eyeballing the eclipse

This is eclipse is making me think about seeing things.

Like the one time I was driving to my mother’s house, and I turned my head into a field that had a stream running through it and there was a monkey. Like a real ass monkey. I passed it, processed the scene, then stopped the car completely. A monkey? In rural Pennsylvania? My left brain retorted, “Uh, no, sir. There is an error in that calculation.” I reversed up the country road.

When I came to the spot where the monkey lived, I squinted and looked, but it was just a tree trunk with branches that looked like a monkey. “It changed back to the tree,” I thought.

+ + +

I woke at 3:02 am ET, exactly, the time the eclipse was starting. The moon whispered in my ear…it is time, my love. It is time, seer, to witness the shadow fall over me and change the shape of things.
The entire yard illuminated by the moon, which I could not find. I walked to the west and there it was, like a spotlight over everything. It was totally full and bright and I said, “Here we go.” (As I write this now, the red is starting to creep over the moon from the top down, like a shade is being pulled over it.)

+ + +

This past weekend, I was honored to hold space for women in an earth medicine retreat where we worked with journey and painting to let the right brain drive for a while in a flowy, dreamy third eye dance. We journeyed, drank dream tea, and painted in a meditative state that implored us to get out of our own way. Our right brain just wants to drive for a while, but what happens, inevitably, is we argue with ourselves.

“This looks dumb. Paint something real, m’kay?”

“Shut it, Lefty. I am just flowing over here.”

“That’s not a real painting. Come on. What the fuck is this? Paint something real. We need evidence of art.”

“Maybe you are right. I don’t think I can do this. Maybe I should go nap. No, wait, you are left. I am just doing what is suggested and seeing how it unfolds. It doesn’t have to be anything right now. Nothing is supposed to be perfect.”

“It can be.”

And on and on…my Right Brain, let’s call it Orpheus, often is much more polite than is required. It says, “Thank you for sharing, Logos, but I am not looking for any advice right now.” Logos totally hates that shit. It is a know-it-all with half the information and so Logos keeps sending evidentiary memories to remind you of how flowing and being too creatively free made us objects of ridicule, or where teachers marked us off points for not being in the lines, or when someone called you flakey that one time.

We painted for four hours, the internal dialogue lessening over the sessions and the painting unfolding slowly. My first layer has a lot of optimism and messages of flying high, going for it. I pulled a Rebel Deck oracle card that said, "Get after that shit." And then the second layer turned darker and more defiant. Why are you always getting after shit? Just calm down. Pause.

I handed out secret messages every so often, like reminders from Spirit, a tablespoon of the extra sauce available for the flow. My second secret message said, "Take that Leap." And I just took the black and wrote NO next to it. I don't want to take the leap. (I may look defiant, but I am pliable and follow the rules and get nervous when I hold boundaries or say no.) I let the second layer be angry and defiant and punk rock. Hellz to the yeah!

My third layer came like a breeze, softening, honoring, calling in the medicine of my inner child and my inner mother, the one that sits with change and destruction and soothes. She said, "It's just an illusion of the sun and the earth. The Sun is shining behind you, my love. It is casting a shadow and makes the moon look like it disappears. Do not be afraid, the moon is always there whether we see it or not. You are always there whether you see or not."

+ + +

The night sky is darkening even more now, and the moon is starting to be enveloped by its shadow. I wonder if my writing will be enveloped by shadow too. The Sun is behind us now, as the Moon does her thing. It reminds me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The shadow emerges and I wonder if I what I will see in this time and how I will see it. I need another cup of coffee.

+ + +

Then after painting, we ate, then we got ready for a dream/third eye focused collective grid crystal healing for dreamwork. Hot flashes + painting + unseasonably warm weather = Angie needs a shower. My mentor talks about adorning before ceremony, cleansing the energy field, doing the work. I pour a baño over my head, salt and herbs and water flowing over me. It feels so good to be in water. I craved it when I can't take a bath or cleanse this way. Then, in the shower, soap got in my eye. Mint soap. (Do adults regularly get soap in their eyes? Asking for a friend.)

It burned, and I rubbed and rubbed and rinsed it best I could with contacts in. And then it felt like my contact rolled up into my eyelid. I finished the shower and went to look in the mirror to retrieve the contact.

I just couldn’t find it.

I start sweating again, knowing that everyone is waiting on me, but my contact was stuck in my eye. What if it traveled into my brain? What if it caused a massive infection? What if I can’t get it? My left brain was loving this shit. Logos said, “YAY, home surgery!! I watch television where people do surgery all the time. We can do this.”

My right brain was like, “Uh, no. You aren’t getting it out that way. Let’s just go with the flow, man. Plus, you are going into a deep third eye meditation. Maybe there is a reason you cannot see right now. Or you can only see out of one eye. Look deeper, Ang. Look at the thing behind the thing. Just reconcile yourself to the fact that you aren’t seeing from this side tonight. The suffering comes from trying to do something you cannot do, like find a lost contact in your eye.”

I told everyone, and the ladies poked and prodded, and suggested things. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing a contact or the sclera, so in the end, I just went on, unable to see out of my right eye, looking like Popeye.

I have terrible eyesight. I mean, I think it is considered 20/500. Meaning what I see at 20 feet is what someone who had good eyesight sees at 500 feet. But I didn’t need to see. I was in the flow of the music of Jonathan Goldman, and the amazing energy of the archangels and ascended masters, the crystals and sacred geometry. I just did what I was trained to do as the wind howled outside and the almost full moon shone through the windows. I stepped into the light and just bathed in the moonlight.

Thank you, I whispered to Grandmother Moon. Thank you for letting me do this work.

+ + +

There is no light outside now. It is like a deep darkness, one that scares me a bit. The stars are suddenly illuminated—always there, but I couldn’t see them with the brightness of the Full Moon.

+ + +

Spirit wanted me to see without seeing, to see perfectly out of my left side and be fuzzy in the right. Fuzzy and tuned in. My eye ached from being manipulated and touched and ran with tears. I could still feel the contact in there, way back behind my eye, but I just trusted and moved into the flow.

Sometimes we have to not see before we can truly see. Sometimes we need to trust that what we need is right there, even if we don’t have evidence for that.

I fell asleep imagining the contact swimming toward my front cortex with little cartoon arms and exploratory tools, like a mini-pickaxe, strapped to its back. In the morning, I looked in my eye again. It felt injured—achy and sore. Still two days later, it feels achy and sore. I still didn't see any contact, but the eye was goopy. I made coffee and pulled tarot cards from the Alleyman Tarot.

Every card and description involved seeing. When the 10 of Eyes came, I realized that even this was the medicine of the weekend. Seeing was preventing me from the feeling. Seeing was preventing me from honoring. It was preventing me from trusting that the monkey was the medicine I needed at that moment. The medicine of laughter, communication, and community. Later in the morning, I found my contact in the sink, stuck half in and half out of the drain.

It was never in my eye. It had fallen out at some point, but I was still looking for something not there. Because wounds feel like that sometimes, like something is there that simply isn’t. Like there is a huge folded up piece of plastic in your eye lid, when it was your own damned finger.

Sometimes you are your own damned irritant.

This lesson is eternal. No matter how much we look outward, we always have a finger poking our own eye.

In recovery, we use sponsors. Sponsors are people who have gone through the twelve steps and guide us through them too. The Twelve Steps basically help you have a spiritual experience by doing some self-reflection, looking at our wounds and the wounding we caused others, asking Spirit to guide you to release the underlying character defects so you can be of maximum service to the world. Sponsors guide you in your spiritual journey, and so we call them when we are poking our own eyes, and seeing things that are not there, and avoiding the things right in front of us. Sponsors are not like therapists though. They often laugh when you are stuck and say, “Yep, that’s how it goes. I remember when that happened to me too. Stop poking your own eye when it hurts. Close your eyes and use your ears instead. Listen.” They can only share their experience, really. They aren’t there to solve the problem, just to think about it in another way.

I am not saying you should become an alcoholic but having a sponsor might be a good thing. You know the person who says, “Did you look in the sink first before you went around doing home surgery without sterilized equipment?” Then they usually say, “Why don’t you pray about it? Why are you trying to fix everything on your own?”

The Left-Brain loves poking at things and doing home surgery and making up conspiracy theories and letting your wounding take on the role of “logic” in your brain. It is the Right Brain that says, “Let’s just make some meaning out of this and go with the flow. Maybe this will lead us somewhere cool.”

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The Moon is completely covered now, there is not even a sliver, and I woke my daughter to see. She saw the blood red of the dark side as it was slowly covered. Then she plodded back to bed. Now it is just a shadow of itself. We honor the crone in the darkness, how the grandmother sits and waits and says, "It all goes too fast." Secrets are said to be revealed this total lunar eclipse in Taurus with the Sun, Venus and Mercury in Scorpio and with Uranus and square Saturn. We are as sick as our secrets; crone sponsors have been saying for decades. Maybe the medicine is the sharing of secrets.

The dogs were not interested in going outside, and I thought about how wise they are not to stand under the moon eclipsing and darkening. They stay inside and cuddle up, preparing for a long day of napping.