Jessica Shepherd's Blog, page 17

Self-love. It’s the foundation of everything good in our lives. We know we need self-love be fulfilled in our self, and in our intimate relationships. But what is self-love, precisely, and how do we generate more of it?

In popular culture self-love has become synonymous with self-care — which this article honestly explores: “True self care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from. And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do…”

I like that last sentence. That feels more like self-love. Because while self-care can be a tool in service of self-love, it can easily address the symptom while ignoring the cause. Self-love always involves questioning our assumptions, embracing our uniqueness, and honoring our true feelings. Self-love means listening and paying attention to our deeper desires, even when its uncomfortable to do so. Self-love requires a commitment to self-honesty and authenticity in all areas of our lives.

Many define self-love through our self-care action items (cooking a healthy new recipe, spending time in nature, reading good books)… which is fine, as when our self-love well is filled these actions can lead to bliss. But when we check off all the self-care items on our checklist and still feel cut-off from our self, and unhappy, deep down inside, that’s a sign pointing to a greater need for self-love.

Self-love is doing the most loving thing we could do for our selves in this moment. With a twist. We are honest with our self. We know our trap doors, our little dark habits. Self-love knows our good intentions are the quickest path to hell, that it is too easy to hide our needs behind them.
Self-love takes the time to ask, “What is my soul yearning for?” “What is hiding behind this hunger, feeling, craving; what do I truly need, right now?” It is asking, “What would LOVE do, in this moment?” Then doing it.
Self-love is the act of acknowledging that we’ve paid for our wisdom- in blood. We cannot, and do not want to, hide from what we’ve learned about our self, our life, any longer. We honor the wisdom of our experience. We do not want to reach for the substitution; we want the real deal.
Self-love takes the time to question debilitating ideas and beliefs that we perpetuate in our minds, self-talk we’ve inherited from culture, family. We decide to no longer blindly follow the dictates of what happiness, confidence, aging, beauty or love looks like. We make up our own minds.
…Without self-love, we farm our need for love out to others, or to self-care rituals, trying to fill holes that only we can fill with our own loving, kind, honest attention.

Personally, I can no longer separate self-love from authenticity: honoring my unique differences and needs, and honesty about my true, deeper experience. The more authentic and honest I am with my self, the more self-love I generate.

To help us all become discerning masters and mistresses of love, and inspire you onward in your quest for the most coveted possession of all time, LOVE, here are some practical examples of the differences between self-care and self-love:

-Rescheduling a phone call with a colleague because I need to spend time journaling (self-care). Not apologizing, resisting the need to tell them why- both are old habits of taking care of others’ energies which causes me suffering (self-love).

-Getting a pedicure because I need some pampering me-time (self-care). Listening to how I treat myself when difficult feelings or jangly energies arise. Not judging my feelings, or my self, for having them. Allowing the feeling sensations to just be, without adding mental stories (self-love).

-Meeting a potential new friend or love interest for coffee (self-care). Making sure I have someplace I need to be afterwards, communicating that from the beginning of the date, in case I start feeling uncomfortable. I don’t ever need to continue a meeting, out of obligation, that doesn’t feel good (self-love).

-Keeping to regular exercise routines and eating habits that help me to feel good (self-care). Making the decision to not let my partner or love interest interrupt this, and sticking to it. I know I have the tendency to sacrifice my needs for others. Being gentle on myself when “I fall off the wagon” (self-love).

-Buying a new swimsuit for my beach life (self-care). Noticing judgmental thoughts and comparisons when I look in the mirror; spending some time questioning those, and my definition of what “confidence” means. What do I want “confidence” to mean to me? Do I want cultural definitions to dictate my ideas of beauty? Deciding that “feeling good” is the new confidence -which feels more honest, authentic, liberating. I buy the bathing suit I feel good in (self-love).

Do something nice for yourself this week: Make your own self-care versus self-love list. With nurturing Ceres in self-appreciative, notice-me Leo, and the Goddess of Love, Venus, exalted (expressing nicely) in consciousness-raising Pisces, it’s a good time to explore and celebrate how well you are loving YOU.

Making mine was enlightening (the above was my list, minus the “love interest” part– I threw that in for everyone). I became more conscious of the actions I take that perpetuate deep, abiding self-love. I also know that when I give positive recognition to my good habits and behaviors, I perpetuate them.

Now go love yourself up!!

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image: Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

The post How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count The Ways… appeared first on Moonkissd by Jessica.

It’s a rockstar morning in Hawaii. The Oahu sun is shining too brightly as I peel back my eye mask and feel the weight of fatigue. I feel like I went on a bender last night, when in reality I ate a healthy meal, worked out and went to bed. I recollect that we were here in Hawaii during the Leo Full Moon Lunar Eclipse at this time last year (then, having no idea that we’d move here), and today, here we are, new residents of this beautiful island. This change, that felt it was taking place so awfully slow over the past year, now feels like it happened quickly.

Cognitive dissonance is a thread that runs throughout these first days, here. Life continues, with its necessities to be bought, dinner to be made, dogs to be walked, it’s easy to be lulled into “same routine, new place”. Until my head spins and I realize how floaty I feel, and I squirt my B vitamin into my mouth and the bright cherry red liquid lands on my only t-shirt (because our household belongings, including my wardrobe, is still on a boat). Well…maybe I should just lay down.

I go to a Starbucks, where I sit and attempt to collect my thoughts. Really, I’m just people watching at this point. I watch the young smiling girls in line, wearing their bikini tops and cut-offs. Older people gather to share coffee and “talk story”. I could be anywhere, Starbucks is like that. Except I am in Hawaii.

Ooh, I love the energy here. It is elevated, higher, so different from what I’m used to. It’s like drinking a shot of wheatgrass, energetically, and this higher vibration resonates with me, even if it’s going to take some time to California detox and adjust. The fact that I go to a coffee shop to get centered, instead of sitting at home, makes me smile. In Marin, I’d never been able to sit in a crowded coffee shop and stay in my own energy field… but here I am.

Honestly, it’s a bit confusing for my Ego. I’ve gotten so used to fielding aggressive and fearful Ego vibrations that being here in this elevated vibration- the HI life– is akin to a miracle, really. I waver between feeling high and giddy, and like a hung-over rockstar, but overall my entire energy body has been liberated. A small part of me worried the other shoe will drop, what if it is fleeting, what if it doesn’t last? Another, wiser part of me knows that’s not true and is singing glory, glory hallelujah to the highest. I periodically burst into happy tears of joy- at the sight of a full rainbow greeting us upon first arriving at our new neighborhood (see picture above), my first visit to the beach, at the invisible barriers once so solid that now gently, easily, fall away.

The invisible barriers are falling away. A big issue I’d been struggling with for years, that has kept me from feeling fully liberated, suddenly freed itself the other day -just a subtle shift in perception that I wasn’t able to “get” back in California, effortlessly revealed, here. This has happened enough for me to see a pattern.

I don’t just attribute this to Hawaii, not entirely. It’s not unusual for eclipse season to usher in new energies, create openings, accelerations of awareness. Astrologers refer to eclipses as portals for rapid spiritual openings, expansion, awakenings. I’ve found this to be true. Big biographical events in the external world (moves, births, deaths, endings, beginnings) tend to get a lot of air play during eclipse time and that’s not unwarranted – but this is a lunar event. If you keep your eye on the external world, focusing on the loud lives of other people and events, instead of what’s going on inside of you, you’ll be missing out on juicy goodness for your self.

During this Leo-Aquarius eclipse cycle, realizations we experience can liberate us from old patterns, roles, expectations, the status quo… and into the unfolding fullness of our authentic, Divine expression. I am unfolding into the fullness of myself. I can feel it, a depth and intimacy within myself, full of promise, expansion. I’d been living with an anchor chained to my ankle, making everything extraordinarily laborious, hard, but arriving on the shores of Hawaii has freed me in ways that I couldn’t do in California. When I described this feeling to my husband, he said, “I’m experiencing the same thing in my professional life.”

He and I have talked philosophically about how easy it is to use the experience one is having (the unfulfilling job, relationship, life) as proof that it’s all we can have- and how that can keep you in chains, stuck. Because from the moment this adventure began unfolding, those illusions showed up as what they really were: fear of change, of our own greatness, our own power, worthiness. Over and over, as I’ve put faith in my Soul’s truth, all the Ego’s fears proved unfounded.

When you receive a message from your Soul, trust that the Divine already has your coordinates in hand. The hardest part is to gently but firmly redirect the voices of doubt/fear into faith. Then to trust, listen, and then trust and listen some more.

Lately, a line from a Prince song called Breakdown runs through my mind: “Baby, baby, see there’s a door that you can walk through, where there used to be a wall…” Yes, yes, I say to myself. This is happening. On so many levels.

Eclipse season is a magical time. Eclipse energy feels big, it’s exaggerating the message for a reason. Go inside your self, listen to your heart. Because, as crazy as it sounds, there’s nothing stopping you from following it. And if you doubt that, “Baby, baby, see there’s a door that you can walk through, where there used to be a wall…”

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The post Leo Full Moon Eclipse: The HI Life appeared first on Moonkissd by Jessica.

“Come home” calls a distant voice from deep inside.

Perhaps you’ve been feeling more emotional lately, or your attention has been too focused outside your self. Don’t worry, this will be easy. Just set the intention: to withdraw from the external world, to let go of concern about what’s going on outside of you, about anything but you, right now. This time is for you and only you.

(I suggest putting on headphones and playing this soothing background music.)

Start by going inside your body, noticing tension, and relaxation. Feel the tight walls of muscle around your stomach. The energy gathered inside your pelvis. The relaxed muscles of your legs and feet. Feel your feet on the ground. Your breath, how you’re holding it slightly high, or breathing in your belly.

Take a few deep breaths, come back into your self. Settle into your pelvic bowl.

Stabilize your body energy. Imagine your trunk is the trunk of an ancient tree, rooted into the earth. You are eternally: solid, safe, stable, grounded…the wind may rustle your leaves, rain may wet your branches… but nothing changes this fact. Take a few moments to deeply connect with this truth.

Now, feel your feet become roots, and send those roots deep into the rich, moist Earth. Let them expand as far, wide and deep as you like. Do not be afraid to take up space, to nourish your self. Feel the moist dirt cradle your roots, protecting, connecting, nourishing you for as long as you call this planet your home.

“Come home”, calls the voice, again, closer this time.

Your imagination opens, connects you with everything you love…

“Come home”… The smell of fresh baked cookies, the silvery glow of the full moon over a field of fragrant lavender, dozing in a fluffy feather bed under the purple night sky, curling up into the warm, furry, body of your favorite animal.

“Come home”… A field of rich golden light, the warmth of a distant star, the softest cotton brushing against your skin, reclining under a huge oak tree next to a shimmering and still, emerald-turquoise lake.

“Come home”… Release worry, regret, sadness, fear. They are nothing more than passing clouds, phenomenon that never change anything about you or your path.

“Come home”… A beautiful Mother Goddess appears offering you the ease of permission. Permission to be exactly as you are right now. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nowhere to be. You are perfect. You are unconditionally loved.

A profound peace settles over your body. You are safe. You are loved. All is well. This is always and forever true. You know this. Connect with this truth for as long as you like. Steep in the peace, bliss and ease of your true nature.

Welcome home.

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Photo by: Adi Ulici on Unsplash

The post Cancer Moon Meditation appeared first on Moonkissd by Jessica.

Holidays generally leave me feeling over-extended, irritable and in need of alone time. It’s not unusual. Overheard in a parking lot, on our “vacation” to Yosemite: “I just want to be at home in my slippers, my new bathrobe, curled up with a good book.” I yearned for the exact thing for most of that trip.

It’s the enforced socialization that puts me over the top. For introverts, socializing after exhaustive holiday and meal preparation is not restorative nor rewarding. Introverts recharge by doing quiet things. Alone.

Over the years, I’ve developed radical self-care practices, like: excusing myself to use the bathroom a lot, suddenly disappearing from the room for awhile. Learning to be able to present and alert to the commotion and energy all around me, but with my attention and gaze turned inward — like a monk in a busy NYC intersection — has been a huge tool I’m working with. Call it “self-care”, but more precisely these are energy management strategies, because really you only have so much each day.

I experiment with a lot of “self care” strategies, but none hold a candle to the decision to stop taking care of other people’s feelings. I had no idea how much this compromises me, opens me up to feeling icky. It was so habitual I wasn’t aware that I was doing it. I thought it was normal to feel bad when someone else did, to go down a rabbit hole of heightened emotional responses (actually, I was just taking on their feelings). In a disagreement, I’d feel so unnerved, distracted by, and ultimately responsible for another’s hurt or pain that I’d lose my center. I’d feel tortured by the interaction for days or weeks. I didn’t realize it was because I was trying to manage or take responsibility for their feelings, even from afar.

Yet other people’s feelings, no matter what they tell you (or what you tell you), are not your responsibility.

It’s tricky. Because this is what it means to be a healer: you have a killer instinct for detecting other people’s suffering and desire to make it better. This is innate in me. Trying to take it out would be like, well, not being me. If someone is in pain or misunderstanding, I’m a magnet to it. I feel it and I would do everything in my power to change it.

I’m empathic, which took this next level. When I’d make choices to avoid feeling other people’s pain (which was logical, in a way – who wants to feel others’ pain?) that would often prevent me from getting what I needed.

I didn’t want another to feel bad, and I didn’t want to feel their unresolved childhood trauma feelings (abandonment, rejection, betrayal). Which meant I’d say yes to a lot of things when my intuition screamed “NOOOOOO…”

I’ve got natal Saturn in Gemini on Cancer Sun conjunct Cancer South Node. Transiting Pluto is square my Libra Rising. The buck had to stop here.

So I initiated the painful process of conscious bikini waxing.

For a healer, not aiding a suffering soul who for various reasons you should and cannot help is like your very first bikini wax (ripping hair off your sensitive parts is very painful). That’s how it feels to walk away from a person in need for someone with a Cancer South Node.

I’ve had to end relationships. This continues to be incredibly hard for me.

But I am learning that because We Are All One, if it doesn’t feel right to me, it’s also not right for another. End of story. No feeling bad about hurting others’ feelings. No taking on their unresolved trauma (so difficult!).

I’ve stopped accepting invitations I don’t enjoy. I’ve noticed that when I felt crappy and wanted to feel better I often reached out to people who actually made me feel crappier (that was an interesting find). I’ve noticed how I can make choices to take care of others’ feelings because it’s what I think they want- not because it is what I want to do. I notice how that compelling urge to help feels, in my body, how magnetic it is for me.

Ripppppp…. (that’s the sound of a huge bikini wax strip coming off).

I’m learning that I cannot help everyone and I’m not meant to. I am a healer, so it feels like this goes against lifetimes of conditioned indoctrination that I’m supposed to help anyone in need. But you know what feels more true and right in my body? Me, first. I’m here to take care of me, and everyone else wants me to take care of me, too. That’s the way I stay aligned, centered. That’s the way I’m in highest service to All.

The Cancer Full Moon heightens our awareness of nurturing, healing, family and connection, and our perceived responsibilities, duties and obligations (Capricorn Sun). As needs of home, self and emotions collide, it’s easy to feel frayed around the emotional edges. Pull back, get quiet, go within as big energies swirl around you; the Crab has a protective shell for a reason. While there, take a peek. How are you feeling? Do you try and take care of, or take responsibility, for others’ emotions? Is there a need, in you, to help, care for or rescue — no matter the cost to your self?

You may or may not be a healer. You may simply be a caring soul who doesn’t want to see any person or thing suffer. That’s a noble thing. If you have a good, kind, heart trust me when I say, we all want you to put your own needs, first. The world doesn’t need more people who take responsibility for other people’s issues, who confuse the rabbit hole of another’s childhood conditioning, patterns or karma with their own. That’s for them to work through, and has nothing to do you.

The world needs your kind heart to be centered, clear. To know the difference between your emotional stuff and theirs, and not take theirs on.

Pattern-breaker Uranus in Aries moves direct the day after this full moon, so here’s an outrageous suggestion: It’s okay to be selfish. It may feel like a bikini wax the first, second or third time you do it, but it gets easier over time.

If you need encouragement, here’s a reminder: Compassion is not pity, self-sacrifice, or being all things to all people. It’s having a clear, truthful relationship with your authentic heart. Sometimes being more selfish is the most compassionate and loving act of all.

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Lately, something has become more clear in my spiritual practice. The more I focus on resolving or fixing anything, the worse I feel. It’s the law of what you focus on grows: Whatever obstacle I think I’m experiencing only becomes more solid.

A problem can only remain a problem as long as I believe it is one. The moment I can relax, accept, allow and invite a solution to appear, it will either recede into the background, like the scenery of a painting, or dissolve entirely.

Is it magic?  Smoke and mirrors? When a problem ceases to be a problem entirely, it can feel that way. Few “problems” disappear altogether. Instead, when our consciousness finds the grace to be okay with what is happening, that is what allows solutions to appear, circumstances to shift — as if by magic. As if only when you are willing to inhabit your Divinity, can the Divine in you step in to help.

I have a funny story around this. We were in Hawaii last week, and while my husband met with a gazillion new colleagues I was due to look at a house in 15 minutes. But when I went to get my key out of my purse I realized John had it, and he was in a meeting. I called the renter and explained my situation. It was the only time she could show us the house. I hung up and felt the edge of anxiety ebb into my consciousness: We had two days to find a place to live and things were looking grim. All of the houses we’d seen so far were, frankly, real shit-holes. This was the one and only house I’d pinned my hopes on, and now, this. What to do? I didn’t want to spin out into defeat. So I took this window of time as an opportunity to go swimming.

I jumped into the infinity pool. Between swimming laps and floating, I invited Spirit’s help. Then, floating on my back I experienced the sensation of being held. It was a small shift for such a big ask, but I registered the awareness that that I was being Divinely held, cared for. When my intuition told me to leave the pool, I reluctantly did. When I checked my phone there were messages, including one from our prospective landlord who said she would come to my hotel and pick me up to show me the house, and, Could I be ready in 10 minutes?

The house is perfect for us. In January it is ours.

How we see the world is how we will experience it, says Sagittarius. If Saturn’s transit through Sagittarius has taught us anything it’s that our perception shapes everything.

We so easily link a cause with an effect: that a person or circumstance is causing us pain, inconvenience, a bad day, or life. The missing key could’ve ruined my chance to see a nice house, for instance. What if it is the perceptual association we make — that this is a problem — that is the actual problem?

It reminds me of a story I heard recently, from our real estate agent named Spirit ;).  For years, before she was famous, Spirit worked with Byron Katie, coordinating satsang. Katie was getting bigger, attracting a wider audience, and Spirit became worried about the facility size not being able to hold the numbers of participants. To which Katie replied (in her way), Sweetie, I’m just not sure that a room has a size. And, sure enough, the room somehow expanded to hold the attendees.

Chiron in Pisces is square this New Moon. Chiron’s glyph resembles a key, yet in practice Chiron is both the key and the brick wall: It is both the thing we experience as a painful obstacle we cannot get around, and the cure for it. But the “cure” is not given to us readily, or on a linear time frame- if at all. The obstacle must first teach us what we need to know before we can heal or transcend it. Not a moment before. No shortcuts and no band-aids- because that would forfeit our learning. We must earn the knowledge we are meant to learn.

Saturn is exiting Sagittarius in a mere few days, and with it the Saturn-Chiron square. We have had to become a student in these areas of our life, to become humble, patient, teachable, receptive to inviting illogical solutions that open doors in our perception. What parting gift has this pair left you?

Just as with my missing car key, I can focus on the problem — on not having the key (or in Chiron’s case, the answer). I can go into a blame spiral toward myself, or someone else, for its absence. I can go into fear, anxiety and panic about what this could mean for our future. Or I can invite and allow a solution to appear. Then ask, What would feel good to me right now?

What would’ve happened had I not had the conversation with my self, made the decision to take a nice swim, not experienced being held and cared for… and instead crumpled like a used towel defeated by the perception of a problem? Would everything have worked out? I’ll never know.

I do know what choice causes me less suffering. If “invite and allow” is a parting gift of this Chiron-Saturn square, I’ll take it.

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image:

unsplash-logoYousef Espanioly

The post Sagittarius New Moon: Invite & Allow appeared first on Moonkissd by Jessica.

Winter solstice, in the Western Hemisphere, arrives at the holiday season. As an energy sensitive, I am deeply attuned to shadows running amok, and I notice there is often more doubt, sadness and fear in the collective at this time of year, when the interplay between dark and light becomes more apparent not only in our environment, but in our inner lives, too.

It’s quite a contrast to hold the darkness against the festive fun we’re told we’re supposed to be having. Yet its an exercise in learning that we don’t have to feel one or the other. Just as it is possible to be sad and grateful at once, it is possible to allow both the dark and light to co-exist, naturally, within our self.

Many times I’ve struggled with feeling the dense heaviness of the holidays. When I resist feeling it, it becomes unbearable (and its not even my energy!). The only thing that works to relieve these dark clouds of energy, will also work for you: I affirm that I am the light. I affirm the knowledge that I am only light. I feel myself as the light that shines into the dark, clearing it.

This isn’t about denying the darkness, but rather acknowledging that (you or) someone out there is in misunderstanding about their nature, and I hold that I am light- and so are they. In other words, I allow and feel both/all. I set the intention for light and dark to harmonize within myself. And since light always wins… I begin to feel better.

To me, this is the spiritual aspect of solstice. At the darkest time of the year, we must more firmly anchor into our light. This allows us to appreciate the bittersweet complexity of the season.

If you are energy sensitive it may help for you to know this, too: Two people in emotional anxiety, fear, pain, depression are more powerful than one. At the holidays, this increases incrementally. Hence, you may find yourself wondering: Why am I feeling so bad, for no apparent reason? (This is more noticeable in the days leading to Christmas).

But it’s also helpful to know that two people in meditation are more powerful than a hundred in fear. So, really, there is only one thing we can do, to help our self, and to help each other:

BE THE LIGHT.

Solstice season is the right time to bring more light into the dark. We don’t do this by rejecting the part of our self that is afraid of being hurt or lonely, of not finding the love, peace, health or abundance we want; we do this by befriending our dark emotions, and then leading them into the light.

Here is the solstice message I’d love for everyone to embody: Hold your darkness tenderly, as you would a scared child. Then follow your pleasure, joy, faith- the Spirit of the season – and when you see it, see it for what it is: An affirmation of your true nature. Become the reassuring light your heart seeks!

A poem for solstice

it’s not growth I seek, or self-fulfillment or awakening

but light

just as a flower naturally turns toward the sun

I will keep seeking light

I’m unstoppable

you cannot stop something drawn to itself, in recognition, intelligence, splendor

the river returns to the ocean because it knows its source

not because its trying to find itself, its purpose, mission

or trying to be anything at all

it wanders and is led

I am the light

no amount of trying and push and work and suffering can replace the easy pull of self recognition

of light turning toward itself

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The post Winter Solstice: You Are the Light appeared first on Moonkissd by Jessica.

We’re selling our 85 year old house, moving from California to Hawaii in January. There’s a lot to coordinate, and with many details, inspections, timing issues, repairs, and unwanted discoveries (like a 60k sewer fix) it is too easy to get caught up in my mind, into anxiety and worry, to hold the perspective of “What if…this doesn’t work out?” Not a creative mindset.

So when my teacher told me that I was not supporting the energy of “this is happening” but rather a negative ego vibration, I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t a total basketcase, yet, but I wasn’t furthering my own cause either. I knew better; I had forgotten. I had forgotten to use my spiritual tools, the ones that I can pull out for the really important stuff. Like selling the house. Or manifesting a move to Hawaii. Or attracting a soul mate.

Flashback to 2007: When I wrote a lengthy book on manifestation – on moving seemingly impossible obstacles, on creating and attracting from the spiritual plane. I know this stuff. Yet I have a second house Neptune. We, who have planets in the second house of “I have,” can claim the skills, tools, gifts of that planet, but we also have a tendency to underestimate them.

My teacher instructed me to spend some time marinating in the Faith piece of my move. As in: “This is happening, this is going to get done, the contractor will show up, the work will get done.” All is being Divinely Orchestrated (sounding familiar to the mantra I once used to great success, “My true love comes to me in Divine Timing”). Then, to take it a step further, to own the powerfully creative aspect of myself and invite that into the move.

So that is what I did. I woke up on Monday morning with a list of what my Ego perceived as immovable problematic objects: the dryer I ordered 7 days ago and has been awol ever since, the plumber I can’t get to return my calls, the insurance adjuster who hadn’t yet responded to our claim, the tree guy who endlessly will “call me back tomorrow.” I asked Spirit to surround all aspects of our move in Ease and Grace. I affirmed that yes, we are moving, and it is all happening, things are getting done.

The big shift occurred when I actually felt my body energy shift into peace and ease–that’s when the phone calls and emails started. After months of delays, the tree guy set a date for our tree trimming. The insurance agent sent me a friendly email saying they’d proceed with our claim. Because they’d failed to deliver on a previous order, I engaged the creative aspect of myself and asked, Is this the right company for us? I heard: wait. That day, not one, but two, people called me to confirm the delivery of our dryer this week.

All of this, my Ego had regarded as an uphill battle, filled with struggle and delays. All of this was accomplished in ease and grace, in just one morning.

Then, in one final stroke of grace, that afternoon, as my realtor sat in my living room and we discussed the timing of putting the house on the market, she said, “I have an idea. You’re an astrologer, why don’t you use your tools to tell us the right time to sell?” Now, as an astrologer I am so used to having my tools marginalized by the mainstream that I rarely bring them up outside the consult room, and here was my realtor open and eager for me to choose a date to go on the market. If this wasn’t a reminder to use my spiritual tools, to stop underestimating and “forgetting” my spiritual toolkit, I don’t know what it was.

Mind you, my realtor also happens to call herself by the name of Spirit. This was no accident either; I had a dream about her the night before I saw her picture and name on an online site. (I love declaring, This is happening. Spirit is my agent! It has a delightful ring to it.)

I don’t always work it this way. Obviously. Most of the time I don’t. Yet Mercury retrograde is designed to go over ground we’ve already covered, and in the sign of higher learning, Sagittarius, being reminded of the feathers in our wisdom cap we already have — but have forgotten through neglect, disuse or busyness and distraction — is part of the larger lesson.

Gemini Full Moon can fill minds and media with too much chatter and opinion, yet Mercury has now turned retrograde (12/3-12/22), creating the sensation of our consciousness slowing down as the world moves quickly by. Meanwhile, Neptune in Pisces sits in an exact t-square to this lunation. This is a perfect storm of spiritual opportunity to catch our awareness mid-stream, to observe how we are deluding or deceiving our self through wrong stories, false perceptions. Astrologer Steven Forrest calls this Neptunian process “cleaning the windows”. By becoming aware of what’s obscuring our windows (wrong perceptions), we discover clarity, truth.

Feel into the energy of this Full Moon. Notice where your attention, and intention, is. Are you magnifying a “problem” by aligning your energy with negative stories, and struggle? Or are you intentionally choosing to align with the energy of Oneness, flow and co-creativity?  I had been aligning with the negative story of resistance, not flow, so that’s what I experienced. But once I aligned with grace, grace happened.

We have no proof that getting out of our heads — letting go of the habit of push, struggle and inner conflict — will bring us exactly what we most want. Speaking from my second house Neptune, moving out of the belief that the Ego must do and solve it all, and into the energy of Neptune- of ease, grace and co-creation- is a risky act of faith in and of itself. We have no proof that trusting in a simple, clear, intention is enough. Yet that is the definition of faith. Sometimes all we have to go on is faith itself, and that is enough.

Some practices we have to keep returning to over and over. This morning I woke up and felt the world of moving details crash in on me again. The street we live on has been under post rainy season mud-slide repair all year, and what we thought was finally ending, isn’t quite done yet. Of course. As I watched my mind start to want to go into the negative story, there was only one thing to intend: I Am Ease and Grace –even if I don’t feel it right now.

Within minutes, as I began to embody that knowing, I felt better, calmer, at peace. And then, like Divine clockwork, life began to flow around me, to effortlessly orchestrate itself in ease.

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The holidays always hold several guarantees: tinsel and lights, Christmas music being played far too early in the season, and lots of difficult emotions about family. This is the time of year when we replay old hurts, traumas. And this is as predictable as hearing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in every store we visit.

This isn’t conscious. Our expectations creep in unawares, like a child tiptoeing around late at night, looking for Santa — except it is us, looking for the love, approval, affection, validation we never received. We think, If I just give a little more, if I change my self, say “I love you” enough, if I heal myself enough… I will finally have the relationship I want. Because, that’s how a person who has been hurt thinks.

Yet we are not here to heal our family. We are here to heal our relationship to our self. And we are enough.

To repeat, you are not here to heal your family. They have people who will be their healer(s). It’s not you.

I have a client whose daughter is verbally abusive. She treats my client as a punching bag; insults, demeans, belittles and then kicks her out of her house. She says she’s always been unnerved by her presence; when her daughter was a small child she could sense a powder keg of fury aimed at her. While her daughter was in the womb, my client had a (correct) premonition that this would be a difficult relationship, so questioned whether she wanted the birth. Now she blames herself (which her daughter manipulates), questioning whether those feelings caused the child’s problems.

So, I asked, Why are you sending texts that say “I love you” after being verbally assaulted by her? Why aren’t you the one saying, “No, it’s you who needs to leave?” It’s gotten bad for her. Her health is suffering, as well as her self-respect.

This may sound extreme, but she’s far from my only client in this boat. Family relationships have huge implications on our mental, emotional and physical health. Engaging with toxic family members can be extremely debilitating. For many, the choice truly boils down to: “your family or your life.”

So why is it so hard to listen to our intuitive voice that chooses love, the one that chooses “ME”. The one who knows, “No. This is not right” and then does what anyone in a burning building, or being chased by a maniac with a knife, would do– get out?

It’s painful to feel the full extent of our pain. The fact that you could be bleeding out on the floor and they would walk on by (while you, of course, would give your last kidney for them)…is really painful. It hurts to let that in. Instead, like a hot potato, you take that emotional energy of pain and rejection and send it flying over to them, again, hoping they will give you what you want and relieve you of this awful energy. They never do.

Or we may have child logic. To the child-self who earns love to survive associates autonomy and boundaries as death, abandonment, betrayal of their codependent family– to love our self enough to be separate, to be in self-dignity and self-respect, is to do the very thing you were told not to do. Even to end a pattern that has joined us “together” is akin to death. Ironically, many of us are still stuck believing we need to survive a childhood that we’ve already survived. No, we don’t need to walk back into the Scorpion den. We did that already!

It’s Scorpio New Moon. We’re entering the holidays. It’s time to get honest and real about how we’re perpetuating old wounds in our families. Do we enter the same old argument and expect different results? Do we try and squeeze blood from a turnip?

What’s your “catnip”? The triggering thing they always say, or a version of it, that sets you off on a tangent; the crippling emotional habit you reach for, like crack cocaine, that sends you into a downward spiral and guarantees misery? Guilt? Shame? Needing to be believed? Needing to be understood?

I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s difficult to not fall down the rabbit hole of a pattern. It’s difficult to draw a boundary. Ironically it is difficult to choose your own self-love and feeling good, over a relationship that has provided you years of drama. It brings up fears. We fear being alone. We fear not seeing our grand-babies, nieces, nephews. We fear… it all. But is it worth the price?

Maybe we can’t avoid family. And sometimes, despite the high cost, we don’t want to. We want to be around them. If you plan to be around family members that run the gamut from slightly dis-resonant to totally toxic, I suggest a holiday survival strategy.

For instance, for me, I know there are certain topics that are unsafe for me to bring up with certain people. I also have a time limit; after a certain time I will start losing my center. And I also know I will need recovery time, sometimes a few days after, before I feel back to normal. I build this into my understanding and structure of our visit. I acknowledge there may be consequences.

Because if you know the stove is hot, you don’t reach for it without mittens, or a full body suit — right?

But I’d love for you to do more than just survive your family. I dare you to give your self a gift this holiday season. Chances are, it’s the one you’ve been wanting your entire life: Stop asking your family for the gift they could never give you. Stop looking for their acceptance, approval, understanding, love. Stop pouring your light and love into a closed heart. It’s your turn to receive the greatest gift, ever — the one that only you can give to you.

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It’s painful to lose a true friend of the Soul. Most of us would choose not to ever lose them. It would be nice if those relationships went on forever, forever inspiring, raising us to be and see our highest, brightest self. But often they don’t, and since it felt so wonderful to be in their presence, it leaves us wondering- what happened? Or worse, What did I do wrong?

Closure is something humans reach for and usually don’t get in the way we want. People may ghost us, disappear entirely, over an interaction we consider minor, or at least resolvable, and the fact that it led to this baffles us. We go over and over this in our head, wondering why, why? The injury revisits us in vulnerable moments. The heart doesn’t have a timeline for loss or grief.

I went into meditation recently over the loss of a friend, many years ago. It has always troubled me how it ended. One day this person just disappeared. Poof. Our friendship for many years, evaporated, and all ties were cut, all lines of connection. When I’d reach out, as I did recently in a nostalgic moment of vulnerability and longing for a true friend relationship (we all have those, don’t we?), it became clear to me that he did not want to be contacted by me. I could feel that he felt betrayed; I could feel the sting of his perception of my betrayal. This wasn’t new to me. Though it still bothered me that, in his mind, I was the source of an injury, which he kept blocking me from healing, correcting.

When I inquired into this, my True Divine Self said that it was his Soul’s path to experience betrayal (I recalled his Venus in Scorpio). But wait, I thought, this was one of the most enlightened souls I’ve met! He happened to be one of the greatest healers I’ve ever known. Then, a list of spiritual teachers were recited — people who were great healers and teachers, who made very human, sometimes awful, mistakes. Everyone has an Ego, a human experience. We all can have soul missions that look very different from our external, worldly role.

Then, I received guidance. “He may or may not still hold feelings about this but you have a choice as to whether to continue to participate. All you have to do is declare that you no longer want to play this part. Embody the light and love you are, that’s all. You were never anything other than light to one another, anyhow. You know this.”

Then a profound wave of love flowed over and through me. Now, there was nowhere for his projections to land. I was and am pure love. I thought of the nursery rhyme “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.” Crap can’t stick to you when you own who you truly are (crap only sticks to you when it has a place to land –a niggling self-doubt, shame, questions about your worthiness, etc. But we can change that, too).

That’s the power of free will. Things happen in life that we may not be able to control, fated events where we literally play our part, or role, in another’s healing journey. They can attach all kinds of drama to it (and we can react with our own, if we choose, and keep that karmic wheel turning). We always have the free will to say: “I love myself enough to not continue this.”

Personally, I’d prefer to “opt out” of the wheel of suffering. There are plenty of opportunities to perpetuate pain in the world. Like a piece of junk mail or spam that you don’t recall ever signing up for, it’s all too easy get roped into another’s painful story without your permission, and keep it going by adding your pain to it, thus creating more suffering. Just opt out.

I now understood that the real pain in my heart was not that of missing him, but the pain of believing I’d never feel so fully met, understood, seen, believed in, fulfilled again. I knew I was reaching for this old energy because I’ve been experiencing a series of unfulfilling connections. But this feeling my Soul wants to experience again was created by the resonance we once shared – it was not bequeathed by him personally. Nor was this able to be taken from me.

I may (still) love him, but I love myself more. To me, loving myself more means not reaching out, longing, for a sticky energy that is clearly not “for me”. I love myself enough to not give my light to people who cannot receive it.

If it feels bad, I opt out.

In this Scorpio season, we can easily feel haunted by old betrayals, grief, hurts and wounds. To feel something has been taken away, denied or destroyed creates pain for the Soul– because we know this is simply not true (ever!). No one can take what is ours.

So much of the time, in hurts of the heart, we believe we need to forgive another to move on. Or get to a place where we are so healed that another’s actions don’t affect us. Well that could take… forever.

All we really need is to own our innocence in the drama. When we own our light, forgiveness is unnecessary. We recline back into the easy knowing that we are only light and love. And so are they (even if they have temporarily forgotten). Truly, we deserve to only be with those who expand, uplift, delight and enhance us. And we can love our self enough to act on that knowing.

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…for more on love and letting go, read my book Karmic Dates and Momentary Mates: The Astrology of the Fifth House

The post Scorpio Is Forgiveness Season- Or Is It? appeared first on Moonkissd by Jessica.

Mars is currently transiting my Third House (of neighbors, communications, transportation, mind), and as Mars transits goes it’s textbook aggravating.

Seeking relief, I decide to go shopping but my stress-relieving trip proves more stressful. The mall is crowded with people wearing sour looks. I feel shamed, by the body language and tsk-tsk of both customers and salespeople, for bringing my friendly puppy to “pet-friendly” stores. While driving back home, a driver lays on her horn because I allow a family, huddled together on a small median, to cross the street on a green light. Reaching my neighborhood, I drive through a kid-populated area and receive an accusatory glare — a glare that tells me she thinks I’m driving too fast although I’m well under the speed limit.

Meanwhile, I’m still thinking about an earlier correspondence I had with a spiritual teacher who responded to a vulnerable question with projections, unkindness. Moments later, bristling with accumulated irritation, I notice I am behind a car with the bumper sticker reading “Metta” (lovingkindness). Primed, I viciously think: Ha! This is probably the worst offender of all. Holy on the meditation cushion, sure, but this one will be the first to leer at you when you accidentally bump into them and spill their seven-dollar designer coffee. That’s how the cycle perpetuates: Blood-thirst begets blood-thirst.

When frustration, anger or worry threaten to send the rest of my life spiraling, I slow down. I get still. I listen to the gentle tumble of the clothes in the dryer, the soft breath of my sleeping puppy laying next to me, the steady pecking of the chicken outside my office window, the silkiness of my pajama bottoms against my skin, the warmth of spicy tea going down my throat. I bake lemon bread with fresh-picked Meyers lemons I buy from the market. I take a walk. From the trees turning colors outside my window, to the stillness of silence surrounding, I ground myself in the gentle steadiness and comforts of Earthly life. These are the things that transport me from ground zero back to solid ground.

Scorpio season churns our emotions with truths, bottom lines. The intensity of our own emotional experience can overwhelm our body, signaling a need to return to our senses. Taurus, as a counterbalance, offers sanctuary, safety in the world of nature, pleasure and beauty. A Venus-ruled Earth sign, Taurus best restores our sense of calm and ease through the natural world. I think of my Taurus friend who, when deep in the throes of a Pluto-Moon transit and teeming with icy hot emotions and despair, went for a run in the forest, planted herself next to a tree, and surrendered years of emotional hell. While the tree supported her and the Earth absorbed her emotions, she experienced a surge of purification. By connecting with Earth and her body, by going into her senses, she came to her senses.

In periods of emotional intensity, irritation, confrontation it’s easy to lose connection with our sanity. When affronted, we want to react, defend our self, even if doing so has proven unsatisfactory in the past. We might simmer on a slow burn, plot revenge, spin out into negative stories or conspiracy theories. It’s natural to react to offenders, even if it hijacks our higher intelligence: Science says we all have a reptile (lizard) brain that is triggered by “reptile issues” such as territoriality, and when the reptile brain is in control, we don’t have access to our frontal cortex (which explains why we why, after a stressful argument, we wonder why we were unable to say the thoughts we can clearly articulate now).

There is something primal in each of us that easily perceives anything from a glare or bump from a stranger to a loud noise as a threat to its survival.  It’s interesting that during autopilot responses to stress, the more reflective, higher response of the prefrontal cortex available to us is only accessible through awareness and acknowledgment of our feelings. Science shows that simply naming the emotion we are experiencing can stop the amygdala from firing, allowing the space for the prefrontal cortex to say: hey, we’ve encountered this before, and we’re okay. Cup of tea?

This is the first step toward safety and sanity, toward a return to the senses.

When the world’s non-sense presses in on you, where do you recover solid ground? Nature? A candlelit table? The arms of a loved one? Taurus Full Moon invites us to sit in a forest, by a stream, next to a tree or on a cushion and discover solid ground again. A grounding question to ask, What do I stand on? What do I stand for? Can I allow my true values to support me when the wind, and my hot emotions, blow? Because once you are firm in your heart values, once you connect with your innate goodness and kindness and trust it, nothing – not even a fierce emotion – can undermine you.

It’s a time of year for honesty about this, because right now we can see behind any “truthfulness” that conceals hidden motivations; behind actions and words that do not reflect humane values of kindness, tolerance, compassion. When our emotions churn in response to the ugliness we will sometimes encounter, can we honestly acknowledge what we feel, and be as unshakable as the firm, kind, confident Great Oak?

In keeping with the spirit of Taurus, we don’t have to do much to access the grounding support of this Full Moon. We can be lazy about it. Simply noticing the pleasures of this Earth and this body allow us to feel supported, to remember the world is a safe place. In the clothes softly tumbling in the dryer, in the hum of the teakettle we can rebuild repose, confidence, sanity, trust and safety. How easy is that.

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