It has come to my attention in the last weeks that living your words, holding yourself to your ideals, can come with uncharted territory – especially if your ideals are not aligned with the norm. Non judgement is the specific topic in mind. Living in a state that truly makes no judgements about people, may leave you without intuition to assist you in navigating various situations. You may feel adrift in deciding something about someone or something if you’ve moved away from the practice of making snap judgements or concluding something without definites before you. While this is disorienting at first, it also opens a space within you of allowance. Information that is accurate can be received in the space of allowance with time and openness. You may be provided with a large gap in questioning and knowing; you may find yourself months or years away from your answer, however, the answers will always come in the way you can receive them.
We are accustomed to instant gratification and to judgements. Once you begin this path of unlearning what you thought you knew and allowing each person and situation to show you who they are or what it is, I believe you can expect to be surprised by yourself and others. Will the surprises be pleasant? That depends on your attachment to the outcome. If you can practice non-judgement along with letting go of expectation while embracing your efforts to bring more light and love into this world, then the revelations cannot be unpleasant. Things just are what they are and you can greet that with open arms.
We are at the threshold of the Snow Moon today and it’s Imbolc as well. It feels as if the Bone Mother calls on those ready to dive into fierce introspection. She is a prominent Slavic figure depicted in folklore as a sort of wicked grandmother. She is a powerful, wise, forest-dweller who may help you or devour you depending on the way wild nature moves through her when you cross paths. She represents the space between the living and the unknown, owning fears, and standing face to face with the untamed parts of yourself while opening to initiate radical transformation. She’s not too unlike the Hindu Goddess Kali in some respects, but Baba Yaga claims the power of the Crone; the old woman that many seek to overlook through repression as useless and no longer desirable. That’s a trick, of course, to keep you from knowing her as an archetypal ascended master.
If she doesn’t scare you off, consider calling on her for support in your shadow work under the last Full Moon of this Wood Snake Lunar Year. Ways to support yourself with the final shed through shadow integration:
Confront Fears: Make a Trigger Board. You may have heard of Vision Boards and you may or may not have had good luck with those. They can be an excellent tool for creating new experiences if your fears aren’t holding you back in some way. To Make a Trigger Board, you may only need tools for visuals of words and some paper with honest reflection about your triggers. List the things that you know hold you back. If words are effective enough for you, let that be but if visuals are more helpful, bring in printed images or magazine cut outs of the images that are going to be most helpful to your true processing of what holds you back. Write and/or cut and paste with intention on the paper or poster board of your choosing.
Devour Fears: Hold the words and images in your view. Consider ways you may respond differently. You may have to devour your ego to do this successfully. Invite an image of Baba Yaga into your mind and ask her how to devour your ego. Ask her how to gobble up your fears. Give some quiet space to see what surfaces as an answer or answers. Be gentle with yourself as you do this. Don’t rush through the quiet space, in fact, let there be more quiet space than you think you need.
Reclaim Your Power: Aim to be open to the different responses you gather. Let yourself imagine moving past any triggers and fears with as much loving grace as possible. Spend time seeing yourself reclaim your power in any scenario where you may have gone quiet before, questioned yourself, or reworked back into a known pattern instead of progressing in a way that would help you to make the gains you seek. Comfort sometimes becomes more appealing than change and we stay in ruts we know aren’t helping us. This is a time to be honest about that. Create visuals in your mind or externally of how you feel after you’ve moved past your fear and revisit these as often as you need to convince yourself it’s better on the other side of comfort and fear.
Forest as Reset: Get into the woods if you can after your trigger work. Let Nature hold you and help you to self-heal. Be with the earth in reverence and witness yourself moving with a lighter heart. Earth will hold you every chance you give her.
Sending so many good wishes to the brave souls approaching shadow work. If you find yourself in too deep, remember to call on a therapist to assist you. Some caverns are deeper than others and asking for support to help you out of there may be what’s needed! Love yourself enough to do what’s right for you.
“Be kind to your heart. You may believe it to be weary… yet still it beats. Still it persists, with unquestioning allegiance to life. What a grand heart it is, this sacred heart of yours. How can it be worthy of anything other than tenderness, gratitude, acknowledgement, and appreciation?” – Alana Fairchild
Presence and Positivity 