MOODS! EXPLORING LIFE’S SHIPWRECKS

  

I live alone with only a little contact via internet and phone with the outside world. I know I’m inwardly generating an upgraded version of me every day and every moment. I have never been in exactly this version of life before. Of course, there were similar conditions, but never in the unique environment I now inhabit. The outer world continues to change, different skills are required, and different weaknesses are exposed. But never at this time, nor between this particular day’s earth and sky before.

Rio Grande Angel Blessing the tare in Gaia

I just walked around outside. It is hot, but not as hot as it was yesterday. Today there are beautiful cumulus clouds against a dazzling blue Taos sky that I’ve never seen in just this way before. The grass is getting tall, but I feel no compulsion to mow it down on a hot day in July. As I watch the hollyhocks arriving at their peak beauty, each in its own time, the flying insects are busy doing their own business with the flowers, unaware of the busy ants on the ground, or the grasshoppers that seem to automatically know that I’m a potential danger. I assure them I won’t eat them, but I don’t like the way they strip a flower of leaves in a few hours. We all have our place and understand each other’s potential for good or ill concerning our own interests. This amazing being I call earth, or Gaia is full of dramas, wars, agreements, partnerships, and a ripple of brutal results when someone in nature’s core-de-ballet falls out of step with the music.

Yesterday I felt a strange unfettered dis-ease of apprehension about this same world that looks beautiful today. I’ve wondered many times how long I will be in this transitional state that resulted in my past memories and present situation thrown together in an alchemical stew pot.  I’m stretching to reach that new, as yet unknown version of me that challenges my thread bare ego version. Anything can change everything.

Perhaps coming into this lifetime with the Moon conjunct Jupiter rising in the sign of Cancer makes changing moods a major concern for me. It could be seen as a flaw, but that depends on how it’s used.  Moods are full of hidden content. They are generated by memory, but we seldom trace them back to their source. Often the situation that aroused the mood sank long ago to the dark bottom of our emotional sea to remain invisible until something stirs the quiet mud encasing them. However, we usually attribute the mood to something that stirs a surface ripple of emotion without reaching down to its source in the muddy bottom of our past. Instead, our imagination generates an ego approved substitute. Generally, it’s some version of “kicking the dog.”

 Living in this house and its surroundings by myself, without PQ’s presence and the buzz surrounding him, cast me into a confrontation between my pre-PQ self and post-PQ identity. In both I lived alone, except for a four-legged companion or two. However, much to my surprise, I’m not the same person I was before we became partners. In the time between, I not only added more years to my history, but my emotional living room had been refurnished piece by piece. It was so gradual I hadn’t noticed, and then he left, and both I and the house were strangers to each other. We are now building a new relationship.

Although I’m not proud of my darker moods, I’ve come to respect their source. Moods reveal the path to hidden resources. Taking my sea metaphor further, they are a sonar revelation of sunken treasures. The best stuff is often buried deep, and it’s covered in rust and barnacles, with scary critters swimming around the hull. Don’t be deceived by fear or pride, among the hidden treasures are utensils and tools you never knew you had.  Although it generates intense thoughts and fears it safe keeps a hidden treasure.

The two years since PQ left for his new assignment, a trickster has challenged most of my unexamined beliefs. I’ve tried to go easy on my very limited income, and unexpected expenses jumped out of the shadows. I tightened the belt, gave thanks for my good health and reliable car. Next, I lost an important piece of extra income. Strangely, I wasn’t particularly upset, and I actually wanted to be free of the attachment that went with it. However, it will have to be replaced somehow. This brings up the reason it happened now.

I’ve always felt like a reader’s comment on the margin of a book. There has never been a page or even paragraph for me in the text. I can do things for other people that I don’t feel authorized to do for myself. I didn’t go to high school, took a couple of years’ worth of college, but didn’t have the resources to go further and then talked my way into my first job working for an oil company. That gave me enough money for independence from the family home, but not much else. Since then, I’ve stumbled from one cliff hanger to the next, and always managed to survive. It now makes sense why I had so many dreams in childhood and adolescence of running from a torrent raging down what began as a bubbling stream. I am standing on the bank and suddenly it is being swallowed by a flood. I scramble with all the strength I can muster, and barely make it to solid ground. But of course, the ground never stays solid for very long.

I don’t want to do this anymore! In one sense, it’s the human condition, or just the condition of life on earth. However, I realize it’s about more than physical survival. Maybe it’s time to find the next step and do more than barely survive. I’m old enough to think about existence beyond this 3-D world. I want to use my remaining time wisely and I’d rather not come back with a bag of issues to correct. 

Today, I’m grateful that the world is very strange, but beautiful and I’m using this unfamiliar circumstance to prepare for whatever is on the way. None of my plans ever worked out the way I hoped for, so I’m turning it over to the Cosmic Planner and his/her staff.  (I may need to be reminded of this decision now and then).