Finish it!

One of my favorite movies is The Fountain, a gorgeously cinematic, multi-timelined epic about mysteries in life, love and death. The main character’s wife repeatedly admonishes her husband to “Finish it!” meaning the book she had begun writing. The book is a life story of sorts, and he is having a difficult time with the final push, as it hinges on his ultimate transcendence.

I can tell you this is how I feel right now about Pluto completing its time in Capricorn (in the very degree of this, my ascendant). Enough already. Finish it! 

My dear and brilliant astrologer friend Ellias recently said something that tickled me in all the dimensional places. After prefacing his comment with how he is a Pollyanna soul, helplessly so, and how he had resisted a certain truth for a very long time, he finally had to admit it was true. 

What was true? “The soul flourishes when the ego gripes.”

I laughed out loud.

Because oh my GODDESS haven’t we all just about had enough of the slogging through, the clearing, the processing, the confrontation with ours and the world’s shadows? I find this particular astrological pass relentless. Griping, for sure.

The ego regularly throws fits when confronted with a summons to greater freedom, which usually means a passage through challenges to the status quo. At the same time, it also fully enjoys its position as overlord of life, so it doesn’t really want anything to change. It’s just that it wants everything it wants, doesn’t have everything it wants, and doesn’t want to change to get it.

While the ego may be an overlord, its rule is more like a warden over a prison where it also happens to reside as the guards and inmates. Everything is in the cage. Freedom really does mean dissolving the cage.

Finish it!

Living Your Inner Oxymoron

Ellias cued me in to something. I realized that recently my soul was having its own other-dimensional high while my human self groveled around in a 7-day surprise detox that left me incapacitated with pain and fatigue. It was pretty funny, living this inner oxymoron (and perfect, of course). My ego was saying, “Oh f*** off!” to my soul, and my soul just kept dancing a jig. 

Soul was dancing because it knows it’s getting what it came here for, and it LOVES it. Soul has stamina. It is spaciously determined. It is going to “finish it” (meaning go where it’s going) come hell or high water. And they both do arise.

If you’ve been on this path a while, you know just how bonkers awakening can be. But perhaps like me, you’ve been a bit surprised at just how deep it goes and what it entails to transmute our physicality. Just exactly how intense is it going to be as we become all light?

We Go Down as We Go Up (it’s about balance and wholeness)

We all love the energy highs and transcendent states of consciousness. Thank God these are part of the journey. They are the ascending path. The balancing polarity is the embodiment, which moves the other way. We go down and in to dissolve the density in order to make room for the light. We get into the nitty-gritty. We do the shadow work so that we can live empty numinosity in every cell, plane and body. 

So there are emotional trash outs, yes. Ongoing physical detoxes, yes. There is also upgrading, laying down new energetic foundations to carry greater consciousness and light.

 

The Difference Between Self-Focus and Focused Self-Surrender

I would say we do well to do this through self-submission and surrender rather than self-focus. Focus is needed, yes, but only enough to know what you are dissolving. Then we simply let everything become empty (there are many ways to do this). It’s a subtle and helpful distinction, as self-focus leads back into the cage where everything is about you, while focus with self-surrender leads to freedom.

This process of material dissolution and light embodiment is profound alchemy. It bears saying that no matter how much we understand this in principle, understanding is never a substitute for the actual transmutation of matter. 

Because the truth of the matter is that, when changing states, matter often feels like shit.

Some of my community were relieved to hear me speak about this in the Source Light Circle this month. We shared about those weird body things, so intense to the point that you might think, “Do I need to go to the ER?” (full disclaimer: I am no medical expert, so please follow your own knowing and health care provider’s advice).

I’ve laughed at that very question with colleagues as we’ve compared notes of strange symptoms and mysterious ailments that wave through as we ascend. And then we watch that bizarre symptom, illness, or strangeness simply dissipate and move on as we release yet more. We soften and allow, and the light rushes in.

The Distraction of Higher-Self Identification

I do love the word dissolve as a description for this process, as it gets subtler and subtler as we go. Many let go of the small-self grips of the ego, only to find their identification has shifted to a super-size attachment with their higher self or even their cosmic self. This is so interesting to me.

What does higher/cosmic self identification look like? Well, we do the same thing with those dimensions we have done with the 3 and 4D ones. We talk about what we are, and as always, we are either very very special or finding ourselves on the short end of the ascension stick.

Those who are identified with their higher/cosmic selves speak a great deal about their uniqueness… what they were in a past life, what their cosmic lineage is, how rare their soul echelon or gifts are, about being either an old soul or one who rarely incarnates. 

To be sure, part of these awarenesses are simply unearthing delight, as in when you discover lost family members (your star lineage, or brothers from other lifetimes). Rather what I’m talking about here is the propensity to anchor such discoveries into identification. You make it “matter,” particularly in relationship to others..what you are that they are not…for this is what ego, whether human or celestial, does.

Another version of higher-self identification shows up in those who profess living upper dimensional realities. They preach about their birthrights of abundance, joy, peace, and love. I fully agree these are our birthrights, for they are infinitely available as life itself. It’s just that I hear people referencing these as entitlements of their small self desires (financial abundance, a pleasured existence, or the perfect partner). Just like that, they’re back in the cage.

Let Your Ego Fits Guide You

Personally I’m find that others’ shadows, both the self-aggrandizing, entitled ones, as well as the self-struggling ones constantly focused on wounds, opinions, and disgruntledness, are challenging my own. I’m equal parts bored and irritated with it.

“When will we all get over ourselves?!?!” I ask. 

Well clearly that answer is self-evident, meaning within me. What a glorious mirror showing me my attachments and identifications. It’s the ego sneaking in the back door again. I know I will only be free and clear in this pass when it becomes no-thing to me that you love to talk about your specialness or your misery.

No doubt the planets are doing me. My own smallness is doing me. The world is doing me. And despite the vigorous protestations of my human self, I am so f***ing grateful for this pass. Because it holds the keys to the golden door. Every little ego-shadow just keeps dancing its way into the room through the music of my soul’s jig, and no matter how full I might think my dance card is, it turns out I have room for every last straggler.

Had enough of what everyone is talking about (whatever is is, including me, lol!)? Welcome your ego griping as it arises so that it may unravel. Focus and release. It is such a sacred symbol of your ascension of your willingness to be a pure embodiment of love. No part will be left behind, as all of you rises together. 

Your trauma, when dissolved, becomes your triumph. 

Your pain, when allowed, becomes your passage. 

Your wounding, when no-thing, becomes your wings.

The Stunning Reality of Shadows

I read the most beautiful thing today in the book “The Sorcerer’s Crossing” by Taisha Abelar (Taisha was one of three women in the same cohort of magical apprenticeship as Carlos Castenadas, and this is her account of some of that time). After a profound experience of a sorcery pass where Taisha entered the “shadows’ world,” Clara says, “Tonight you’ve found out something of real value, Taisha. In the worlds outside of this one, there are no shadows!”

That stopped me in my tracks, as yet again I saw just how profoundly unique and glorious this realm we call earth is, with its celestial magnificence of light and dark. What if this polarity-possibility doesn’t even exist in other worlds? No wonder we opted in. No wonder we chose now, with all of this epic planetary support and opportunity streaming in. Our souls are flourishing just as they are contributing to the collective rising. We are bringing light to darkness, making ready to fly to where there are no shadows.

There’s that jig again, the soul’s happy dance joining with the foot-grinding of the ego. It’s like a grape stomp, turning water into wine.

Soul says, “Sweetheart remember, when you’re done smashing all of those grapes, stomping away with your soles, relax into how simple it is. Remember you’ve always had wings.”