Happy MOONday - Monday !

In my lifetime, I have moved at least 20 times and have lived in 5 countries so far, and even if some stays were shorter than others, I have always felt the need to nest, to create a sense of home - albeit a temporary one, wherever I go. This has been challenging at times, but I do it because my soul requires it; I am simply not the kind of person who can inhabit a space without somehow making it my own. Some years ago, when I began delving into my astrology, I understood where this need came from, and it all clicked as I learned about the fascinating Lunar Nodes, also known as Karmic Nodes. Although most people know their zodiac sun sign, very few know about the nodes, and what I have learned is that they hold the most powerful information when it comes to using astrology as a life tool for self-development and well-being (which is how I use it).

The Lunar Nodes are not planetary bodies but mathematical points in space. The South Node is known to represent the qualities and traits that your soul has brought into this lifetime from previous experiences. This can explain how some activities or roles in life can come easier to you than others; in a way, your soul has lived through those kinds of things already. On the other hand, the North Node represents the more challenging aspects of our development, those life roles that feel uncomfortable or hard to accomplish, but that will provide the biggest opportunities for your soul to achieve its purpose in this lifetime. The nodes are in an axis, so their energies are contrasting, they are polar opposites, so understanding them and consciously activating the North Node qualities in our life, is not the easiest thing but ultimately, the most satisfactory because doing so leads us into a path to self actualization.

Of course, WHERE (meaning, which house of the zodiac wheel) the North and South nodes live, can give us a lot more details as to HOW to go about activating those energies. This information is infallible and unique to each individual. The more I study different charts and help others understand their nodes, the more I confirm how powerful this information is.

I am very much a person of this Earth, I love her and I care for her (also in alignment with my Cancer NN!) and enjoy putting body in direct contact with her body by gardening, swimming, walking barefoot, hiking, or whichever other way I can. And, just as our ancestors who were in deep communion with the land in order to grow their food and have shelter, harnessing the solar and lunar energy to prosper here on Earth, us urbanites can also benefit from learning to use this information for our work and well-being. Learning to do so is wonderfully helpful in life, and I am delighted to share that with you.

Do you know what your Lunar Nodes are?

CATURDAY AND THE NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

There is a non-human intelligence in the world that speaks in non-verbal ways. These diverse languages make the world alive; a living and breathing, animate organism, serving as home for infinite expressions of life.

There are many styles of sentience, other shapes of sensitivity making meaning within this same ground we dwell in.

These other shapes are also engaging with the same terrain, drinking from and bathing in the same waters as we are.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Today, I declare my independence from any identification that restricts my full potential. In the frenetic (and often times fanatic) race to fit in, to belong, to check the box, we violate our infinite expansive nature and its innate capacity for transformation. 

Today, I declare my independence from any nationalistic ideals that seek to “divide and conquer”— a fallacy of the hubris infused imaginary. 

Today, I declare my independence from any structure that wants me to simply follow, confining critical thinking and judging what is outside the norm. My wild human nature is whole and vast and ever changing.

Independence Day

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE, And all the men and women merely players...

William Shakespeare said that through the voice of Jaques, the lucid, existential character in As You Like It, a comedy which, by the way, I did several years ago with The Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Co. We were an all-female identified cast playing all the roles written by The Bard. Aside from having to tape my breasts down as flat as I could every night, the experience was awesome.

To stand in the world as another being is perhaps one of the most illuminating experiences one can have. 

Luckily, as a professional actor, this is what I get to do. In my career so far I’ve played many different roles including a teacher, an art gallery owner, an assassin, an immigrant mother, a cowboy (yes, a male), a ceramist, a doctor, a poet, a crack-addicted sister, a newscaster, a hotel maid, an astronaut, to name a few. And in every single one of these characters I have been completely and wholly myself. There is no other way.

I have learned that the whole world lives in me, and I live in the whole world. This may sound too abstract and philosophical, perhaps, but when one has the chance to embody this notion, it is actually something that can be felt for real.

I wonder if we could all act more. And I don’t mean in the performative way that is in vogue now but, actually, wholeheartedly ACT—step into somebody’s shoes and live life from their point of view and within their circumstances. Wouldn’t that force us to become more empathetic? Every good actor in the world knows that in order to play even the most macabre, cruel, horrifying character, one must access those aspects of the self, that darkness inside. Humans are very complex and inherently flawed, and the array of personalities and living circumstances is vast. In order to truthfully embody that other being, one cannot judge the character, or else only a feigned performance can be achieved. Every single aspect of life must be considered from that particular character’s point of view, and it works the same way whether you are playing Heidi, the little girl from the Swiss Alps or Ramsay Bolton from Westeros. Wouldn’t the world benefit a little (or maybe, a whole lot) from having more people live life as ‘the other,’ that character that is perceived with such fear and suspicion, even if it was just for a little while?

This morning I saw the news of a white couple in Missouri pointing a rifle and a pistol to peaceful protesters who were passing in front of their house. I wondered if anyone had ever pointed a gun at them. I wondered if, even just for one day they had been automatically assumed criminal, just for looking the way they did. From the way they were holding their firearms and pointing them at people, one could assume they had very little concern for the implications of their actions; It was as if they were innately exonerated from any culpability because in all their whiteness-greatness, they were defending their eye-sore of a dwelling with all their mighty right. Now, I have no way of knowing what they were feeling in their hearts, and in actuality, they were probably very scared and felt they needed to threaten others with their weapons. But, why were they so scared? How could it be that some people will go so far as to threaten to kill and— in way too many cases, actually kill another person out of unfounded suspicion? How have we let this get so far?

I continue to grapple with so many questions every day, and scour the reality of the society we have co-created, in search of beauty and all expressions of hope that allow me to go on. It is only the faith in that “as is above, is below,” the trust in the universe’s great balancing power that I find the courage to keep going.

We all have a voice; some have the chance to be heard much more easily than others and so we speak up. We can, we must find a better way to coexist. #BlackLivesMatter