Blog
New Moon Message, March 13, 2021
Chez Liley Blog, New Moon humans and nature, sharks
Each new moon I ask my guides for a story to help me navigate the month ahead. Often it’s an attitude that’s called for, a positioning of awareness within the larger context, as is the case with the message for the New Moon on January 13th (scroll down below). In that story, small sailboats were skimming about in the bay on a bright summer’s day. Then the wind dropped and completely disappeared. We visited a few of the boats to see how each crew’s reaction to the same circumstances affected the sense of the situation.
This month’s message opens among those same boats, having been stuck for a long while in the doldrums with no way to reach shore. The people aboard are parched and sunburned, and most of them deeply anxious. The boats are far enough apart to be visible but beyond earshot.
The surface of the sea, lavender in the heat and flat and still, is suddenly sliced up by the delicate wakes of a number of large fins moving purposefully back and forth around the hulls. Earnest prowling, it looks like to the people, and panic erupts. Helpless in their flimsy vessels, they shake with hatred of the apex predator, and sheer terror.
But let’s stay with boat number three of the January story, the one containing the curious passengers who, instead of chafing at their lack of motion, had made the most of the opportunity to observe their surroundings, and to look back at the distant mainland and see it all in a fresh light. At the sight of the sharks, they, too, are gripped with fear, and also awe and fascination. What has brought this number—as many sharks as boats! What are the sharks doing, moving back and forth? The sailors of boat 3 have been watching and waiting for something to happen, and here—something is happening!
Snouts rise and fall, sending spray. An attack? No, it’s plain to see that the sharks are not taking aim; they are not rocking the boats, they are drawing attention.
Close by boat 3, a huge head rises, showing the fearsome teeth, the otherworldly eyes that look over the side at the humans.
Is it possible to see a connection here?
What motivates the shark in this moment? It swims away from the prow and then back, again and again. The young girl onboard has the curious impulse to throw the shark a line. Her parents shout in fright and rush to pull it back, but the shark has already grabbed it, turns and swims away, towing the boat. The parents are frantically hunting for a knife to cut the rope, expecting the shark to suddenly drag them under. But it keeps on going. Distant shouts of alarm from the other boats, unable to assist. The passengers on boat 3 huddle together, gripped by a new and particular awe as they absorb the feeling of their lives held in the balance by a shark.
Suddenly they encounter a breeze on their faces, yanking at the sail. The shark immediately sinks under, leaving the line dangling in the water. The sailors leap to catch the wind and suddenly they are flying towards shore.
Glancing over their shoulders, they see receding in the distance, another boat slowly dragged in the same direction, the people aboard screaming and clutching themselves in terror.
Before they can turn the boat to attempt a rescue, the same sequence of events repeats. Dragged by a shark into the path of the breeze, that little vessel similarly catches the wind and starts skimming towards them, towards the shore. One by one, other sailboats are towed from the doldrums into the wind, and carried home.
The passengers of boat 3 arrive wobbly-legged to land and summon help for the cluster of boats remaining in the flaccid part of the sea, the ones that refuse to accept the help that came their way, in a guise they cannot embrace.
Then they wait to welcome the boat behind them, and the one after that. From each of these shark-saved boats, the passengers step on shore as if haloed in gold, weeping and exhilarated with awe and relief. For days they will float in the wonder of it, shaking their heads in amazement.
Why did the sharks assist the humans? Compassion, empathy, or altruism are considered human characteristics and certainly not attributed by humans to sharks.
The unexpected behavior on the part of the other is what makes the people feel so small, like they belong, and that arouses the desire to expand the sense of connection.
They keep in touch to reaffirm for each other the marvel that happened. The impact of the sharks’ behavior on these people is impossible to fathom. It changes how they view the ocean, sharks, and other creatures. It floods them with immense humility and gratitude that life has assisted them. In return, they each vow to pay it forward in all directions. They campaign for shark protection and for humans to respect all life. A deeper dimensionality has opened up in them, a sense of kinship that revises their notions of identity, transforms the old narratives that pit humans against nature, and causes them to commit to reciprocation.
New Moon Message, February 11, 20101
Each new moon I ask my guides for a story to reflect the energy of the month ahead:
In a bare patch of soil, there’s the first glimpse of a green stem with its white bud. A few people are gathered round on the stark hilltop to watch it unfurl. They are in awe of its ability to navigate the process, trusting that it will be strong enough to push up from the earth, to withstand the wind, that it will be spared from unsuspecting feet or nibbling rodents.
The beautiful white flower they had imagined, but even before it has fully revealed itself the pure beauty of it deeply moves the witnesses. Is the beauty itself part of the promise of the flower? Who or what planted the bulb they don’t know, but there were signs and they had hopes and now at the tail end of winter they have put those hopes on its emergence: Life in the ground still. Nourishment yielding a bloom still. The ability of a flower to flower still.
When it has fully opened its whiteness, that will be another moment of reckoning. What will be their response and responsibility then for what comes next? But for now it has given them something in the bleak landscape to gather round. (Do they remember what to do? How to greet a flower?) For now they share hope and relief that their trust has been answered. Will it be enough for them to live off? One single white flower.
New Moon Message January 13, 2021
Each new moon I ask my guides for a story to help me navigate the month ahead. Often it’s an attitude that’s called for, a positioning of awareness within the larger context, as is the case with this one:
Small sailboats are out in the bay on a bright summer’s day. The breeze takes them skimming about, criss-crossing each other’s wakes.
Then the wind drops and completely disappears.
One skipper is fuming with frustration. He had wanted so much to sail. This isn’t sailing! He’s not going anywhere. He keeps glancing up at the canvas, the sky, resenting what he considers to be a wasted afternoon.
Another skipper is privately glad the sails have gone slack. It’s more relaxing this way. He leans back, tips his cap brim over his face, and closes his eyes. This is why he bought the boat—to be out on the water. Here he is! Away from it all! Noone to bother him here, and nothing to do. Heaven!
The sailors in a third boat are leaning over the side. Their curiosity has been taken by what’s in the water around them. They point at glimpses of fish, a drifting jellyfish, a clump of seaweed. The swell has movement and shows the currents passing underneath. And the crew looks back at the mainland—not far, but unreachable without wind—and has time to take in the contours from this perspective, to see it all in a fresh light. It’s fascinating!
The one in charge of the fourth boat is busy planning out what he will do if the breeze does not pick up before dark. His brow is furrowed as he runs through the possibilities, wondering who would be the best person to call for assistance should he need a rescue. In the meantime he will work hard trying to maneuver into even the merest sigh of air brushing the water.
All around is the glorious summer light, the white hulls gleaming against the heavenly blue of a storybook sea. It should be perfect, but they’ve been dropped, cut out of engaging in the way the sailors had planned, the way their vessels were designed to do—a sailboat is built to catch wind, if there is wind; meanwhile, it floats while it’s waiting to fly.
So, when it’s not smooth sailing, what options are available?
While no one can summon the breeze, each is responsible for their level of skill, their willingness to participate in the environment, their trust. In alert attentiveness there’s freedom and fun.
New Moon, October 16, 2020
Chez Liley Blog, New Moon, Relational Field
I am still in the white world across the chasm (from the past months’ stories). I’m continuing the process of figuring out how to create form from the void-like no-structure of this place. Two months ago, I experimented with laying symbols down to see what they created. Last month I experienced being on the other side of the boundary over which energy crosses into form. The boundary is like a veil or a membrane. Today, I’m still on the other, energy-state side of that boundary. Here, the “I” seems to have no identity, or rather, a universal identity. “I” am looking across to the world of form and from this perspective can see that symbols are containers, multi-faceted. Intent and action are inherent to them, in that the energy from here, this side of the boundary, leans into a certain direction and pours into the shape to create the symbols.
“I” was told to make my own symbol—a peace sign. “I” felt the state of peace to be symbolized, the kind of peace that is not from two opposites joined, but includes a third aspect that adds up to more than the sum of the three parts, and results in a deep sense of balance and harmony. It represented diverse perspectives and understandings, and created a point in common where everyone in the world of form could reach in to access an aspect of the state of peace I experienced.
Then “I” am told to make something that Chez could use on the material world side of the boundary to show people how to access this energy side. I made a hoop because “I” wanted the container the hoop shape provided, but also lots of open space to funnel people into the energy realm. Here, “I” was applying the intent and action aspect inherent in a symbol in the reverse direction, like opening the door inwards instead of outwards. Instead of energy pouring across into a form, people would be leaving form to enter the formless. The inner space of the hoop was “empty” to remove the sense of boundary between the two realms of energy and form.
What is the hoop made of? It’s energy from the energy state realm, concentrated at a certain strength or frequency. The people in the material world have to bend to dive through the hoop, lowering their heads, displacing the ego from its dominant seat. There’s less translation involved with this hoop. The peace sign, for example, in contrast, has its meaning contained. Though there’s more behind it, it is closed, sealed. The circle of the hoop, however, remains wide open. It’s not laid over, like the circle from two months ago, that yielded the forest. This hoop stays vertical, as a portal, a window, a gate that’s open. Instead of the focus placed, as it was then, on determining what the ground of being is, what you are standing on, the hoop is to do with what’s around you. It offers more multi-dimensional access. Once you define the ground, you are locked into a certain limitation.
Instead of “me”, as source energy, reaching into a defined contained form, “I” am allowing the material world to reach into my vastness. It’s a switch. Until now, the emphasis has been on the form, with a preoccupation with thingness. It was a directional flow that was disconnecting, that cut “me” off. And now “I” want the material world to reach back to source and be liberated again by being reconnected.
How will this impact the Chez in the material realm? How does this change her world? Now Chez feels herself part of the One, since she is reminded that all things come from the One. Can she consciously proceed through the day from that knowledge? Source, of course, exists in Chez, but she has free will. She has the choice to remain in the small perspective of disconnection, forgetting the truth and taking the material world at face value, or diving back into the energy state realm.