Sacred Moon Cycle- Week Three

Week Three (day 15-21): Coming Down and Harvest Phase. 
Autumn energy.

Post ovulatory descent - can be positive or negative, a sense of pride or failure. 
May experience feelings of failure or elation depending on what you achieved from your creative peak in the few days after your egg has died unfertilised. 
"I lost my chance", "I feel useless". 
"I am so awesome, look what I did!" 

May feel relief or regret (at not being pregnant, literally and metaphorically). 
Feelings of wanting to get rid of unnecessary things around you or in your life. 
Wanting change. 


Things or ways of being that are no longer working for you show up. 
This may be confronting or a relief or both. 
Depending on how long you've been ignoring these promptings will depend on how you react to them showing up again. 

This happens to get your attention so you can let go of them in this and the next phase. 
"Everything seems to be hard", "Nothing feels like its working". 
"I've been so busy, I'm so glad I can rest now".

Week Three 
Celebrate what you have achieved, created, succeeded in this cycle and let go of what you haven't. Don't be hard on yourself. 
Start to notice the things that aren't working in your life in readiness to let them go with your blood. 
Don't start any new projects, rather finish things off.

-Jane Wardwicke Collins at www.Moonsong.com/au

Wisdom

New Moon March in Aries

Image: chelsea@planetwaves.net

March 30th marks the new moon in Aries. This has been a major time of transformation, we have come face to face with our fears and discovered a greater depth than we thought possible. As we begin this season of Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere), we are grateful for the shoots of personal power that are rising forth from the darkness. What has been dormant within, is now pushing toward the light to come into physical expression! We must continue cultivate and water our gardens with our attention and loving care taking concern with not overindulging and self regulating.

Its also time to set new intentions moving forward in our sacred moon cycle. Set your Intentions for what you wish to manifest in this new cycle, this new beginning marked by the New Moon. I urge you to gather as woman and honor the age of tradition of setting intention in a circle. Giving thanks to the lessons received and the outlook to come.

The mantra for this weeks astrology report from Kaypacha is

If I am to be a co-creator,
It’s my job to know,
What to water, when and how,
to regulate the flow.

Wisdom

Image: Source

Sacred Moon Cycle-Week Two

Week Two (day 8-14): High Energy Creative Phase. 

Summer energy 
Increasing physical, sexual and creative energy building to a peak at ovulation. 
Urgent creative feelings. 
Heightened awareness of self and others. 
More interested in physical appearance. 
"I feel happy, excited, full of energy", "I can do anything!"

Week Two Honoring

Use your creative energy, make something (make your own pads). 
Express your sexuality, beautify yourself, be indulgent. 
Celebrate the energy of your ovulation (just like you would the full moon). 
Dedicate your egg to something you wish to give the creative life force to.

The Feminine Process

Image: Suffering- Soul Painting

“Depression comes as a gift that stops one from hurrying briskly, confidently into the market. Stops one from rushing to the shopping center to buy one more bargain blouse for an already overcrowded closet. Stops one from emptily mouthing what one no longer believes in anyway.

“Depression stops time… and one settles into one’s own waters as a sailing vessel without wind… without wind… without momentum…and one sinks into one’s depths.

“And somewhere, deep inside, in the beehive tomb, one sits alone… and weeps.

“Depression comes as a gift asking that a woman recognize her own substance and trust it as the quiet, steady voice of her own truth. As she trusts it, hearkens to it, attends as it unfolds, she learns that of herself never allowed to develop when her allegiance  was with the collective…”

“Depression serves a woman is it presses down on her, forcing her to leave behind that which was not herself, which had influenced her to live a life alien to her own nature. Her suffering, now substantial, insists that she no longer deny its truth.

“She can no longer ‘keep stiff of her upper lip,’ or ‘pack up her troubles in her old kit bag and smile, smile, smile’ or, as one woman struggling with her weight said, ‘rise above it all.’

“…Depression asks that the attitude towards one’s life be changed, that the source of authority be recognized as no longer outside, but now deeply within, that one relate to each event, task, and moment of one’s life personally, subjectively…”

“Present-day society is afraid of depression. Whatever it resembles – reflection, introversion, a drawing within for quietness – may also be feared.”

“Suffering is feared and the sufferer outcast. Collective attitudes have evolved fostering archetypal masculine doing and achievement values. As woman entered the work realm outside her home, there was little alternative but to adopt those values. There was little recognition that her processes as woman was of a different nature or that doing/achievement values were not complete or valid for her.

“The issue is not whether woman can achieve, but that preoccupation with achievement may deny a descent into her deeper nature which a woman must make to touch her true strength. The masculine must perhaps fly to fulfill a part of its heroic nature. But woman, pressed to fly, may lose herself and be prevented from descending into her depths, prevented from fulfilling her own feminine nature.

“For through her descent, she touches the power of the feminine, the power that comes of being, not doing… the power of wisdom in the face of a very old woman, a face on which one reads, ‘I know what I know.’

“A woman through her descent, touches a deeply feminine authority, as different from the authority of the masculine as is the moon from the sun.

“It is an authority not of abstracted, rational, objective knowledge, but an authority which allows her to speak from her own unique experiencing of life, from her own deepest personal conviction.

“A woman prevented by her own fears or cultural attitudes from making this descent, is left to speak only from her achievement-oriented side rather than from a deeper experiencing of herself as a woman.

“Because present-day society has not understood, has feared the process which woman must undergo to claim her power and wisdom, has recognized only the masculine process, women have been left little alternative but to speak ‘as men…’

“Woman herself has become alienated from her need to sink into herself. She has begun to expect herself to have the energies, emotions, and attitudes of the masculine. It is a tragic token of the lack of recognition of a separate and unique feminine process…”

“A woman could be helped to understand her depression as a passage of initiation to claim her own soul and wisdom to be shared, later, with other women as they prepare for their own passage. She’s is taught, instead, to fear her experience and to loathe herself.”

“…It is this meaning, emerged from her own suffering, that allows a woman to descent, each time anew, into her own depths, to be present to the truth and wisdom lying there. For only by her willing descent can she uncover, again and again, the meaning of her life.

“Can we come to a new understanding of the feminine process toward wholeness? Can we, as women, take it upon ourselves to deepen within ourselves and each other and appreciation of the descent in the feminine process?”

~Judith Duerk from Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself

Connection

image: Julia Watkins

You can create a deep connection with a long hug. Of course. You know that. What you might not know? The amount of time matters. We're not talking about the half-second hug-cum-chest-bump.  Or the 5 second clench-to-coax. No, indeed! Apparently, a loving embrace held for 20 seconds taps our sweet spot. The folks at The Shift Network say that 20 seconds is the "magic" length needed to release oxytocin in the body. 

News organizations from the BBC to USA Today have reported on the University of North Carolina's discovery that a longer hug reduced cortisol (stress hormone) and increased oxytocin in the couples studied. Oxytocin is the "bonding hormone" the inspires the feeling of meaningful connection with others. This happy hormone is also linked to reducing blood pressure and the risk of heart disease. With whoever you are close to, try staying close longer with a 20 second hug. You may feel the difference. 

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4131508.stm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-03-09-hug-usat_x.htm

http://theshiftnetwork.com/tsn/main

- See more at: http://www.monkpunk.org.php5-19.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/?p=232#sthash.oY4DOLrp.dpuf