It’s the full moon lunar eclipse, or tonight, the aftermath of it. Do you feel it? Eclipses come in pairs (the first one, a new moon eclipse, was on October 25), and in astrology it’s generally believed that the two-week period of eclipses ushers in new energy and opportunities, while at the same time closing the door on something that has come to an end—or fundamentally changing whatever that might be.
I suspect some of you are not super into astrology, and I will not bore you with stories of things in my life that have “coincided” with past eclipses. (And I won’t even get into what the North Node and Uranus are up to this time! However if you are interested, here’s a good article.) Instead, I’ll offer two meditation-type things. See where they take you!
Meditation One
The portal opens. The veiled inner eye awakens. There is a quickening, a rush, the impulse to move forward, the taste of new possibilities on the tongue, fingers twitching as they reach for a new, imagined future reality.
There is another portal and it is closing. It feels like a skin that has been shed, like Inanna staggering back up from the underworld after she followed the whispers into the darkest places. It may be hard to imagine leaving this doorway behind, yet somehow, strangely, it already feels like relief, and there are only ashes on the other side, anyway. Moving away from it brings the odd sorrow of tears that somehow taste sweet. A mourning period before readying to enter that other luminous portal, or portals—perhaps there is more than one.
This new portal, it feels meant-to-be, it feels right, yet diving into it will not be exclusively joyful, because the loss that has come before cannot be erased and no one would want it to be, because it is part of our story now, woven into the thread of who we have been and who we are becoming.
Meditation Two
Close your eyes and allow yourself to get comfortable. Shift your awareness to your breath coming in, shifting out, like the wind stirring a tree.
Let yourself go within and begin to descend. As if you are spiraling deep into the roots of a great tree, deep into an unknown, not-yet-seen, underground.
Now you are in the forest of your heart. Leaves shift beneath you. The sky is bright through bare limbs. You squint, orienting yourself.
There is a path behind you and it is where you are coming from. It is well-trod, perhaps muddy even, and from where you are, you can see all the bends it has taken, all the permutations, the detours and the reroutes and the backtracking and the crisscrossing and the smooth straightaways (thank god for those straightaways!) and the hairpin turns—all of them bringing you right here, to this moment.
No matter how tangled, how gnarly, how maddening, you find in yourself a voice—perhaps no more than the thinnest of whispers—that can offer gratitude for this path. Because without it, no matter its trials and tribulations, its hopes and disappointments, if this had not been your path, you would not be here, as you are, right now. Perhaps there were other paths you could have taken, but you didn’t. You took this one. This brought you here. This made you who you are, right now.
Sometimes it’s easy to feel gratitude, and sometimes it’s hard, and however you feel is okay.
Know that some parts of this path have come to an end; some routes are closed. Some are changing beyond recognition—transmogrifying, you might say, into something entirely new and unexpected. Do you feel that little leap of thrill in your heart, seesawing between fear and excitement? Yes—that means you’re alive.
Now you turn to the path that lies ahead of you. This is less clear. Perhaps leaves obscure its bends; perhaps it dips into a distant valley and disappears, or vanishes over the height of towering mountains. Perhaps it is a journey by water where there is no path except the one charted by the stars.
Take in what you can about this path. Perhaps images come, or words, or ideas, or smells, or a feeling. Perhaps what you sense most of all are the gray clouds of uncertainty or grief and if that is the case, remember that the sun lies behind those clouds, and it will not be cloudy all the time.
Time—timing, well, that is what none of us know. When will it happen—that is in greater hands than ours.
See if you can take that hope, that vision, that dream, that future, and place it in the care of whatever is greater than you, trusting that it will be tended. This could be your big self, your guides, your guardian angels, God, the universe, the certainty of time, whatever word(s) you use, or don’t use.
Give that future vision a good squeeze, and then let it go.
You breathe in, out. You bless your own path, what’s come before, what lies ahead. You do this in whatever way seems the most appropriate to you.
And so it is.
P.S. If you’re in the U.S., I hope you voted today!