Align Your Orbit #97 - i of the storm
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.
In the front car of a roller coaster, we see the bottom and the long way down, but the back car hasn’t peaked yet. We feel in our bodies what’s coming. The hurricane brews around us. We know better than to build elaborately in this moment of collapse, so we sculpt sand castles only for the love of it and remember than only art has permission to be tedious.
As we enter new leadership roles, as we organize our communities, as we sing the songs of the culture we have scraped back together louder than ever before, we determine the backbone of what is strong enough to stand.
Want to experience these experiments as a Tidal playlist?
New Experiments
1. define the scope of your agency – When something feels wrong, our impulse is to find a solution, but sometimes there is nothing to be done. There are times when you can move closer to what is actionable and times when all you can do is witness. Acknowledge your current capacity, the likelihood of change, and the level of discomfort. Right now, the storm is bigger than you.
Challenge Mode: We want to believe that everything is possible, that we could conquer even death, but there is hubris in that. Once you have identified something you cannot, at least in this moment, change, spend time in meditation to sit with the discomfort and the grief of that knowing. Your witnessing is an alchemical process that leaves nothing behind.
2. know we are the most dependent – If we truly believe we humans are at the top of the food chain, that means we are affected by the health of every species below us. We have borrowed our bodies from the earth and soil and continue feeding ourselves with the bodies of plants and animals. Our existence requires the churn, the turnover, the storm. Honor the beings you build your body with in gratitude, in prayer, in witness.
Challenge Mode: From human waste management to embalming practices, humans, especially in Western culture, keep almost all our collected nutrients from returning to the soil. Your saliva, blood, and urine all contain food and information the land never stops craving. Find a sacred place that calls for more connection and give some part of yourself back.
3. align expectation and reality – As change agents, we map the underbelly of existence to find the places that need us most. And yet, our urge to help, coupled with an inability to budge the mountains, drains our energy. Be strategic about what is ready for movement. Nothing good comes from forcing change—there is an art to patient listening.
Challenge Mode: As the storm strips us away, the physical space we take up shrinks, but that makes room for our inner landscapes to deepen. Identify the parts of you that have nothing to do with the material world. Where are you in deep service, in deep meditation, in deep communication with the web of what is? When all the objects collapse in on themselves, what you have learned stays with you.
4. find affinity with what remains – You are not the only agent left in the aftermath. There are others looking for you just as you are looking for them. Allow yourself to be seen and see the nakedness of others. Speak to the similarities and differences, the resilience and the flaws. It is vulnerability that lights the path toward lasting connection.
Challenge Mode: We know now that more than blood makes a family. But, when blood isn’t what’s keeping you together, something else exists in the fabric beneath. Name the foundation you’re standing on and acknowledge that it could shift. There are values you aren’t willing to compromise—write them into the landscape of relationship before the shadows find them first.
andra’s Recap of In the Underworld We Are
The experiments from this previous moon cycle included stripped bare (challenge mode: you don’t owe sense-making to anyone), no unacknowledged hand-holding (challenge mode: belong in the space between), resist the siren song (challenge mode: this is here to teach you something), and live into legacy (challenge mode: your body the spaceship needs maintenance).
As the storm of sleep deprivation, infancy, and early mobility rage around me, I am sorting my identity, my activities, and my priorities into buckets of what can go dormant, what can leave for good, and what is still core to my being. These “poles” in the sand have become my guiding stars, and if I can hold onto them while the storm continues, then maybe they will be there when it’s over. I’ve identified that I naturally build into the abyss of human existence, that I emphasize depth and beauty, and that I collaborate with my body and the body of the land as partners. These are axioms I can return to and trust that the core of my personhood remains preserved through all the change.
That said, my core operating modes don’t need to make sense to anyone else, and in fact, if I have truly done the work of understanding what spark within me decided it was worthwhile to separate from the greater universe, then it will be foreign and mysterious to everyone in its novelty and uniqueness. I no longer feel attached to others’ understandings of my drives and identity, and there is significantly more peace in that.
There’s also sorting going on in terms of what I’m able and prepared to put energy into fixing and what isn’t fixable, at least right now. I’m better now at acknowledging the gaps in someone’s plans without bending over backward to fill them. I’ve gotten very good at saying things like, “that’s a great idea—I’m excited to see where you take it,” and leave it at that. I let people ask directly for the help they are actually looking for.
I have a tenuous relationship with physical intimacy these days, likely because my fantasy space around sexuality is so robust. That and the reality that I don’t have much actual physical energy these days to make those kinds of moments happen. I’ve let it be rushed or too destination-focused. I’m shifting instead to sitting with the longing as itself a form of intimacy, and reorienting toward that has eased the pressure on some of those encounters.
I’m not sure why it is still so difficult to find time and motivation for movement, but I have been doing more singing, which I know is a deep part of my magic. The baby doesn’t love the car, so I sing the medicine songs I’ve learned from full moon saunas and from the ecovillages I’ve visited to keep them alive in me. I also sing them the songs I have composed to remind myself of those potent moments that caught me, and that always has the capacity to alchemize what I’m working through.
I encountered what is likely a Buddhist saying from the documentary End Game that goes something like, (paraphrased) “suffering is in the gap between expectation and reality.” I’ve been sitting with that deeply as it relates to where I am currently unhappy, and it’s taken great effort to shift some things from the “I might be able to fix this” category to the “there’s nothing I can do about this right now” category. But, in doing so, I am able to witness and sit with the discomfort in a way that brings both peace and satisfaction rather than deep spiritual unhappiness, and I look forward to the ways that sorting continues to support my healing and maturation in my parenthood journey.
Because of my death doula training (which is nearly finished!), I went on a deep dive into completing my own advanced directive and took a candid look at what I would want my own death to look like in an ideal situation. There are quite a lot of logistics to document with passwords, accounts, bank information, and the like, and having that sorted did make me feel better. But, in that process, I also found that I live right next to one of the first cemeteries in the nation that does natural burials throughout its land and not just in designated areas. So, it’s very likely that I could be buried with relative ease along the very creek I do restoration work on.
We recently discovered a martial arts gym that does events for kids from ages 0-5, and I look forward to being a regular attendee. Naturally, as the baby becomes more active, my stamina will increase, and I look forward to that phase. More acroyoga, more walks through the forest, more lifting the baby. <3
I hope you enjoy this moon’s experiments. Be well out there.