Lunar Eclipse in Virgo
the courage to share your dilemma & release the script
Included in this post is:
Venus, Chiron and Mercury in Aries & this Virgo Full Moon Eclipse:
The courage to share your dilemma & release the script
The astronomy & astrology of this lunar eclipse
A maturation of Love
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Borage (photo taken a few summers ago, but I think this is a really nice flower ally to support us with all the activity around the Pisces-Aries threshold)
Venus, Chiron and Mercury in Aries & this Virgo Full Moon Eclipse
You’re not alone if you’re not sure:
what you like
what you want
where you’re going
who you are beneath the roles you’ve been cast in
You’re not flawed or broken if you struggle to:
put what matters most to you into words
speak without your voice shaking
share your deeper worries and fears
(believe that you) make sense
You’re not the only one who is well into adulthood and is:
still confused
still confused about how and what it means to ‘be an Adult’ and why it is we’ve come to “adult” the way we do (Does it mean showing up in a certain way in your relationships? Achieving financial stability? Being able to understand and follow-through with self-care? Caring more about what you look like? Caring less about what you look like? Throwing out your stuffie?)
still confused about what it means for you to be authentic in relationship
And it’s normal if you’re still learning how to:
reach out
receive support
receive pleasure
let go
Don’t be fooled. Even the people who appear most stable, still have nervous systems that go up and down the whole ladder. People who seem clear, have confused parts. People who are calm, have anxious parts. People who show up confident, carry self-doubt. People who seem proper and self-contained, experience out-of-control-anger. People who seem super-comfortable in themselves, carry shame and secrets.
Shame (and being taken down by shame) is part of being human.
We know it’s unsustainable when we only identify with our shame, fear and doubt ….
but it’s also unsustainable when we only identify with our confidence, calm and competence.
To be human is to be messy. To be human is to be multiple. And it takes a whole lot of Life force energy to try to contain ourselves within a single role or archetypal expression.
But even as I assert our innate multiplicity and fluidity as humans, there sure is fixedness in us too. There are aspects of ourselves that are not actually that open to influence or flexible. And then there are aspects of ourselves that are very impressionable and permeable. And this varies between individuals.
So, it’s less about fluidity & flexibility = good and fixedness = bad. It’s more about the unrealistic expectations that are birthed from homogenization and standardization. The culture of productivity and progress has put sooo much pressure on the human to keep our performance predictable to those who “sponsor" us (this could mean a number of things — could be financial, emotional, social…), and we’re all de-conditioning and dis-entangling ourselves from it.
So where do we go from here?
The medicine is inside the dilemma.
We notice and acknowledge to ourselves the dilemma — but we limit this to just naming our own felt-experience of it, not an analysis of external situation.
We remind ourselves that we’re also inside of a larger relational field that’s influencing our felt-experience and perception — and that we don’t have a full picture of what that is yet. We’re inside of a larger Story to which the ending is not written in stone because the characters haven’t all been given voice yet. We reach for more context, step back for a bigger picture.
Then, in whatever way we can in a given relationship, we practice naming it out loud — without a script, attachment or agenda for what’s supposed to happen next (can’t fake this part!! the other person will feel that).
We ground and drop into a deeper listening to what is present, and improvise from there.
That’s the open door. You don’t have to fix your emotions or heal yourself in order for something new to constellate. You do have to let yourself be human and available to feeling.
But it’s scary because once we’ve named something out loud, we have to embrace being incoherent (not the same as incompetent!) as both our internal system and the relational system move through a shuffle and scramble. It’s scary because we don’t know how long we will be in this incoherence. Inside this place of … what’s happening? Are we going to make it through, or find resolution? Wait who’s in charge? Panic! Retreat! Go back to the familiar pattern/configuration/conversation/conflict!
But we must hold ourselves and be willing to stay here, in the unknown, navigating without a script.
Why must we drop the scripts? It forces you to enter into a deeper listening and empathy that can shift, in and of itself, the way a relational field is configured. When you are listening with your whole self, you’re actually make your system or instrument more available to meet the “unwanted” identities, the “monstrous” aspects of self or the archetypal energies that are your personal shame triggers. You make yourself available to *possibly* being perceived (by yourself or by another) as the kind of person that you’ve been trained to not want to be perceived as. But remember: allowing other people’s narratives, realities, perceptions to exist, isn’t the same as agreeing with them. Allowing undesirable emotions to be here, isn’t the same as being run by them. Yes, it might kick you off-center, but you can find your way back. This deeper listening and allowing is how you discover your true nature, cultivate intimacy and it gives way to the connection that you are seeking. It strengthens your immune system or authenticity in more relationships when you can hold space for more gods, self-states, emotions to arise.
Then the person before you can truly feel that you have space for them.
And the possibilities of what can emerge, what fresh visions of Love can be mutually discovered from there … is so often undeniably worth it.
By Nela (nyabla.net) (with additional annotations by Onceinawhile) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Astronomy of a lunar eclipse
I think we all know this, but it’s still fun to just linger with the basics and let them “take” in our system more fully, informing our perceptions.
A full moon occurs when the Sun and the Moon are 180° apart, with the Earth located between them. The Moon’s surface facing the Earth reflects the Sun’s light and appears to us fully illuminated.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth and Moon line up precisely and the Earth’s shadow (or umbra) is cast upon the Moon. Colors with shorter wavelengths (blues and violets) are scattered while colors with longer wavelengths (reds and oranges) are reflected. So, the Moon appears to “blood red” from the Earth’s perspective.
This Full Moon Eclipse will be visible on the West Coast beginning at 11:26 p.m. on Thursday, and at 2:26 a.m. Friday morning on the East Coast, with totality lasting for around 65 minutes.
Astrology of a lunar eclipse.
On a full moon, the inner meaning and aspiration that was birthed or seeded on the New Moon is fulfilled in some form. Something comes to fruition, followed by a depletion of vital energy from that particular version of the form as the Moon wanes.
On a lunar eclipse, however, our ability to perceive this full moon phase of our creative process is obscured in some way. We can lose a sense of clear feedback around where we’re at and where we’re going.
It could be that the emotional patterns and subconscious beliefs held in the bodymind have been somehow taking us off-course or scooping us up and away from the experiences that our soul actually desires, but that the ego reads as not-right or a threat. Then during an eclipse or a retrograde, we can be confronted with those patterns and our cosmic support system “assists” us with their release.
But also, it might not be that. You might not be off-track. Instead, you just might not be getting the clear or concrete feedback that your mind wants to have in order to feel affirmed in your direction. What’s being manifested in your creative process is temporarily obscured from your vision, imperceptible to your normal Daytime senses or outside your conscious awareness. You might not be able to perceive the order or logic behind what’s happening, how it’s happening, when something might arrive, or where you’re heading — but there is a golden thread through this period of darkness and uncertainty. If you can surrender into it, a real transformation is allowed to occur. While this is a general theme for lunar eclipses, it’s especially true for this Virgo Eclipse. Right now, we’re all being offered an opportunity to more deeply let go of (or at least relax) our need to know, figure out, fix, control, manage, order, organize what is innately untameable and wild about the (co)creative process.
In this scenario, just notice: what do you tend to do when you hit a patch of darkness, fog or conditions of low visibility? Where do your thoughts go? What stories do you tell about yourself or others? What strategies do you tend to reach for? What can you let go of? How can you be more kind to yourself?
And finally, another possibility is some mixture of the two. You’re on the right track, but you do need some editing or adjustment that helps you to meet the other (Full Moons are relational) where they are at. In this case, what patterns or stories come up when you’re asked to edit or adjust something important to you that you are creating? How can you re-source your Self through these edits?
Whichever way this is playing out for us personally, it’s educational in terms of learning about what we put our trust in during times of uncertainty and what gives us permission to feel worthy of our desires and soul’s joy. It involves us continuing to practice speaking more truthfully to ourselves about what we want, discerning what we can authentically offer to others, and where we can better support ourselves (and nourish our nervous systems around) allowing our creative process to take the time it takes.
But I know … I (and alllllll my Aries planets) know … that going slow and hanging out in the unknown can be more than scary; it can feel impossible and threatening to our survival. This is really where cultivating an internal felt-sense of safety in the present moment, whenever possible, can support our discernment here.
There are ways that we might avoid the tension of waiting by taking short-cuts and applying the equivalent of artificial fertilizer or supplements that interfere with the dream’s innate instructions around its gestation and development, that reduce full saturation of the dream’s colors when it comes into the world, or that harm the dream’s holding environment when it’s still a baby.
There are ways we plant seeds only to then dig into the soil and pull them up out of their soft dark beds in the ground, to see if they’re sprouting.
There are ways we keep giving up on watering our unique seeds because they didn’t sprout soon enough compared to other plants — only to go back to plant them again, because we can’t not keep returning to the whispers of our soul desires.
As we approach this Full Moon, the serenity prayer keeps coming back to me — you know the one — "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
With that prayer in mind, I want to ask:
What can you give up trying to change or fix about yourself?
What’s innate to your energetic mechanics? Your unique way of being and moving in the world?
What matters most to your heart of hearts, that’s now asking for your time, love, attention and energy? What does this ask you to let go of?
How can you support yourself in supporting your Dream with more time to grow and flesh out? Liberating it from unrealistic expectations? But also holding space for it to surprise you?
A Maturation of Love
On the day before this lunar eclipse, Saturn conjoined the Sun beginning a new synodic cycle. During such a conjunction, the Sun can burn up old perceptions, images and forms of Saturn (e.g. permission, authority, authorization, commitment, structure, responsibilities, follow-through, maturation, grounding, realism, father figures, father archetype), giving way to a kind of death and re-emergence of how Saturn shows up in our lives and expresses through us. For example: we might now be really clarifying our definition of follow-through, in light of our soul’s joy and purpose. That’s a potential here. But again, since the conjunction is so close to an Eclipse, I’d suggest approaching this thread through indirect, contemplative methods that honors the darkness, grief and mystery, while offering our song of Love to it.
to mutually discovering fresh visions of love and commitment
and human kindness,
Nicole
