Changes are afoot.
Embody the Self Amy Herring
When your job is to assist people in identifying their soul potential and courageously moving toward it, you've got to be walking that talk. My lack of newsletters, facebook posts, and other offerings may have seemed like I've been absent, but in truth, I've been in my 'laboratory' where I hope to eventually be able to offer you many new creations. My progressed moon has been in the first house for two years now, urging me toward a new identity, but unlike I (unconsciously) expected, the outline has not simply waiting for me to step into it. I've had to craft it from the raw materials of self, and in Aquarius, there's been no template appropriate to follow.
Nonself, Amy Herring
I expected that the 12th house period was the letting go and the 1st house would be all about the new, and it is, but I underestimated the impact of the unfamiliar. In the 12th house, I sloughed an old skin. I had no perspective on why it was happening, and had I not had the knowledge of the purpose of the 12th house period, I would surely have gone mad–perhaps I did a little bit anyway. But that was just the letting go part. In the first house, I find myself having to clear away the debris that dropped to the floor. One needs room to work, a clean slate, and in my case, it wasn't automatic. Instead of just one big sweep, it's been tempting to sift through it and try to figure out what parts I can save, but that's all been an attempt to cling to an old orientation and way of life, especially when the new one isn't just sitting there like a vessel waiting to be filled.
When last I posted about the 1st house, I was just entering it, and I shared some of my early observations. Having been moving through it for a while now, here's a few to add to the list:
It has been exceptionally challenging for me to produce anything concrete. Blog, reading, video, class, lecture, book – these all feel like end products, but I am still designing blueprints. I draw on the old model whenever I can, whenever I must, but my libido is invested in this self-making. Finishing anything takes an act of great will, one that I don't always muster. As a double Virgo with Capricorn rising, it's been challenging to my sense of self and self-esteem to not have anything "useful" to point to, to not have a stack of contributions that I've been offering. It has been very difficult to just embody the space, trust the process, and patiently reinforce to myself that it's enough. The first house experience is about you taking up space, you crafting your own life, so I have to light my own flame. Continually. Often. Over and over. It often goes out. Momentum has been extraordinarily difficult to maintain, especially when the direction is unclear. It is not motivation, but meaning in order to drive motivation, that I've been needing to generate. I've made what I feel like have been a number of false starts. I haven't signed up for the military or invested my life savings in any radical schemes, but I have been so hungry for direction that any inspiration, no matter how mild, sends me running off to catch it before it dissipates. It then becomes rapidly apparent that this is not the "start your new life kit" I'd been hoping for and I turn around and head back for the crossroads.
Sunrise Mandala, Amy Herring
I signed up for a summer series of six classes offered by the Jung Society of Seattle on Creating Your Own Red Book (I have discussed the astrology of Carl Jung and his Red Book in previous posts). Carl Jung underwent a massive internal transformation which he documented in his black books and later compiled into the Red Book. During this series, we were introduced to methods and theories of Carl Jung that we could utilize to create our own 'red book', such as active imagination, mandala creation, dream analysis, and synchronicity. This series was profoundly helpful in giving me a 'container' in which to conduct this self-making. The drawings in this blog have all come from my own red book (although mine's blue).
A brief but rapid series of synchronicities prompted me to finally decide that the only thing missing was to apply a little perseverance to the path that I clearly wanted to walk down but kept second-guessing. I am on the Universe's mailing list (you can be too) and one day it said to me:
Usually, the best way to find the yellow brick road of your life, Amy, is to start out on the dusty, dirt one.
And then let yourself become so preoccupied in making the best of it, having fun, and challenging yourself that you actually stop paying attention to the path.
Until, one day, not so
long from now, with a new best friend, wearing cool clothes, feeling awesome, a
teeny tiny bit taller, fresh from a WOW vacation, looking for the path you just
left, you'll notice that it's 24 carats… baby.And you'll wonder for a
long, long time, sipping on some exotic fruit drink, when the transformation
actually took place…Tripping, The Universe
Although I think it is always true, my awareness is constantly drawn up in the fact that I am perpetually unfinished. However, I think the fog is starting to clear. The outline is drawn, and now I am stepping into it, embodying it.
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