You Don't Know Anything

My Inner Wisdom's voice can be a little feisty

This week I am reflecting on expansion, and how we are all being called to expand what we think we know, and our perceptions in order to feel more aligned with what is going on within ourselves and the world. The outer world right now is a shit storm and one reason besides the obvious is that most people cannot see perspectives beyond what is right in front of their nose, and that their perceptions are in a state of contraction because of the onslaught of external noise, biased news, echo chambers, and perceived division and “otherizing”.

In the natural world however, we are in the darkness and approaching the Winter Solstice. There is nothing more expansive than the dark. We often fear it, so we spend all our time “out there” in the madness matrix of social media and news rather than “in here” with ourselves and connected to nature; paying attention to what it is doing and the signs and synchronicities it offers us. Going inside often requires us to do some internal housekeeping and clearing out and the weeks before the Winter Solstice is an ideal time to do that before we start visioning what’s next and adding to our goals and to-do lists.

Every morning my practice is to ask my Inner Wisdom what I need to hear and receive for that day. There was a time about a year ago that Inner Wise Woman (who curses like a sailor...then again so does my outer wise woman) kept saying "You don't know shit." This went on for several weeks and was a call first into humility and secondly to expand my lens of perception and expand into possibilities that I couldn't quite see yet. And so now I make it a regular practice to ask my Inner Wisdom and my Divine to show me what I am not seeing. To assist me in stepping out of my limited day to day survival lens and up into the visionary and symbolic realms while at the same time remaining very grounded in the Earth and natural world because both spaces have information to offer us. I usually use free form writing, collage, working with plants and animal guidance to move into those realms because our logical minds are only capable of seeing what is behind us or right in front of us, but without a way to step into the intuitive intelligence you cannot see what you cannot "see". You have to step into the imagination.

I believe collectively it is TIME again to step out of what we think we know and expand our minds and our hearts to see things differently. I think it is the only way to maintain our own alignment and not get caught up in engaging with all that we see "out there." Our job is to shift our own minds and expand into what we are here on this planet to do, not waste our precious energy trying to change the minds of people unwilling to look at things through a different lens. I have needed this reminder the last several months, because hey my brain seeks to prove itself right, or find the echo chambers just like everyone else’s does. But what I realized is I really don’t know shit, none of us do and everything is in the mystery. What I do know is trying to change closed minds or get into the us vs them narrative brings me further and further away from what my soul is here to do. I assure you it brings you further away from it too. We didn’t come here for this, we came here to connect to ourselves and all beings. So, ask yourself, “what did I come here for?” And then listen for the answer. Then take some action that is life affirming. For me it is returning to some of my ancestral roots in the fiber arts and the plant/folk medicine realms, and to do my practices before engaging with anything outside of myself. My rituals must become the star of the show again because I can feel my shadow side overtaking the expansive qualities of the dark and while I love my shadow as much as I love my light I know when it is moving me out of alignment.

Many of us have been in a "contracted" state for months, some of us years, maybe even a decade, hunkering down, cocooning, being with the ones we love, only spending time with those who think like we do, or maybe being engaged in a fight, even a sacred one will ultimately lead to contraction even if it is a valiant and worthy fight. This is NOT to say that those of us involved in sacred activism and community engagement should stick our heads in the sand and spiritually bypass everything that is going on, but we need to rest, we need to continually check in with ourselves and what is in alignment, and we need to do this regularly in order to maintain perspective and to make choices for the highest good.

We also emerged from a pandemic and most of us still haven’t processed that. In one moment it seems like that was yesterday and in other moments like it was a decade ago. We just moved on and tried to “get back to normal.”Some of us enjoyed the slow down, some of us did not, and for some of us that changed from day to day. But like all Universal Laws (which I love because Universal mystical laws account for science, everything in the natural world including the body, spirit, psyche and soul) we can only contract for so long before we naturally expand whether we want to or not, we can fight it or we can let nature takes its course. When we breath our diaphragms contract and we can only contract for so long until we MUST expand, and so it is for our minds, bodies, and souls. If we don't allow the natural instinct to expand, we feel like we are constantly gasping for air.

My invitation to you this week is to sit with what you would like to clean up and clear out in your field of perception and perspective and then what you would like to expand into. Perhaps it is time to break out of the cocoon, remove the invisibility cloak and bring a piece of your work into the world, maybe it is time to expand your mind and learn something completely new and out of the ordinary for you. Maybe it is time to expand into a physical practice that tests your limits. Maybe it is time to take a dare, connect with people you would not ordinarily connect with learn about the world from their perspective and maybe even understand we are more alike than we are different. Don’t pretend to KNOW, because you don’t. Any and all of these things will move you into the next state of being, which is inevitable one way or another. But when you make the choice from your own Inner Authority of how you want to expand, what you want to expand into, and how you want to walk in the world it feels so much more natural and aligned as opposed to holding your breath and waiting for outer conditions to meet you in a past self that no longer exists.