Last week the Sun crossed my natal Pluto, which is next to my moon in my twelfth house of Libra. In Whole Sign Astrology, the Twelfth house has to do with the psyche and the unconscious. And conjunct my Pluto is an asteroid called Alice. When my astrology teacher, Lalita Karoli pointed this out she said: Jessica you’ve been down the rabbit hole. Yes, yes I have. I felt called to share in the video below some visions and dreams of old that I hope will be of service to the collective as we are sifting through fake news and doing our deep human healing.
Pluto is at the outer edges of the galaxy. Pluto as Lord of the Underworld is often confused or conflated with Lucifer, but remember that it was Jesus that descended into the depths and conquered death (Lucifer didn’t want to descend), and before Jesus, it was Inanna who took the path of descent, the Queen of Heaven, The Great Mother traversed the void, who dwells in the cosmic yoni that may pull any man in to face fears of being overcome by the feminine. (Orgasm in french means ‘little death’).
With the sun shining on the deep depths of my psyche and the rabbit hole and the collective unconscious I began to feel panicky and stuck in the underworld. I accused my partner of tricking me and trapping me. All very Hades things to do. Could I face my own Hades? Could I do this initiation this time? The truth is there is an aspect of ourselves that does trick and trap and pull us down. Sometimes we trick ourselves into believing things are fine when they are not. Or we trick ourselves into thinking things are terrible when they are not. Sometimes it’s all about our perspective. And what is truly ‘terrible’ to us. Ultimately the Trickster character was never kicked out of the realm of the divine for it always tricked everyone into a more marvelous happy ending then anyone could possibly imagine.
The way through is the way of the wound. If I want to heal myself and stop repeating whatever kind of unconscious traumas and dramas keep spinning through my life, I have to face those things I would prefer not to look at. Trauma changes the brain. And while some may label that a disorder, trauma also offers its own sort of gifts. For me it seems I have suffered many lifetimes of broken heartedness. The work of healing and opening my heart is an everyday practice. Some of us find ourselves at a place where we fear to slow down and look into the dark, or descend into the body for the grave fear that we might not ever get back up. If we started opening up, the dam would break. Things would pour out of us that we wouldn’t know what to do with. Sorta like pandora’s box.
Love has many layers and it’s always beckoning us deeper. I love my husband and I know he loves me. But still, love scares the shit out of me most days. Our relationship has challenged me to look at all the ways in which my heart has shields over it. In trying to release I’ve learned, I can’t force those shields to go away. I have to build a relationship with what is being protected and defended against and why. I have to face my fears of being vulnerable and receptive and deep fears that I may not be worthy to receive love. Cognitively I know this to be false. But the body remembers, and the issues in our tissues have much to say.
There was this cliff I kept falling off of in my mind. This place I would go where I would just scream through new layers of low, of lost hope, of dread. Ultimately I had to come to a place where I landed in the hands of the divine. Where I could feel that this holy presence was real and not just an imaginary security blanket. My illusions of separation from the divine had to go. My work was to embody this divinity and recode those voices of shame, unworthiness, that kept me closed down. I had another breakthrough last week.
One of my major fears was continuing to experience heartache through the fear of betrayal of my beloved. I was externalizing the source of the problem. I recognized that I had this little victim within still placing blame upon the men who raped me or took advantage of me or made me feel worthless and like disposable trash. Part of my healing was recognizing those part of myself that may have agreed to experience those things. Why would the soul choose this? For the very reason that Jesus embodied the ultimate human experience: death as a criminal in a most gruesome way: in order that even this might be redeemed. In order to reveal to humanity: love has no bounds. It can redeem everything we’ve ever experienced. Sometimes I wonder if souls want to experience the opposite side of pain they have caused in a past life. Sometimes it takes a lot for a soul to feel ready and worthy to return to a meaningful connection with source. No one can force it. We all have a choice about how and when if ever to do that.
I read the story of Quan Yin as told by Kaia Ra in her book The Sophia Code this week and it helped something click for me. The story is Quan Yin had been brutally gang raped, her family murdered in front of her, her village burned. Something within told her to run to the woods and she escaped and wandered mad and animal like through the forest for years until a man showed up. He had come to help her heal. He was human but also made of light. In another lifetime she had done the same for him. He watched with compassion as she wrestled to receive his love, to accept compassion for all within her that had been wounded. Sometimes for those who have been most wounded, it is love that we lash out at. How could someone else be so loving, when we are in such agony, so at peace when we are in pain? This man’s love opened up her deepest insecurities. She destroyed the altars he built for her soul. She lashed out in rage at his kindness. His patient presence allowed her the time and space to move through her anger and grief and to find the utmost compassion for every piece of herself. The most powerful thing any of us can be for anyone is a compassionate presence while the pain runs its course. She finally returned to her peace. Since learning about her, I have felt her presence softening my own heart when I call on her.
Quan Yin, artist unknown
When one of us learns something, we learn it for the collective. We know in a new what what is truly humanly possible. Quan Yin had a destiny to become the Great Mother of Compassion for humanity, and her initiation was to first find it for her very human frail self.
I realized in my pain I was still putting the shame of sexual misconduct upon the masculine. I was externalizing something I couldn’t hold or have compassion on for myself. For when I was younger I experienced what it was like to be put in the “slut” category in junior high. It was a dark place filled with tons of projections about what my peers both desired and feared. I was none of it, and all of it, not myself and yet called to be a bigger self than I had any idea that I could be. This old slut shame was still hanging on. For anyone who’s experienced this or interested in helping girls recover I would recommend Emily White’s book, Fast Tribes and the Myth of the Slut. It seemed now that I was the one pointing fingers and trying to unconsciously shame my partners in order to make myself feel secure. I had swung the pendulum. The opposites had been experienced. I could release them now.
I wonder: can I forgive pedophilia? Can I forgive rape? Can I forgive the men who have believed themselves so unworthy of love that there only way to get affection was to take it? Is there anything in this whole creation that is truly unforgivable?
There is an energetic gateway in the heart, and when we open up and heal the shadows in the heart, purging out jealousy, unworthiness, and shame we find ourselves home again in the ground of our being, which was always good; it was just a lot of illusions that distorted that truth for a time.
Some people think because there is evil in the world that God is not good or not real. But I believe that God is so good that God allows evil to run its course, until it finally wakes up in the arms of love again.
Time is grace. Grace for all of creation to run its course and discover that love is patiently waiting for us whenever we feel ready to finally accept it. When we no longer fear death, death of our ego, death of control, death of any kind, we do brave things for love. For then we come to know that it is love that will outlive all that comes against it. Wherever we cannot have compassion upon ourselves or others, we are still in a place of judgement and that is not love.
So I ask myself often: can you have compassion on that? On that? On that? And wherever there is a no, I know exactly where to focus my healing work.
