Crowrider: Learning From Limitation

If you are anything like me, one week into the New Year you may be sharing my current prayers.

Please, please Universe, Let me return to the order and rhythm of my own life.

Please, please Universe, Let me return to my own body, my own purpose and goals.

Please, please Universe, Let me be provided for and supported.

Please, please Universe, Let me find the daily and weekly structures that will help me move my goals forward.

I don’t think I’m the only one that marvels at how much time and energy it takes to return from the rituals and sacred festivals of this season.

What I notice about my prayers is that they all have a rather Saturnian ring to them. (pun intended). And, of course, here we find ourselves with the Sun stationed in Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, or as the Greeks called him Chronos (time). How fitting that my prayers are perfectly suited for the god of limits, boundaries, structures, and authority. The Father Principle.

Not only is our relationship to the Father principle enlivened this month, it is going to be solidly on the altar for many years to come, as Pluto (the principle of change and transformation) moves through Capricorn. Our relationship to this principle will greatly impact the transitions that we have imagined 2012 to be.

As our culture and economy are failing, many of us are facing extreme limitation – a challenging face of Saturn. For all of us, there is some place in our life where reality is not quite how we want it to be.

1. How can we face, with authority, the limitations of reality? How can we be authors of our experience when the plan is in such upheaval?

I was strongly initiated into this teaching at the Solstice ritual I lead on December 21st.

It was a night of every little thing not going according to plan:

1. I got lost getting there and barely made it in time (even though I’ve been there MANY times, and am not someone who gets lost!)
2. There were no seats for participants in the closet where they always are!
3. The heater wasn’t working (and it was super cold in that old church!)
4. I got a coughing tickle in the middle of reading a powerful piece on the birth of the cosmos by Brian Swimme.
5. In the midst of the chaos of all of the above, I couldn’t find my class outline where I had written out a meditation and a good timing for the evening!

My night was not going the way I wanted it to go. The structures I had been relying on were not there fore me.

I registered how strong my desire was to control the evening. I didn’t want everyone there to be cold and I was so attached to everyone having the most AMAZING experience possible that night.

Even the wick on my candle I lit fell through the bottom of the candle. Seriously. Really? I felt myself internally say to the Universe, OK, I get it, I’m listening.

You see, this was a high-powered ritual night and a shamanic journey class. And I find that whatever is on the altar for a class I’m going to teach I always receive the experience and information ten-fold. Usually, I go through a big ride the week before a class and arrive at the class initiated by the themes and energies I’ve evoked. Yet, it seems on that night my learning was happening right in step with the class. And as I was drumming for the group’s shamanic journey I received my own information, as I often do.

My experience that night was my journey. And if you have never journeyed before, the experience of the shamanic journey is an intensified and symbolic mirror, a gift from the other world and the depths of your own psyche that is showing you something that you are ready to dance with. It brings you into a full encounter with the energies, beings, and parts of yourself that are ready to be known.

And as I say to everyone, there is no such thing as a bad journey. There is learning and information in every experience.

That night I was asked to release my attachment, I was asked to say yes to realities I was resisting, I was asked to trust that even though my plan wasn’t holding there was another plan that would come forward and that everyone would have the experience they needed. I was asked to breath into my anxiety and terror. I was asked to befriend myself, chaos, and the unknown. I was asked to entertain that even though my plan wasn’t necessarily holding that the exact realities of my life, as they are, are providing for me the exact experience that I need.

The only power I had that evening was to say yes to life as it is, to shake hands with reality, to create with it and be kind to myself in the process.

We all want things to be perfect, to have enough savings in the account before we start a family, to have the sun shining on our wedding day, to have the heater work when you feel responsible for the 20 people that showed up for your class.

That’s what we want.

But something else is often given.

Now, the other part of the learning that night was, that in the end, the evening went beautifully. There was an intimate quality to having everyone bundled up in blankets, and we all worked together to find other chairs in another room and got the altar set up. Someone handed me water when my throat itched. Every participant brought so much magic to the evening and somehow a great meditation came through me on the spot without my notes. Everyone had a wonderful shamanic journey, we honored the light within, we sang songs together and were nourished.

So as I am slowly returning to the land of structure and order in this time of Capricorn, creating a schedule and plan for myself to meet my goals this month and this year and re-instating healthy practices into my regimen – I’m also reminded of what is shifting in my own relationship to Saturn.

While I often find myself taking responsibility (also very Capricorn) and making plans to build some experience or project (Capricorn again) where I have to make use of outlines and linear plans – I find that my true power and authority lies not in whether or not I’m capable of carrying out the plan but how I respond to the way the plan unfolds.

Let yourself muse for a moment about your relationship to Saturn/Capricorn/ and the Father Principle.

What plans, structures, limits and order will support your soul this month and this year?

What plans and structures do you need to re-work to dance honestly with present tense reality?

Where are you being asked to surrender and say yes to reality as it is?

Where can you be kinder to yourself in the process?

How would it feel to trust this experience is offering exactly what you need right now?