Align Your Orbit: Cosmic Optimism

Align Your Orbit is a monthly series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide you toward intentionality and impact in your daily life. These are games to inspire intuition, so please adapt the offerings to fit you and find delight in how you engage.

Though the delta variant continues to rage and, at least in our neck of the woods, fire season approaches, we refuse to give in or give up. Instead, we remind ourselves that we are playing a long game and that, even if the cosmic earthquakes have cracked the foundations, even if the ripple effects haven’t reached the penthouses yet, worldwide shifts in consciousness have begun.

It is this cosmic optimism—knowing, for instance, that life continued even after an asteroid killed the dinosaurs and turned the Earth into a hellscape—that keeps us going and fuels our tanks when we run dangerously low. Find what brings you joy, discover where you can accept help, and celebrate the ways the rest of the world is beginning to take rest and bodily autonomy seriously. We have a long way to go, but we’ve also made enormous strides of progress. Hold onto that.

Want to experience this month’s offerings as a Spotify playlist?

Experiments for August

1.      Shake Social Pressures – Our rapidly changing global situation—from the pandemic to protests—has dramatically altered our concept of “normal,” and as a result, there are fewer people holding you to unrealistic standards. Identity the “they” you talk about when you assume people will judge, look down on, or criticize you. Do they even still exist? Are you the one upholding barriers to what you want?

Challenge Mode: Make taking care of your body a priority, even in social situations. Do yoga spontaneously. Refuse a chair or take one while everyone else is standing. Stretch, move, readjust, interrupt to go to the bathroom. Take up space and listen to your body.

2.      Alchemize Relationships – Take the idea of “chosen family” one step further. Identify the ingredients that make up the relationships you have now—blood, mutual understanding, value alignment, witnessing, nostalgia, etc. Which of those have longevity even beyond this human life? Which create and foster a sense of cosmic duty?

Challenge Mode: To be a better coach, you need coaches. Look for mutual uplift, peer support, and ways to compensate those in your social circle who have something to offer. Listen to elders, ask questions of your friends, get curious about what children have to tell you. Find inspiration to become a better person in the people who are also doing the work.

3.      Rediscover Your Fears – Name and spend time with some of your rational and irrational fears. What haven’t you faced yet? Your biggest fears are gateways to your greatest discoveries. Know that even your willingness to sit in discomfort over time will revolutionize your relationship to what you are afraid of. Find opportunities for your own style of exposure therapy and see the world through the perspective of a snake, spider, or parasite. What do they have to offer you?

Challenge Mode: Sorting through your fears, defying social pressure, and adapting to the instability of our times is not easy. It’s going to rock your world if it hasn’t already, so now is a good time to learn to accept help. You are not an island; humans are a social species. If you ever offer help, you also have an obligation to accept it when you genuinely need it. A refusal to accept help prevents circuits from completing.

4.      Acknowledge Evolution – As you work on yourself, set boundaries, and remove yourself from toxic situations, what cycles are you breaking? This is difficult labor, but it significantly lowers the likelihood that you will blow your trauma through others. What have you witnessed, and how has that changed you? What promises have you made that prevent you from kicking that same pain down the line?

Challenge Mode: If you have identified toxic behaviors in yourself and took action to change, it’s worth going back and apologizing to the people you hurt, even years after the fact. Confront your fear of facing consequences with tenderness and vulnerability. Apologize without any expectation of a continued relationship. Provide context for what has changed for you and leave it at the feet of the person you harmed so they can take it or leave it.

Please tell us how these experiments are working for you! We would love to hear from you at r/highpriestesses or r/spacemermaids.

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Andra’s Recap of July’s Experiments

The recipes for July included bearing witness, remembering who you are becoming, analyzing how you gossip and censor, finding a third choice when there are two bad options, and noticing how far your self-control can take you.

Bearing (and baring) witness was a huge theme for me this past month as I try to process the last seven months since my father passed. Having returned from his memorial services, which were delayed because of Covid-19, I crashed really, really hard. Once I had cleared my calendar, my body, mind, and spirit all stopped functioning at stress levels and dropped me on my ass. It has been a humbling experience to ask for help when I am struggling just to get out of bed and eat most days.

My experience of bearing witness is to understand, process, and cradle the trauma within me without blowing that trauma through others. Sometimes, that makes me feel like an outsider when other people are having a good time or when families are functional. But, this month, it helped to remind myself that the chosen families I have cultivated reflect the version of me I want to be back at me. My net and network can catch me as I’m falling. There are people in my life who want to repay the favors I have offered over the years, and I could not be more grateful.

So, my goal has primarily been to eat, sleep, and shower this last month, being tender to my body and my soul as I weather everything resurfacing for me now.

With regard to how I gossip and censor, I spent a lot of time thinking about the ways I talk about (or don’t talk about) myself. I realized earlier this month that, if I didn’t tell people in my life I was struggling, if I just went to my room every time I started crying, it’s possible that no one would notice. And that thought scared me. It meant that I had to be vulnerable, and I needed to be specific about the care I needed during this rough patch. But it has meant the world to know that I can reach out to friends and ask them for more frequent check-ins and physical affection. Even just the fact that they know I am struggling has proved helpful.

In terms of divine messages, I had the distinct privilege the other night to have a dream about the baby my girlfriend and I might have together. Their name was Ealish, which I found out later is a Gaelic name, meaning “noble.” It was such a pleasure and a reassurance to spend time with the baby and all their curiosity about the world. I felt very blessed when I woke up and felt the need to tell the most important people in my life about the experience. They were genuinely happy and excited for me.

Fortunately, I was not put between many bad choices this month—it’s been more about navigating the ones in the past. I have been very grateful, however, for the ways in which I have made the grieving process my own, making sure I am customizing the process at every step in a way that makes sense to me and my tender heart. 

I found myself very, very tired and fatigued from grief this month, so I’m afraid I didn’t much stay up late or get up early except for one late-night walk a few days ago. This was a great experience to reconnect with a person who is leaving my household but still has dedication to be part of my family and my life. I enjoyed and appreciated that I was brave enough to say yes.

With self-control, I have been struggling to decide the relationship I want to have with marijuana. It has been a crutch and a medication for a long time, and I’m wondering how long I want that to go on. However, I recognize that now, when I am at my lowest point, might not be the best time to kick the crutches out from underneath me. Knowing that I will have time in the future to reevaluate is a comforting thought as I recover from the intensity of grief and a childhood of trauma.

I have, however, enjoyed using my bike (currently connected to an electricity generator) to get empty. I find that, on mornings where I skip that particular routine, I feel a little adrift and lost. It’s been a good habit for me, whether I bike for 10 minutes or for 30. And the best part is that it generates power!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy this month’s recipes.