Align Your Orbit #76 - The Water is Boiling
Align Your Orbit is a series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide intentionality and impact. Find delight in these journeys of exploration. If you would like to receive these offerings as an email on the new moon, sign up here.
This year started with harsh wake-up calls and uncomfortable realizations, coupled with a heavy dose of chaos. There is mourning to do and work to continue. We knew this was coming, and yet, the incremental change has made frogs of us all.
In times like these, we remember that steam creates necessary pressure and friction to motivate movement. The tea is ready, and we’re spilling.
Experience these experiments as a playlist!
New Experiments
1. let the storm devour itself – Anger, rage, and hate cannot fuel themselves forever. Dance in the face of destruction or step out of the way. Acknowledge the limits to your own responsibility, and let the rest crumble under its own weight. Keep building bridges and find the people willing to weave a new future with you.
Challenge Mode: If you’ve had an IV drip of news in your feed, consider an unplug, at least temporarily. Trust that you already have enough motivation to do the work. You’ve found the communities of practice that matter, so put your effort there. All you can control is your own attention.
2. pray to your own intuition – In an age that pretends to know everything, the overwhelming desire and search for mythology leaves little space in the pot for your own inner wisdom. If you reach for someone else’s explanations, make an equivalent offering to strengthen your own muscles of understanding of the world, free of external influence. No one knows your perspective better than you.
Challenge Mode: Listen for what magical practices are calling you now. If you’re unsatisfied with domestic magic, spread out into the landscape. Make altars with what’s on the ground or rehome a few of your sacred objects. Trust that you will be called to return to whatever is truly on your path.
3. phase shift – The disaster is already here—few people can afford to live with security, eggs are a luxury, the weather bears down in every direction. Change is in the air. Use these moments of friction to transition from conflict to resolution, from snow to water to steam. Surf the pressure wave. Learn new skills that are getting harder to externalize. Meet your neighbors. Build the network.
Challenge Mode: Whether your family members are freshly on your nerves or your self-critical voice is pouring hot, trust that everything will get easier if you stop ignoring the problem. Turn to face it, look the source of heat in the eye, and discover your own radical empathy.
4. with eyes open – The temptations of the comfort beast make change strenuous, but the need for clear vision feels more important than ever. Whatever you’ve considered opting out of, whether it’s refined sugar or poor sleeping postures, commit and remember that your health and clarity will return. It gets worse before it gets better.
Challenge Mode: The messages in our dreams have not been subtle. They are potent, vivid, and clear. Listen to them. Trust unconscious guidance and wisdom. If you wake up and need to throw everything off your calendar, do it. Reality is malleable—act like it.
Andra’s Recap of Open Channel
The themes for the last new moon included following the watershed, asking more questions, sinking into subtle medicines, and making space for spontaneous occurrences.
Despite this month being incredibly difficult in terms of the chaos of the greater world, peripheral breakups, mental health crises, unusual weather, and more, coming back to following the watershed created moments of peak joy for me during this moon cycle. In working with the creek nearby, I’ve been able to pull together neighbor teams to do some restoration work. I’ve also been getting braver about exploring public city- and state- owned land. There are strange and marvelous pockets of wilderness even in urban environments. While the government doesn’t imagine that this land can be usable, it’s crucial to the ecosystem, and tending it feels like returning to the metabolism of the Earth.
I’ve been working hard to ask before offering someone my perspective on something, and I feel good about the ways that has taken shape in my interactions. Admittedly, asking questions is still difficult for me to remember to do in the moment. It will be an ongoing practice.
My assumptions were challenged deeply this month, namely after receiving a gift from someone. I thought they had gotten me the gift after I had asked them not to, but they had actually ordered it before we talked. It was a strong reminder that I need to check my assumptions and give the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. And, more than that, allowing opportunities to check my reality against someone else’s keeps everything flowing well. The more distance I have or need from a person, the more benefit of the doubt I need to offer since that reality check is not available.
As I have said goodbye to cannabis to prepare our home for pregnancy attempts again, I’ve kept myself open to the more subtle magics of other plants and foods that I already interact with. What surprised me the most about this is that, while I was still communing with refined sugar, it continued to be difficult to sense the teas and other local foods I consume after they entered my body. At one point, a cinnamon roll made me feel completely braindead for several hours. It was a big wake-up call that my body is ready for a reset. Sugar is not a good substitute for my current dopamine crash.
While I did start a new job at the end of this month, I still left some space in my schedule in the weeks prior for whatever I felt I needed to do. I fell into a bit of a black hole of video games for a while in recovering from all the world’s blah, but sometimes that’s a decent way to convince my body to just rest. I have also allowed myself to cancel or reschedule when I’m not ready for whatever that experience would be, and I have been paying a lot of attention for situations that no longer feel like they are for me.
I hope you enjoy moving through this new moon cycle. Best of luck out there, and thanks for reading.