For those who are interested in the esoteric side of life, you’ll know that there was a lot of hoopla about this month’s full moon in Scorpio. The significance was that it opens a pathway to your truest nature and deepest passions. Energy is all over the grid; things ending; things beginning.
It’s felt ‘jagged’ for me. I don’t have a better word to describe it. It rained last night so meditating was in the general direction of the moon but no visual. This evening it’s a bit cloudy and the moon was a tad low on the horizon so the only place to see it was sitting under a tree next to the sidewalk along a busy road. Not ideal but gotta do what needs to be done. So I hauled my picnic blankie out and sat outside for a bit, feet on the wet grass. While a tad on a cold side, it felt good having grass between my toes.
it wasn’t an overly long meditation, or contemplation if you will. Sitting outside in the dark, under a tree on the sidewalk made me realize how unnoticed I was. I mean, how often do you see someone meditating on a sidewalk facing a full moon yet passing motorists had no focus other than on what they were doing. Good for the motorists, because you know, safety first, but it made me realize how unnatural life is in some ways. We don’t see what’s in front of us because we’re seeing what’s put in front of us.
There’s routine: You wake up, feed the kids/dogs/spouse, go to work, work, talk shit to people, commute home, cook, clean, shower, TV, naps, etc. and it plays out in similar sequences most days.
Then there’s rhythm: Sunrise, sunset, seasons, daylight, darkness, settling, waking up, cycles in nature and the body. We don’t live by those things most of the time. Our surroundings artificially provide light beyond the dark, we wake up at ungodly hours; there’s constant noise. It never ends. Traffic all the time in varying quantities because the stores are open 24/7 in case you need to buy a lawnmower. People work shifts so that the profit machine never needs to shut down. We eat beyond what we need because it’s there and we can. Burger and all the trimmings at 3am? You betcha! We don’t listen to our inner nature anymore. We aren’t in tune with nature because we’ve all but obliterated it in our daily lives. We’ve lost balance and turn to entertainment and medication in an attempt to fill the void where balance used to be.
The seasons are just mere weather; our lives don’t alter to match it. Foods are available all year round and if it’s not in season, then we’ll just have that shit shipped in from wherever it is in season. There’s no work and rest. We’re entertained and connected all the hours God sends so there’s no slow descent into restfulness at the end of the day. It’s lights on, lights off. Outside, the street lights are on or the sun is up. There’s never just total darkness, so we get blackout blinds to create darkness to sleep, while simultaneously working to make sure it’s never dark outside.
Where is the silence? Unless you live in the boonies, it’s never quiet. There’s a car honking, traffic, alarms or sirens. Always something. There aren’t many places to experience deafening silence, or just enough silence to sleep restfully. We don’t wake up naturally. I personally wake up to blaring bagpipes as my alarm tone so it feels like I’m ready to invade a small country within 5 minutes of waking up. Yes, I could pick something gentle, but given that I sleep with earplugs in to drown out the traffic noise so I can sleep, I need a loud alarm to get through the earplugs. See the conundrum??
Our routines seldom deviate and our rhythms are out of whack. The tragedy is that it isn’t set to change. The world won’t suddenly embrace no street lights or stores that close at 5pm. The traffic won’t go away while there are places for those people to go, or jobs to be done servicing the people who need to shop at 2am. Shift work won’t vanish while there’s money to be made.
How do we get the rhythm back? While I think the notion of having paraffin lamps would be romantic and old fashioned, I’d probably burn the block down and cannot be trusted to operate something that doesn’t have a switch. How do we tune into the natural rhythms when we’ve spent years eliminating the need for them? We don’t have to sleep when the sun goes down because lightbulbs y’all! We’ve gotten very efficient at living; packing a pile of stuff into every day. But do we actually have balance?
As fluffy as it sounds to any left-brained person, I need to find ways to embrace the natural rhythms in my life again; whether it’s the biorhythms of the body, phases of the moon or seasons of the year. Instead of routine, I need ritual; rituals that respect the rhythms of nature and of my nature. Maybe that’s the road to balance.
