Align Your Orbit: Here for the Growth Pains
Align Your Orbit is a series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide ourselves toward intentionality and impact. Synthesized after years of conversations and now with inspirations from ChatGPT and MidJourney, we’re fully embracing our cyborg natures. Find delight in these journeys of exploration. If you would like to receive these offerings as a monthly email, sign up here.
We feel mounting intensity in the ache to grow—ourselves, our communities, and our purpose—but the seduction of despair clings in shadows. Turn toward temptations and learn how to weave them into the tapestries of something larger.
Don’t ignore anything—you and everything else in this reality is full of knowing. Tap into the wellspring of your own understanding and share it with others. Give and learn to receive.
Want to experience this as a Spotify playlist?
This Month’s Quests
1. everyone is chosen – There are entities invested in us at work beyond our human capacity for sight. Many of them, if not all of them, want us to succeed in becoming more whole, satisfied, and fulfilled versions of ourselves. Trust in the knowledge that unseen forces will go to enormous lengths to aid you if you let them.
Challenge Mode: Imagine that you have an enormous deposit of energy about to drop into your spiritual bank account. It just hasn’t fully cleared yet. What it does it mean to live into that abundance? What actions would you take as a result?
2. with sensations of knowing – Consider how you physically experience intuition in the body. Describe the actual sensations of your gut feelings. Pay attention to when electric currents bolt down your spine. Trust that your body understands a set of stimuli even before you know they are happening.
Challenge Mode: Trusting that there are unseen entities on your team, what symbols and pathways do they use to communicate with you? Focus on the logic of dreams and embrace the signs, omens, and suggestions you encounter every day.
3. so acknowledge distractions – While engaging with art, media, altered states of consciousness, and social interactions each represent a capacity for growth, they can also numb you. Before you engage in an action, be honest with yourself about which you are seeking. Give yourself several extra seconds of decision-making time before you numb the area.
Challenge Mode: Rattling atoms and shifting electrons make up the fabric of our bodies, so it’s no wonder we need to move. We are beings of light and energy—we are not meant to be stationary for long. Get your steps in, take a class, dance, and flow in pattern with your fundamental pieces.
4. & tip the scale – Something that is a problem at a small scale might actually be part of the solution at a larger scale, and vice versa. How far do you need to move the needle to find resolution? How close before everything breaks? Play with zooming in and zooming out on aspects of your experience. What does this change?
Challenge Mode: You can’t possibly know all the forces, communications, energies, and patterns flowing through you at any given time. All you can do is become a wider channel for all the information sharing—whether that is through mindfulness, meditation, exercise, or some other access point. Find what works for you as you imagine widening the very veins that carry your blood.
Andra’s Recap for September’s Missions
The theme for last month was Everyone is a Rogue Agent and included experiments around making rage art, gaming the system through storytelling events, evaluating the effectiveness of content warnings in friendships, and causing limited pain in ways that heal the body.
Because I have been dealing with some significant struggles with self-worth and specifically around some experiences of seemingly unwarranted self-hatred, I decided to focus my rage art with body paint. I set up a space alone and brought in a bunch of objects I had made and things I had painted to surround me. I also set up a mirror. I used the body paint as performance art for myself with the goal of making my internal sensations of psychological self-harm external. Afterward, I invited my partner to come witness me and take photos. This practice was one of those times when it’s hard to see the immediate value of an action, but it felt very symbolic in a way that I expect will resonate for a long time. And I think it was important for me to see all the beautiful objects I had created and how much contrast there was to the ways I had been treating myself.
It seems like the spiders are struggling. At least where I live, we went from very hot temperatures to abundant rain very quickly, and I’m afraid that the spiders are having a tough go of it. I’ve gone to great lengths to relocate spiders, this last month especially, which had significantly lowered my fear of them.
At the state fair when I was doing handspinning demos with some of my apprentices, we started making tallies whenever someone said something mildly uncomfortable to us and laughed about it. While that was a good strategy in the moment, it made us think about how to find spaces that value us more going forward, and I think that was an important reflection.
I went to one afterparty this month, and I’m glad I did. But I think what I was almost craving was an after afterparty. I think what I want is to be in a room or some other location with only people I know and love after an event where we were very social with more than just us, and we didn’t quite accomplish that with the afterparty I attended. I think, also, I don’t want to have to stay up until the early hours of the morning to accomplish that. So, I suppose this is still a puzzle.
I’ve been thinking about content warnings a lot, especially as it relates to white fragility. On some level, we need to come to face our discomforts so that we can become more resilient, but we also need to acknowledge that that is an emotional process that is going to take some time and self-care. Balancing the need to toughen up, especially with regard to the harms our ancestors (and current systems) caused, with the need to care for ourselves is tricky but crucial.
I don’t know that I did a good job advocating for accessibility options for other this month, but I do try to be aware of and support the organizations and events that are being mindful about it. It’s not wholly clear how I can throw my weight behind this sort of thing yet, but as I move more into the public view, I vow to be mindful and thoughtful about it.
This month, I did get a used acupressure mat, and honestly, I love it. I do wish it were the length of a typical yoga mat, but I really enjoy the sensation, even if I’m only running my fingers over the spikes. It’s been an excellent way to stim. My only difficulty with it is that it seems to work best if I don’t have clothes on, and most of the time when I want to use it, I don’t feel like taking my clothes off. But it gives me strong feelings of peace and playfulness when I do.
After many months of trying to figure out what it is I want in a play partner, I went out to an adult club with someone I met online with the intention of perceiving each other as gay boys. While the context itself was held, I feel like we didn’t fully align on what we wanted to have happen inside the context, and there as some discomfort inside of that. I’m still working on how to describe exactly what it is I want to other people.
I hope you enjoy playing with the quests for October! Happy spooky season!