By Amanda Moreno
I’m in the process of reflecting on the incredible year that has been 2014, and I have to say I’m hesitant to put things into words at this point. Although I’ve been writing about much of the restructuring and growth in this forum, it still feels too tender to be concretized by words.
Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day
I’ve spent time this week going through my journals from this year, specifically the 40 or so pages from my five weeks spent immersed in ‘the work’ while in Florida. These reflections as well as a whole bunch of synchronicities and the cards in my new tarot deck (side note: after four months of searching, I finally found a deck that gave me that love-at-first-sight glow of knowing!) have been echoing one theme: major rebirth. An entirely new cycle beginning. Resolution and purification of some very old core complexes.
This year has been a monumental one in my life at all levels, and I’m happy to be getting positive affirmation and reinforcement, even if there are still parts of me that doubt that I’ve really changed any patterns at all. Perhaps that doubt will keep me humble and honest? I hope so.
Long-held narratives surrounding relationships of all kinds, the anticipation of trauma, and what it means to be of service while having strong boundaries have broken open to more hope and possibility. The resulting upsurge of encounters with my vulnerability and insecurity has helped me to understand just how sensitive I am — and what a blessing that can be, even as I fumble through getting to know myself as an emotional being. I feel like a child in so many ways.
I’ve been blessed in the past year to finally begin to experience the true merging of career and personal path. Vocation in its true form — as Jung used it, mainly as the path towards individuation — is being realized. I can remember specific moments this year when I claimed the labels “astrologer” and, dare I say it, “writer.” I’m so hesitant to claim labels other than my name, so these moments were breakthroughs for me. Creating a sustainable way to live my calling is an adventure I just can’t turn down.
I wrote the above, and then found myself in a many-hours-long plunge into a well of emotions. It felt like all of the old stuff rushing to the surface, like a greatest hits sample-platter of all the things I thought I cleared and healed this year.
This emotional plunge led to a fitful night of moving between sleeping and dreaming and crying. To find comfort and stop some unnecessary mind-fucking, I pulled out Caitlin Matthews’ book on Sophia.
During my time in Florida, I was enchanted by a mega-swarm of synchronicities that kept showing me that Sophianic mythology is of huge importance to my path. I gained more understanding of what I’m here to do and came into contact with the heart of my lineage. This feeling of homecoming happened so frequently this year. It seems to be something that happens as consciousness becomes aware of what the soul knows, tapping into ancient memory.
As lie in my bed, the emotions continued to build. I did my best not to assign meaning and words, but to instead let the emotions come out. At first they trickled slowly, but then gushed out in a torrent. I kept in mind the knowing so supported by my lessons in divine wisdom, courtesy of my run-ins with Sophia: I am here to anchor love. Love is really all there is.
I could feel a particularly insidious old pattern arising: a pattern of amping up drama until someone noticed (they rarely ever do, I’ve come to find out). As the grief intensified I was reminded of my new narrative, that I am someone who asks for, receives and gives support. I managed to find my words, and said out loud to my sweetie (at 4:00 am): “Too much sadness.”
I felt his arms around me (oh, how long I’ve waited for someone to hold me during these times — thank you, 2014!) and the instinct to run and hide and cry in private overwhelmed me so much that I started to crawl to the edge of the bed.
And then I stopped, that I could receive the comfort I had asked for, and he curled himself around my sitting form, and I just let it flow without understanding why.
Finally, words came: I don’t want anyone to suffer anymore. I could feel all around me the acuity of the suffering in the world, the acuity of the suffering in the various lines and lineages I’m a part of, my heart open and tapped in and grieving.
I heard myself saying, “Nothing ever changes,” even as I had an awareness that it felt like I was saying goodbye to something. A swarm of negative thinking, beauty and pain melding to create tension on the heart, and the resulting catharsis. The realization that so much of my personal ‘anchor love and light here’ mantra is based in my ability to open my heart and feel what is going on with my loved ones and in the world.
We have all been through so much during this Uranus-Pluto square. Understatement of the year, I know. And really, it’s not limited to just this small blink in time, as the epic of our collective time on this Earth ripples out in a sphere. We’re nearing the ‘end’ of this one little transformative passage, and I wonder all the time what we will do with what we’ve learned. I wonder if the depths of the Plutonian underworld will be able to integrate the sudden barrages of Uranian lightning bolts. It’s a line of thinking that is something along the lines of: if the soil is not ready, the seed will not take.
And so the prioritization of inner work and the spiritual path continues, even as I grapple with understanding just what that means. I have so much gratitude for getting to participate in the world stage at such a difficult, tumultuous, inspirational and magical time.
Thanks for reading.
Dear Amanda, You seldom fail to touch me, but tonight you seemed to reflect my inner reality in explicit detail. Found myself crying as you directly mirrored so much of my personal drama of this last year or two.
At the beginning you say you want to finalize the process we have been through this year but That is my feeling also because for all the turmoil and visions I lived through this year, as yet, I feel a longing for concrete evidence of a major shift and inner healing or even the direction in my life. I feel as insecure and defensive as ever I have. My confidence this year is shaken and I often wonder if what I have been tasting and seeking isn’t just a pipe dream.
I’d had so many highs during the two previous years but this year energy seemed to hone in on the lows and exaggerate them. Its like every humiliating experience of my early youth has been relived. Humility without defense of self may be the lesson; the felt desire is to be who I am without hiding – allow the others to accept me or not. And it seems that “not” is the popular consensus. I feel like I am confronting the demon who chained me in when I was three years old and he is kicking my ass again!. I want to conquer my fear and be the beautiful being I truly am – free enough to share myself with everyone uninhibitedly! But the rejection seems overwhelming and even though I sort of do truly know who I am – reflective enough to realize what is going on – the battle for middle earth seems to be a losing proposition. My seclusion appears to be my punishment. How do I contribute when no one wants me? That is the felt reality of my life of late.
Then – as you describe – I to have someone who accepts me, even what she doesn’t understand, even what I don’t understand. We together are practicing the art of “unconditional” love. It feels wonderful in her beautiful caring arms where I know the true acceptance, the loving caring appreciation from another. She believes in me and holds my image in that frame of light, even when I am a miserable mess (as I have been much of this year). We give and receive the love and acceptance that everyone needs, that everyone wants. When I hold my thoughts there – looking in her beautiful gaze – I feel like everything is going to work-out; I feel blessed. I am loved.
Maybe just surviving this year is concrete enough.
Dear Amanda and Cowboyiam
You both verbalize what i have experienced most thoroughly.
The only difference is I have no one to hold me, in a physical sense, which is apparently my cross to bear from childhood. Working on this journey to finally rectify that. I do have one friend who understands while the others have pretty much fallen away or distanced themselves. I appear as an oddity – which has always been my trump card – yet that has been challenged and torn apart by a desire for deeper understanding of love and freedom of spirit. This has been a hard fought year sprinkled with many ‘ah ha’ moments.
My ‘awakening’ was inspired by someone i met who lives his life without fear. He cracked my shell – then disappeared …
Hopefully these changes towards a more authentic ‘me’ will one day come to fruition for all to share and enjoy for all of us.
Namaste
Thank you both for sharing. Sending love…
Thanks for your post, Amanda. I’m feeling these things too, particularly the connection with true vocation – my soul’s calling. I’m feeling the energy start to shift too, and it feels like 2015 is going to be amazing! I can already tell that my personal challenges are going to be “getting out of my own way” enough to keep going with the beautiful flow of synchronicity that started in early 2014 and continued and intensified all year.
Cheers and blessings <3
Thank you, Amanda. You say so beautifully what I have been unable, or not so clearly able, to put into words. This also has been a year of strong transformation for me, leading to … where, I don’t know yet. There are some glimmerings, but dealing with the unknown, or rather, the fear the unknown brings me, seems to be a one of the labors of this moment. And the falling into “doubt”, but is actually despair, of looking around suddenly, thinking: nothing has changed, nothing changes… is this all self-delusion?
But, especially in the last few months, I have been experiencing more and more of the flow, of inner conviction, that yes, I am going in a “good” direction—”proof” as it were that, even with the continuing insecuritiy (thanks Cowboyiam) and lack of something irrefutable in this 3-d dimension (like, you know, some kind of Energy Accomplishment Certificate!)— yes, there has been “concrete”, even if technically “invisible”, evidence. This is a good moment to remind myself of this, and be grateful, grateful, grateful!
Thank you also Cowboyiam, Vincent, and abenasara for your comments: they have all enriched me… and inspired me to write also. (abenasara – already some fruition! thank you!)
And in this “new year”, which starts at every moment: May blessings continue to flow for all, and that we have the wisdom to be able to receive them!