Last night the moon was full in the sign of Gemini. This morning when I went out in my backyard early to do tai chi (cold!) there she was, hanging ripe in the misty western sky between the sleeping branches of the neighbor’s apple tree. Since she moves quickly through the zodiac (a degree every hour) she was already in Cancer, but still very plump and lovely.
The affirmations for moon in Gemini, from Donna Cunningham’s Moon Signs, are:
I release my blocks to spoken and written communication.
I let go of negative judgments about my intelligence.
I easily learn all the skills and concepts I need.
New ideas and understanding flood my consciousness.
My mind unfolds to its highest level of development.
I am coming up on the one-year anniversary of the conception of this blog: the idea came to me clearly in a moment on the Winter Solstice of 2015. So here in the light of that Gemini full moon and its airy, verbal qualities I want to share with you some of what I have learned from the last year of writing, and the 100+ posts I have published in the ten months since the blog launched in February.
My intention for this post is that what I have to say about written communication, an art form that is so close to my heart, will stimulate in you a reflection on your own journey: how you are expressing the desires of your own heart and what you are learning from that expression. May this Gemini lunar energy help strengthen your ability to gain mental clarity about, and speak the truth of, the things that are important to you.
I release my blocks to spoken and written communication.
The aspiration to write has been with me for a long time. James Hillman writes about “the acorn” – purpose buried deep in the soul’s core, out of which comes so much that unfolds in one’s life (including both successful manifestation and struggle). My acorn has writing in it: I began my career working for a book publisher, then became an English teacher and later a technical writer. All along there have been sporadic attempts at writing poetry, fiction, drama, and more; all along they have faded or fizzled or remained incompletely expressed. But this blog has brought things together for me in a way that works: I find that with this vehicle, there is a format and a purpose that enables me to write consistently and to reasonably good effect, a couple of times a week. In fact, it is this combination of form and content that has been the key for me: I have needed both a reason to express myself and an appropriate medium through which that expression can happen. Although I know this intention is not always perfectly realized, I do have an intention: to share ideas and inspiration to help others on the healing journey (the same journey, of course, that I am on myself). And the form of the blog, which turns writing into an ongoing practice of simultaneous discovery and sharing, feels well suited to my personality and style.
There are some blocks that remain, certainly. The writing itself has helped me gain clarity about some of them; others are waiting to be discovered when I am ready to see them. What writing the blog has done – is doing – is to give me a sense of direction and momentum, some experience facing the dragons of uncertainty, and a modicum of confidence that makes it a little easier to keep on walking when the fog is swirling around my ankles.
So there are three things worth noticing here – hardly a formula for each of them will demand a lot of you: find your purpose; find a means of expression that fits you; keep on walking.
New ideas and understanding flood my consciousness.
One of the surprises of publishing a piece of writing a couple of times a week is that the act of writing almost invariably gives me new insights. There are times when it’s difficult to sit down and do the work…because I don’t know where it wants to go. On most days, it is the writing itself that reveals what needs to be shared in that moment. It’s really quite exquisite, almost magical, how that happens. Even when I think a topic is sorted before I start, the act of articulation changes what it it, and changes my relationship with it, and something unexpected always seems to emerge: just a couple of days ago I started pulling on the thread of an idea, time’s two-headed arrow, and ended up someplace kind of surprising.
This is another version of “keep on walking”. It’s only by movement of some kind that the landscape starts to shift and we can tell where we are, and what we need to learn.
My mind unfolds to its highest level of development.
If you’ve reading my writing lately you know that I have been in a mentally supercharged state. I’m soaking up psychology and literature and cartography concepts, and more beside. I think Gemini (and Sagittarius too) is just delighted with this kind of energy. But I’m starting to see that “learn all you can” is not quite the right mantra for me. The phrase that has been coming to me instead is, “take this mind and give it to the earth.” This is not a morbid or negative thought; on the contrary, it suggests to me that my mind will find its “highest level of development” when it understands that it is (and I am) part of something much, much larger, much grander and more magnificent than just the scope of my own mental capacity. Being Itself wants to find expression through my mind, and through all of me, as part of Its great unfolding.
This also means that my mind’s unfolding does not separate me from anything or anyone. There is no ivory tower, no retreat for any elite. We are all just growing and learning and dancing together, gaining in understanding as our karmic destiny unfolds here on this incredible rocket ship. This is something else I am learning about writing: it connects me with you. And through the bonds of connection that form between me as writer and you as reader, I find myself more at home in the world. It’s quite noticeable: after years of feeling isolated and alienated, the flow of friendship and comradeship is opening up, not just through the nice response to my writing that I get from time to time, but in all sorts of planned and unplanned ways. I think the practice of sharing my mind and heart, here on this site, has something to do with that.
In the light of the Gemini moon, I encourage you to think of the growth of your own mind as a form of spiritual work that brings you into connection rather than separation. Study, learning, and thinking – letting your mind grow – can make you more a part of the living breathing earth, rather than somehow suspended above it.
