I loosely follow astrology, except for when I very closely follow astrology, which is when need I validation for why I’m feeling so immensely raw and beat up by life. After this month’s eclipse, I thought I had got the message that I needed to receive. But I guess there was more because as my dear friend Alexandria once told me about my chart “you be going thru it fr” and I am going through it.
Every-time I feel this way, I ask the question “What is this pain asking me to see? What is trying to make itself known?”
I have tirelessly plotted the map of my suffering and sometimes it just feels like “Can I receive A Very Loud Message?” once and for all and get to the other side of what needs to be healed? 🥴
The dharma reminds us that the cessation of suffering is patient work. Decades of built-up patterns do not unwork themselves in just a couple of years of practice. Healing takes a lifetime, maybe. Ajahn Chah himself instructed his disciples to not be in too big a hurry to rid themselves of hindrances and that these states of mind are a “sharpening stone” for developing wisdom.
I don’t like being here in this moment of suffering. Now that I am here though, I have the choice to stay in the edges of this growth, to give time to notice my patterns. I can acknowledge my capacity to be with this pain and it is a gift to really feel it all, in a way that I don’t experience daily. This is, in fact, a very unique, and rare space to notice my patterns. I can move at the poly-rhythms of urgency to WAKE UP and the constant re-examination required to develop clear seeing. There is an intimacy to tasting the grit at the bottom of my coffee.
I hope your messages are coming through. And if they aren’t, may you go through your transits with loads of compassion.
xo Jessica
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