...Breath and emotions flowing like water... full article, part 2

                                                           II.

“I saw the angel

in the marble and

carved until I set

him free”

--Michelangelo                                            (quoted from Diane Booth Gilliam's “Yogastrology:Yoga meets astrology, chapter on Cancer.)

       Cancer moon goddess, Artemis, warrior goddess who abhors violence, 

                                                                                                                         in the light of the sun...

                                                                                                         picture from Dark Beauty Magazine, 

Photographer: Vijat Mohindra (Vijphoto.com)

And that's what the energy of Cancer carries....

 the urgency to dive deep into the center, our Self, explore, and nurture what that soft human heart loves.

 Represented by the symbol for emotion, memory, connection to the earth, our habits, our relatedness to childhood, etc,  the moon, its all about finding the Self and nurturing the good, the bad, the ugly and beautiful, finding the depth of the human experience, our emotional world.

Our connection to “below” and “above” is our heart. 

 Our chest represents our ability to be vulnerable with life...When we are vulnerable, we think we lose our strength and find weakness...really, we are living in integrity when we honor what we feel and find our truth. 

 We can find our strength in acknowledging and nurturing ourselves.

It is not selfish.

It is not wrong to love instead of judge ourselves.

In fact we need a healthy Ego in order to give back.

SOOOOO.....

Why do we feel guilty for loving what we love?

And in that judgment, those rules, we have habits we don't love... things that harm us. We peer into those dark places and instead of being selfish we choose to hate them, to think we're wrong and feel shame. 

 That darkness is part of the human experience. 

 Once sat with, these dark areas transform into our deepest lessons.... usually they are coping devices, soothing, for wounds we knew not what to do with. 

 Once seen as such we become vulnerable, and we have a choice.... show our vulnerability, empowering ourselves to our strength, or begin to judge to hate to condemn ourselves with a label.

 we empower through nurturing those wounds, those dark places that human experience has shown us the depth of our psyche, the depth of our ability to heal relies on our ability to nurture the wound, the cause and ourselves with the utmost love, like a mother has correcting a child. 

 Salve the wound. 

It may be dark, but that's just a polarity....know the Light hides in the wound. 

 Bring your light to it, and then to the Light by softening yourself to feel it, explore it, and smile at it.

Balance the polarity by cultivating the opposite.

We are dark.

We are light.

Both contain the Light.

Light vs. light? Hmmm...what?!

[Circling around polarity (the dark and light) through the labyrinth of the internal, and into the center of the self, balancing the polarity in wholeness, Light. 

Self lies at the center of the labyrinth, the center of the Light, and through the cultivation of opposites, we balance to the Center of the Self....we find our true essence, and realize the dark and light create beauty and depth.

And in the center, we find change. The labyrinth is the healing.]

Light is the source of the Self, of ALL things....

....it lives centered within....

 and when we center, we see our essence which is that Light; differentiated but one with all things, taking this human form not to be only light, but to experience pain, discomfort, joy and fear, love and apathy.... just to experience the depth, the dark shadow of humanity. 

But...

We think of this as bad....

BUT....

... Our experience leads us to our light. 

All that is, IS for our highest good....

...just when do we see and accept the lesson that opens our eyes to see it...

 And in the sign of Cancer we learn what it means to nurture our experience in love and find our inner truth or essence.  Here, within, we find our emotional awareness to heal, allowing us to open the chest, open our hearts, our vulnerability to the world by addressing the wholeness, dark and light, of the self. 

 And in that openness we find space that allows us room to find gentleness.

~Once we find inner peace and connection, we will find outer peace and connection.~

But we nurture the inner change, the transformation that Kali has brought to our attention the first half of 2013, and become soft to surrender, to open and find what we love, what serves us, what our hearts speak to us from that essence to bring forth in our experience.

When we nurture ourselves, we become conscious of the Self. We respond when habits no longer serve us. 

 we reach the into the depths within to find the release.

And that's exactly what we've been doing :)

Kali has spoken. We have heard the call to transform.

The struggle of trying is no longer needed...let it go.

did you know?  The greek meaning for Evil = to labor....???!!!

 learning to look with love at the dark thru sitting with it to release the emotion / thought / habit, because the darkness isn't bad, evil, wrong, a reason to give up on the Self... rather our experiences aren't always easy to digest. That darkness is a result.

So we learn to digest, not to struggle...

We learn to look.

We find the centered action through mindful engagement.

Darkness, like dark matter in the universe, is full of potential.

And no, lol, I'm not saying run out and live from your shadow, doing anything you can for an experience to find your light through...ha, rather find what IS.

Unfortunately it takes an explosion... a lightening bolt, to bring out the potential in dark matter...

.... A strike of light.

And we've all seen the face of Kali, Uranus and Pluto over the last 6 months to 2 years.

Once the explosion is over, we can with mindfulness pick up the pieces of life and create a new picture, a transformed picture with ease through awakening via pranayama (right action, right breath for what IS).

We're doing the work already.

Now the cosmos comes into support what we've sustained in the darkness, the distress of the last few years.....

Riding in on the white horse, suited in armor....right?!

haha...no, not quite, 

But.

We're becoming ready for the change.... but how to nurture and soften the transition into transformation.

You want to know a depth of empathy? Of true love and compassion? Know yourself, your darkest place.... sit with it.... breathe with it.... explore it with mindful curiosity, like a child. And watch how quickly the dark leads you to the depth of emotion, of experience, and hence it's release.

Why is it so hard to let go of negative emotions and experience?

Hahahaha

Because we don't ALLOW ourselves to FEEL them.

Frankly, it's exhausting, uncomfortable, and sometimes when sitting I've gotten up and proceeded to throw things and feel even sillier.

_______________So I learned to smile.                     

                                                            

Internally first.

Then on the outside..............

Once I was processing something so deep in meditation that this smile emerged; and, as it emerged, I saw my darkness not as a beast, but emerging as a beaten child.....a child judged, not nurtured. I cried as I realized fear was at the base of every emotion, movement, action...and I cried. And cried. And cried.

After the crying, this soothing vision came in....I saw myself as nurturing this depth, this darkness, 

and I became able to feel it... and let it go.

I realized...through all my habits, my shame of dark....

I just wanted to feel love.

We feel a lack of nurturing because we haven't been taught how; our cultural structure and institutions have neglected to support love and emotion. We fight each other, civil / religious wars, we rape, murder, and steal, we have starving children by the millions....wow.... we have so much darkness in the world, is it a wonder we tend to live out of the negativity, the void of love?

to feel nurtured and to nurture ourselves?....what does that even mean to us in a Society that taught us to judge ourselves and label unity into dichotomy....

especially for things we do that are 'dark'?

.......................

Must fix, must fix....

…......

Must we?

There's nothing to fix.

There's only nurturing needed.

Try it :)...Drop into the breath...

awaken your curiosity of the depth of your feeling, your being, your Self... and explore, as a child, with innocence, and notice what that child sees...do you love what you see?  Or do you feel shame? Shame is a product of false judgment. 

 Nurture whatever it is by sitting with it. 

 Nurture it, get to know it.

Breathe with it.

 Don't excuse it....nurture it. 

 And you'll find that the “tough mother” isn't needed afterall, but is reborn into a compassionate boundary setter. Not a de-centering, not by correction, but by feeling the hearts pulse for life and what we love, the attachment to what doesn't' serve us, a "rut", falls away.

It's not that you have to immediately surrender that thing/habit/thought, but rather surrender, soften yourself....and see what that nurturing does for you, your Self.

See if it changes that “thing” from the inside out.

We are meant to love what serves us and discern and pass over what we don't...it's that way for our survival.... instead we are taught this habit is wrong, through a lack of love and acceptance for the concept of love and pleasure being our highest calling. Really it draws us towards our highest vibration as our soft hearts can love what they love out of our highest good and nurturing for ourselves.

You are allowed to feel.

You are allowed to nurture yourself.

It's not selfish ...in fact, it's necessary to extend love and empathy outward.

It is there for our survival... our spirit's way / voice to call out to our Dharma... our vulnerable spot leads us to our love which leads us to our survival... our heart's calling

Flow with the divine, the cosmos. Receive the support and guidance. 

Aligning your will with the Light, the cosmos, and find yourself in the midst of surrender receiving all you wish for.

The sages say,

The moment we surrender,

Everything we have been wishing for is ours.

Celebrate the water influence by feeling

Align with the moon by softening and surrendering.

Transform with Kali in the form of Pluto and Uranus, calling for our inner change of structures that have outlived their usefulness that will reflect into global change.

And allow Kali to show you the dead limbs on your living, growing being that need pruned for your own higher path. It can be painful and unsettling, but the cosmos has the support during the next 6 months that once we soften and receive it, we find a soothing dose of water to nurture our spirits, to soften the wounds, and to find the healing we need to transform and grow into our manifestation.

Start breathing, start engaging. Start your healing by nurturing, aligning with love, let that “shit” slide off your shoulders by setting your intention, and allow what's died to fall away with nurturing support to that inner Self. And with the lessons of mindfulness and breath, create ease by further drawing down into your own depths and feeling. Here you'll find the center, the Light, that absorbs the light and dark to remove the duality into understanding the Self and how all things leads to our discovery of that Self placed in unity and healing.

Some of the darkest people I know are the Lightest on the inside....our perception is the illusion. We choose to live out of the light, even through the darkness.

...soften into the new, the transforming

….love the old, but release it with a blessing and faith, knowing all things are coming.

Can you soften to it, to yourself, and others ....

“What if the Source of All Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omni sexual?

What if the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of your understanding, forcing you to change the ways you think about everything?

What if, as Rusty Morrison speculates in * Poetry Flash, * 'the sublime can only be glimpsed by pressing through fear's boundary, beyond one's previous conceptions of the beautiful'?

I invite you to close your eyes and sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining intelligence.”

--Rob Brezsny

modern day philosopher and astrologer.