Notes from A Season That Demands Attention
This is a season where so many around me, so many people I work with - and me myself - are feeling pressure or tension that beg a response.
Many people are finding themselves between a rock and a hard place, facing decisions and processes that are asking, “Who are we really?” “What do we really want and how bad do we want it?”
Below are a couple of offerings that I’ve found to be supportive for myself or those I sit with during this time that demands we pay attention, go deep, and find an ability to move with confidence and power.
Discernment Processes Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Let me start here. Previous ways of making decisions may not seem sufficient right now. Or you may just feel like the weight of your decisions or movements is demanding more reflection and deeper alignment.
Here are a couple of simple practices that you can try to discern with Spirit when you feel like you are between a rock and a hard place.
Practice #1:
1) Make a list of all the options you currently know.
2) For each option, write the feelings you have in connection with it - these can be emotions, sensations in your body.
3) Take time with each option using any spiritual practice you have that helps you be attentive to spirit - this can be prayer, quiet listening, spirit writing, an oracle deck, meditation, etc. - and make note of what happens.
4) Review the notes you’ve taken and reflect - What happened during this process? Did anything shift or make itself clear? Do you feel invited to do anything in response?
Practice #2:
1) Write out your current situation.
2) Write out your desired situation.
3) Specifically ask the Spirit or any spiritual help you call on, and yourself, to show the “wisdom in the gap”. In other words, “What can this gap show me (or pull out of me?)”
4) After setting that intention, engage in a spiritual practice you have that helps you be attentive to spirit - this can be prayer, quiet listening, spirit writing, an oracle deck, meditation, deep breathing, etc. - and make note of anything that comes up.
5) Reflect - What happened during this process? Do you feel invited to do anything in response?
A Reminder
Reminder: when the world is shifting under our feet (more often than we remember), it is not a time to build tall.
Stay close to the ground, nimble, attentive.
By “tall” I am not making a statement on bigness or smallness.
This is an invitation to set yourself up for shifts.
Look to the earth. Literally - pay attention to what is happening in the nature around you, invite the help of plant allies if you know how to or are connected to people who do.
Look to the sky. Literally - pay attention to the stars and planets. Tell the time by the sun and moon. Look for the wisdom in astrological interpretations of the movements of the stars and planets.
Look front and back. Consider the generations before, those who made a way out of no way so that you would be here today. Those whose lives were experiments just like yours. Learn more history. Look up resources about a part of your spiritual lineage that remains a mystery. Learn from and sift through the decisions and frameworks of those you came from.
Left and right. Consider who is alongside you. Is there any mutually beneficial way your decisions and moves can involve each other? Are there ways you are connected to people around you that are showing themselves to be unhealthy or not aligned?
Look inside. Take lots of time with yourself. What do you know about yourself? What are you trying out to see? What parts are trying to debut or expand themselves?
A Poem
All That Is Left
Start in the cracks and
spread far and wide
so that
by the time they see you
they cannot
pick you out
without ruining
further
all that is left
of their kingdom
then
that too
break down
break
and break
and break
use its bits
for your present need
your generation
until
all that is left
all that they can point to
when compelled to boast
is a ruin (barely)
of their imagined past
and you
alive
present
Support I Offer
Birth chart readings - to help you receive yourself and receive the time with wisdom.
Spiritual Direction - to hold non-judgmental space for reflection and discernment.
Downloadable Resources for Individual and Collective reflection.
We got this.