On Hope & Hopelessness

(New Moon in Sagittarius reflections, 12/12/23)

“All relentless entities depend enormously on a few things: Your fatigue. Your hopelessness. You're turning away.”

- Hala Alyan (poet, psychologist)

In context of her conversation with adrienne maree brown, it’s clear Hala’s not saying we should never feel hopeless, exhausted, or the draw to turn deeply inward.

You are not aligning with the forces of greed and destruction when you allow these extremely challenging emotions to exist. 

Hopelessness, helplessness, despair, fear, numbness, rage, overwhelm are totally natural to come up and through at this moment in time.

Coloniality depends on a denial of relationship to these emotions, a refusal (or lack of support, skills & resources) to bear witness to the people in both our internal and external worlds who are being rocked by them.

Decoloniality depends on intentionally relating to these emotions, and bearing witness to the people in both our internal and external worlds who are being rocked by them. 

Grounded Hope (Jupiter in Taurus), for me, is revealed on the other side of these emotions.

To amplify (Jupiter in Sagittarius) what has been drowned out. To receive and attune to every precise feeling (Jupiter in Pisces) that I can – and stay with it, as long as I can, until the tides shift towards action informed by what I’ve witnessed, learned, understood.

It’s this journey of witnessing that I come to truly understand who and what I truly am. 

It clarifies my thinking and my offering.

But the key here, is to not unconsciously enmesh with one emotion’s perspective of reality.

And that is a razor sharp edge. Because these kinds of emotions can so easily be overwhelming, all-consuming, where this is all that can be known and perceived in the moment of witnessing.

I personally do not know if I’ve ever been able to fully bear witness to exiled parts of myself, without first offering Connection to the parts of myself that want to protect me from seeing and feeling what is being shown.

In other words, the ways we “get in our own way” is the exact place where we create radical change through Self-Connection.

That said …

I also do not know if I’ve ever had the clarity and strength of center alone — when I’m not being held in a clear, grounded relational container, be it with humans, planets, plants, ancestors, forest, Sky — to keep dancing with and honoring my protective parts without mental interference (agenda, overlaying of my own dominant narratives), so that I can then keep returning my exiled parts long enough to hear their story and see what they want to show me.

So, one aspect of my soul desire is a plethora of practices and resources for Self-containment and Self-connection in the process of authentically bearing witness, within and without.

Towards that aim, in my work, I am tending more contexts, containers, resources, languages and skills to relate to the entire ecosystem of high voltage cosmic energies that step down through the Moon and Mercury, into our personal and collective systems. 

If we can honestly approach, meet, dance with, create with and then RELEASE identification with these cosmic influences through our physical, emotional and mental bodies, I believe (and see and experience) that we can make radical shifts in the personal and collective patterns that would otherwise repeat themselves again and again.  In this, there’s hope.