By Amanda Moreno

So it would appear to be mutable grand cross season — although I’m not entirely certain about that. It’s all kind of foggy. The increased mutability underscores a feeling that I’m constantly trudging through, or on the verge of, an identity crisis of some kind.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Part of that might also have something to do with me learning all about Libra through Uranus and Eris opposing my natal Pluto in Libra as well as a whole cohort of Librans I appear to have called in to my life right now. Libra shadows, both the dark and the golden, abound.

I’m using the term “identity crisis” lightly and somewhat whimsically at the moment. I apply that same whimsicality to the sentiment I’ve been uttering a lot lately, which is that sometimes Libra just feels like a lie to me. It’s an energy that seems so externally motivated, and while I’m all for making and keeping the peace, diplomacy and harmony, the stronger Scorpio parts of me just want to shriek, “But what’s REALLY going on?! Underneath the surface?! Who are you really? Who am I really?”

As for those last two questions, I wonder if we can ever really know. There is so much mystery to this dance we’re partaking in on the Earth. Being able to be present with our lives as the mystery unfolds seems worthy work. Letting the pieces fall into place and giving ourselves a break from trying to figure it all out sometimes. At the same time, it seems as if combining the seeker’s need to know with worthy work and service in the world is utterly vital to our wellbeing as a collective. The combination helps to put the emphasis on the process rather than the outcome, which is rarely ever pre-defined.

Last weekend I attended a Town Hall gathering with Michael Meade in support of his newest book, The Genius Myth. From the website:

The Genius Myth proposes that each person born participates in the genius of life and the world at this time is in great need of an awakening of the genius qualities hidden in each of us. In a rapidly changing world faced with seemingly impossible problems, it becomes important to understand that each person has something to contribute to the solutions.

I was introduced to Mr. Meade’s brand of storytelling and his perspective on the world while I was in graduate school, learning about apocalyptic cycles and quite immersed in what it is to be living during a major paradigm shift, as we are now. Seeing him again felt like a homecoming and a very timely reminder, re-igniting my own genius and reminding me who I am at my core. I appreciate those anchors during times of identity flux.

Something I read very early on in my experiences at Planet Waves spoke to the importance of each person becoming an expert in just one or two things, rather than all of us learning superficially about so many. This was an idea that has stuck with me, and that has helped me in times of feeling overwhelmed or like I should be doing more or learning more. I believe this idea that each of us has an inherent spark of genius that shows us what we’re here to do is similar to that. Both ideas also seem to allow for some fluidity of identity. In fact, Mr. Meade points to the inevitability of identity change as being the mark of a healthy human.

The inspiration I felt at the lecture was very much a double-edged sword. It definitely brought me closer to my own gratitude for being so deeply immersed in the works of such wise, grounded and realistic humans as Mr. Meade for so many years now; and brought me closer to my gratitude for having found my ‘calling’, as well as the ability to strike off on a path that is absolutely meaningful for me.

At the same time, that heartening, inspiring immersion means I’m also diving in once again to the world stage, to the realities of climate change, nuclear proliferation, one refugee crisis after another, ‘climate change fatigue’, the fact that our current president is officially the longest war-time president, and the absolutely surreal shit-show that is our political system.

The resulting emotions can be pretty acutely bittersweet. The joy and exhilaration of being alive at this time is often equal to the heartbreak. Sometimes that tension is incapacitating. But often…it’s the most potent form of fuel.

So much of what’s been stuck mentally and emotionally for the past few months seems to be moving again — all at once. I suppose it was obvious that a Mercury retrograde in already stubborn Taurus could lead to some stuckness, but as always the felt reality of the idea was still somehow shocking. Now the deluge of mutability is definitely making me think a lot more about drugs, alcohol and altered states — alongside a longing to be in one. Even if waking sobriety feels like an altered state as it is. It’s good to be aware of these things, and to monitor how often I’m giving in.

So I’ve decided, amidst my sometimes over-dramatic and sometimes entirely authentic proclamations of identity crisis, to try and channel the sudden fluidity of emotional energy into poetry, which is for me a form of cathartic release, and one I have not visited in some time. I want to write love songs to my body and listen to its responses — to what it has to say, and to what it’s still holding onto — as an ode to incorporating the lessons of these earthy Mercury retrogrades.

I think it could also help to uncover more of what’s going to be arising as Mars re-enters Scorpio this weekend. That re-examination of desires in terms of whether they’re in alignment with what the spark in my soul — my genius — is striving towards seems like good identity crisis medicine.

That pursuit might or might not be one I’ll share here. But I will leave you with a poem I came across on the interwebs the other day. It speaks quite deftly to whatever it is I’m trying to articulate and experience in my own life these days, and hopefully in some of yours as well:

the hard season
will
split you through.
do not worry.
you will bleed water.
do not worry.
this is grief.
your face will fall out and down your skin
and
there will be scorching.
but do not worry.
keep speaking the years from their hiding places.
keep coughing up smoke from all the deaths you
have died.
keep the rage tender.
because the soft season will come.
it will come.
loud.
ready.
gulping.
both hands in your chest.
up all night.
up all of the nights.
to drink all damage into love.

∼ by nayyirah waheed

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