This Full Moon we have Gemini, the sign of communication and partnerships, asking us to speak freely and share our truth. For some, that might be enough. They might see what meets the eye on this Full Moon: the quality of their relationships and the result of what emerges from them when raw and vulnerable communication comes out from under the covers.
But for those of us on a deeper path, this Moon means tuning into the deeper dimensions of our relationship with life (with one another, with the planet, with what is seen and unseen, known and unknown) and how we live in connection with and service of the expression of those relationships.
One of my great teachers, Laura of The Rhythm Way says it well, when she describes the "interconnected and irrevocable way we exist in relationship to the intelligence of life, in all of it's dimensions, in one vast web of connection and intelligence - an intelligence we can, and do participate in" but that we have lost sensitization to and awareness of in our Western culture.
So, the deeper meaning of this Moon is about what lies in between. It's about reclaiming and owning the sacred and often unseen ways life communicates to us, beyond what we accept as "real" delineated by the limited perception of our 5 senses.
This Full Moon we have Gemini, ruled by Mercury, who Laura explains is "the planet named after the messenger of the Gods, the one who is able to traverse betwixt and between dimensions of consciousness."
Over the past month, this liminal state is where I've found myself. Marked by several transitions in my life - I've been crossing over a threshold and in the process, I’ve been thinking a lot about Femme Rising. Why it started, what it’s become and where it want’s to go.
In the early Femme Rising days, I talked more about my experiences with the unseen. The whole point of starting Femme Rising was been to provide women with the resources to “awaken” and to awaken the Feminine on the planet by helping women heal, own their power and have permission to be themselves in the process.
On the blog, in the archives, there are deeply personal experiences, “Mystic Transmissions” where I recounted my experiences with the Mystery. But as my teachings and offerings have evolved over the past few years (while these experience are still regular occurrences for me, and necessary for my own nourishment with Spirit) I haven’t shared about them as much.
With this Moon, I’ve been swimming in the deep end of the unseen and in the process of going back into the unknown, I realized how much I haven’t shared around what it means for me to live an awakened life: to live in alignment with a deeper Divinity that’s proof can’t be found in any books but that is deeply known and felt and moves through me daily in very real ways. But this Moon says it's time to go there, so I'm goin'.
The path of awakening feels kind of like these words from David Whyte:
Remember the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons,
whether you reach them or not.
Admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary, you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim,
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
Awakening makes some things very clear to you. Primarily, that there is a Great Spirit that moves beyond you and within you, and that you, and all things, however you perceive them to be (good/bad, light/dark) are an expression of that Divinity. And that once you've been up the path and made it back from the mountain, you come back to lend a hand to help others traverse it.
Because awakening is not easy. You cannot keep the comfortable or cozy life you have if you choose to awaken. Awakening strips you to the core. It's WEIRD and foreign and sometimes scary.
It rips away the illusions you build around yourself and it "calls upon your true self, your real soul" and it calls upon you to act, over and over again, in service of your truth. It requires tremendous courage and faith not only to enter into the Mystery, but to live in alignment with it.
Because living in the Mystery means learning from what it reveals and leaning over an edge that doesn’t fit inside the lines that Western society has drawn. Native and Ancient Cultures knew this truth, as Alison Nappi says:
“Everybody wants the magic, but nobody wants the Mystery, the schooling: a thing that must be lived in a place where book knowledge has no meaning, for all books are manuals to the world you already know. That means, the well-honed intellect — the masculine theory of reason — will not save you, cannot free you. The Mystery, by its very nature, must show you what has never been seen, never been written, never been known, because before you were forged, it was impossible.”
In this way, and in many ways, "awakening" is a totally unique experience, and our unique experience, the way Spirit reaches us all, comes down to who we are and how we receive and respond to it (especially in our relationship with the unseen frequencies that Spirit travels through).
There’s lots of anecdotal and mythological evidence to support mystical experiences, plenty of “proof” for those of us who learn where too look, lots of validation (that isn’t needed but is nice) … but there is also the actual truth of our experience.
And sharing the of that truth - being willing to tell the truth of our (unique but often shared) experience is what gives others permission to stand in and share their own truth.
This is why we share and teach. And, this is a primary element of The Feminine and the mission behind Femme Rising, to give women permission to RISE and stand in the truth of their own being by standing in my own.
The Mystic Transmissions that I initially shared were in service of this.
And with the nudge (ahem, shove) of this Gemini Moon and in service of sharing the truth of my experience, here it is, the truth of what awakening looks like for me.
{Entering Vulnerability} I have what I call “cosmic conversations” fairly regularly, but they vary in length and intensity and understanding.
I’m a multi-dimensional channel (yup, I really just said that) … and so that means I can sense, feel and sometimes see and hear things that are unseen or “unEarthly” … but ussssually these convos are just between me and my higher self or recently, between me and my mom, in her celestial form, but I regularly encounter other things.
My biological mom died when I was 10, and even though I’m clairaudient and a medium and a channel, I’ve just recently been able to hear and converse with her. So, this is a recent conversation with the unseen, a Mystic Transmission with her on BEing.
And, if what I just said above sounds weird, prepare yourself, the Cosmic Convo that follows might be even weirder for you ;)
What am I supposed to do? I feel so in between. I have no answers. Not even any knowing … what am I supposed to do?
-Nothing
But what should I do?
-As I’ve said before, you aren’t to do you’re to be. (she’s recounting the two other, very similar conversations we’ve had where she tried to unsuccessfully get my attention about this “being-ness”)
But who am I to be?
-You aren’t supposed to be anyone but who you are in this moment.
You are in the process of BE-coming. Who you are will lead you to who you will be.
... You will see.
Soon, you will see.
And so I just wait?
Yes. But you aren’t waiting.
You are BE-ing.
But is it enough? To just BE? (said as societies understanding of being vs doing filters through my head)
It is.
And it will be and it always has been.
You’ll see. Soon you’ll know.
(I sigh)
As you know, there is a level of trust required for the unknown.
Ugh, I know.
You are deep in the womb now.
In 9 months you’ll know. (no, for those of you reading this, no, I'm not pregnant .. that would have been too easy of an answer for whatever mystery has waiting for me)
I between now and then, you follow freedom.
You follow what makes you feel free.
That’s your guidepost.
You find what feels free and you act on it.
Freedom isn’t passive, it requires awareness and action.
It calls on you to move as much as you stop. To question as much as you know as you don’t. To rest as much as you trust.
Living a free life means being willing to embrace and run into this unknown.
To welcome it. To be in it and to be okay with not knowing.
(“ugh, I knnnnow” I say again, said like a kid who is annoyed with the sage wisdom their mom is spilling, because in this moment, I was a kid talking to my mom, and I was annoyed)
Because how do you really know what you’re here for?
(no response from me)
You don’t.
So let me tell you.
That’s what this journey is FOR.
And it’s FOR you to FEEL FREE.
And to seek your meaning in that freedom.
Because the journey to freedom, how you show up, the choices you make, who you choose to be, what happens to you and what you do with it, these are all the doors you get to open.
Each door, one by one, leads to a response.
That response is either an EXPANSION or a CONTRACTION.
You are here to expand but you are deep in the contracted state that is required to grow.
Contraction is the tool. It’s the way you figure it out. You cannot have one without the other. This is nature. This is law.
Light / dark … birth/death … sun/moon … love/fear … EXPAND/CONTRACT
Only your refusal to contract, to rest, to wonder, to experience life in all it’s dimensions (known/unknown, seen/unseen) to experience fear or longing or uncertainty or darkness, all of the things you refuse constrict your ability to expand.
(my annoyance continues, because I know all this in my logical mind, and one of my favorite poems is Birdwings by Rumi, which I’m sure is why she’s citing it. And this is what I teach women to do, to rest in the unknown. So I know what she’s saying, but I know she’s not speaking to my logical mind. She’s speaking to my liminal one - the one that is in between thresholds of consciousness - trying to strike a cord so I’ll get past the logic to let what she’s saying really sink in)
So I say again. You are here to FEEL FREE.
And to experience all the things that allow you to experience freedom and the things that keep you from it, so that you can seek your meaning through that freedom.
But why can’t I know what it is?
Because it doesn’t exist yet. You, in this crossing, are part of what is bringing it into being.
Then shouldn’t I know? (I say annoyingly)
No, you shouldn’t know, you should BE (she says sternly).
(RGGGH)
You will know.
In 9 months, you will know.
I between now and then, you learn and you act - and you learn and you act in service of freedom.
You can and will do the things you have begun to feel in your heart but don’t yet understand, it’s just not time yet.
Until it’s time, you find FREE.
Freedom will take you there.
Follow what feels free and the meaning will appear.
Cosmic Convo: The End.
So, what am I doing with that cosmic bag of bananas?
Well, so far, I made a list of what makes me feel free, because if anything is clear from my little convo, it’s that I can’t think my way free, I have to feel my way to free through BEing.
And as I am passing through a new threshold, deeply in the evolutionary realm of unknowing, right now I’m honoring the deep winter I find myself in and I’m breathing into “just being” with it.
I’m taking my cues from nature and being like the tress: relying on my roots, releasing any clingy leaves, hibernating, resting in the wisdom that this too shall pass and doing what feels free in the process (which mostly means yoga and a lot of journaling, documentaries and BEing with a lot of questions that feel way to be to answer right now).
So what's this mean for you? On this Gemini Moon, it means to be with your gifts and to share them. Seen and unseen. Normal or not. Earthly or celestial.
You are not one dimensional. You never have been and you never will be.
You are a multifaceted creature capable of feeling and seeing and sensing so much more than your skin or what meets the eye.
There are unseen forces alive and well within the world.
This is seen with powerful juxtapose of love and hate.
These aren’t “SEEN” but they are felt, they are known. Their energy is just as real as anything else.
Insert your word for the unknown (Spirit, Creator, The Divine, God, Goddess, Krishna, Kali, Shakti, Allah, Adonai): this is what takes you where you need to go. Your willingness to let it lead you is up to you.
Let this Gemini Moon take you further into you, deeper into your perception of yourself, your relationship with life and what you perceive that meaning to be.
As you venture into the unknown, trust the feelings and sensations you experience, knowing that an open imagination, unattached to creating defined experiences, is a pathway to pure consciousness. You don't have to define Divinity. You just have to let it in.
You do this by hearing what your inner wisdom whispers and then honoring what it has to say. You do this by listening to what your body needs (rest, hydration, sex, sensual movement, cooked veggies, raw veggies, less booze and less processed food) and nourishing yourself with it. You do this by letting yourself sit within the realm of imagination and the sensations that arise in your body.
Because Spirit isn't linear. It doesn't move through logic. It lives in the liminal. It lives on the depth of your breath and the ability to make healthy choices for yourself that bring your closer to your inner nature, living in alignment with nature, and being an expression of nature.
And, because I have the best bestie on the planet, here is your Full Moon Playlist. I didn’t make it, she did :)
Because when I told her about my latest Cosmic Convo, about how I had written about it and how I was deep in the unknown of winter, feeling like a tree without her leaves that was just waiting for the last few to fall … she listened … and then she asked if I was going to share what I had written.
As in share publicly what I had written. And I said, “ugh, ya, well I guess I gotta let this cosmic cat outta the bag in a bigger way … even thoughI don't know how it'll all shake down because I’m under strict orders to ‘just be’ …“
And then, a few hours later, she texted me, with a link to a playlist she had made for me.
Aptly named Just Be, here it is (with the exception of the last song, which I added, because it was what was on repeat when she sent me the playlist), which has since been on repeat.
This playlist sums up where I’m at in this winter … with a breakup on the burner and a large dose of uncertainty looming nearby … all while the freedom this chaos creates sits patiently at my door, waiting for the day I'm ready to open it and walk through to all that awaits on the other side.
Into the Mystic,
Ashly
