The catalpa trees glisten like jewel-drenched royals. They masterfully orchestrate a stunning spectacle of fluttering and flurrying golden leaves that waltz down to the carpeted street.
Here, I grant myself a cappuccino-sipping pause.
Windows cracked to relish the sun-cloaked day, I remain in the car to be riveted by the artful trapezing of the fanned-shaped leaves. In witnessing their dignified and graceful bow to life’s seasons, I experience a rising rush of sudden revelations. As I watch their splendid spins, my heart spills suddenly visible and articulate truths.
My old life, similar to the glory of this fall day, must too be honored as it dazzles in integrated lessons, and in destined-guided time fades away, for a new life stirs. A star-wise friend counsels me, it’s all right if this new life looks radically different than my former life.
And I believe in iterations, distinct chapters, the phases of the moon, and am growing to revere and respect my own cyclical ways of being.
There’s an elegance to the emptying, to granting full permission to be in a pause. To push back, to resist this extended breath of time, would further exhaust me.
And in illuminated honesty, I confess to an exhaustion, one that travels beyond the external remedies of double-espresso cappuccinos and hours of uninterrupted sleep. This exhaustion summons me to retreat, to hold a flickering candle to the shadow and meet my internal world in heightened listening. The past three years hummed in intentional going and creative giving, and at the peak of my time in Austin, at the very end, I could stretch out my arms in full amazement to marvel at the life I had created – one where I was living in my passions of teaching yoga in the Austin community and being generously offered rewarding opportunities to perform improv and teach the creative arts to children (or really, they taught me about improvising spontaneously and being authentically funny).
And while in amazement of this Austin life I also sensed the arriving time of departure, and so I am here, in the grandeur of full-blown fall, and feel a new life beginning to breathe.
There’s anticipation, real excitement, inspiration infused in the initiation of a fresh inhalation.
And a mourning, a fear…because the creative life-force that rejuvenated and heart-hummed when teaching, especially yoga, rests dormant and distant, and even the attempt to reach, to conjure energy to teach exacerbates the energetic exhaustion.
And here the lunar magic of the new moon in Scorpio whispers:
Trust the flow of letting go. Linger at the bottom of the exhalation. Brighten awareness into the shadowy corners of our multifaceted humanness.
And Scorpio revels in the shadow.
Scorpio sizzles in reserved emotional intensity, and this magnetic and elusive loner prefers to dive head-first into the depths of feeling. The treasured truths discovered remain close to the Scorpio’s heart – an introversion that instructs the self-friendship found in truly knowing yourself, and refrains from expressing those exquisite finds to the outside world. It’s not being secretive; it’s a sacred communing between our human and divine selves.
In the quiet dark of this November new moon, Scorpio holds skillful sensitive company to those of us willing to be still enough to reflect inward.
Here in the practice of a pause, Scorpio rewards with a revelation on the energy motivating the past three years. While there’s a sparking and sputtering of enthusiasm for future endeavors, I sense that this new moon isn’t about external launching but the exact opposition: the ignition of inner travel.
The Scorpio new moon beckons to befriend our own shadow, to merge with an inner spaciousness that allows whatever to surface to be seen in peaceful understanding.
I experience that peacefulness here – in this savored sip of a cappuccino, captivated by the fleeting ballet of sashaying leaves, and cradled in the comfort that arises when I choose the self-honoring decision, which this time manifests as pressing pause.
Scorpio briefly appears in the pause. I smile at Scorpio, hands tucked in a black leather jacket, casually glancing up, while forging a unique path through the blanket of fallen golds.
Pausing is a rebellious act. And if we sit with ourselves in the night of our souls, open to the surfacing truths from our underworld, we’ll find the calm encouragement of Scorpio and maybe a decadent moment to be exuberantly alive in the fall.