18.11.17 New Moon in Scorpio.

I've been feeling it rising like a tide.  A rot in my body releasing poisonous gases.  Burning my face like a permanent blush.  Shame.  Hate.  Disgust.  Rashes on my hands, arms, ankles, throat.  

Finally this morning I dared to look at it.  Lying in bed I scanned my body.  A rotten pomegranate where my womb should be.  Surrounded by protective thorns, worm-ridden.  Black ink dripping like blood.  I reeled in shock and fell back.  My hand grasping onto saffron robes, her sandals.  I prostrated and begged.  Hot tears.

She took my face in her hands and looked into my eyes.  Total calm.  I knew she was an experienced mid-wife and would help me birth this fruit of collective pain.  She swept debris aside, lay a cloth and wordlessly motioned for me to lie on it.  Taking a blade of light from the pouch at her waist, she sliced through the thorns surrounding the fruit, performing an etheric episiotomy.  

There was a sudden quickening as my womb began to pulse.  She placed my hands on my belly and showed me how to assist by massaging in circular, flowing movements.  Like a camera trick the fruit began to travel back through the death and growth cycles all the way to the bud stage as my inside cramped in waves.

I absorbed all the goodness from the fruit back into the cells of my womb which had returned to it's pink, fertile self.  Everything that no longer belonged, all the rot, worms and ink had alchemically combined to form over a dozen black tear-shaped crystals.

She swaddled the crystals into a neat packet of red silk and pressed them to my heart, my lips, my third eye.  She turned and disappeared in a flurry of saffron.  I knew they would be buried deep in the earth with solemnity. 

I know I have grieving and healing to do.

America, Meet Your Shadow.

Trump.  I really believe this tangerine baboon is where he is for humanity's higher good, this pussy-grabbing arsehole, having made it all the way to The White House is waking us up to the collective ugly of mankind.  If Hilary was the one elected it would have been an equally bitter-pill to swallow.   Her ways are also the old ways, being the 'powerful woman behind the powerful man' and condoning toxic masculinity.

I doubt Trump will do anything positive for his supporters, I believe Hilary would have done little for women.  Many notable Black Americans claim that their people are now worse off after the Obama administration.  Cornel West, William A. Darity Jnr, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Tavis Smiley are just a few to comment on this and the research seems to back them up.

It takes epic levels of self-control to resist the pageantry of the political system, especially with social media's polarising effects and creepy algorithms.  People holding onto dying systems are like grotesque Punch and Judy characters, repellant, yet mesmerising.  Trump and Clinton didn't seem real by the end of the election, duking it out like two paper mache puppets in their little stripped booth.  It's worth remembering that both puppets are being controlled by one entity, the corporations that make political donations.

When my emotions are activated by politics, world events or some infamous person's behaviour my 'story' arises and I immediately want to don the self-righteous armour and go to war with whomever or whatever it is that has triggered me. In doing so I am creating a boundary of 'us vs them' which feeds the 'story' and gives it even more INTOXICATING power.

We literally start lashing out at 'the other' to avoid feeling our own shit and it's totally ADDICTIVE.

I have learnt that I can avoid a whole lot of wasted energy, cruddy physical sensations and even actual pain by stopping my 'story' in it's tracks and saying 'hey, that was an extreme reaction, is there something deeper going on here?' I take some time and space to 'poke' the issue, feeling the locality of the tension in my body and staying there with presence, just noticing, rather that taking it to a mental place and building a fucking castle.

Sometimes that process is a millisecond of discomfort and you're out the other side with clarity and purpose and sometimes it's belly down, crawling through a shit-pipe like you're escaping from Shawshank.  More and more people are facing it and crawling that pipe.  If they aren't, then they'll at least be splattered as others shake themselves free at the other end which is exactly what needs to happen with large-scale belief-systems built on bullshit.

Victim-shaming.  Gender superiority.  Gender norms.  Racial superiority.  Religious superiority.  Class superiority.  Colonialism.  Capitalism.  War-mongering.

These belief systems exist because we need to see others as something 'less than' so we can justify our own uncomfortable behaviours or those of our country, church or community.  It's a radical act to begin making space for our grief, anger, fears (and even joy) to flow through when we are used to being on socially conditioned auto-pilot.

There is no need to demonise or dehumanise anyone to protect our sense of self when our values emanate from the core rather than those simply adopted from family, friends or peers.  When we drop the conditioning and tap into what means the most to us, we can start to act from our OWN truth and grow our personal power from the inside out.

As we begin to connect to ourselves and other humans by dealing with our shit in the place we can have the most impact we may still be challenged by people with different values or beliefs, we just get better at not taking it personally.  We move from reactivity to action by channelling our energy into pastimes and projects that are inline with our values.

Every event that happens on the international stage is an opportunity to thresh out our beliefs and let the chaff fall.  We no longer care to waste our time arguing when we are doing something proactive, making time for the kind of self-care that is needed when you do this kind of shadow work or grieving what was before we decide what we will do next.

Trump will come and Trump will go.  In the do-do-do, time focused way of our society functions a four year cycle feels like an awfully big chunk of time.  In the overall scheme of things however, four years is but a micro-blink.  These systems took a long time to build and they will take a lot longer than the next four years to dismantle.  Our 'Leaders' are not our saviours.  That is our job and it starts within.