“Everything is process.
Process is everything.
All life is process”.
Anne Wilson Schaef
And since my last email, my process has brought me back to Muxia from the rose farm in the Asturian Mountains where I have spent so much of the last few months.
Sitting at my desk, I’m looking out over a grey blue scene. At eye level sea gulls skillfully manoeuvre the coastal breeze. The roof, just above my head seems to be their chosen resting place. They congregate and leave there in vast numbers!
La tormenta, the storm that lashed us earlier today has passed for now. Although outside the harbour walls, life seems less peaceful.
I’m also returning to a steadier inner state. The harbour walls that cut across my view remind me to be the safe-haven for my myself, when my strongly felt emotions threaten to overwhelm.
The hermetic principle, as without, so within is alive and kicking!
As I write, we are in the final hours of the dark phase of the moon – the darkest dark, when the moon is hidden from view and, on a cloudless night, we have just the stars to guide us.
It is the perfect time for reflection and for discerning the intention to be set, the seed to be sown as the new moon once more graces our skies.
More and more, I sense that my life is just one big experiment and, in an intentional move away from a linear to a cyclical or spiral world view, a left-brain way of living to a more right-brain experience, I’m experimenting with structuring my life around the moon and sun cycles
The initial draft of my calendar for 2025 looks pretty, and today, I realise that it is moving anti-clockwise – we shall see how practical it is!
Perhaps I’m just setting myself up for greater confusion!
However, as part of this move, I am intending to honour the dark phase of the moon each month, to withdraw, to reflect, to look ahead and to discern my intention for the upcoming moon cycle.
This month, my withdrawal coincides with an astrological phase where Mercury, then Mars, then Mercury again move retrograde. Astrologers advise that this is a time for inner work, for reflection, for healing in readiness for a more forward moving, active phase from next April.
And, in respecting the dark phase, we might be invited to plumb the depths!
I was knocked sideways this morning by a photo popping onto my screen – a memory from this day in 2018.
The image showed the smiling face of a man, affectionately known as Cook Muhammad, standing before a huge bubbling pot of deliciousness. He was preparing a special farewell meal. I was leaving the team and the place that had been home, work and community to me for the previous 4 years.
Cook Muhammad loved that I appreciated everything he served. I loved that lunch was an inclusive time for the team to sit at table together, to be nourished and reset, so that we could focus our time on what each of us was there to do.
During the four years leading up to this farewell lunch, we had changed the world in palpably positive ways.
There was more love, more inclusion, greater understanding, greater unity.
Children and adults alike had been given hope for a family life that had previously been denied them. Traumatised families had found some level of healing. Skills had been developed; resilience built, lives and laughter shared, cultural differences navigated.
I had handed out coloured post-it notes and invited everyone to write down something that they had learned from me, something that they were going to carry forward in their lives.
From the small team, we created a huge rainbow of good intentions on the office wall
I wrote farewell cards to each person, thanking and valuing them for the way they had enhanced my life.
We ate enthusiastically, then lingered together after lunch – sipping piping hot sweet tea from small glasses, sharing hugs, gifts and gratitudes, taking photos, wondering together about the future.
Some strength that was not mine alone sustained me that day. Grace flowed in abundance. All who were present were showered in some way.
Love and sorrow mingled.
This period of my life had been the most professionally fulfilling episode I have ever experienced.
It broke my heart to leave.
My creativity, skills and authenticity had flourished in what seemed an extreme environment. The life force was palpable.
I had grown and filled the space available to me. It seemed the only way I could have stayed was to compromise and limit myself in some way.
My Soul knew I had to go.
During these last weeks at the rose farm, I decided to wrestle with a bunch of particularly stubborn, well-rooted weeds. They were overwhelming some infant fruit trees that had been planted with loving care and hope for a future harvest.
Sapping all the nutrients from the soil, these malas hierbas were threatening to overwhelm the trees.
My process entailed taking the trees from their pots, stripping their roots bare of soil, tracing and untangling the unwanted roots and finally repotting and watering the trees.
By the time I’d finished, I was bruised and sore, covered in mud . . . and extremely satisfied!
The work had been an embodied meditation – a determination to extract these deeply embedded roots from both the small trees and from my life.
It was powerful work – I shouldn’t have been surprised by what has subsequently been uprootedin me
This week, in an assignment for my studies with the Dwarf Planet University, I was invited to explore the astrological transits for a time in my life when my light shone brightly, and inspiration flowed. I chose the date, in 2015 when I delivered the first ever foster care training to local social care staff in the Kurdish Region of Northern Iraq.
It was the birth moment, prior to the ending I’ve just described.
At that time, unbeknownst to me, the Dwarf Planet Eris was activated in my life. She is one of the newly discovered dwarf planets that are thought to represent new aspects of consciousness. Eris’ archetype represents diversity consciousness. From the astrological perspective, Eris was challenging me to embrace diversity and to ensure all my teaching was inclusive.
Depending on our spiritual maturity, Eris can also present strife and disruption in our lives, to encourage growth.
And Eris is exactly sesiquadrate (in a 135⁰ aspect to you and me!) today’s new moon. A sesiquadrate, a square and a half presents a challenge to the beginning of the new monthly cycle.
In Alan Clay’s (i) words,
In Alan’s recent 10-minute video he describes how we might encounter Eris’s diversity consciousness, depending on our current level of maturity and how to overcome any strife we may be experiencing in our lives.
Alan goes on to describe how, for the spiritually evolved, Eris can be a spirit guide transmuting life into love and bringing sacred wisdom into our lives.
And he describes how Eris is a higher octave of Pluto.
Eris lifts Pluto’s archetypal, masculine, transformative energy – a potentially coercive, competitive power into a fierce grace – a strong yet gentle female power which rises to meet the needs of any challenge by transmuting the experiences we’re having into love.
I wasn’t expecting to be sharing the story of the ending from six years ago. My conscious memory was unaware of the anniversary and yet, the event must have been held in my body.
The dark of the moon invited me once again to plumb my inner depths.
Something linked to these events was still entangled in me. I needed to be uprooted once again, stripped bare and untangled.
I needed to give voice to this experience that I’ve been holding silently in my heart for so long.
One thing that the rose farm has repeatedly taught me, is that below the beauty and fragrance of the rose blooms, there are protective thorns.
Weeding between rose bushes is not for the faint hearted!
So, whilst I paint a rosy picture of the work done in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq, it would lack depth and texture if I were to ignore the thorny shadows beneath the blooms.
I truly believe that we each did the best we could, under the circumstances, with the resources, skills and level of maturity available to us. With the benefit of hindsight, many miles and a few more years under my belt, if faced with the same situation, I would wish to approach some of the challenges differently.
How Wonderful! There’s something to celebrate!
Uncompromising deep reflection can help us to see how we have grown and where we may still be repeating the same old patterns!
In my slightly more mature state,
I would notice my own capacity to be competitive, controlling, coercive and manipulative.
I would welcome and acknowledge these parts of myself.
And I would choose to act from my more mature parent aspect that values cooperation, collaboration, inclusion, and respect for myself and for the other.
If my intentions were met with a similar or greater maturity,
I would try to explain my feelings more eloquently and less reactively.
I would ask to hear the perspective of the other.
I would attend to their communication – verbal, non-verbal and what has been omitted, noticing and acknowledging all the emotions as they rise and fall without reacting in the moment.
I would seek to see and approach my own ridiculousness in a light-hearted way.
I would invite us both to sit in the tension of opposing views without grasping at the polarities and wait for a third way, a new way to present itself.
And so, at this new moon,
Are you being invited to look at yourself in an uncompromising way?
And/or to be more inclusive in your world view?
And/or be willing to hear an opposing point of view without reactivity?
If yes, what will be your intention for the coming month?
With gratitude and appreciation for each one of you,
Be happy, be safe, be well,
[i] Watch Alan Clay’s 10-minute interpretation of the dwarf planet energies, and how they might manifest in our lives at today’s new moon here.
* To learn more about Eris, scroll down to the February 2024 Full Moon Feature to hear Alan Clay speak about the Dwarf Planets