art is by Hannah Thornhill
New Moon in Aquarius || January 21
We are to make our precious lives living, pulsing, breathing, working expressions of beauty. And what is beauty to you? Decide. Decide for yourself and refuse with all your might to let anyone or anything else define it for you.
For everywhere we grace, every home we make, every corner of life that we curate, may our actions be taken in accordance with what we know to be beautiful and good, supportive and nourishing for all.
Beauty is revolutionary. To muster the spiritual energy and foresight, to smply allow ourselves to play with form… this is a radical act of self sufficiency and care. This is risky and vulnerable — this is the eternal child in her joy and fun. Where do you keep yourself from play? Why do you believe you don’t deserve to have fun while you go along?
Why so serious, love?
Buddhist teacher Pema Chördrön always reminds us of why and how not to take these passing feelings floating within us so seriously, but rather to befriend them with a gentle curiosity and ease. This is maitri, loving-kindness towards ourselves. She says "...'this very moment is the perfect teacher, and it's alway with us' is the most profound instruction. Just seeing what's going on — that's the teaching right there. We can be with what's happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives."
You and I, we aren’t meant for the over-culture program of conformity. You and I, we are meant for what’s different, emerging straight from the mud and muck of soul. Like bubble-gum orchids blooming from the back crevice of the scraggly old tree. Like the first yellow Lily of a rainy spring. Like a God portal opening fungi popped straight out of a pile of poo. We ourselves are the complex beauty of the mystery of Mother Earth.
We ourselves are the something-else-out-there-for-me that we seek. It’s all within us, baby. It’s all just right there, in the pause between the breath. In the most dense moments of conflict, when we create that inner-spaciousness that makes others feel safe. In the daily ways that we wash the dishes, pull the weeds, put on clothes. All of it can be a revolutionary act of beauty, if we really want it to. You and I, we are not mono-crop agriculture. You and I are an entire mountain range of wildflowers.
The rush, the impulse to move right along… the itch for fast, free, and perfect all at the same time is a huge distraction from the deeper work of our lives! Pick one. You can’t have all three. But actually, pick none. Because who wants plastic perfection anyways? How truly beautiful are the nuances of growth? And who wants free anyways? How rewarding and wholesome is mutual recognition for the time and energy given to creation? And who really wants fast anyways? How fundamental, healing and grounding is the easy-going?
I have a toddler who is presently in a stage of learning about time and patience and wow are those confusing human lessons to learn. You mean to say that I can’t have absolutely everything that I want right this very moment and all of the time?? No no my dear, none of us can. And I find myself realizing that slow paints a mental picture that can be equally as thwarting as it’s opposite energy, fast, and so I do my best to bring us back into a grounding gratitude for the present moment and all that is possible at our fingertips in the spaciousness of the Now.
What an invigorating and profound lesson for all of us, toddler and elder and everyone in between. Right here, right now, in our abilities to choose beauty and mystery and to refuse conformity and to commit to the long game in present moment patience, with plenty of silly belly happy grins of fun along the way.