Align Your Orbit #83 - Sense the Slipstream
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.
We spent the last moon pulling inward and seeking inner guidance. Now, we’ve found it. We know what is singing within us and what we want to say. We’re ready to share our inner gifts and wisdom as we surrender to the slipstream of universal knowing. The ease, the patience, the sacred pause is already present. Listen for it—it’s all around you.
Know that your celebration is a gift, trust that your teachers are already in front of you, uncover the mystery of the everyday ceremony. All this is innate to you. It’s time to remember.
Experience these experiments as a playlist!
New Experiments
1. curious care – Tending for a space need not be something on your to-do list. Instead, get curious about what is asking for your attention. What is one thing you can do on your journey from here to there? Pick up a pinecone, pull one opportunistic plant, write down one line of a poem ricocheting in your mind. Observe first and make the path better for your passing.
Challenge Mode: Creating space for everyday ceremonies is difficult, but so find places to put visual reminders. Add some trinkets to the base of a favorite tree, create an altar outside your front door, or pause before entering a space. Every threshold is a portal to a new way of being.
2. probability play – We talk about manifestation and the mind’s ability to influence reality, but how do we actually engage in that process? Write down or otherwise brainstorm reality shifts that would have a universally beneficial impact—note any potential downsides. When in doubt offer your energy to what is in all beings’ highest good.
Challenge Mode: It’s easy to think that less suffering would be universally desirable, but what about pain signals from the body that keep us from continuing to harm ourselves? There are messages we need to receive, and sometimes a little suffering is the mode through which the body sends the message. Open yourself (or, gently, others) up to receiving pain signals as catalysts, curiosities, or opportunities for greater self-knowledge. What do you discover?
3. from crisis to consequence – These modern times are terrifying, and many people describe this as a “meta-crisis” as imperialist frameworks begin to fail. But, as Vanessa Andreotti has said, the word “crisis” creates a situation where people want an authority figure to come save them. On the other hand, “consequence” allows us to acknowledge our degree of complicity in the collapsing system and empowers us to take action to restore right relationship. How does this change feel in your body?
Challenge Mode: If you feel guilty about your level of complicity and allow that to paralyze you, nothing will change. We must collectively move beyond guilt and into reckoning and repair. Accept that you hold a piece of the world wound and find one way to be in more authentic relationship with the land and their waters. Clean up a beach, walk to your local grove of trees, establish regular visits to a sacred place.
4. radical redirect – We must defend ourselves from attempts to stop our healing work in the world, but we can’t afford to spend energy in useless struggle. Seek a way to redirect harmful energy by getting behind it and using its own energy to pin it to the ground. Pull the argument further into its current trajectory. Listen a layer deeper to understand someone’s motivations. Ask a question.
Challenge Mode: Your celebration is revolution, is gift, is sacred offering. The land doesn’t just want your grief and your reparations—they also want your joy. Find time to dance and sing, play and giggle along the banks of the water or near another natural landscape. Bring gifts of seeds, flowers, or spirits to share with the earth and their ancestors.
Andra’s Recap of Mind the Interface
The experiments for the previous moon cycle included trusting internal balance (challenge mode: not seeking external authorities), allowing mistakes (challenge mode: not pushing yourself), setting the pace (challenge mode: returning to practices and prayer), and sharing tools (challenge mode: asking why we crave control over the opinions of others).
I practiced trusting my internal sense of balance all throughout my recent travels. I took part in and co-produced a two-week journey from the headwaters of one of the tributaries of Willamette River down to the confluence with the Big River (Columbia). This experience, which aimed to listen to stories and weave together people doing regenerative work in this collection of watersheds, was deeply moving and spiritual.
As part of the ceremony team during the tour, I was holding a potent thread and doing a lot of listening for when sacred moments would arrive. I offered some of the headwaters to almost every place we visited, and universally, people were grateful for a moment to pause, reflect, and receive. There was an innate respect for the cleanliness of the upper river, and it was easy to guide the group into ceremony in this way. To hold it well, I had to trust that my listening was correct and pursue it. But, on days when I left the jar back at our lodging site or opted out of that ceremony, there was a potent absence. It was good to feel both experiences so I could trust my sense of them even more.
Our culture makes it really difficult to trust that making mistakes is okay, but I did what I could to surrender to the process, especially in terms of having grace for other people’s mistakes. If someone forgot they had agreed to do something, I paused to feel my disappointment but transitioned toward trusting that there was some reason why that didn’t happen. The more I surrendered, the less I needed to feel in control.
Slowing down has always been a challenge for me. I confuse my capacity with my desire to be competent. But, during the tour, I felt into how much the whole group needed breaks more often than they were scheduled. I tried to balance respect for others’ time with the changing energy levels. I took time for myself when my eyes were too heavy to keep open. I definitely made mistakes and let the rush push me at times, but overall, I am grateful to have practiced this skill of giving more spaciousness to the sacred.
I spent a great deal of time thinking about “sharing the news with the Earth,” especially because there was someone travelling with us who helped us brew chicha. Chicha is a traditional South American drink made of fermented corn, flowers, and intention. We shared some with almost everyone we visited and drank deeply after we had danced or sang together. It became a potent ritual. The brewer of the chicha told us that chicha is information. By offering some to the land before we drink, we are sharing everything that has happened on our human journeys with the earth. I more potently felt the connection with the living land as a result of this practice.
As the journey I went on was framed as a “listening tour,” I was prepared to receive stories, teachings, and surprises, but I also offered them in return. There was a true exchange going on within our tour group and with each of the places we visited. We shared our secret superpowers with each other, offered the gift of our deep presence, and saw the reflections of ourselves in each other’s eyes. I felt my perspectives and mannerisms shaping those I was around and felt their mannerisms shaping me.
I hope that you enjoy this cycle’s theme and experiments. Go well into the world.