Align Your Orbit #85 - What Do You Get Out of This?

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.

Feedback is a necessary part of the cycle of growing, composting, and tending the communication at the edges of each membrane. Staying silent about your experience, getting defensive about constructive criticism, and submitting to the ways things have always been interrupt the natural stages of renewal and change. Create brave spaces wherever you walk and fearlessly seek opportunities to look in the mirror. You’ve come a long, long way—celebrate that. But there’s still a long way to go.

As of last month, ash and andra have been writing these self-evolution recipes for seven years, long enough for every cell in our bodies to replace themselves. You and me? We are completely different people. Whether you’ve been following this journey since the beginning or only recently joined, we’d love to hear what you’ve been getting out of this. Give us some feedback as part of this cycle’s theme.

No playlist this month as we are actively switching over to Tidal from Spotify. Stay tuned!

New Experiments

1. practice discernment – The nature of existence is that you will constantly get bids for your attention. Especially in our hybrid digital-physical landscape, the opportunities for engagement are infinite. We cannot say yes to everything. What are the conditions under which you actually want to say yes? Name them and let them come to you. Be bold and brave as you stand in the power of no.

Challenge Mode: If something is taking up too much of your energy and not giving much back, it’s time to extricate yourself. What is the kind but timely way to leave this situation? How can you compost the energy so it can grow into something just as (or more) beautiful?

2. prune and strengthen tethers – We are living the ongoing social experiment of carrying our digital footprint wherever we go. Connections from decades ago can find you and attempt to reinvigorate a thread. Bloated folders full of photos and videos take up mental and digital space. What and who do you actually want to remember? What is ready to return to the ethereal soil.

Challenge Mode: If you are committed to a long-term connection or organization, get your agreements out on paper. Make it possible to refresh and reimagine what it means to be in relationship. Return to your agreements on a predetermined rhythm. Are they still relevant? Do they give everyone enough room to breathe and grow?

3. co-curate reality – Anytime you gather with others, you are attempting to change reality in some way, even if it’s just to generate joy and connection. What space are you carving out of the greater reality to make this possible? What do you want to change and why? This intentionality will make it more likely that your reality transformation can occur.

Challenge Mode: Assess if the organizations you are part of are serving their mission. Has the reason you are doing this changed? Make sure your organization practices what they preach. Take time to turn inward and make internal changes that can serve you long into the future.

4. accept help – It’s easy to believe that no one will come to save you, but maybe you just haven’t asked yet. Swallow your pride and make it obvious when and how you need support. Get specific and give clear instructions. You don’t have to do this all on your own. When the going gets harder, you’ll want to be comfortable with saying yes.

Challenge Mode: Make the preparations for an event or project visible to others. Stop making it look easy. You’re human, too, and it’s okay to show that. Demonstrating the actual time and energy cost of what you are doing can inspire and encourage others. It helps to put reality in context. You aren’t a machine. Embrace that.

andra’s Recap of Ooze

The experiments for the previous moon cycle included assessing your integrity (challenge mode: stand your ground), invite others into your regulatory process (challenge mode: surrender when that’s the only option left), exist in your present moment identity (challenge mode: soak in how it feels to complete a project), and make space for rest (challenge mode: invite unlikely allies and their resources.

Well, assessing integrity is a big topic at the moment for me. I actually think that I hold my integrity as more important than anything else, which makes it difficult for me to seek rest or otherwise prevent overextension. I need to give myself permission to communicate when I simply don’t have the energy, desire, or time to make something happen without being afraid of losing my sense of personal integrity. I think, because it hurts so much when other people seem out of integrity with how they agree to things and don’t follow through, I am so reluctant to do that to others.

I have benefited from separating the concept of integrity from the concept of ethics. If I think about ethics as a guiding star (sort of in the Buddhist vein of unattainable goals), then my integrity is the way I communicate what my current ability to prioritize that ethic is. If I am able to communicate clearly and accurately, then it’s okay when I fall short of my ideals. We still exist in a transition ethic world, after all.

In regard to standing my ground, this most relates to a practice my mentors suggested recently, which is to work on offering feedback to others. Lately, I’ve gotten very comfortable receiving feedback from others and making space for that, but I have anxiety about how to offer it to others in a way that they can receive well. While I don’t have attachment to other people changing their behavior, I do have a responsibility to communicate the way I felt as a result of a given situation. We are mirrors and catalysts for each other, and I don’t want to stand in the way of that cosmic process.

I’m not sure that I had many opportunities to include others into my regulatory process since the last new moon. I have a tendency to shut down and pull inward when I’m experiencing a lot of emotion. Luckily, the people in my life can see what’s happening when my face falls in that particular way. But, otherwise, I’ve invited others to take deep breaths with me when I feel overwhelmed or anxious, and that’s going well.

To be honest, I’m afraid of determining that something about an uncomfortable situation is inevitable. I want to believe that there’s something I can do no matter what is happening. Lately, the place where I feel the most trapped is my own calendar. It’s easy to keep trying to grin and bear it, but I just keep burning myself out and getting more and more tired. I’m working toward making more spaciousness for myself, but something always manages to fill the space or I feel like I’m too tired to make adequate use of it. It’s an ongoing puzzle.

In terms of freeing myself from my context, I got some practice when a new sub-personality finally fully emerged and decided they wanted a name. The system as a whole felt a bit uncomfortable with their presentation and the possible ways that the external world might perceive them, but it felt important to allow them to express and be all the strangeness they are. I look forward to seeing how they evolve over time.

There were so many long-term projects that finished up for me this season, and it’s been so important to allow myself to bask in that space rather than quickly shrug it off and move onto the next project. I know that I won’t have the space to engage in these kinds of processes for a while, so knowing that I can take pride in what I have accomplished feels important and beautiful.

Making space for rest, as mentioned before, has proven so difficult even though I don’t have a traditional job at the moment. I am taking classes and still volunteering in a lot of ways, and my calendar fills up with appointments and markets and catching up on all the things I put off when I was working. This next period, I’ll be shaving down what I’m doing and committing to basking in this next phase of my life as a parent, which will only happen this way once. I want to be rested and ready for when that moment comes, so I have to commit to making space for myself now.

With regard to inviting unlikely allies, mostly I am trusting that there are enough new people doing direct action right now such that I can take a step back. While it’s hard not be down on the streets as often as I was, protesting or doing mutual aid outreach, I know that there are more and more people every day saying that enough is enough. I trust the long-term stances I have taken and their ripples out into the world. I’m immersed in the community I want to live in and continually give other people tools to create and seek the same for themselves.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy this moon cycle’s experiments!