full moon in virgo: the in-between

I am angry. about money. how there is so much of it but never enough to go around. I am angry about the ways we are reliant on it & the ways those who don’t know what it is to really not have it say we should be in relationship with it. move away from it. I am angry about how it doesn’t matter if you “do everything right”. if you work those days at that shitty ass job (or two, or three, like me) with no space to breathe. if you get in debt worth years of daily labor to get a degree so you can still hunt for a job, sometimes years after you have the piece of paper. I am angry about the ways we suffer with the lack of it.

I have all these feelings about money & the ways we’re conditioned to accept access to it, the ways we’re allowed to make it. and how little we’re allowed to make. I have all this anger about how I have to fight away the feelings that I did/do something wrong, that I am not working hard enough, that I’m failing 

we are not failing. the world is failing us. yes, we are the world but there is something about naming the dynamics of power (white supremacy & capitalism, to name two) that shifts the ways we assume response-ability. and I am not willing to be responsible for trying to survive in structures I did not create & do not willingly participate in. I will be response-able for what I do with whatever extra money I ever make & distributing whatever capital I have access to or ever obtain. because even as we imagine & invest into alternative strategies, we gotta fucking eat. and most of the strategies I’m familiar with that already exist in this US of Amerikkka involve already having access to a large amount of money. 

I’m thinking about all of this as the moon waxes into what will be a full moon in virgo (thursday 7:51PM EST) in my second house- finances, resources, security...MONEY. I’m noticing my (virgo-appropriate) frustration with the way everything doesn’t fit neatly into place, the way I don’t trust money, & the ways it’s still tied into my senses of value & responsibility. The details of what each rising/sun sign might expect are in the horoscopes. I wanted to share this moment, right here, right now with you all in hopes that you will allow yourself to be with the anger more & perhaps cultivate more awareness about what we as individuals are response-able for in relation to the collective. here’s something relevant I shared on facebook: 

no one is allowed to speak to my relationship to anger without my consent. no one is supposed to, without my permission, tell me when my anger is appropriate, when I should get over it, or when I should laugh the causes of it off. I will not believe I am angry because I am young, I will not believe I am angry because I'm immature, I will not believe I am angry because I want attention. regardless of how many times I am told these things & more.

to attempt to control the anger of others and their expression of it, when it is harming no one, is to violate the necessary building of intimacy & trust processing rage requires. let alone the by-passing (spiritual, racist, or otherwise) it requires to put yourself in a position of assumption that gives you the illusion you can speak to anyone's rage. there is soooo much we can do to shape change— and sometimes it feels there is so little & we need to be with our poverty, with our trauma, with our pain, with our anger. all those things are data we can use to find a more accurate measure for our contributions & capacities

 
this is relevant to something you may have seen me say already if you follow me on instagram. I answered the question: why pay for horoscopes when there are so many amazing free ones? well the Commune is kinda my on-site version of Patreon- cash poor brown girl gotta eat even as the stars speak. It is important to me to be accessible AF but that is not always something we can embody on an individual level. so the Commune is for those interested in new/full moon astrology & interested in investing into a boricua with an ongoing decolonization, anti-racist, anti-capitalistic, anti-every-ism lens. #fuckthekyriarchy

this is one of the ways of the many I hope to find that I am trying to build alternative income that gets me more life & puts me in a position of being able to give, to support, to redistribute wealth. my intention is not to sell to you but to share my process as a low income boricua. it is a slow, tiny, ever changing, but life-giving way. isn’t that the way of the earth?  

Happy full moon,

oxo

saltwater & stars 

on pluto: personal power & systematic racism {#1}

http://lady-phoenix.tumblr.com/post/153538459654

I was reading about Pluto the other day. How it is the part of our psyche we repress, suppress, depress. It is urges for the life-death-life cycle that make us uncomfortable so we refuse it. It is the gray area of utilizing our negative impulses by accepting & therefore transforming them into power- a word which here means an authentic source of knowing. It is a gray area because so much of our conditioning is done through the black vs. white polarization of morality, theology, religion, thought, beliefs etc.

We are trained to be uncomfortable with the in-between, with the process, with the shedding of old skin. We are told we have to be either good or bad, right or wrong, ignorant or all knowing. There is a denial of the gray because we are afraid of falling into a category, of the unknown, of death. And beneath that, we are uncomfortable because we have repressed our raw power so long that our translations of it have become tainted, intertwined into social|cultural constructs, & fear.

So to look into our power| darkness means to look into the unknown, to drop into vulnerability, & create accountability. 

There are many things that are right or wrong. Yet it is my belief that most issues fall into the in-between where we are trying to create a cohesive belief system rooted in the empowerment of ourselves & all people/systems in our lives. Complex. It is a triggering process. Taking our power back, removing ourselves from victim|powerless dynamics or the other side of Pluto: dynamics seething in control|power over others or the self rooted in fear, negative conditioning about what power is, & ultimately the resistance towards vulnerability. Sometimes it is both. 

So using delving into the death, the darkness of Pluto takes bravery & a development of unconditional self-love. Delving into this transformative process though means that anything that is tied up into our constructs around power, negative or repressed, will also die, if it does not survive. Creating a relationship with your power means truth, raw emotions, & that not everything will stay. Not everyone will stay. Only what will thrive will remain. 

What we're craving when we start being real with ourselves & others-stripping away the facades, the fears, the cover-ups- is authentic power. This means doing no harm & taking no shit. This means taking accountability. Raw power empowers everyone around you, because you are not taking from anyone else to give to yourself, & no one is taking from you to give to themselves. 

It takes time & trust to dismantle shame, guilt, & fear that we have wrapped into our power from our conditioning, our stories, our beliefs. We need resources chosen by our intuition, support given by our receptivity, & gentleness in our internal process. 

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Now. For some real time shit. Take EVERYTHING I just said & apply it to the process of dismantling white supremacy & becoming a true accomplice to deconstructing the systematic oppression of people of color & marginalized groups.

For my non-white audience, take EVERYTHING I just said & apply it to the process of healing ancestral & current trauma, the reclamation of your cultural & individual power, & leaning into your emotionality & vulnerability as a vital part of cultivating healthy power. 

It is an uncomfortable process for white people. As people of color, we cannot baby that process. We cannot coddle, comfort, soothe that process. It is necessary & it will continue if it is allowed to be felt. That's where the change comes from. And being in marginalized groups feels Pluto- dark, heavy, complex, overwhelmingly powerful. And realizing you are on the side of the oppressor via your race, conditioning, silence, feels similar. And this is each individuals work. 

WE have our own healing & work to do. We need our support, our resources- that is what is going to keep us in power. I am learning to have sacred boundaries. That all the conversations I have with white people, friends & allies & potential accomplices, are draining because I cannot do their work of awakening for them.

I am committed to always speaking truth, to never staying silent, or keeping comfortable, but I cannot deconstruct all of their conditioning or educate them as to my oppression. This is part of the work, in speaking up, but it cannot be our load. It is exhausting. 

So we have to cultivate our own power & focus on our healing, so that we are stronger, thriving more, & able to use the sharp power of Pluto to see through bullshit, call out oppression, & deal with the what sometimes feels like constant state of rage that dredging up old wounds, ancestral trauma, realizing the impact of systematic oppression has really had on our psyche. Figuring out what our role in the work, in the movement is while knowing that the best revenge is a life well lived.