Love is the byproduct of intimacy, and it means possessing the ability and the willingness to bend. A rigid and inflexible sense of self keeps many from bending.
When your sense of self is fragile and held together by a weak thread, you fear you will lose your sense of self if you bend.
I’ve struggled to understand the concept of self-love in the way most people use the term. But now I see it as the epitome of self-compassion. That is the ability and willingness to bend when you experience feelings that don’t align with the rigid sense of self you’ve developed.
When we experience feelings that challenge the idea of ourselves we hold in our mind, we can quickly rush to judgement, immediately rejecting it saying “this isn’t even me”, “I can’t wait till I feel like ‘myself’ again.”
But those feelings are you, too. And rejecting them is rejecting your body and your biology. It’s talking yourself out of the physiological experiences that are meant to arouse your drive for self preservation and personal evolution.
Self-compassion is a primary path towards self-preservation, the kind that entitles you to body and life. And it is a primary path towards personal evolution—actualizing to the fullest your core values.
Here is the thing—being loved and treated with compassion is how we learn self-compassion. So when we do not experience that compassion during our formative years we know that our work as adults is to cultivate self-compassion like as a skill.
The same way you’d do push-ups and train your upper body by developing strength and stamina, you can train your mind to respond to your body with compassion, and you can train your body to respond to your mind with compassion.
There comes a point when the defensiveness and self-protective instincts we’ve developed and fine tuned as an adaptive mechanism can undermine our self-preservation.
That constant state of stress and threat detection is the makings of heart disease and many other stress related illnesses. For many, we come to be unable to differentiate between love and harm.
That self-compassion we develop means we can honor the feelings our body has in response to our experiences and the world around us. We don’t forsake our bodies for the sake of our minds. And we don’t forsake our minds for the sake of our bodies.
Do you possess the ability and willingness to bend in the face feelings that contradict your idea of who you are? Or, do you retreat into yourself, waiting for the ‘real’ you to return?
Do you possess the ability and willingness to bend in the presence of another? Or, does bending feel like loss, death, or anxiety?
No judgment here. I hope to provide some language for us to understand some of the emotional challenges we face in life and in relationships.
No judgment here. I hope to provide some language for us to understand some of the emotional challenges we face in life and in relationships.
To add some astrology to this, the Sun is the mind. Its sign + house placement and its aspects tell us about our sense of self and how it is configured in relationship to other parts of ourselves and our lives.
The Moon is the body and the physiological responses we have to our mind, our environment, and our experiences. Its sign + house placement and aspects tells us about how we experience our bodies in relationship to other parts of ourselves and our lives.
The relationship between the Sun and Moon in your chart tells you about how you mind and body related.
A Full Moon in the natal chart can show a deep mind body split due to a fractured home life. The body ignores the mind and the mind ignores the body. But the opposition means swinging back and forth between the two.
A Full Moon in the natal chart can show feeling like you have to choose between the mother and the father. Do you believe your mind’s perception, or your body’s experience? How can you bridge the gap?
Full Moon in the natal chart can show an experience of one’s body as contrary to how they see themselves.
Example, Sun - Taurus + Moon - Scorpio. The body is formed via experiences of conflict, separation, and having to fend for oneself emotionally. Taurus Sun is entitled to comfort, convenience, + pleasure.
How do you find that comfort when you constantly feel unsafe, exposed?
How do you find that comfort when you constantly feel unsafe, exposed?
In my understanding of astrology, it is a social science the encompasses time, history, and how the individual is formed by, relates to, and embodies the collective.
This thread is a good example of what that means for me in practice.
This thread is a good example of what that means for me in practice.
As always, I use the sidereal zodiac exclusively. If you have never seen your sidereal birth chart, then it might be different than what you know or are used to. (NOT 13 SIGNS)
orcle.me/chartguide
orcle.me/chartguide
