New Moon, May 22, 2020
The imagination is the realm where deep change is born. It’s our tool to create reality by engaging with the relational field. What’s the relational field? It’s the great animate intelligence, the unified ground of existence, whose underlying principle is harmony. It constantly regulates its interrelated parts towards harmonious integration within the greater whole. Within this larger context, the position of the point of view determines relationships to other elements—together these make up the relational field.
I engage with this field to access guiding stories in answer to questions from individual clients. I decided to use the same process to ask for a story, each new moon, to describe the collective energy for the coming month and certain tasks to help align with it. This is similar perhaps to an astrological forecast, except from a different perspective.
This is the second month of trying this. I’ve decided to share the message and invite you to join me on this journey. It’s an adventure into the unknown for me, too, since the story comes in metaphorical language and this engages us to collaborate with the meaning-making process. It’s also asking us to take a different point of view—just as turning the focus on a kaleidoscope re-constellates the entire scene, a re-positioning in the relational field affects the way we relate to the rest of the world. If you’d like to share your interpretation and experience as the month unfolds, I’d love to hear from you.
Story for the New Moon, May 22, 2020
A bird in the thicket chirps an urgent warning. We don’t understand what it means. Its world is so different—or rather, it inhabits it in a way we can hardly imagine. Is the bird raising the alarm about us? Or telling us about something ahead on the path?
We crash on, clutching binoculars, eyes peeled, but oblivious. Looking in all the wrong places. We can’t see anything that isn’t in plain sight.
Why don’t we stop and wait? Why don’t we have patience?
Waiting is uncomfortable if we can’t stay present. The idea of waiting, even, is misguided since it implies passive inaction and an expectation. So, too, is avoidance. This is more about how we meet what’s ahead, and where.
If we knew the danger was, say, a hurricane on its way, our reactions would be different in terms of staying put, sheltering in place. But regardless of predictions, in this state of non-knowing, why do we hurry forward with such confidence in how we expect the world to be?
Let’s say we stop where the bird raises the alarm. Not another step further. Since the danger is not evident, still a threat only, for now we sit unobtrusively at the edge of the clearing to see who’s here—birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, and reptiles—and how they are responding to the alert. How many of their languages can we learn, to better understand our situation?
We might never have a name for the danger, or know whether it passed us or not. Instead, we might notice a new trail and follow that in a different direction, leaving this place behind. Or we might stay put in the clearing because we have found a place where we belong.
If we don’t heed the bird’s warning but insist on pressing on, perhaps we won’t meet threatening weather at all, but the one snake on the path, that brings us down.
Some tasks you might consider relating to this new moon cycle:
-
Stop and listen to the bird.
-
Take your place at the edge of the clearing and see what you can learn. Stand at the periphery of your life and pay attention to the other beings, all facing the same future. Consider the clearing not just as a pretty view to march through, but a place to inhabit.
-
Practice looking with a soft-eyed wide gaze that takes in the whole life of the clearing. Don’t come to conclusions too soon, just notice who is here—that takes some patience. Patterns of behavior emerge over time. Compensations indicate where systems are stretched. For example, inhospitable invasives in that corner mean this corner is busier and more densely populated. Let the careful observations lead you where—or not— to go, rather than you guessing right away, or making assumptions too quickly. The other creatures might even reveal the hidden path they’ve been using, leading in a new direction.