By Amanda Moreno

Lately, my soul has been longing for quiet. I consider myself to be a city girl in so many ways and for so many reasons, but the fact of the matter is that cities are loud. For someone who is growing into her sensitivities, the constant sounds of planes, trains, automobiles, humans, dogs and so on can become abrasive, even maddening.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I often imagine living in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the noise of birds, winds and water to accompany me.

In the middle of a two-week trip to the East Coast, I have found myself unexpectedly spending some time in Brooklyn and New York City. At first I was anxious about it. There’s so much to do, so many decisions to be made and so much humanity to navigate in the city. On the heels of five days in a tiny town where I was helping souls to navigate past-life memories and the afterlife, I wasn’t sure coming to the city was the right decision, as I usually need quiet integration time.

Today, however, I found myself wandering through the city quite mindlessly and enjoying the hell out of it. Getting on trains, taking them uptown, then downtown, and leaning into the sea of humanity that is this big, beautiful city. I found myself asking the people in each establishment I visited where to go next and then following the routes they laid out. I noticed the feeling of being completely alone and yet entirely engulfed in a complex web of intertwining realities and dreams.

I experienced an interesting combination of feeling completely free and yet totally bound up in the rhythms of the city. New York City truly is a dimension all its own. Everyone is a stranger, and yet the awareness is there — everyone has a story and is carrying around so much under the surface.

At the training, I was honored to witness the incredible bravery of the 12 students as they plunged into some of their deepest traumas and compulsions in order to embrace the opportunity to heal. Looking around the opening circle on the first day, everyone seemed bright and cheery with an undertone of anxiety and fear. Then, as their stories began to come out, I remembered — people seeking deep soul work very rarely tell stories of ordinary lives. The places we can go to hear these stories, and the places they can go to tell these stories, are very limited.

The power of storytelling is quite profound. Sitting in silence and listening as the students told their stories in the circle, or even participating in shared storytelling around the dinner table, I was taken by the awareness of a simple truth that is so obvious and yet understated: you really can’t tell what someone is carrying around just by looking at them. You often can’t even tell by spending a little bit of time with them. I was also taken by the knowledge that we are so very lucky to have the container of the training to experience that opening and witnessing.

I met someone at the training who came over from Australia. We launched into an intense, personal story-telling conversation on the first night that lasted a few hours. During the course of the conversation she told me that she knows of 12 men between the ages of 19-25 who have committed suicide in the past few years in her hometown. I was shocked to hear the number, and shocked to learn that the Australian government apparently has a rule that suicide stories can’t be covered in the news.

We talked a bit about her thoughts as to why these boys had chosen to end their lives. She spoke of their isolation, or a lack of meaning, and we later related it to the lack of outlets for witnessing and storytelling and the alienation of the modern world. Surely each of them had their own story and own complex reasons for doing what they did, but still — there is a pervasive loneliness attached to being in the world today.

Context is everything. We don’t know the experiences people are carrying around that have led them to be who they are or to behave how they are behaving. As this Mercury retrograde period comes to a close and we head into a Libra Moon cycle, I’m called to reflect on how often I tend to forget this simple truth.

I’m also called to remind myself about the importance of authentic interactions — with an eye on what my intuition is telling me about the interaction, at the same time as I make a point of listening to what the other is saying and holding space for their story to come forward. Sometimes that balance is hard to find, as it can be when I am feeling over-stimulated or overwhelmed.

That is part of my own story, however. And it is up to me own that and do what I need to do to decompress and come back into myself. I do so with a blessed recognition that there are so many other people out there right now aiming to work through their hurts and pains, and embracing joy and love in spite of — or because of — their own complex and rich stories.

Earlier this week, I began catching up on Planet Waves radio, starting with Eric’s interview with Jacob and Jared. Because I was crunched for time, I listened to the interview before really knowing much about the story, which is not the best way to go; but it is what happened, none-the-less.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

As I listened, I was taken with how candid and honest the two men seemed to be. I was even more surprised by the ways in which they refused to let the conversation turn into one in which they came out as the victims in any way.

They spoke of the fact that they had to remain present with what they did, with the hurt and pain they caused the women they so callously and disrespectfully talked about in a public forum. I was impressed.

The next day, I decided to do my research into the actual story, and what I read made my stomach hurt. I was particularly dismayed by reports of potentially non-consensual sex with one woman while she was in a hospital and heavily drugged.

I tend to be someone who has an exceptionally high capacity for acceptance and forgiveness, if not just listening to a story without judging. I found, however, that what arose was a general distrust of the two men, despite a strong instinct that their remorse was genuine. What would have happened had they never been outed? Is it helpful to think about those kind of ‘what ifs’?

One thing I am clear about is that places exist where space can be held for sides of a dialogue that are underrepresented in the mainstream dialogue.

Conversations about these topics, whether they’re framed as being under the “rape culture theory,” “misogyny,” “fourth-wave feminism” or “having basic respect for human dignity” categories can be tremendously difficult. Our tendency towards polarization and casting issues in black-and-white terms allows us to bring really big, institutionalized and entrenched concepts down to Earth, so that we can talk about them. At the same time, however, I can’t help but notice the ways that these categories promote division into victim-perpetrator mentality.

What consistently strikes me about the conversation comes from my background in depth psychology, a philosophy that stems from Carl Jung’s ideas about the psyche. I’m currently assisting at a training for people who are studying Deep Memory Process, which is a form of cathartic past-life regression therapy. My days and nights are being filled with awareness of trauma at the level of the body, and understanding it through psychological complexes and the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious. This has me thinking a lot about the Shadow.

In depth psychology, the Shadow is essentially the field where everything that we have repressed and moved out of the light of consciousness exists. This archetype can be understood at the personal level, but also at the collective level as well.

Stripping the theory down, what comes to mind are the ways in which we have been conditioned to repress our animal instincts. In particular, I am referring to the more predatory instinct to kill as well as the instinct to procreate — to fuck. Both have, for various reasons, been repressed throughout the development of western civilization. The animal body and all of its instincts are largely thought of as sinful, shameful, primitive, uncivilized and as something to be kept hidden and repressed.

The fact of their repression does not, however, mean they don’t exist. The repression just means that for most of us, when the energies constellate or rise to the surface, we are unequipped to deal with them and therefore fling them out as projection — as anger, rage and judgment, for example — which might take the form of warfare and rape. Or perhaps the seeking out of sexual conquest or fulfillment.

The primal instinct and energetic imprint that prompts us to kill has not gone away. The instinct to fuck is even more prominent. And, of course, both of those instincts mingle together in an infinite variety of ways, creating the many entwined layers of our personalities, psychological complexes, pathologies and creative instincts.

We can clearly see, and the interviews with the Waking Life Espresso guys elucidate, the ways our society has pathologized these impulses. This creates what sometimes feels to me like a vast void of unsolvable riddles and problems. These men were acting largely based on social conditioning mixing with their inborn impulses in really harmful ways. The women were accepting their advances based on desires that were shaped by the same mixture — although likely never dreaming the exploits would be publicized.

Our tendency towards polarized thinking leads us to cast debates in terms of victim and perpetrator, right and wrong. When we see the victim-perpetrator dynamic play out in the media on the main stage, we then have a public figure onto whom we can project our own shadow material and all of the emotions associated with that material. Hitler would be a prime example of someone who carries the projections of the archetype of Evil. We each have our own personal response to that evil, however.

Reading about the stories from the ‘manosphere,’ my personal reaction was a stomachache and nausea. Someone else’s reaction might be vehement anger and hatred, and another’s might be resignation. The stories stimulate something within us, and the same actions that prompt an anger response from you might prompt a grief response from me, and so on.

Here we can see the contents of the personal shadow bubbling up. Where have I been wronged by men? Where is it that I have wronged men? Or humans for that matter? Perhaps someone else responds with envy, stemming from a long repressed urge to just have meaningless sex and be done with it.

So, where am I going with this? Well, what comes to mind here is the insidiousness of the Catholic Church’s paradigm: that there is no redemption for some, that the evil ones must be cast out of the garden. We as a society do not take well to flawed mainstream characters — hence part of the reason our politicians hide so much. Making a celebrity into a fallen angel gives us a vent for our own darkness.

In the work I do, however, there is nothing that is beyond redemption. When we follow a past-life character through their death moment, into the realm of the soul, they often express guilt, remorse and other emotions associated with their unfinished business. These emotions tend to weigh the soul down, resulting in what we might refer to as earthbound spirits or ghosts who are still attached to the material plane.

In the practice of the therapy, we provide the soul with healing allies and reunion with loved ones. We also provide the opportunity to repent and then atone if the soul needs to. We hold space for healing without judgment. No exorcisms here.

Of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes the souls do have to accept that the victim cannot forgive or forget. But we still work to resolve the complex that is keeping the soul weighted down so that they can return to source, or back to the present-life person in a kind of across-space-and-time soul retrieval.

Even if you’re not inclined to believe in past life memory or soul retrieval, the basic premise is the same: perhaps the continuing cycle of casting out the perpetrator, or the impulse that we don’t like, is just perpetuating the cycle of perpetrator-victim thinking. In my experience, we each have some of both inside of us, and the tendency to cling onto either identity, whether consciously or unconsciously, causes harm. It’s in holding space for those parts to be witnessed and moved through that the healing comes.

What does that mean on the practical level? Well, it’s incredible to me that the kind of dialogue that Eric had with Jared and Jacob occurred here. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it — having safe spaces and containers in which people can process all of their stuff, whatever that means, is totally integral to our moving forward into a paradigm that is less about who was wronged and who did the wrong. Although claiming the victim identity can be a helpful step towards empowerment, it can also become an all-encompassing identity that starts to impede that same empowerment.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the container of interpersonal relationships, especially those of the intimate variety. For example, sometimes sex and violence do go together. Again, they are primitive, often unconscious impulses that are inherently linked. Bringing those impulses to awareness, understanding what they feel like when they’re being triggered, and then having the self-consciousness to act upon it from a place of knowledge, is huge.

My involvements in the kink community have been fairly limited, but are ongoing. Some of the most profound learning has come from being open to people’s fantasy lives, and then being able to act those fantasies out as consenting adults.

I once had a lover who was very open with me about his rape fantasies, which allowed me to be open about my own. Through talking and negotiation, we were able to act the fantasies out, to the great delight of both of our sex drives, in a container where trust had been established.

Both of us had talked about our own direct and indirect experiences with sexual violence, as well as our experiences dealing with these things in and out of therapy. This kind of play is not for everyone, of course, but it provides a great example of bringing that shadow to the surface, becoming as aware of it as possible, and then consciously discharging or using the energy.

The animal body is not going anywhere. It has its preferences for sensation and touch and ways of getting its own needs met. It is not inherently sinful or shameful, and undoing the thousands of years of conditioning that say differently is tough work.

The change is happening, however. Holding space for the recognition of humans as humans — the connecting ground of soul, body and spirit, in all of its complex, flawed wonder — is imperative. Sometimes we’ll come across someone or something that brings that insane, volatile level of angry reaction to the surface, and that’s OK too. Perhaps there are others who can hold the space for their witnessing and atonement.

Making people into perpetual demons that must be cast out of the garden, never to be redeemed, seems like a waste of energy to me. Not all men are rapists, not all women victims — or out to demonize men, for that matter. It is not a problem of men vs. women.

It is a problem of distortions of the masculine and the feminine within our current paradigm. Rather than constantly vilifying and somehow then popularizing specific figures, I believe it is up to us to perhaps channel the rage that stems from injustice; we can channel it into creative reconstructions of our institutions and ways of viewing the world, using a cohesive, wide-angle lens.

I decided to pay attention to Pope Francis today, an action I have long been avoiding. It was good for me, but also helped me to understand just how deep my distrust of the Church goes.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I was a part of the Catholic Church until the age of six when my Catholic father died. I loved going to Sunday school, although I found the old people’s services to be boring and always dreaded the day when I’d have to go up in front of people to take the body of Christ.

At some point several years after my dad’s death, my mom decided to take my brother and me to a Methodist church — the denomination she claimed to be a part of even though she wasn’t practicing. Five minutes in, I informed her that we needed to leave because they were doing it wrong, and she decided it might be best for me to stay away from Catholicism.

Through the twists and turns of my own spiritual path, through my staunch atheism in my early twenties, I still tended to maintain a “to each their own” policy when it came to friends and family members and their religious choices. There came a point, however, where controversy surrounding the Catholic Church and child sex abuse became more than I could bear.

I could no longer remain passive. I could no longer hide the fact that I could in no way understand commitment to and worship of institutionalized child rape, especially on top of all of the other atrocities committed in the name of the Church over the past two millennia, not to mention its key role in putting the marks of repression all over the bodies of women.

I have very loosely followed this Pope’s story, seeing headlines that speak of humility, opposition to global warming (hooray!), interfaith dialogue and even an openness to “non-believers.” My initial responses have been that it’s a trick or manipulation of some kind, and that I just can’t bring myself to trust anything the Church does — because even if the dude is a spiritual leader, he’s also a political head. And besides, to this day he still opposes abortion rights, is no ally to the rights of my LGBTQ friends, and has been alarmingly vague in his response to the epidemic of child rape in the clergy.

Sure, there might be something to be said for his approach to changing the formalities of the papacy. But perhaps the only thing that will begin to chip away at my distrust is the full-out embrace of all people and a move towards more up-front, open and honest conversations about sex and sexuality, alongside an honest discussion of the ways in which clinging to power have distorted the teachings of Christ.

This begs the question of what is good enough. We have to compromise, right? In our relationships, in our day-to-day decision making, in our approaches to our own spiritual paths. I mean, I know that sugar is essentially poison and that it makes my tummy slightly bloated, but it’s in everything and sometimes I deserve the enjoyment of a piece of key lime pie, right? Perhaps Pope Francis is inching forward, making headway, all the while trying to bridge the gap between committed believers and those who have defected, or those who might be swayed to the Church.

It just…doesn’t seem good enough for me. I feel the same way about political leaders. I don’t expect them to be perfect, but I do expect them to be open and honest about their flaws and the problems of the systems they are supporting, and to address how to go forward in ways that show me they are working on it. I’m not saying that I’m advocating outright hatred or refusal of the Church, but discernment seems key. We live in a world where a “yes we can” chant becomes a platform in itself. We are so eager to give someone else our power to change the world, when in reality the power to change always lies within.

When it comes to the Catholic Church and the Pope, I just keep wondering the motives are. We are talking here about an imperialist institution. Imperialist entities strive to extend their power either through military force or diplomacy.

Reading the transcript <> of the Pope’s speech to Congress, I felt a few moments of hope that we are witnessing a true spiritual leader — whatever the heck that means — inspiring the masses, bringing the focus back to personal and social responsibility. But then I almost immediately ran across a story condemning the canonization of Junipero Serra, a Spanish missionary who apparently headed up efforts that killed about 90% of indigenous peoples inhabiting California in the 1700s <>. Elevating this man to sainthood was one of the primary reasons for Pope Francis’ visits to the states.

The volleying between diplomacy and military force — or genocide — seems to be a go-to for the Catholic Church, and I’m just so incredibly ready for a radical shift away from that. Perhaps there are beautiful and meaningful parts of the religion that can still serve. I’ll hold a little space in my heart that maybe the world is seeing the progression of a spiritual leader that can bring us back to the heart, and to a focus on love and forgiveness. For me, however, that path will have to be paved with something more than what I’ve seen so far.

By Amanda Moreno

Sometimes writing a column about ‘spirituality’ is strange. Such a watered down, all-encompassing, over-used, misunderstood term. The first line in Wikipedia’s description of the topic reads: “Spirituality may refer to almost any kind of meaningful activity.”

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Ok, then. That sounds about right.

The freedom to write about anything meaningful is quite lovely for the most part. This week, however, all I’ve wanted to do during times set aside for writing is sit in a bathtub with candles going and let out some final Saturn-in-Scorpio sobs mixed with utterings of gratitude for all of the people, places, guides, animals, essential oils and stones that have supported my personal passage through this initiation. I got some of that out of my system the night before writing this.

Now I’m sitting here letting the world wash over me, finding little connection to any writing topics. And oh, how my Mercury-Pisces word-making function needs that connection to the flow.

What do I see while the world washes over me? Well, a refugee crisis. Not so sure this is a new thing, but the phrase has been popping up everywhere, so at least it’s getting coverage now. And at least it’s getting coverage in a way that shows how absolutely unacceptable America’s response has been.

What a particularly apt Saturn in Sagittarius theme — a refugee crisis. The shadow of belief is deep and dark and the fundamentalist tendencies in all of us are now up for review. To think that anyone could justify mass murder and rape because of their beliefs is pretty appalling. Experience says, however, that fundamentalist tendencies will likely become more pronounced before they release. Understanding the millions upon millions of humans being massacred still, with additional millions fleeing their homes and being left to die in squalor, makes a conversation about spirituality seem somehow trite and privileged and yet totally necessary, all at the same time.

Do you know what else seems trite? American politics and the media’s — and therefore collective American culture’s — fixation on Donald Trump in the face of genocide and refugee crises. It’s hard to find the balance there. I’m told it’s my duty as a citizen to pay attention to the presidential race, but in all honesty I don’t see the point right now. It’s just a circus and spectacle.

Whether or not it is specifically geared to serve as opiate, distracting the population from ecocide, genocide and all of the other drastically more grave evils being perpetrated, I can only speculate. That is, however, what it seems to do. As far as I’m concerned, the best choice for me is to try to avoid the circus and tune in just before primary season so I can make an informed choice at that time, and then again a few weeks before the election.

I’m grateful to those who pay attention the entire way through. I, myself, am choosing to put my attention elsewhere, digging into those consciousness-raising efforts I’m so passionate about. I cannot say with certainty that I will even be voting this time around. I had to go with an independent candidate during the last presidential election. The thought of voting for Obama made me sick to my stomach, and I am lucky enough to live in a state in which taking my vote away from the incumbent didn’t make a difference, and so I voted my conscience.

A horrendous attitude to have, I’ve been told, but at this point even the most hopeful parts of me are increasingly coming to terms with the fact that no part of this system is salvageable. I don’t mean that fatalistically, just realistically. Participating in any part of the system is becoming increasingly difficult — a moral and spiritual conundrum.

I have been escaping lately into some personal flights of fancy. I thank/blame all that delicious Venus-and-Mars-in-Leo energy. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and love what I see. I want to play and have fun and dance and celebrate, and am doing so to some extent. But underneath all of that there is a constant knowing, and a constant connection with the belief that spirituality is in fact going to be what gets us out of this incredible mess we are in; that it has to infuse every part of my life and who I am. I hate using the term and the word makes me cringe, but if we don’t find a way to connect back with meaning and purpose I don’t know that we stand a chance.

There is, of course, the problem of defining what meaning is the right one. Youch! There we get into the muddy waters. Finding meaning in flat screens, Mountain Dew and green paper clearly isn’t getting us anywhere. But who am I to tell someone else that their meaning-making mechanisms are fucked up? Who am I to say that I know the One True Way? Who am I to dictate what compromises can and cannot be made when I know damn well that every once in a while I’m going to opt for a flight to the other side of the country, blowing my fossil fuel consumption for the year. There lies the rub. It is so hard not to live in contradiction.

For example, I will never be able to understand how someone can justify membership in a church that has institutionalized and approved child rape, especially when there are many institutions that have essentially similar beliefs without the heads of the church taking advantage of children. I cannot make sense of it. But who am I to dictate someone else’s path? Then again, when and where do we get to have the conversations that bring these contradictions to the table, and how do we learn to do that in a way that meets people where they’re at?

This spirituality stuff can just lead us in circles and divide and conquer just as much as it unites, calms and connects. It’s somewhat maddening, really. Even still, perhaps a robust and fluid understanding can be found, one that allows for individual truth and understanding within an enchanted cosmos.

This week I walked in for my tarot reading shift at this incredible little shop in Seattle and realized it was a rock shipment day. More specifically, my coworker was in the process of unpacking about two dozen shiva lingam stones.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

These stones are pulled from a specific river and made in the shape of a phallus and come in all different sizes. They represent the divine masculine and feminine energies coming together and pack quite the punch.

We tend to have a lot of fun with shipments of stones. This one was no exception, especially seeing as we unpacked a few 12-inch, very girthy specimens. My coworker and I both being of the very feisty Leo variety enjoyed playing with and flaunting the energy of the stones as it permeated the store.

We are also of the quite-empowered-in-our-sexuality-and-unashamed-about-it variety. Our type seems to be coming to the forefront, especially as more women choose to remain single into their thirties. In many ways, it’s as if we have had no choice but to focus on self-empowerment.

Looking back on this latest Venus retrograde period, I’m quite intrigued by how body-focused it was for me; restricted diet, no caffeine or marijuana and very little alcohol. I felt myself coming into my body with a clarity I’ve never experienced before. It felt like an immense blessing, reinvigorating my commitment to walking the path of a paradigm-shifter and allowing that decision to infuse the essence of who I am at all levels.

I also swore off of sexual and intimate interaction with other people. It felt incredible just to be in my own energy and realign my values with an emphasis on taking care of myself at the physical level first and foremost.

Saturn through Scorpio took me for such an often-excruciatingly emotional ride that everything ended up feeling empty and dead. My sex drive went away entirely for a little bit there. This was an entirely foreign experience for me, but a necessary part of healing.

Venus retrograde was like a reset button for my entire being with Saturn providing the necessary discipline and motivation I needed to focus on health and purification. Now I have a more visceral sense of the merging of the divine feminine and the divine masculine within me, giving me some hope that I might get to do some of that conscious co-creating I keep writing about.

One of the areas I’m most passionate about is sexuality and relationship. I don’t write about it here very often but it is a primary focus in the work I do. A friend and I had a conversation the other day about the observation that our culture is changing so rapidly, and new ways of thinking and being emerging so quickly, that it almost seems like we’re facing trial by fire. We were speaking specifically about sex and love and the ways a fiery essence can make things feel more enticing and possible than normal. The opportunities to just let go and flow into new ways of being seem to be surrounding us all the time.

I revisit a conversation about non-monogamy with my therapist pretty frequently. He often reminds me that there are reasons our societal structures exist in the forms they’re in; that the institutions of marriage and family exist because relationships are hard, child-rearing is hard, and we need rules and models.

Sometimes it seems like he uses that “they’re hard” argument as justification for the status quo, which makes me bristle. To me, the fact that they’re hard combined with the fact that our current institutions seem to be breaking down quite rapidly indicate that we need to encourage exploration into other ways of doing relationship.

Imagine if it was the norm to have an entire network of support around a child — extended maternity leave, aunts, uncles, friends and mentors who not only help out with child care but provide the child with alternate versions of whatever mom and dad are modeling. Maybe that sounds Utopian for some, but some of us are here to bring the Utopian to Earth and figure out how to make it work. Because we have to.

I live in a city with a thriving non-monogamous community. I am part of a ‘secret’ group on the book of faces that now has over 900 members — all of whom identify as or are dating someone who identifies as polyamorous. I know more non-monogamous people who are not part of that group. Every time I turn around another couple I know is opening their relationship.

To add to that, the kink community is thriving as well. People are in fact opening up to different ways of relating, of embracing their sexuality, and of experiencing both on terms that are on completely uncharted paths. We are carrying forward the experiments of the Sixties, but outside of the communes and cults. Of course there are people for whom these alternative styles are not working, but I keep coming in contact with people for whom it is working extremely well. It’s very heartening.

My period of detoxification reminded me of the importance of loving myself first, of aligning my day-to-day life and practices with my values, and of making sure that I am owning my own experience — whether it is fiery and overtly sexual or inwards and in need of down time. Now, however, in a long-awaited outward flux, I feel the hustle and bustle of my love for life and my enthusiasm for doing everything I can to lead as authentic an existence as possible. I’ll enjoy it while it’s here.

By Amanda Moreno

This week several friends gave me suggestions as to what they thought I should write about. As diverse as the topics have been, they seem to fall under the umbrella of reality versus fiction, or a pervading sense of surreality and dreaminess, at the same time as the concerns of the physical realm have become emphasized.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

To try to combine them in a cohesive framework, I set out for the Planet Waves main page to see what my colleagues had to say about the astrology of the moment. The title of the weekly subscribers’ issue pretty much says it all: What is Real and What is Not. Of course! We’re in Pisces-Virgo Full Moon season.

One of the friends I consulted suggested via text that I write about love in the digital age. Having recently re-entered the dating pool, he has been trying out various online ‘dating’ platforms. His words to me were, “Like…what is intentionality in this realm?”

He then sent me a bunch of emoticons that pretty aptly expressed his experience: excitement at all the options, the ease of hitting up his phone and the apps on it, the sense of fishing for something…and then…silence…no contact…just emptiness. A shadow.

I myself have a kinda-mildly-like-it-as-a-necessary-evil / totally-hate-it relationship with online dating. I’ve actually met some remarkable people and had some really fulfilling relationships come out of those meetings. I’ve also become increasingly jaded and tend to deactivate my accounts regularly.

For me, it’s very much about the “what is real, what is not?” question. Often I’ll receive a message that makes it clear within a few lines that the person has projected all kinds of forevers and hopes and dreams onto the pictures they saw of me and the profile I’ve written. I find myself annoyed, thinking but you haven’t even met me! You don’t even know me!

I’d rather meet people to date in the wild, but that seems so rare. There’s also the fact that online dating is yet another vortex to get sucked into when avoiding the fact that shit seems to be going down in the world at a far more rapid pace than we ever dreamed imaginable.

Which brings me to another conversation I had today. A friend was commenting on her observation that many people seem to be hanging on for dear life these days. More specifically, she pointed out that even those who thought they were prepared or preparing for the magnitude of the transformation we’re facing seem to be finding themselves a bit caught off guard and shocked that all of it is actually happening in real time.

We’re here! Ecological tipping points are being reached, small towns in California are finding themselves without water, racial tensions are rising, genocide continues, the ecosystem is collapsing, Donald Trump is gaining in the polls…things seem to be accelerating at a rate that can make it very difficult to get our bearings in time and space, especially on top of personal emotional upheaval. There it is again — surreality.

I loved seeing that Len wrote about the current astrology in terms of a rite of passage. Using that kind of terminology is helpful in that it gives us a concept to work with that provides a framework we can navigate within. A rite of passage is an event or process that marks the transition between one stage of life and another. On the collective level, it is marking the transition from one paradigm to another.

During a rite of passage or vision quest there is often a core fear that is faced. This movement creates tension as we move from one identity to another. The tension generates creative energy that allows a new facet of our identity to emerge, bringing something new into the world.

Eric describes Jupiter in Virgo as a nice description of the initiation of that creative process, which is something we can use as a catalyst for change. When taken in the context of rite-of-passage astrology, what comes to mind for me is the potential for bringing the Piscean fantasy down into the material world, hopefully by the initiation of a Virgoan creative process.

What does that mean? A creative process that is embodied, practical and rooted in intention. Hopefully an intention to serve — be that serving the greater good or just a specific purpose in our personal lives. In other words, what fantasies or dreams can serve us moving forward?

In my own life, I have been noticing the surreality in many ways. I have been watching documentaries such as The Human Experiment or Frontline’s episodes about government spying and “nightmare” bacteria. At the same time, the skies over Seattle have been this eerie, apocalyptic yellow due to the fires burning all over the state. Sewage spills in the lake have closed beaches. The Olympic Mountains, home to our state’s rainforest, are at 3% of their normal rainfall. I could go on.

As everything seems to be speeding up and getting more surreal, however, I’ve been coming home into my body and truly anchoring into my life. Through continued dietary change and lots of learning about the connection between the gut and the brain, I’ve been making a commitment to being here. I feel grounded and centered, even though deeply emotional content continues to arise. I am aware that whatever new identity is coming to the surface, it is more committed, more secure and more aware that we have to change our cultural conditioning towards acceptable ways of living immediately, and that I have to exist in a way that embodies that knowing. It’s an intense awareness, but the calm I feel is surreal.

The Virgo-Pisces axis is so fascinating to me because it speaks to the need for intentional commitment to some kind of practical service at the same time as it reminds us that we have to let go and that nothing is permanent. I find myself in a space where I am focusing on health and achieving goals at the same time as I have invited the universe to guide me, knowing that at any time my ideas of where I’m heading might need to shift. I am trying to accomplish at the same time as I am surrendering.

I’m reminded of a class I took in grad school about the life of Carl Jung and the spiritual crisis of our times. For part of the final assignment we had to create four mandalas, each of which was representative of some part of our spirituality. The fourth mandala was to represent our ideal spiritual vision for our lives.

I am a horrible visual artist, but really got into the project. For this fourth image I wanted to paint the circle of the mandala nestled within a tree. I was so looking forward to painting each individual leaf, as I was working with the Virgo-Pisces axis a lot at that point in my life, and individual leaf painting felt like a pretty epic Virgo activity.

About a third of the way through I realized I hated what I was creating. I had drawn the trunk and stems of the tree and then began the leaves and it looked ridiculous. The colors were all wrong, and it was quite clear that I was not going to be able to make the image in my head translate to the canvas. I felt anxious and then angry. I dabbed my paintbrush into a glob of paint, self-critical scripts all pumping in my brain, and then began to mindlessly blot out all of the leaves, knowing the painting was ruined.

About three minutes into my furious blotting and dabbing a funny thing happened. I realized I was filling the tree in with leaves — but leaves that looked completely different from what I had intended. The shape and textures and color variations created the image of the tree without need for each individual leaf being painted. I started laughing and realized I had just followed the flow right back into Pisces, giving up and surrendering my vision and ending up with what I had wanted anyway. I’d simply gotten there a different way.

The Virgo energy is integral to our ability to discern what is real and what is not, and to bring the fantasy into reality. We have faced so many of these catalysts for change in recent years, and from my point of view now we are being called to step out and consciously co-create a new world. Even at the most subtle levels or with small steps, and using discernment as to what steps make sense, we can allow space for the divine to come through, inviting it to guide the way. Using the blend of Virgo and Pisces, we can tap into creative intent, becoming a catalyst for change at whatever level responds.