Holding Calendula instead of my phone. She’s much sweeter!
Lately I feel so strange to myself. My phone broke. I think it was because of a flower. The last picture I took was of a Datura I was communing with in a friend’s garden. And then an update wouldn’t take, and wouldn’t take and wouldn’t take until it wouldn’t turn on at all. So I’ve left it on a chair. I broke up with my phone.
My life without a phone: I miss my astrology application that tells me about the times and placements of alignments and risings and settings of planets and sun. I miss my menstrual cycle tracker. I think that’s about it. What I don’t miss are the hours I wasted staring into a device that doesn’t reflect the world around me or allow me to engage with it. It’s scary to think we are all so used to doing this, to perceiving the world more and more through this interface.
My first smart phone was given to me by a boyfriend in 2012. I felt some resistance, but agreed to engage for a little while. Unfortunately I did not give up the phone at the end of the six month relationship and it has been with me ever since. But I don’t think my phone is compatible with plant communication somehow, so it’s interesting that it has given up the ghost now. What I notice since living without it: My sleep is different, longer or shorter, and more intense. My days are longer and I do more. There are more hours. I engage more with my surroundings. I see more beauty. I talk to more flowers. As I go phoneless, I receive more messages from the universe. It’s that simple. And what do we receive from the Universe? The love that starts us and keeps us going. I never received that from my phone.
This new moon is about receiving love. Venus will soon rise as the evening star and beam down on me. Am I ready to take it all in? I think my phone was getting in the way. My other blocks to receiving love are still there of course but it’s as if I can see them more clearly. Maybe it’s because I’m not staring into a screen to avoid them. I’ve lost my main means of distraction from myself. I wonder at this object, small and shiny, produced as a product to make me into one (conversations at the farm have been about commodification of the self) and as I take a step back from it, I become more myself. The world spins. I make decisions. I may take fewer pictures, but I see more. I don’t have anything to show for myself, but I am more myself without this constant thing to check. It does make it a bit strange to be in the present world, but I suppose no stranger than it is for a flower to be today, or a butterfly. I want to be whole and rooted. I am seeding thankfulness and gratefulness, sun-ward, like them.
I also wanted to write about wholeness – another moon whisper. The cosmic energies are not particularly harmonious at the moment: Venus is square the Moon’s nodes and Saturn who sits on the south one, so there is a karmic tension about endings. Fall has come and we are descending into darkness, moving away from our mothering aspects of self. Perhaps we are being too harsh on ourselves. I’m thinking about relationship and those that brought me into darkness and those that brought me out. I’ve often felt, and been told, that I give too much, but I see now that my giving was seeking to fill a void I sensed, to bring balance, to fill in what was missing there: a too cold heart, an unfeeling mind. My balancing act with others was a beautiful, if sometimes painful, art. I’ve since learned that the only void I can really fill is the one inside myself and that people should do their own void filling for themselves, so I don’t try so hard now. I’m finding my own divinity and learning from this divine within myself. The planets of my birth chart as they move through the sky remind me of the universe moving within myself, all these complex aspects, singing together. Outside as inside, that old saying, the moon reminds us too, balancing the dark and the light.
What are your new moon intentions? Now is the time to send out what you would like to bring in. The new moon is dark longing, followed by, when she meets the sun, receptivity and becoming, openness to change. I feel the moon slipping down to the void of herself, the void of me. I’m a thin sliver now, dreaming of the dark, not yet anticipating Spring, but reveling in what the roots speak to me. This morning I made an altar and petitioned the planets for a little while. I’d love to help you start a moon centered ritual cycle. Let me know if you think creative coaching with me might help you connect to the universe and write, paint, sing, draw or work on your pet project with the help of the plants! May you listen deeply!