#76 You Got Me Coming Up With Answers
Despite, or maybe as a result of my Catholic upbringing, I took a pretty hard-core 180 into near-atheism in my young adulthood. I had a hard time understanding how The 10 Commandments and The Golden Rule were supposed to be the most important parts of our faith, when the Sunday church bulletin featured fawning articles about the "heroes" who defended the unborn by bombing abortion clinics. None of my teachers seemed able to explain how it was possible that only Christians would be allowed into heaven, even though "God loves everyone." And my religious education was heavy on the infallibility of the Pope*, but a little light on the bloody Crusades – a centuries long murder-spree that catapulted the papacy into rock-god status.**
These days, I'm an interested, if inconsistent, student of all things metaphysical. I'm fascinated by the big questions: What (or who) is out there, why is life the way it is, and is someone actually in charge? I'm intrigued by the histories of early medicine people – women, especially – who understood the healing powers of herbs and flowers. I love crystals and tarot cards and healers and astrology. I own dozens of vials of essential oils and I am not afraid to use them.
I am 100% that witch.
This is an old healer dude in Bali about 2 minutes after telling me that I was too fat, 2 minutes before taking a call on his flip phone, and 5 minutes before telling me I need to "open up" like a flower.
If you're not keeping up with the latest lunar news, today there's a New Moon on Monday – which would have absolutely made 1983-Colleen rush to the typewriter to dash off a Simon LeBon-themed fanfic – but has 2020-Colleen doing a bit of navel-gazing. This particular New Moon is in Sagittarius and is a total solar eclipse. Yeah, I don't really know what it means either, but the moon is pretty powerful so I just like to keep tabs on it. ***
I'm so glad ankle boots made a comeback.
So, last night I joined a Zoom event hosted by Primavera Salva, a spiritual teacher who is so calm and ethereal that I felt my blood pressure decrease 10 seconds after I clicked "join with computer audio." She led us through a number of meditation and breathing exercises and then dove into what this New Moon and solar eclipse might mean for earthlings like me.
This is not the moon. It's not an eclipse. #IJLTP
First, the basics: A Full Moon is a good time to acknowledge what's come to fruition, celebrate successes, or let go of things that no longer serve us or that have been completed. On the other hand, the New Moon is like a blank slate, a great time to begin something new, to call something in. Sounds good so far.
But eclipses are not a good time to start something new, so use this time to meditate and reflect. OK, so wait a few days before I launch the new thing? OK, got it.
This particular New Moon is in Sagittarius, so it's all about joy, optimism, hope, and inspiration. I like where this is going. Tell me more.
Sagittarius is a student, a philosopher. It's saying: "Everything that is happening in your life is exactly the way it should be happening to support the evolution of your soul." Hmm. OK so all this pain has a purpose? Like, I'm learning something? I mean, that's cool, I guess. But does it have to be quite so painful?
Now is the time to go out of your comfort zone. Does this mean leaving my apartment? I'm not sure I'm ready for that.
It's time for adventure! But, again, just to clarify: Do I have to go outside?
You'll have fear. Make fear your friend. Oh, fear and I are very well acquainted. In fact, we're working together very closely these days.
And then we meditated again and did some breathwork that made us sound like we were in labor.
So, OK. Clean slate, reflection, joy/optimism/hope, adventure, make fear a friendship bracelet.
Got it.
Let's do this.
PS.
I do have a new project coming up... a new podcast. Stay tuned!
Cx
*I read up on papal infallibility and it's very confusing. No wonder the nuns couldn't get it straight.
**I'm also still enraged and humiliated that I spent so many classroom hours learning about Mesopotamia (aka the "Cradle of Civilization" and "The Fertile Crescent") but managed to graduate high school without a firm understanding of US geography, how to balance a checkbook, or that "Mesopotamia" is an archaic name for the area now known as Iraq (plus parts of Iran, Turkey, and Syria) and that the US was, at that time, financing the Iran-Iraq war. I'm sure they didn't think it was that important.
***"When the Moon is “new,” it’s located between the Earth and the Sun. In other words, the Moon is in line with the Sun, and the Sun and Earth are on opposite sides of the Moon. (Note that when the Moon is perfectly aligned in front of the Sun, it blocks out the Sun, giving us a solar eclipse.)" – quoted from The Farmer's Almanac.