Ah life is pain, isn’t it?
It’s Sunday morning, correction, Sunday afternoon, and I’m tired. This is obviously a blanket statement. We’re all tired, are we not? Similes have been constructed for the very purpose of further describing what these mundane, overused words mean in the undertone, but quite often it’s easier to blanket deep truth to avoid succumbing to the terrible state of being vulnerable. I actually don’t have a problem with vulnerability, in fact sometimes I make myself so vulnerable that I end up in dangerous waters. I trust too easily, I give people the benevolent benefit of the doubt. I blame my born again Christian upbringing along with my Jupiterian nature that dictates I! must! tell! the! truth! at! all! times! It doesn’t feel authentic if I don’t. So how did I end up in an industry that conceals all, operates covertly and constructs unbridled fantasy to sustain itself? I mainly blame my eighth house stellium along with my Mars/Pluto conjunction in Scorpio in the seventh house (the house of relationships!). I came to spelunk the depths of my psyche and to be penetrated by the sharpest, most intelligently seductive knife, that would, in kind, atomise the ancient wounding in the depths of my soul begging to be unearthed and healed. Mars you see, is cutting, it is also sex and masculine energy and the fuel that jet sets our lust for life. Pluto is nuclear. It is explosive transformation that leaves you irrepressibly changed. Forever altered. Never the same again.
So how does one reconcile a truth desideratum in a world that is built on a web of lies? Suddenly this dichotomy feels as though it could be referring to a number of different spheres of existence. We all know how the sausage is made yet we continue to devour it for sustenance whether it be flesh and blood stuffed into a thin white intestine casing or some genetically modified soy concoction designed in a lab amid ingredients we don’t know how to pronounce. This question all of a sudden becomes existential. How does one live in a world full of pain and sadness yet continue to hold a candle for love and joy and pleasurable experiences? The answer demands bilateral dissection in which the image of a mirror surely thrust forward in magnanimous view. We project a hologram of ourselves out into reality which then magnetises a swirling current comprised of the intricate pieces of our nature into an outer force field. These undoubtedly are people, jobs, experiences, landscapes, animals and exchanges that then crack us wide open. What are wounds besides crevices filled with sadness and shame that conceal the truth of our nature? What is life beyond an inquisition of the self?
I mentioned that I woke up this morning feeling tired. Bone tired. Run over by a train tired. I woke up feeling lonely. A loneliness that aches for community, for kindred spirits, for companionship. A deep ache like an old injury on a rainy day. I woke up feeling cut up that I have subsequently exited off the plain of most social media platforms in pursuit of genuine connection versus immersing myself in a soupy pool of other people’s pain, sadness, ego projection and need to feel seen that quite frankly messes with my mind and leaves me feeling more wasted than before I logged on. There is also the complicating shame spiral woven into the nature of comparison we tend to get lost in online…of not feeling like I’m living up to my potential, feeling as though I’m not doing anything productive or worthy with my life. This state of mind feels like a push pull, for I am fighting with myself and there is no escaping the feelings of miry desolation. There is no going over, there is no going under, there is simply sitting in the pain and feeling through it all until every last tear is rinsed out and I am washed clean. Until the truth shines through. Until the fears have released and the pain has dissipated. Until I reconnect to myself. Until I find the truth once again. I am worthy of life regardless of what I achieve. Being here in the present is all that is required. It’s all that is required. Let that sink in.
We live on a spectrum of colours that constantly presents us with confusing shades of grey. I live in a constant plume of tonal grey, stitched together by stigma and repulsion. This is the eighth house, the underworld full of taboos and and shadowy lands, of voices that spook us in the nighttime. I love grey areas. There is compassion and love in their most raw forms when we are pulled into these spaces. They dictate desperation, times of strife, times of grief, times when we don’t know what else to do but feel we must do something. This is the power of Pluto. He forces us down to our knees and demands we try it a different way. A way we thought couldn’t possibly be the answer. Along with Uranus and Saturn, he shatters the projection and constructs a new reality. The old frame work doesn’t work anymore. A new truth is formulated. For what is the truth besides being brave enough to question the current status quo? This is how we evolved, and how the chemistry in our brains adapted to our ever growing curiosity to further the consciousness of intelligence, to traverse how deep and wide the universe really is. How we are all connected, through life force energy, to all living things. How we rely on each other to survive.
If life is pain, it is also love, for these two entities belong on the same spectrum of polarity. What I have come to discover in my seven years in this subsequent world of providing is that truth and fantasy also exist on a a very similar spectrum. On the equinox of these poles I’ve found moments of bliss that exist the connection that presence demands. Nothing is perfect. There is always lack and waste and lies and fear to conceal the truth of a situation. Religion has dictated that it is god’s place to judge but so often we decide to reprimand this as our own cross to bear. There is grace and peace and gentleness in the grey areas of life that we want to fill with penance. This is how I reconcile the truth of who I am with the nature of what I do. I become that safe space. That reprieve. That lighthouse. That source of love to salve whatever need is being presented in front of me. I have found deep joy and purpose in this place. It has transformed me, shown me another way. It has expanded my mind, quelled my judgement, targeted my shame for examination, healing and growth. It has invited me to step up into an empowered self that recognises worthiness. It has fulfilled a desire that has evaded me for what feels like eons.
I hope to meet you in that space soon.