Nox Amicus

Tonight at 10:26pm the Moon became New again, signaling the time to explore another theme.

Last cycle I said I was going to be looking at themes of Solace – particularly revolving around Solace in solitude. I am blessed and privileged to be able to ride out this pandemic in a safe environment. I am blessed that my career continues to move forward without putting me in the path of any physical harm. I am grateful beyond words that when a 10% pay cut was announced this month that it was manageable – and yes, infinitely preferable to a more drastic alternative. Solace in a physical sense, was not hard for me to find and cultivate, and I give thanks.

Spiritually has been another story entirely. Dreams have been a cascading series of troubling non sequiturs. I find that I am easily irritable and don’t have the emotional stamina that I’m used to from myself.

Through conversations with trusted souls I began to see that I was still holding on to a sense of “normal”. I’ve worked from home for nearly four years, I’m naturally an introvert, and my day-to-day really hasn’t changed all that much. But we are all subject to eddies and currents beyond what we can perceive with our conventional senses. Even absent that, we are all subject to the unknowns that lay out ahead of us.

My mind goes back to the scene from “This is Spinal Tap” when Nigel is explaining the amplifiers that go to eleven. We all have settings that we operate under – calm, anxious, happy, irritated – we usually find ourselves dialed into these settings. But can it also be possible to choose where we set our frames of mind? Can we turn the dial ourselves?

Which brings us to this cycle’s focus. Chaos. Why can’t there be a setting on our panels where “Chaos” is the new “normal”. Having a set of prescribed actions for a “Chaos” setting would, by its very existence, provide us control in uncontrollable times. We would no longer expect to know what’s next because the status quo would be not knowing. In this way I feel like perhaps I can leverage my generalized anxiety and OCD and use them as tools to contend with the unpredictable emotional swings of the day-to-day. I’d no longer feel like I have to be in control, because today’s normal is such that there is no control.

So how does this work in a practical sense? I firmly believe that magic exists at the intersection of intent and Chaos. So for this lunar cycle, I’m going to try to explore the act of letting go of rigidity and just sail on the seas of Chaos – guided by the rudder of my intent.

Normally I end these with a song – but I want to share a video that might illustrate the finding of joy in this approach. It’s a video of a woman spinning cotton candy – the strands spin in Chaos, but the stick is her tool of intention. The result? Joy.

It’s all in how you look at it.