Up until the very last day before traveling, it was moment by moment. I did not know whether I’d take the trip I’d planned on taking now for months. Yet I was not in fear or anxiety about this fact. Only wonder. As in, “I wonder how I feel about taking this journey right now?”

When I’d ask myself the question, and get an affirmative answer, I knew everything was in alignment for me- despite topsy-turvy world events. I kept checking in, asking myself multiple times. I was open to canceling everything, and have many times before. I have nothing to lose by listening to what my Soul most wants. My deepest (and only) commitment is listening to and honoring my connection to Divinity.

Therefore, the predominant feeling I’ve been experiencing is lightness.

It struck me that all the spiritual work I’d been doing for years has prepared me for moments like this. I’ve learned to pull my energy inward, to not turn to external sources for affirmation or guidance, but my own. When I am listening inward, I trust that I will be given the information I need. I don’t need to listen to others, or the news (which doesn’t mean that I tune it out, entirely). If I’m walking out the door or airplane and my Soul doesn’t want to be walking out the door or onto the airplane, I’ll know it. I’ll feel a strong sense of dis-resonance, which feels like anxiety but is actually intuitive information, psychic perceptiveness, and is a very different energy from anxiety or fear. That’s a sign to pause, and be open to inner listening.

I’ve learned to live in the moment, the value of not going on auto-pilot with Ego’s plans- so easy to do. Because plans dynamically change; that’s life (I’ve never found a way to game that – not even with astrology!) We are in clarity/certainty one day, and a few minutes, days, weeks later, we aren’t. If we want to live from the Soul, live intuitively, we need to be flexible like the Willow tree, not unyielding like the Great Oak. If something’s not happening, it means my Soul doesn’t want it right now; it wants to experience something else.

It’s so much more pleasurable, enjoyable, even, to learn to flexibly move with what’s actually happening. There’s so much freedom and space within the present moment. So many good options.

When I was on my trip, which I ended up taking, I was sick with a sinus cold for most of the time. I didn’t get to do some things I’d planned. But I’d brought my paints and notebooks and divination cards. I ended up spending some time revisiting sketching and painting. I wrote. I explored my inner landscape more deeply. I took long walks, photographs, cooked, listened every step of the way to what I wanted.

Whatever is happening or not happening in your life…whatever is not working, being cancelled, plans being thwarted… is not cause to feel victimized, but an opportunity to be even more present to what is. To live more fully from the space of your Soul. To enter more deeply into the temple of yourself, the greater part of you that is truly okay with whatever is happening because it knows that, as a client who is experiencing several rather big and simultaneous Neptune transits right now recently said to me, “this is a dream. This plot change, the characters, set and scenery are all for my experience”.

But if the Ego has a story to tell about it, it will. The Ego wants certainty and security. It wants immunity from suffering. It wants its just desserts. It has an idea that it has suffered enough, so certain things (this) should not be happening. It will hang out in those attachments and belief structures your whole life, if you let it. Yet as the human experience teaches us over and over again …it’s not within your control. Let go, good friend. Turn to something bigger than your Ego’s version. Surrender. It’s not your Ego’s job to manage the stock market and your portfolio right now. It’s not within your power. Give it up to Spirit. Pray. Ask Spirit to do the work of figuring it out for you. Find that calm place inside.

The invitation is to be present to the now. To recognize the energies and thoughts and stories that take you out of the present and then work on coming back home to yourself, again.  Because if you are living in a state of fear or despair, you are either caught up in an external energy, or a story. There is no other option. Figure it out, and you can return to the calm ease that you are. I have many ways of doing this, many of which I’ve shared with you on this blog.

Neptune & The Invitation into Greater Presence

We also have astrology. Reading the astrology, energetically, pandemics (invisible illness and contagions, because we are interconnected) are ruled by Neptune/Pisces. When Neptune comes visiting, our expectations and understanding of “reality” gets washed away. From an evolutionary perspective, Neptune’s intention is to offer us a greater experience of eternal oneness, spiritual consciousness, the recognition of Self-as-Spirit. There are methods and means for getting to that place of expanded connection. Some popular ones are: going to the cloisters, spiritual retreat, illness, removal from our daily life so we can enter into an expanded state, willingly giving up our material and Ego-driven focus for a spiritual one, sometimes thru death. However, for most of us, a common method for Neptune is isolation & removal.

Do you value what Neptune is offering all of us right now? Monasteries & artists, do. Modern culture doesn’t (staying home, cancelling of plans, a shift from productivity to inwardness is threatening to capitalism, as well as the Ego part of us that is focused on survival). Likewise, you may have some conditioning stacked against the very methods Neptune is using right now, as your master teacher. But in meeting present with presence there is:

-opportunity for quiet contemplation, inwardness, reflection and silence

-a reprieve from day to day reality, a chance to retreat

-a break from social demands, roles and obligations

-quiet time to be with our visions and dreams

-time to make art and create, revisit that latent hobby, if we are so moved

-space to relax and let go, make space for something new

-time do more energy, spiritual and intuitive practices that feel good to us, and are healing

-opportunity for embracing our introverted, imaginative, reflective and solitary nature

I remember when I was 17 and became ill with an undiagnosable syndrome. I didn’t get to graduate with my high school class. I was unable to live a normal life for several years. Being faced with a situation where my life, and my body, was totally out of my control at such a young age taught me the kind of things that most of us would never willingly sign up for. Yet the greatest gift of that period was that it shaped who I became, today. During those long months and years spent in isolation I turned within, and found depth psychology, astrology, spirituality, art and writing. Now when I undergo periods where life feels out of my control, I deeply understand my Soul has elected to experience it.

Finally, if you are having difficulty with this period of energy…

Neptune is the window of consciousness, the lens through which we view the world, and our life. Many of our windows have a few smudges on them. When you look through a dirty window, you will get a distorted reality. If you are suffering, it is not the reality, but your perception of it. As Steven Forrest has asked, during Neptune times, how dirty are your windows? Clean those windows, so to speak. Look at the beliefs and stories you are carrying around. Set the intention to release them. Those are the things that are causing you to suffer — not the pandemic, or the threat of it. It is possible to experience the many things we consider hardships in life with a sense of equanimity, surrender, peace.

Collectively or personally, something will always challenge the Ego’s attachments. None of us are immune from sickness, death, and disruptive change. We may feel more out of control in times like this but even that is just a reminder that we never are in control. So, the invitation is to keep doing the very practical things that keep you feeling calm and grounded in your Light. Perhaps to clean your windows and let some of those energies finally… go.

Jessica