Just about six months ago I posted my first Moon Cycle post about the Pisces new moon – in fact that was my first actual post on this blog. Now the sun has moved to the opposite side of its yearly cycle (late winter to late summer), and the moon has gone through twelve monthly cycles and is lining up opposite the sun in Pisces. And so we get a Pisces full moon, on Friday.
One of the things I love about astrology is the same thing I always loved during those years of singing Gregorian chant and especially the Psalms: the way the fluidity of one’s personal psychology interacts with the regular movement of time, whether it’s the daily cycle of the divine office, the weekly cycle of psalm-chanting, or the perpetual shifting movements of the stars and planets through the year. These patterns keep changing in their regular ways, and we keep changing in our irregular ways, and in the dance between them new pathways and possibilities emerge.
So here we are with a Pisces moon again: a full moon (which begins a cycle of completion, ripeness, and perfection) rather than a new moon (which begins a cycle of receptive emptiness, possibility, initiation). Let’s take those Donna Cunningham Moon Signs affirmations I’ve been working with, and see how they look from this point of view:
I release my addictions to people, places, and things.
I give myself permission to experience my feelings.
I meditate easily, willingly, and regularly.
I cherish and express my creative abilities.
I experience my connection with the divine.
Six months ago I was just about to start my very first Soul Cartography class. I was thinking about my experience as a high school teacher thirty years ago, and anticipating my return to the classroom. That Pisces new moon initiated a cycle of creative discovery that has continued through the recent months; now it’s seeking new forms of expression. So the affirmation “I cherish and express my creative abilities” is taking some interesting new forms in this season: the yeast is still bubbling but the new loaf has not yet taken shape. My renewed exploration of Buddhism is putting me into contact with meditation again for the first time in a few years, so I welcome the Pisces full moon’s support of that during this time as well.
But it feels like a new and different stream of energy is emerging right now, something that Pisces is helping to bring into focus. It has to do with these two affirmations:
I release my addictions to people, places, and things.
I give myself permission to experience my feelings.
I wrote recently about my shifting relationship with work, and my endeavor to find wholeness and integrity in the workplace. There’s another nuance that has come into play more recently; this has to do with heartbreak. As I have learned about both the possibilities and limitations of work environments, I’m realizing that, nearly every place I’ve worked, after some period of years (it’s a variable amount, depending on the particular circumstance) – I come across the experience of heartbreak. What I instinctively long for: the community, the love, the connectedness – falls prey to one form of failure or another. Ultimately I think it traces back to the reality that every human enterprises I have encountered is made up of…humans…and that may be their fatal flaw. Somehow the expectation of “More” is built into me; the expectation is foiled; my heart breaks; and sooner or later I need to move on.
So: it just recently dawned on me that after probably six or so such experiences through my work life in the last thirty years, it would be really, really great to break this cycle of heartbreak. It would be really great to just be present in whatever work situation I’m in, as I am – but also accepting those around me (including especially the leaders) as they are.
So I want to focus this “I release my addictions” affirmation on my attachment to a really quite unreasonable ideal of perfection in the “people, places, and things” of the places where I work. It is time for me to let that go. Pisces moon, O you who call us to transcend all boundaries and limitations: I call on you to help me.
And the second affirmation, “I give myself permission to experience my feelings”, is closely related. After 30 years in conventional technology workplaces I have found that they, and the people who tend to gravitate toward them, just aren’t that great at dealing with feelings. I know that such places are not where most of my emotional expression is going to take place. However, I am noticing that the affirmation is not about expressing feelings, but about experiencing them. That is always possible, anywhere, any time. So I can recognize the limitations that the conventions of my circumstances impose on me – while retaining my integrity, and my honest connection with my own experience. My rich, expressive emotion-body, that lovely watery Piscean creature, feeds me and keeps me in touch with my inner wisdom.
