Good morning familia. Happy Tuesday! Thank you for taking the time to read my words, my soul. May it speak to you as it's speaking to me while I write.
My saturn's return is in FULL effect. On a metaphysical level the time between our 28-32 birthdays is very auspicious. The changes brought about by Saturn and her power can be extremely scary, lonely, guilty, shameful and you may undoubtedly feel defeated. All the 'stuff' in your life just starts to come up from what seems nowhere and it has the ability to knock you down on yo a##. Relationships will be tested, jobs will be placed on the line for you to decide if you are really happy doing what you do; plans you had in the past but never got to will come knocking at your door yet again; YOU will be tested, but just like with anything in life that if you are fearful of- you can either allow these circumstances to keep you a prisoner in your own life or you can use them to catapult you forward into the next, bigger, greater, brighter chapter(stuff I've written over and over and you already know anyway) ;). I've been 30 for almost 2 months and I can already tell you it's been a HUMBLING experience. I thought I was layers into my 'onion' in order to get to my true essence but lord: I've only cracked off that dry crust that comes off mad easy anyway. It is only now that I'm getting to the second layer and you know what...that's perfectly OK! I will be patient with myself and take my time and strip down to get to the perfect, whole, god given soul.
Devotion is a word I've been meditating on for quite a while now, and on what it means to me. It's a word I am no stranger to. In terms of 'faith' I consider myself a pretty devoted devotee =). I have woken up hours before the cold has even started to form in the eyes of our beloved morning birds in order to pray or meditate for hours and hours in silence, with chants, with bells or 7day candles (velones for my Catolicos). I attend spiritual centers, churches and ashrams in order to solidify my faith. I have given up eating deelish sweets that I just adore, drinking one sip of alcohol or one drop of soda in order to learn discipline and garner more faith. I have fasted for mornings, afternoons and even DAYS. Drinking potents and syrups and juicing in order to detoxify all the impurities I've allowed in. I even have an altar decorated with blue and yellow silk, with pearls, peacock feathers and mirrors for Ochun, a small San Miguel statue, pictures of my ancestors who have passed and spiritual books I read daily affirmations out of. Speaking of books, if you want some great life-altering books to read holla at me I can list about 25 on the spot and have read and own them all. This is All great devotion but at 30 I'm realizing it's just not enough, faith without action just isn't really faith at all. I have done all of these great things in the name of making myself a better person, making the world a better place, but I haven't put much action into this work. One of my mantras is "Step out in Faith" but the verb in that phrase has eluded me. I must STEP out in all of that faith I have cultivated. Put one foot in front of the other and just walk, one step at a time. But I haven't allowed that to come easy into my life =/.
In an efforts to 'be a better person' I'll sit in meditation for hours than go do yoga and bend my body and my soul in contorted ways to help me 'find' peace but on my commute back home from the studio I'll snap at someone on the train for some relatively random/minor act. I will get home and instead of putting my faith and action into my dissertation work and BELIEVE and affirm that I can do this degree,I'll find 1 million other things to do like nap or laligag on facebook for way too long. My mother suddenly transforms from the tiny docile amazing chef she is to (according to my ego) the most annoying, impatient, rude, boundary-stepping lady who ever walked this earth...where is my faith? I allow the fears and pain from my past to dictate what I am going to think, feel and inevitably how I am going to act. My faith tells me that I should not be a prisoner to cirucmstance, that I need to let go of the past and just STEP but I don't believe this, something inside of me doesn't feel worthy of being ALLOWED to let go of what so and so did to me, 'did you hear how she spoke to me?', 'do you know how much I gave him and he didn't give me the same back in return'...now I may be alone on this one so forgive me if it's not resonating with anyone on this site ;) it's just my truth for the moment.
Now the beautiful irony with the way faith works is that you can be that devoted devotee mentioned above. You can stand up from your half-lotus or kneeling position, slowly drift back from your meditative state, finish the last page of that amazing book and expect your life to be all Zen and for everything to fall into it's divine 'perfect' place (again, this just may be). But that's usually not how it works. You prayed for clarity and happiness and joy and God sends it to you but it may not look the way you want it to look. You have to do some spring cleaning before anything happens, you have to ACT. It seems that right after you have a beautiful spiritual moment in whatever fashion, life just says 'Here Miguelina, you have done all of this necessary work now you can handle all of this STUFF'...and the universe will send you some S T U F F! People, events, circumstances that have the potential to put you on yo you know what. You can easily fall into the victim role and cry out 'Why me God? I did all this work I deserve peace and quiet. I've asked for you to come into my life: Where are you?!'. But the thing we forget is that IS God, that is God making you stronger and better and more at peace. There is just some 'stuff' that you need to clean and sort out and the only way to get that done is to see it, to feel it. But we confuse this with punishment, or think that our faith isn't working so we don't put that necessary action into it. So we go back and start from square one, either doing the same things to build up our faith again or starting with new rituals, prayers or mantras. We go in circles instead of sitting still for a moment and then going forward, stepping out in a straight line. Or if you are anything like me you allow fear to stop you in your own tracks. We may be reluctant to step forward because maybe we are afraid. I'm sorry IIII am reluctant because I am afraid ;), I am afraid that I may not be able to complete that task, to finish that project, to Love myself enough to believe I can do whatever it is I put my mind towards, I am afraid to be hurt again. We expend energy fighting these inner battles with our fears when the battle isn't ours to fight, it's our creator's. Whoever he, she, it or they are, it is theirs. Hand it over to them in your prayers, in your devotion. Let them know that you cannot do this on your own and you need divine intervention (thanks Gri!) All of that energy that we no longer need to fight our inner battle can now be put towards something better: cleaning up the STUFF that was surfaced through our devotion.
The clean up process will look different for everyone. It can be being a bit more patient and nicer to the teenagers on the L train in the morning, it may be that class you've always wanted to take but were always making excuses (no time, no money,etc). You may need to make the painful decision of walking away from a relationship (romantic or not) that is not bringing you joy or peace OR you may need to let go of your 'perceived' fears and surrender to someone you love and loves you back. Maybe it's time to really sit with yourself and admit that you HATE your job and you need to leave and than you do just that...LEAVE! And that's where FAITH comes back in, your faith will allow you to take that necessary step knowing that God got yo back. Your faith doesn't let anything stop you from doing you, fulfilling your dreams and getting what is your God-given right: SUSTAINABLE peace and happiness. So it's a beautiful cycle of faith, action, faith again than more action...and it just keeps going and raising you up higher and higher to a lighter happier place where you belong. Not vibrating at the bottom of the barrel of life with the lower emotions, but up in the sky with the higher ones, mainly with LOVE. Love of self being the primordial one.
As I write I feel like I meditate and sit through a therapy session all at once; it helps me flesh out some STUFF in my life =) and makes things a bit clearer for me. I let my pieces morph into whatever the universe wants them to morph into. I almost never title my work until I'm almost done, this one not being an exception. The title, just like most of the material in this piece just comes to me and I share it with you all. What came to me as I wrote today is that despite all I wrote about working on our faith and developing it, we don't NEED to do all of that work to be good people or have peace enter our lives. It's wonderful, beautiful and someone in the universe is appreciative of all of your sacrifices and offerings but we don't need to perform any rituals or say any prayers in order to do or be good, it's just who we are, inherently GOOD, we just forgot. Faith is just there to remind us of who we are but more importantly WHOSE we are.
Ache
Peace
Om...
Migueluz
