Align Your Orbit #91 - No Edges
Align Your Orbit is a series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide intentionality and impact. Find delight in these journeys of exploration. If you would like to receive these offerings as an email on the new moon, sign up here.
When we are born, we know no edges. The world is us. We are the world. Everything (and nothing) that happens, we cause. Separation is a skill we have to learn all over again. Return to this primordial knowing and let it reinvigorate your empathy, your wonder, your patience.
The lights get brighter, the sounds are louder, and the bodies around you give off heat you didn’t even know you needed. Find the context that calls you—club or beach or bed—and invite the most fluid part of yourself. You carry the infant within you everywhere. Let them cry. Let them sleep. Let them look up at you while sprawled blissful across your chest.
Want to experience these experiments as a Tidal playlist?
New Experiments
1. it’s all a construct – In a world of highly selective surveillance, privacy is a construct. Evidence supports the side with the most resources. The narrative is made up and true at the same time. Truth is blurry and many-faceted. We are not one thing or another. We are all. We are everything. Assume nothing, and walk forward with the most generous interpretation for yourself, for others.
Challenge Mode: Assumptions become dangerous when your mind catastrophizes. Check your fantasies, your myths, your core truths for wild errors in logic. Defrag your mind, your projections of others, and the ways you name the past and future. What happens if nothing goes wrong?
2. from drama to empowerment – Triangular communication within groups knows no end, and the narratives constructed from these constant games of telephone cause misunderstandings that are difficult to disentangle. Even internally, our well-meaning inner voices often shut us down instead of lifting us up. Rather than criticize, rather than step in and play savior, ask what someone needs. Stick to questions and practice non-attachment to the answer.
Challenge Mode: Separation is an illusion and is simultaneously all there is. We are bodies and molecules that touch but don’t touch. We mingle but don’t combine. We are in front of and behind every mirror. Let what is immaterial flow freely through your intimate connections. Love is liminal—metaemotional, hyperphysical.
3. pattern recognition as superpower – You’ve been far too humble to call yourself clairvoyant, but you’re more accurate than you aren’t. You sense the cards before they flip. You know what that feeling in your back, chest, finger, heart means. Your statistical mind is always making calculations. Stop pretending that isn’t valuable information. Trust the ways you have meticulously constructed your intuition. It doesn’t come from nowhere.
Challenge Mode: Those of us with an uncanny knack for predicting the future are often hesitant to give it the weight of speech. We don’t want to bring unfortunate possibilities closer or make good things elusive on account of being noticed too early. But, that doesn’t mean you sit on your hands. Prepare those around you for the fortunes (and lack thereof) in your most likely futures without ever speaking a word. Delegate the tasks ahead of time and save an equal amount of the reward for yourself. You know, better than anyone, you’ve earned it.
4. nothing but the basics – There’s a reason babies need sleep, need food, need quiet, need touch, need light, need dark. We all do. Being around the youngest generation reminds us of our animal natures, our need to vocalize, our need for stimulation, our need to regulate. Give your body what it craves and don’t ask questions. This moment and this moment and this moment is for you.
Challenge Mode: There are muscles, movements, and mental patterns in you that are tired—overworked. And there are others that have sat on the bench too long. Reimagine a more balanced way to put your players on the field. You have more capacity and resources than you think you do. Train the people with interest and give your best players a well-deserved rest.
andra’s Recap of It’s All Fire
The experiments for the previous moon cycle included the timing is now, and now, and now (challenge mode: pick one thing and give it a deadline); trust what bonds (challenge mode: name the sensation before the story); get to know every hour like a friend (challenge mode: track when you feel alive and when you’re pushing through); and those of us who can do it will (challenge mode: what would it look like to renegotiate).
As ever, I am here to relish in this moment of presence and this one and this one. When that collides with my creative energy, I listen, even when I’m sleep deprived, even when there are other tugs on my heartstrings. Everything deserves space—all things in balance. Alongside having a new little baby to care for at home, I still find time for the writing that calls me. I started writing a story about gods going to group therapy, and honestly, it’s fire.
While I’m not quite back to working on a deadline, I am proud of what remains of my systems, projects, creativity, and personality after the birth. I am very much still here even if the winds of fate have blown hard through all these open doors.
The physiological bond to this baby, even though they are not biologically related to me, is more intense than I would have ever believed. While, in the last month, it has softened out of its trauma bond shape, the chest tugs are strong. Call it what you will—hormones or survival or magic—I love this little one, and I feel safest when they are bundled up against me (spoiler alert: that’s exactly how I’m writing this right now).
I brought the baby strapped to my chest and led a basket weaving workshop, and I like to think I made my ancestors proud.
Giving my sensations and emotions space to exist without a story has been freeing. When I am digging into the dredges of my capacity, sometimes all I have left is the naming, and maybe not even that. This month, I had to surrender to others’ judgment about a crushing pain in my back because I didn’t know if it was something serious. Many signs pointed to a heart attack. I went to the emergency room in the middle of the night, and they didn’t find anything alarming, but I think it was important for me to be aware of the possibility, and I’m seeking support to try to figure out what happened in all types of ways.
Certainly, parenthood has pushed me out of my temporal comfort zones. I am frequently awake on my shift from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., and before things settled down after the hospital visit, more erratically than that. I have learned who I am when I need to show up in the dark, and I know the exact moment the birds start singing. It’s an honor to see the world while it is still sleeping.
I can see how easy it would be to zone out and let these newborn days blur together, especially without reliable sleep. But, it’s the little things like making sure the baby has a fresh blanket every day and a matching diaper cover or showing them something they have never seen before that keep me grounded in what is now, what is here.
Recently, in therapy, I realized that I often throw myself in the way of others experiencing what I deem to be cosmic unfairness but I don’t circle back around to do aftercare when the dust settles. While I’m not sure how to filter when I take a blow versus when to pass it off to someone else, I know my current strategy is not sustainable. I need to work toward creating resilience in others rather than being the invisible hand of protection.
Renegotiating relationships has been up for me in a big way as I’ve run into a difficult conflict with one of my housemates. Luckily, we have both agreed to do family therapy with the rest of the household, so hopefully that will help. What I was able to articulate about myself through this process, though, is that I am almost always willing to give people more chances if they are willing to continue engaging and improving upon the situation with me. It’s total communication disruption that I won’t stomach.
I hope you enjoy this month’s experiments!