The self-betrayal slithers out in the form of a joke.
A joke that is also a lie.
A joke coupled as a lie to pull me back, to keep me half-hidden, to constrict the expression of a vibrant self-truth.
“Must have seen it on a bumper sticker.”
My hand swats at the space in between the computer screen and me, a fast-paced gesture that gathers all that I’ve said and urgently brushes it all aside.
Instead of agreeing to disagree, or letting others have their own valid and separate experience without their reaction adding or taking anything away from my own experience, I falter into my default setting of people-pleasing, acquiescing for a sense of peace, dimming to fit in.
I make a joke … at my own expense, even heat it up with a lie. I didn’t see what I said on a bumper sticker. It’s been my life-giving, quantum leaping mantra for the past six-weeks.
Why did I sacrifice my authenticity for the perceived appeasement of a stranger?
The pain of self-betrayal wails instantly.
But I can stay with this pain. I can soften and breathe. I can recognize that simply being aware of this seemingly small and significant moment in an interaction holds great potential healing and transformative work for me.
I can do what Mercury Retrograde invites us all to do — slow down, review, reassess, and see with radical compassion where I am in my journey.
This is a shift in perspective: to see myself as innocent, to see myself with unconditional love, to note that it’s a process.
We’re all spiraling upward in a flow of ascension, so the same lessons will naturally be met again, and each time with new integrated insights that we can implement, we can put into practice.
I start with softening. I start with an acceptance freed from judgment. There’s breath there for me. There’s ease in my body.
Awww, I go into people-pleasing when I don’t feel safe to be me.
The perceived criticism or sensed rejection of another registers in my body as a threat. I see this. I feel this. I can feel this without creating a story or feeding into a narrative about what this says about me. I can feel without story. The story is an illusion anyway.
I breathe into this. Hand on heart. Feeling the feet on the ground. What can I do to feel reassured, regulated, in resonance with life now?
The judgment can be noted and not enacted upon. I choose differently. I shift my perception, and this is the miracle choice, the tremendous moments of power, often subtle and silent, when we decide to stay in our heart, to see with our generous heart-gaze — compassion, mercy, forgiveness, love — the truth of our beingness, the truth of our innocence.
Mercury retrogrades always beckon me to question my perception of reality… the trip-ups may be experienced as tricks — the whacky mess-ups with technology, communication, reroutes with travel plans, hearing from old flames.
But when Mercury gets mischievous, the trick is not to slip into a full-blown reaction but to pause and pivot awareness to witness the reaction.
Noticing grants us the spaciousness to respond from a center that can hold the bigger picture.
To zoom out while still remaining centered.
So I find stability in my spine, in my breath, in my heart, and I zoom out to see the greater cosmic play.
Let’s start with Mercury Retrograde.
From earth, it appears that Mercury is spinning backward, thus a retrograde! But this is a trick of an eye — an optical illusion from the point of view of our earthly vision. Actually, Mercury is just finishing up his 88-day orbit and is slowly moving forward.
I’m not moving backward, even though today when I made that comment, oh, it felt like it. It felt like all my healing progress these past few years just shriveled up and went up into flame… but that’s just an illusion. I’ve been given the medicine of noticing, slowing down to see where and how I can live more strongly and vibrantly in integrity.
We are not moving backward, even we feel like we’ve slipped into old programming, we have expanded the capacity to notice, and the noticing is the healing.
This is a shift in perspective, and in the shifting, we can see ourselves more clearly, the way Mercury sees us when he spins perfectly orchestrated mischief into our lives.
No missteps, or mistakes, just opportunities to slow down and realign with our powerful authenticity.
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In this month’s Body Writes, we’ll be moving with the medicine of Mercury and shifting to perceive ourselves and the whirls of the world from the heart-space. There will be movement, meditations, and musings. If you feel a heart-spark of resonance please register with the link below.
Shine Your Shine.