Tonight is a new moon in the sign of Libra. We have passed the autumn equinox, but for me anyway the energy around me is still finding its way to an autumnal place. The hoped-for clarity has not quite manifested itself yet. As that incubation continues, I’m pausing to reflect on Donna Cunningham Moon Signs affirmations for the lunar cycle that is beginning:
I release my sorrow over past relationships.
I let go of the need to find the ideal man or woman.
I am complete and need no other to make me whole.
I am loving, lovable, and loved.
I give and receive unconditional love.
Just last night I wrote about the need to identify and walk one’s own path on the spiritual journey. This affirmation, then, will help me focus on that:
I am complete and need no other to make me whole.
In part, Libra is about relationships, and it’s useful to hold this notion in that context. For me right now, what it has to do with is the gradual quenching of a life-long pursuit of community as the ultimate source of validation. It’s no surprise: I grew up in a tight evangelical church with a very strong sense of boundaries between it and “the world”. I’ve spent much of my life since then looking for a replacement for that experience. This quest has taken me at one time or another into Jewish, Sufi, Buddhist, New Thought, contemplative Christian, and men’s movement (to name just a few – the list is really quite embarrassingly long). This quest has also led me to seek community in my “day jobs”, leading me quite consistently to heartbreak and disappointment in my emotional life at work.
This story is getting quite clear to me: a repeated story of looking to groups of people to validate me and mirror back to me my worth in some way. But in waking up to this pattern I find myself rejoicing rather than despairing, because it is through waking up that I can finally – finally – break free of it.
The radically personalized nature of shamanic practice has been so valuable in this breaking-free process, but so has the teaching of Jesus, who spoke this to me the other day (through the Bible for a change, in Matthew 6:6): “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
I don’t know why we think that we need the validation of other people when we walk our path. I don’t know why we think we need to have our identity absorbed in some larger group in order for our work to be worthwhile.
It’s just not true!
Libra new moon, I am calling on you to remind me through the next four weeks of this lunar cycle:
I am complete and need no other to make me whole.
