has changed a lot over the years.

For a long time I felt broken. I felt I needed to fix myself. But the emotional woundedness and the healing were all part of the same cycle, the same archetypal pattern, much like the victim/rescuer complex. It took me until my Saturn return to really restructure this patterning, and I am grateful, every day, for the stability I have built over this time.

The vulnerability I have been processing recently has been more to do with myself in the world. The process is also one of healing in a different way, because it it one of growing, and growing always involves healing as we push through our own boundaries. In this way I have felt a lot like a seed, sprouting. The hard shell of protection has softened and now I am trying to break through, out of the dark, into the light… perhaps up until now I was planted in the dark soil, learning these subconscious lessons. Perhaps as a child I was a delicate blossom, easily damaged, which became a fruit, which was eaten by the bird of adolescence which took me to such a dark place (to extend the metaphor out too far).

It is a similar metamorphosis to that of moths and butterflies… it is the process of fighting its way out of the chrysalis that pumps vital blood into the butterflies wings. Human beings undergo similar metamorphoses. We are phoenixing beings. We must die to the past to remain in the present. Like Inana’s descent into the under-world, in this journey of deep soul alchemy, we much let our riches be torn away. We must let go of everything… in order to gain everything. It is a painful process. I understand why many people avoid it… and it is not for everyone. We all have different meandering paths through this chaotic social wilderness.

Chiron is not just about woundedness, and not just about healing. It is about empathy. Suffering is something that unites us all, and when we can process past the self-isolation and absorption of the wound, when we can untangle these knots and allow them to heal, that scar tissue remains as a connecting point. Chiron can connect us to the whole, in much the same way Neptune can. Chiron can feel like all the sadness in the world, which is a heavy emotional burden, but Chiron can also blossom into exquisite empathy. I have been feeling this empathy well up in me, as well as a deepening sense of holistic connectedness. I have let go my old life, over and over, mourned the past, and been reborn into the present.

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Chrysalis by Stephanie Wild http://www.stephanie.me.uk/

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“Good enough”: the power of modest affirmations

A few days ago I was having an episode of crazy – of not feeling good enough – of all kinds of ridiculous internal pressures. That happens… and often there is this pressure to be AMAZING – to be special and wonderful and outstanding and awesome and all of these over-used superlatives.  We overcompensate for not feeling good enough by reaching for the stars (which has often struck me as an ironically air-grasping metaphor). Affirmations usually favor big words, but perhaps there is a quiet power in small humble statements: I’m good enough. Everything’s okay. Relax.

“I’m good enough” is digestible. It’s believable. It’s no great commitment, no great pressure. It’s acceptable, and it’s honest. There’s nothing wrong with being a good-enough mother, a good-enough daughter, or granddaughter or student or academic or writer or any of the other labels people tend to accumulate in their short lives. It is a calm, contented centre in an otherwise chaotic storm of great vulnerability, expectations and obligations. It’s an in-between road that is not a dead-end or wild goose-chase shortcut. It’s just a simple breath of fresh air. I’m good… enough.  It’s an invitation to let go.

This is a time of letting go. It has been a frustrating and transformative couple of years.  Today is about endings, about letting go, mourning the death of the old paradigm and making space… and resting… and allowing the new to arise. Today is a good time for acceptance, for allowing, for letting things be. Today, “good enough” is enough… and probably, tomorrow it will be too.

Decluttering by the moon: Virgo dark moon phase
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Decluttering by the moon: Virgo dark moon phase

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In the Southern hemisphere it’s time for spring cleaning and in the Northern the trees are beginning to let go their leaves. It’s time to shed excess baggage and the last few days of the Virgo dark moon have been especially good for this kind of work. I imagine if I hadn’t been on a 24 hour decluttering spree I would have felt extra frustrated with everything else.

Bearing in mind that the outside reflects the inside and vice versa, cleaning the house is a great way to clear the mind. Tidying one’s bedroom is akin to tidying the innermost room of one’s psyche, and cleaning can be so satisfying. I wish I was taught this as a kid, rather than learning to resent dumb chores that took up valuable TV watching time.

A few months ago I began noticing the Virgo moon coinciding with my cleaning habits. One full moon I cleared out the worst corner of the kitchen. When I checked my emails on Monday I read in the Daily Mystic that the full Virgo moon was perfect for a spree.

I now have exceptionally minimalist bedside surfaces (by my standards). My habit of keeping things in beautiful bowls had gotten out of hand, so I spent hours sorting through batteries, hair fascinators and other debris. After much deliberation two large bowls of collected crystals have been replaced with a small dish of favourite gems. And after two drop offs to the local recycling centre I have two bags of treasures to give away and a tidy costume collection. It’s hard to let go of shiny things, especially those collected over a long time, but much better than turning into the miser from the Osho Zen Tarot.

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The dark moon phase, just before the new moon is the best time for self-care, introspection, letting go and not getting into trouble. This is the waning, resting, releasing and rejuvenating part of the month before the fresh start of the new moon.

Everyone I know seems to be on a detox at the moment and given the heath obsessed anal-retentive nature of Virgo, its probably a good time for juice fasts and colonic irrigation, especially if you’re going through a major Saturn transit. Counselling and other brain-clearing activities also wouldn’t go amiss along with cleaning up your work environment, or even just your attitude to work and health. After cleansing and clearing on all different levels I’m ready for the fresh start of the new moon. Time to set powerful new intentions.