Welcome to the end of the week – a BIG week full of eclipses and retrograde planets, ending with a delicious New Moon! Whether you believe in all this or not, I think we can all agree it’s been a time of big moves and big experiences. Our community has seen accidents and shootings and outages, and we have personally experienced missed appointments, accidentally sent emails, wifi going down right as you’re about to submit something on a tight deadline or the sudden panic moments of checking your online account or seeing the number of your child’s school show up on the ringing phone. There have been quite a lot of “What NOW?” moments, no?
And now we are in a New Moon and looking forward with anticipation at a glorious long weekend (Happy Birthday Your Majesty!). The time of recovery lines up with a time of increase where we get to plant the seeds of new intentions and watch them grow. We have some ideas on how to do that, taken from the lessons of our old people.
Our ancestors used to know what to do with a New Moon. As the moonlight shrank to a sliver and disappeared in the nights leading up to the beginning of the new cycle, the old people would prepare the ground. They would weed and clear, turn the soil, dig out any stones, and be ready. On the New Moon they would plant the seeds or transplant the seedlings, lovingly tending the plants that would soon provide their families with the “Ground Provisions” they would eat. Children would be brought into this process very young. My grandfather would take my mother into the yard and show her how to plant what and where, and they would end the day of hard work cooling off in the hammock as the fingernail of the New Moon would come to rise. It was a time of intention, planning, hope and expectation. The intentions of their planting would be followed through with consistent work – hopeful tending over the next weeks and months, protecting from chickens and rabbits and insects, adding fertilizer from the cow pasture, and eventually reaping a fruitful harvest. Every New Moon there would be new things to plant or transplant.
Today we don’t grow our own food as much as our forebears did. But the New Moon hasn’t changed its cycle. Women’s bodies and the ocean tides and the plants all move with the cycles and some traditions are worth keeping. The challenging or inconvenient events of the past several days and weeks may well be seen as a clearing of the ground in our lives. This day (and the long weekend ahead) can still serve as a reset, refresh, and reassessment opportunity.
A few ideas on how to harness YOUR New Moon You…
First, prepare the soil with some combination of these practices
- Take a long bath and contemplate the week’s events. Imagine soaking the residue of all the experiences off of your body. Watch the water drain away and say goodbye to your past.
- Journal about the events that linger in your mind after the past week(s). Identify what you would like to leave behind and what lessons you have learned.
- Have the difficult-but-necessary conversations you have been avoiding.
- Meditate (of course!)
Then, plant the seeds
- Set goals for the next four weeks and write them down somewhere you can see them and check them regularly.
- Set intentions for the next few weeks based on the lessons you learned in the past few weeks. What will you do differently now that you have learned this lesson? Who will you become?
- Make a list of things you choose to forgive and let go of. Then let them go. Burn them, shred them, whatever it takes to make that paper and the things written on it no longer exist.
- Set a budget, draft a business plan, submit your business license or job or university application – do the thing that moves your life forward along your chosen path. Don’t overthink it – do it.
Keep in touch with us during the month of June for updates on upcoming meditation classes and programs for Summer 2021.
