Welcome to the in-between space - this time between eclipses and in the shadow of the upcoming Mercury retrograde - where it is hard to know things in a hard-and-fast way. Reality feels less solid and more wavy. The ground under our feet feels like quicksand, or aether. Surprises abound and we can’t assume much about tomorrow based on what happened yesterday. We no longer have aspects of the past available to us and the future hasn’t all-the-way arrived yet.
As a long-time meditator, I know this place well.
As a long-time human, I know we don’t like this wavy/quicksand feeling.
But, as Jenny Lewis sings, “life goes in cycles, it’s a merry-go-round”.
And, as Edie Brickell sings, “I’m not aware of too many things, I know what I know if you know what I mean.”
And as Jon Kabat Zinn says, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
So, yes, this little window of time is not great for pinning down our ideas like butterflies to a board, much less cementing them in stone.
You know what it is great for though?…
Meditating until you connect to the energy of all things and then playfully creating ripple effects.
So yes, the energy is diffuse, let’s get diffuse.
Nothing is set in stone, so let’s give ourselves a break from being so hard.
Reality is wavy, let’s be wavy too.
Let’s have a little homecoming to ourselves as energetic beings in a world ripe with mysterious flows of energy and information. Let’s stop pretending we know everything about the best ways for life to organize itself. Let’s allow for the energy of all things to have a hand in the proceedings.
Another way to say it is that it is like we are standing over a still, clear lake which is our existence. Maybe we think we know what is best for this lake - that it should run in a certain way, like flowing in a linear way through a concrete channel that we made. So, we have a choice - to work very hard to force the water (existence) to try to make it take an ever-lasting hard and fast shape of our choosing; OR we can merge with the water, enter into its ways of being, come to know its way of holding energy and power and then using the felt sense of water to create ripples that radiate out, affecting the lake in better, more co-creative ways, with more far-reaching benefits, than if we forced the concrete channel idea.
Which of those two options - forcing the mind’s idea or creating ripple effects - do you think is more work? Which is more magical? Which sounds like more fun, a grand experiment or a strange but rewarding game?
In this spirit, today I want to share few short clips from some meditations I love when I want to go really far out.
All of these are available as instant downloads for $5/each and all are included in the Streamers library for $11/month.
Maybe just listening to these short clips will get some ripple effects going for you, or maybe one of them will inspire you to experience the full version.
Let’s start with a very earth-y one - SAND
Then, let’s tap into the energy of space - DARK MATTER
Then let’s see what water can do - CURRENTS
And then, tuning into how feelings come and go - FEELINGS
Paradoxically, during this in-between-time, creating ripple effects through meditation is literally the most productive thing we can do.
Whether through our subconscious or the collective unconscious or the quantum field, endeavor to merge with the energy of all things and then playfully engage the waves.
Let energy flow through you. Let feelings come and go. Let your nice, big brain off the hook of trying to pin it down, figure it out.
Instead, lean into the quantum, holographic, fractal nature of our existence.
Easy come, easy go. Experience it all without letting it get lodged inside you. Give up forcing things to be a certain kind of way and instead, keep finding expansion as you deepen into in how things are and what they might become.
As Hunter F. Thompson said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”.
Times are definitely weird. Let’s go pro…
Until next time,
Jess
“According to Jungian psychology the human personality has four aspects, or functions, set in two opposing pairs. The first pair is thinking and feeling; the second pair is intuition and sensation. The first pair is rational, the second irrational.
Thinking concerns rational intellectual functioning, what we think about things.
Feeling has to do with our values, how we feel emotionally about a situation.
Intuition implies a nonverbal, irrational perception of ideas, outcomes and situations.
Sensation has to do with nonrational, sensate perception of the physical world of objects – their sizes, shapes, colors, smells, sounds.
Jung explained the four functions this way…
‘The essential function of sensation is to establish that something exists, thinking tells us what it means, feeling what its value is, and intuition surmises whence it comes and goes. Sensation and intuition I call irrational functions, because they are both concerned simply with what happens and with actual or potential realities. Thinking and feeling, being discriminatory functions, are rational. Sensation… rules out simultaneous intuitive activity, since the later (sic) is not concerned with the present but is rather a sixth sense for hidden possibilities, and therefore should not allow itself to be unduly influenced by existing reality. In the same way, thinking is opposed to feeling, because thinking should not be influenced or deflected from its purpose by feeling values, just as feeling is vitiated by too much reflection.’
Very early in life we get the first function going – just the first small beginnings of consciousness. When the first function is established, a second function is added. In our culture this happens around early adolescence. The, when we can stand it, a third function is added. And that brings us to the ordinary, everyday kind of consciousness in which most of us live.
We each “specialize” in one function, the one that comes most naturally. This is called our superior function. The opposing one of the pair, that which is least in our control, is called our inferior function. (This is a greatly simplified explanation. It is important to remember that no one exemplifies these functions as clearly in real life as it is possible to do in theory.) Each of us has all the aspects to some degree, and through their complex interplay we each express our unique personality.
- Robert A. Johnson p.53.-54, Ecstasy, Understanding the Psychology of Joy
“Everybody has a superficial side and a deep side, but this culture doesn’t place much value on depth — we don’t have shamans or soothsayers, and depth isn’t encouraged or understood.
Surrounded by this shallow, glossy society we develop a shallow side, too, and we become attracted to fluff.”
- Joni Mitchell
”90% of all transformation is awareness.”
- Aaron Doughty
"There is no such thing as independent existence. That is an illusion. Only by the interconnection and endless reflection of all things upon each other can life exist. This is the basic message of every spiritual teacher I've studied, and Indra's bejeweled Net symbolizes it beautifully: The One vast Net and the Many living jewels who continually reflect light between one another. The things we living beings do and say, create and emanate, reverberate through the cosmos.”
- Seena B. Frost
“We take it for granted that we need to take showers, clean our houses, and wash our clothes. We’d be uncomfortable if we didn’t, to say nothing of being the object of social criticism. Yet, the mind and its thoughts need cleansing, perhaps even more than our bodies. The mind works longer, encounters wider dimensions, and runs the operating system of our life as well! While few of us would consider eating dinner on yesterday’s dishes, we think nothing of tackling a new problem with yesterday’s cluttered mind…
Just as love is a difficult concept to describe, yet intrinsically part of a natural, healthy state, enlightenment can also be thought of as a natural state, and equally difficult to describe. In this way, enlightenment would be achieved by a process of undoing rather than doing. We keep ourselves from enlightenment by our own mental blocks, just as a roof blocks the sun from shining down on us.”
-Anodea Judith
"Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning - We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love."
- Joy Harjo
"In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed
with balance and stealth."
- Patti Smith
“The mystical experience is nothing other than becoming aware of your true physical relationship to the universe.
And, you are amazed, thunderstruck by the feeling that underneath everything that goes on in this world, the fundamental thing – is the state of unbelievable bliss.”
- Alan Watts
Let’s be wavy 🎟️🌹