Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)

[0:36] Introduction to Episode

Aloha, everybody, and welcome to Your Heart magic.

This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. And this is our 27th Episode I believe today 27 is one of my lucky numbers. It is my birthday number. It's a number that has shown up for me with other things in my life where it feels really special to my heart. So I love that it is episode 27.

And today, our topic is understanding cycles and cyclical living. And we are going to be looking at the idea of what does it mean to live more cyclically? What does it mean to live more intuitively and to live in accordance with some of the greater cycles that are happening around us in terms of seasonal cycles, planetary cycles, cycles that might be happening within the collective, our own personal cycles wherever we're at in life, and our own season of soul as I like to think about it.

And then we're also going to be talking about some of the cycles that are happening at this time.

[1:49] Akashic & Astro Update for July

There is a big astrological transit that is happening on July 17, it will have happened by the time this podcast is released. And that is where the nodes of the moon are going to be shifting into new signs. They have been in Taurus and Scorpio for approximately the last 18 months or so since January of 2022. And they are moving into Aries and Libra.
 
And the reason that I chose to focus a little bit on this today is because in my work with the Akashic Records, the Akashic Records called the month of July of 2023 a month where we were going to be beginning a new cycle.

And there was really interesting energy for the records when I opened them for this month, it almost felt like the energy that I sometimes will feel at the end of a calendar year, when we are preparing to shift into a new calendar year.
 
And often, I will start to have in late November, definitely by early December, this urge inside of me to take stock and take inventory of what's happened this last year. And I'll feel like I am starting to close out the year and turn my attention to what would I like to manifest and the year to come.

And the how this translates for me is in my reflections, I will have things in my journal where I often will go through and I will break down month by month. Well what happened starting in January? How about February and I will take account of some of the major themes and memories that I might have within each month of the calendar year.

And I always do some form of intention list or writing down my vision or what would I like to manifest I have learned, the longer that I go on my journey to be as specific as I want to dream to be as I can dream to be while also staying super open, that what I'm writing down in December of one year might not be at all what happens in the upcoming year. And that the plans that we make, or the plans that we are hoping for can take twists and turns they can write into new plans.

Sometimes we get going with something and figure out this doesn't work for me at all, or I'm finally getting what I wanted. And guess what, I don't want it anymore. So there's all these reasons that things can turn into a curveball in our life.

So I believe and fluidly creating a vision with lots of room for reinvention and evolution. If circumstances or my heart tells me, hey, it's time to evolve this thing. And what was interesting about July of 2023, is I got these sorts of things, impressions and echoes of that same kind of energy, where I was told by the record that we were experiencing a ending of a cycle and the beginning of a new cycle within the greater cycle of the year of 2023.

And so there were is almost this sense of closing things out. And this sense of also preparing our hearts for something new.

And it was just interesting energy to get like smack in the middle of what is summer in the Northern Hemisphere when we still have a whole second half of the year, because it felt like such a sense of completion. And to maybe just give an illustration of how I work with cycles is some of what I've been doing over the last few days as I am working with July's energy.

And we're preparing for the nodes to shift into a new sign, as I have been going through my journal and I have been looking at well, what did show up for me over the last 18 months? How have things been forming in my life? What have been some of the major events? What have been some of the major highs, what have been some of the major challenges, I have looked at some of the themes that I'm seeing from all of that.
 
And I have also looked at what's been showing up just the last few months, you know, how is July feeling differently from June? How what did I start planting in June, or maybe May and now I'm seeing it come to fruition in July, are what am I planting now. And again, I will look for themes, I will look for patterns, I will look for connections.

My friend and spiritual colleague, Virginia Mason Richardson has a beautiful ongoing publication called the magic guide. It's accessed online. I have mentioned it on here before I mentioning it again. And I will make sure to put the link to that down in the resource section under the write up of this podcast. But it's at the magicguide.com.
And she offers a channeling for each new moon and full moon in a completely unique way.

Virginia is a storyteller, she's a powerful spiritual channel, she's a beautiful light being she is just a super cool human, I really respect her work. And she is very gifted and with cyclical living and seeing patterns and seeing themes and seeing the interconnection between things. And she writes these beautiful stories around the energy with the full moons and the new moons. And I believe those are offered for free to anybody who chooses to access them. And I encourage you to do so.

And they are telling this ongoing story, which is just so remarkable and has helped really reinforce for me the belief that it is all interconnected. Magic and beautiful things and synchronicity is happening all around us.

But something else that she does. I am a member. And one of the things that she does is she channels, these beautiful messages that speak to some of the big planetary transits going on. And so she did one for the node shifting and 2020 to January of 2022. And she will have one coming out for the new nodal shift that's happening soon.

[8:09] Integrating Cosmic Cycles Into Your Journaling Practice

Basically, what I do when I open the record, specifically for the purposes of this podcast is I will just say to the records give me Some notes, what would you like me to know to bring through on the podcast for the individuals who are going to be listening to this? What do we most need to know right now. And the record said that understanding reality in a less linear manner in a more cyclical and circular pattern is really what cyclical living is about. It is looking at things less as this forward trajectory, and I'm sort of A plus B equals C and a sequence of events.

And really seeing that our past has been the grounds for seeding the future, which often ends up being the present and exactly where we're at. And the future is still an opportunity to keep learning from our past and to heal and redeem and evolve from some of what has come before us. And they said that the present is about embracing the totality of all, all that's already happened. All that is still becoming, and looking at where our experience of ourselves intersects.

With all of that, within any given moment, I thought that was just a beautiful way to think about it, our presence is the totality of all of it. And I love the idea that every day is a blank page, every moment is a fresh start, big fan of giving ourselves permission to always begin again, and to kind of start from scratch, and to not live in the past, by carrying around the baggage of the past with us and the weight of the past.

But instead to learn from the past and take the wisdom with us and leave the baggage behind. I'm a big fan of that. And yet, sometimes I think that when people say all we have is right now, and the past doesn't matter. And none of that matters, feel like if that's not taken into context.

And we don't have a sense of balance, and that, that sometimes we are missing vital information that actually can help inform us on more enlightenment and self discovery of our own journey. And that can help us figure out what direction to keep pointing ourselves.

And I think anything that is maybe taken out of the context of the whole is oftentimes incomplete information. And so I don't believe in living in the past. But I do think that our past is very helpful for helping us figure out what has been showing up in my life, how have I evolved are the same patterns still here, of learning from our younger selves, and using that information, to embrace the present moment to live better, and then looking ahead to the future.

And maybe not future thinking where we're always living a few steps ahead of ourselves. That's a work in progress for me. I'm so vision oriented, but continuing to think consciously about who do I want to evolve into, and how do I want to grow into those ideas are really about embracing life cycles, and learning to live with more trust in the process, learning to live with more patience and the process of ourselves.

And learning to realize that this greater story that we're in, it's always unfolding around us. It's always being rewritten. And we're always writing new chapters.

And even though we can't go back and redo the past, we can work with the narratives and our life to look at what we've been through from a new perspective that can oftentimes be profoundly healing and profoundly informative. And again, help us embrace the present with more peace of heart, and clarity and more consciousness.

[14:00] Cyclical Living & Working With the Whole

Cyclical living is about focusing on the whole, it is about focusing on how to understand where you're at right now, with considering what might be coming and what came before. It is a process that asked us to just take a deep breath, to open to receiving more from life, and to working with this balance of tensions that just as much as we are making life happen.

And we are actively working with the ingredients that life gave us we are also allowing life to happen. And we are partners with life and to some extent, we're just as much along for the ride and just a passenger as much as we are also sometimes directing the life, the directing the drive, you know, directing the ride, and I think that balancing of opposites and balancing of tensions is really part of What this experience of having a soul and a human body is all about, and it's part of what being on this planet is all about.

And tying it back into the shift of the nodes right now, it's part of understanding, like when we talk about these big planetary shifts and talk about, well, the nodes are moving into new signs. And what does that mean?


I asked the records, like break it down for us, if somebody wasn't super into astrology, or they just understood a little bit, they're fascinated by it. But they're like, What do I really need to know from this? And what does this actually mean for me, one of the things that the Akashic Record said is that we can understand these nodal shifts as a tension of opposites. And it's almost like opposing magnets, or like the South Pole and the North Pole, these opposing poles that are holding things in place.

And now what these shifts actually do is help subtly shift and direct the focal point and the energetic point for the collective. So if you think about the idea that we everything is energy, and we've got all this energy happening around us all the time, and it's always evolving, and it's always in flow, how do we make sense of all of that, it might just look like random patterns of chaos.

And when we start to look for the patterns in it, we start to look for ways to ground energy, or give it a focal point, or give it something to organize around, give it something to collect around energetically.

So it takes on new meaning. And it takes on a new resonance. That's part of what these shifts are about. And it's part of what I love about tracking astrology, it's understanding the archetypes and the history, behind many of the planets.

And when we understand those archetypes and histories and meaning, and this rich tapestry of experience and wisdom and the collective of what these different things mean, it's a way to focus, our attention to focus our energy, and to understand some of the themes and patterns in our life. It organizes what could potentially look like chaos, and it helps us create meaningful patterns out of it.


So right now, as the nodes shift, not only will that mean some shifts more in a cosmic way, and a planetary way, but it's just a shift in focus, a shift and how we're understanding ourselves as shift. And we'll just say life or spirit saying, Hey, we have been looking at these themes.

And we're moving into a new shift, where we're going to be looking at and working with some new themes. And we're going to slightly shift our perspective now. And every 18 months, those keeps shifting, and kind of moving around this greater wheel, this greater cycle that we're all working with, so that everything continues to get the attention it deserves, and come into balance.

[18:00] The Aries and Libra Nodal Shift: A Few Things To Know

So right now, we are shifting into this beautiful energy of Aries and Libra. And that is really about the self, and then about the others. It is about balancing our will our drive, what we want our desires. And then Libra is often about balance and equity and making balancing energies and relationships.

And so how do we take those things, our wants our needs, our desires, and understand them within the greater context of the whole, and serving the whole. And ultimately, that's what the record said that this was this cycle was about was understanding yourself and the context of the greater whole.

And that this is really about understanding how your unique gifts, your unique voice, your unique talents, is here at this time, not just to serve yourself, and help you create your most joyful vision of a beautiful life.

But how it's also here for the greater purpose of connecting to the whole around you. And that's really the collective shift that the records have been talking about for the year 2023 And the evolution of the light, they have been very clear on what we do for the one we do for the whole.

So if you're healing an issue within yourself, and you're working on some sort of pattern in your life, that is likely also healing something within the collective. And it's very likely if I were to open your personal Akashic records, it would show that part of your sole purpose is to work with some of the issues whatever that is that's unique to you.

It's been to work on healing them, and that you also have this more collective purpose where you are healing things on behalf of the collective and healing things that are greater than just yourself.

So what we do for one we do for the many and we What was interesting is I open the records on the second half of the year 2023. A while back for a show that I did back in June to bring some information through for that community of individuals.

And one of the things that the records talked about was this idea that the emphasis of the second half of 2023 is less about ourselves and more about ourselves in the context of our relationship to everybody else, and everything around us. And it's this subtle shift again, and focus and energy, we're not talking about you not being important, or you not being significant, or our hopes and dreams not mattering.

This is not about self sacrifice to the point of being for others, and not knowing how to be for yourself. This is about bringing balance to those energies, and working with Well, what do I do when my wants and my needs and my desires seem to conflict with the wants and needs and desires of the people around me? Or the groups that I might be working in?

How do I find balance between that? How do I work with those tensions of opposites? Is there a way to bring it into harmony, disharmony mean, I compromise and everybody gets a little bit of what they want just harmony mean, I compromise something within myself, probably not, that's not a very harmonious solution.

Oftentimes, harmony is found through shifting our perspective, setting good boundaries. And sometimes understanding that saying yes to something in ourselves actually is a more effective way of helping the people around us, when we know we can show up more powerfully, and the ways that we feel called if we sometimes say no to others.

So when we talk about this idea of balancing the tension of opposites and finding harmony between them, this isn't some black or white, right or wrong way of doing it, it's more of a sense of these are the energies we'll be playing with. These are the themes that we'll be playing with.

So if things start coming up about Well, I really want this but people around me want this are being called to work with groups, or being called out or groups, or just dealing with anything that is more like self versus others and understanding yourself within the greater whole, without losing a sense of yourself. All of those are themes that I think we're going to be seeing more of and our individual ways over the course of the next 18 months.

[22:38] What is Cyclical Living and Being Process Oriented?

So I wanted to talk a little bit more today about some principles for embracing cyclical living and understanding what it is. And there is a marked difference between process living, understanding cycles, and versus looking at the world through a much more linear way where we don't really acknowledge what's come before us.

And we are disconnected from the context in the whole of our greater life. I think that often times I think this is shifting, but I still hear quite a few people say that they were kind of raised in an environment where they were taught stuff like, Well, you go to school, you graduate, maybe you go to college right after that. Maybe not maybe you get a trade or something like that.

Often times you get married, you might decide to have kids in there, you might do things like establish your own family, buy a house, maybe you stay in your job, retirement comes at some point.

And those are certainly all things that we do. But it used to be taught that that was kind of this prescription for how you do life, like these are these big milestones that you're supposed to have. And I really think, you know, in this, the 2000s. And beyond that it's just been challenged so much.

And people are like, Why do we have to structure it that way? And we're seeing more people challenge that status quo and say, Well, I don't want to do it that way. What if I create a different timeline? What if I completely break from tradition and just do life and much more authentic way? And I think we are seeing more experimentation more authentic expressions of self.

I think we are seeing people who challenge the status quo by going in a completely different direction. We see people who fall along the more traditional path and then sometimes feel guilty for doing so. And wondering if they're missing out on the path of authenticity. It's interesting to look at how we structure life.

But I think there was this idea that life is lived in this linear Way, which makes sense we experience it linear we experience it as we grow. And as we age and biologically, it is a biological fact that our bodies like continue to age throughout our timeline, and they expire at some point and, you know, will no longer be here.

But I think when we understand process living, we can understand that, even with that biological, biological experience, and that psychological experience experience of all those developmental phases, we can create constructs and ways to think about life that are a lot less linear, and more about seeing it as cyclical and understanding that we are always in cycle, we are always in a process of change and growth.

And we are always recycling, and alkalizing ingredients from our past and what's came before us and using that to create the vision that we have for the future. And when we look at things like that, part of what I think it gives us is that it is a much more gracious way to experience life, because then it's never too late.

You've never messed up, where you missed the wrong turn at some point. And you've gotten off trajectory, and you haven't met a milestone, if you thought you were going to be doing this by this point. And now you're not in you feel like somehow you're not a good adult, or you know, you're not doing it right.

Instead, we're able to become these rich collectors of experience. And we realize that there's no experience wasted, that all of it is being used to support the totality of our growth and our becoming not only as a human in this lifetime, but who we are as a soul, and our light and from a spiritual perspective.

So when we talk about living cyclically, that is a process oriented way of being in the world. And I think one of the important things about that is learning to respect the art of the process. And really learning to make those mindset shifts and paradigm shifts that help us understand this is just a work in progress.

Life is a work in progress. And to give ourselves more grace, when we feel like somehow we done it wrong, or we wish we could have a do over and we can't, and instead just have that understanding of No, this looks messy right now. But it's still alkalizing into something greater. And I'm always on my path, I'm always moving towards a higher expression of myself, this might have been an unexpected event or occurrence.

But it doesn't mean that I've wasted my time or wasted this experience, it doesn't mean I failed. It doesn't mean that whatever judgment is there, that oftentimes we put on ourselves, it doesn't mean anything, it just means it's all part of the process of are becoming.

[28:04] The Value of Mastery Experiences in Personal Growth

And the other thing that I think is important about bracing, the art of process living is understanding I wrote down understanding the value of mastery experiences.

So what I mean by that is that we will have many, many, many times that something comes around in our life again, and we say why are you still here, I feel like I stopped this pattern, or I don't understand why this is coming up. Or I tried to set a boundary and this person just isn't listening, you know, or whatever it is that we get frustrated when the world and others around us aren't behaving the way that we want them to.

And then we start to wonder well, what am I doing wrong that this is still showing up in my life? And I don't think that is the best question that we can ask ourselves I think we can ask ourselves instead, like growth have I had since the slash showed up? What have I learned since I last saw this theme or cycle or person pop up in my life? And how can I create a another mastery experience for myself?

So let me break this down and give an example. Let's say you've been working on boundaries for a long time. I'm a good example of that boundaries. It's a work in progress for me and I've come a really long way.

And I struggled with good boundaries and saying no when I was younger, and often felt torn if somebody wanted me to do something, and I could feel it as an empath that they like really were I was hoping I would say yes or agree with them or do whatever it was that they were wanting of me for whatever reason I had a hard time saying no to that not some really old like people pleasing stuff, old codependency stuff.

And that's been a work in progress since probably like late college 20s or something like that. And I'm about to turn 46 So you know, this is Just over 20 years of really actively working on this, but I would say over the last decade, in particular, more like 1213 years, I have been very conscious of boundaries.

And, you know, really had some things happen in my late 20s and early 30s, that I could look back on and say, Okay, I didn't set good boundaries for myself at the time, I don't think I knew quite how to give myself permission to. And I used to have a piece of myself that would rather self sacrifice my needs, wants happiness, at the expense of making me happy, in order to make everybody else around me feel happy, and feel like they were getting what they needed.

And that was an area of deep healing that has taken place in my life, I'm very happy to report I've not been in that place for many, many, many years. But it did result in behaviors where I had a tough time developing what I would say kind of a threshold, a thermometer for measuring when I really don't want to do something, or really don't want to say yes, and yet I feel obligated to and my measuring stick for that I will just say my thermometer was a little bit broken.

Because I was so inclined to saying yes, broken to the point that I want to remember and an Akashic reading that I received. The reader told me you should say no, like, if not everything at least 50 times before he say yes. Because it would be really good for you to learn how to say no. And I was like, Oh my gosh, 50 times. And I kind of didn't fully get it then.

But what I understood are can understand now is that it was just this reflection that even though i At that time, knew better, and knew that boundaries were good. And I had had growth and didn't say yes to everything, I still was being more for other people and being what they needed me to be versus being what I needed to be for myself. So this has been an ongoing theme.

And I feel like I have really achieved some level of I wouldn't necessarily call it mastery. But I would not be in those same circumstances now at this point in my life, because I have learned to say no.

And, you know, part of some of the growth I've had over the last decade was around more really realizing that ultimately, if I want to shine my brightest in this world and truly fulfill my purpose, then I need to figure out what's the priority, and when to say yes to something and when to say no. And that I needed to say yes to something inside of myself a lot more often than what I was giving permission for.

At this point in my life. When I have stuff come up, and somebody doesn't want to respect a boundary, or I'm having an issue come up where I feel that old pool between obligation and between. Like, I really feel like I should say yes, I kind of want to but I also sort of don't want to at all and I'm and that really murky place, I can now understand that it's nothing wrong that I've done that that's still coming up.

[32:33] Healing Reoccuring Patterns on Behalf Of The Collective

For me, some of it is it's just a life pattern that I think on a soul level I've agreed to work with. I think it is something that as I heal it on behalf of myself, I am working on healing it in the collective, there's a lot of people pleasers who are healing that wound out there.

And there is a lot of things in the collective energy that are imbalanced in terms of finding that healthy soul sovereignty and authenticity without doing it in a way that runs over others and disregards others.

I think there is an empathic wound as well we're impassive really struggled with learning how to be for ourselves and stand for ourselves and take space for ourselves in a healthy way, and learning when we can when we have more to give versus when we have less to give.

So I think all of those things are things within the greater process of life within the Akashic records, that our collective wounds, and as I do my own work, I think it's an opportunity to help offer healing on behalf of the collective.

So I don't feel like I'm doing something wrong if that stuff pops up now. And if I find myself getting pulled back into that old pattern, I now recognize, oh, here's a mastery experience that has come to present itself to you.

Just like a master artist or something would just keep on working on refining like the artisan skills or whatever the craft is that somebody who achieved that levels and artists might do.

This is an opportunity to work on boundary issues to work on saying no to work on if something in me feels drawn in or like I shed Well, Where's that coming from? And what old voices might that be? Or what old programming might that be? Or what old wound might that be? So embracing mastery experiences and not resisting when old patterns pop up in our life.

But instead, just realizing that when those old patterns pop up, it's an opportunity to not only kind of pass the test again, and practice the skills we've been working on, but to do it a little bit more masterfully. Each time, again, when we can have a perspective like that it is so different than that mental talk of what am I doing wrong? This is coming back up. Or why is this person not listening to me that I thought I set this boundary, and they're not respecting it.

And we get really frustrated at all this stuff that often we can't control. And I think when we talk about cyclical living, it's really about shifting our perspective for how we think about and create ideas about the world around us.

And so old patterns become an opportunity to refine our skills to maybe even reach a point where the pattern doesn't pop up. Because our mindset is so far away, we automatically respond in a way that doesn't give the pattern any time to take hold, it just becomes a chance for growth, as opposed to something that we're doing wrong.

[36:43] The Importance of Cultivating Nuance and Patience

Something else that we need for cyclical living is the cultivation of nuance and patience. Oh, isn't that hard for us, we're in this instant world, pop it in the microwave, it's instantly hot, direct message somebody or instant message somebody, some people get really impatient if they're not responded back to you right away, or don't get a response to a text. But I texted them an hour ago, and I haven't heard anything back yet.

You know, there's something about this sort of instant gratification and life right now. And yet, if you just examine the cycles in nature, there is no instant gratification. Everything is slowly building on everything else.

And so even when it seems like like magically overnight, winter turned into spring, and you know, the bugs come out on the trees, if you have been in a winter type state, and you start to see green growth, it's not magic, there was a whole process going on that led to it, where it might look like it happened, and simply and yet it was part of a process that took patience.
 
And I think patience is something that is very challenging for us. And we get very impatient with ourselves. We get very impatient with our lifes and why something isn't happening yet. We get very impatient with timelines and why things don't look the way that we thought they should when we thought they should.

And I think appreciating the art of tolerating impatient states and saying, Wow, I'm really not getting what I want, or want right now, and I don't like it. But I can embrace having patience towards that, and patients toward that part of my process. And then appreciating what has changed. And the nuances of that I love this one, if you are working on creating some sort of bigger dream, or growth or vision, and you are frustrated that you haven't achieved that yet.

And I love the idea of looking at what steps have you taken what has shifted? What has changed? What is different now than it was then the Akashic Record said during the month of July, that many of us might have kind of this interesting deja vu experience, where we felt like something was repeating in our lives.

And that for some of us, it actually might be that why is this coming back? I feel like this is old stuff. I know I had a few things pop up already starting at the end of June, in the beginning of the month, that I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I've been here before.

Just kind of these bizarre things that aren't worth going into right now. And I want to take up our time with them. But more like these themes and little points in time, that suddenly like came back and showed back up and I made me kind of feel like I really wanted this to be done. I didn't want to still be dealing with this or dealing with this energy.

And I wish this was just complete and totally finished. And the invitation from the Akashic is when those points come up, to look at them and say, Well, maybe things haven't changed as quickly as I wanted, but how have I changed?
 
I have said on here before that as I move closer to turning 46 At the end of July. I, I've been reflecting on what was your 45? For me this is again another example is living cyclically and being in process with it, I learned the shear and and how is it going to inform what happens in the next year for me the next trip around the sun.

And I've said that I felt like the year 45 was really about like coming face to face with myself, facing fears, and learning to choose faith over fear. Learning to choose greater courage, I've had to use my voice in greater ways, in ways that I don't like things having to do with speaking up and the legal system.
 
And I'm pretty sure I shared on here that I had to get a restraining order right after I turned 45 Me and my husband did for a problem neighbor, I was being stalked at the time, just some really crazy things happen.

And I was doing all these things that were so non BethAnne. Like, you know, I am, by nature i Who loves conflict, some people do, I do know how to I am like a peaceful person by nature, I don't want the stress, I don't want the trauma, when it shows up on my doorstep, my inclination is to ignore it.

And sometimes that's okay. Sometimes if we don't give it our attention, it will dissolve. And other times something doesn't go away just because we don't like it and want to ignore it. And so we have to be called into more of a warrior energy and more of a fighter energy. And that is something to share that I've had to develop more inside of me. And I had it there.

But I prefer to direct that energy towards self focus things like my endurance running and running marathons. That's the energy I use to do graduate school, I use that energy for more of a personal goal, I don't like having to use it against somebody else, or in order to defend something and myself and get I was called to multiple times throughout the last year.
 
And when we have those moments where we are not loving what's coming up, is an echo or a fragment of the past coming up. Even recently, I had a little bit of some stuff I thought I'd cleared out, pop back up. And it was this reminder of okay, well don't forget your warrior energy.

That was a huge lesson that you learned this year. And it was also an invitation to really look at, look how much you grow and now versus then and see how much bigger you've become. So we can use these things that happen that might not be shifting as quickly as we like. And we just didn't want to deal with them. But here they are. They can also be reflection points that help us appreciate our own growth and appreciate the subtleties of our own growth.
 
I really think we need to cultivate an eye for nuance and subtlety, because that is part of how we make the journey sacred. It cannot just be about the big mountain top experiences, or everything going the way that we want it to, or we're going to feel a chronically letdown or chronically frustrated.

We have to learn to love the process, and appreciate the process. And the only way I know to appreciate the process is to develop that fine eye for what's the richness and the depth of the process. What can I see in this that somebody else might miss that makes it meaningful and makes it sacred to me.

[43:36] Healthy Cycles vs. Toxic Cycles

I also wanted to touch on the idea that there is a difference between being stuck in a cycle and embracing cyclical living. And we did a podcast a while back on breaking toxic cycles and patterns of addiction.

So I want to be clear today that we're not talking about being stuck in a cycle that feels like a downward spiral, where things are getting worse and worse, or they're getting more and more toxic. I suppose if the person isn't ready to leave, that we could apply this wisdom and say, well, they're in their own process. And they'll get it when they get it right.

Let's say like, let's just move this outside of ourselves and say somebody in our life, we really care about them. They're stuck in a bad addiction, a bad pattern or something like that. Maybe they're in the wrong relationship, or we think it is. And they keep coming to us saying I'm really unhappy, but yet they won't leave the person.

You know, we can use these principles to understand well, they're in their own process. And I don't know what ingredients of soul they might need to finally come to a place of being willing to change. But I can see that in their process right now. They're not willing to change and I can set my boundaries accordingly.

And I can decide maybe how available or not available I want to be for being a supporter Friend, so we can apply these principles in that way, but making it about us, I am not talking about when we feel really stuck in something and we are the one stuck in a bad pattern, or a bad relationship or a bad cycle. That can be part of our process. It absolutely happens to all of us. It's not bad when that happens.

But I think healthy process living and healthy embracing of cycles is really about growth, even if it's solid growth versus stagnation. It is about seeing the movement for none or path, being able to see how things changed. It is not about regressing backwards. I talked on here in the episode about breaking patterns and addictions and toxic toxic cycles.

And I used an example and spoke about on the podcast that day, one of the big changes I made in my life this last year is I chose to go alcohol free. And one of the reasons why is I saw my relationship with that particular substance is something that was stuck in a negative cycle. And I felt there was no room for growth or change there. And I didn't like over longevity of time seeing the things that I felt like had come from that including increased tolerance. an increased sense of like, this is one of my go to coping, I didn't feel good about those things.

And so when I made the decision, which did take a lot of kind of momentum on my part to do it, I really had the sense of if you keep doing the same old thing, nothing good or new is going to happen, you're not going to get new results from trying to change this thing in your life that you feel really stuck with.

And there are times that we have something in our life that we feel entrenched with, or we no longer feel it's healthy. And it's not really cyclical living at that point, that's just being in a toxic cycle or a negative cycle where we feel like we're just spinning our wheels.

That's not what we're talking about today. This kind of living is about knowing that things are always changing, always growing, always evolving, always moving forward, in some shape, or form. They're always optimizing to gather. And it's having the wisdom to recognize something feels really stuck in our life.

And we do a little self inventory and say, Is there something I can do to change this? Now that's going to give you a lot of information. Sometimes there isn't like maybe you don't like your circumstances, and you're stuck in a job that's not quite right for you. But there's no other available options. And you are in a position where you need the income. And you're like, No, I can't leave it right now.

And so if there's nothing that you can do to change that, then you kind of work with where you're at. And that's where you would really work with spirit and say, it's no longer in my heart to do this.

But in order to leave, I really need something else that is presented to me, because I've got bills to pay, maybe I've got kids that I'm taking care of. And I can't just walk away and not know where the next gainful employment is going to come from. So please help me break free of this.

[48:24] Self-Reflection Questions and Understanding Growth Cycles

So start with asking, Is there something I can do about this, but if there is something you can do about it, when you feel stuck? That's a great point of intervention for yourself to ask--

What can I do differently? Can I change myself? Can I change my thinking around this? Can I change my relationship with this? Can I change my anything, my paradigm for how I'm looking at this working with this, can I do something differently with this, and that right there is where the growth is.

And that is where in cyclical living, we will see something old come back. And we are invited to master the experience, to have a better experience to have a more healed experience with it to make a choice that grows us forward. And so even though we might not fully leave it behind, we've now changed that cycle.

And so that cycle is gently moving us forward, even if we're still in a process, or the way that I like to think of it as more of an upward spiral where we continue to circle back around to things in our life.

But we are really always moving into a higher understanding a higher perspective versus feeling there's like a slow downward spiral that you can't pull yourself out of if it feels in that direction. That's probably a good place to get some support, get some help to really kind of have a self reckoning of what's going on that I feel like things are just going downhill.

So these are different kinds of cycles that we're talking about today. And I just want to clarify by that, and also clarify or just make the point that we also have to understand that we can always be on a growth trajectory, the world is not set up in a way that we're always in a constant state of expansion.

After all expansion comes a contraction, after every flow will come and ebb. That's about balance and about giving time for something to integrate. So if we've made a big change in our life, or decided to move ourselves in a new direction, and we see all this stuff shifting around us, it's not uncommon to have a sense of a law after that, or time just to integrate the changes that we've made.

Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking what's wrong, I was making so much forward progress. And now things are really stagnant. So sometimes we need to just tap patients and give something time to really understand it for what it is.

And oftentimes, if we truly are taking the steps that we know how to take and making the movement we know how to take all that's going on is we're just in a natural contraction state after a time of growth or expansion. And those contraction states are usually the gestation period, for when something new is going to be planted to come into fruition and to grow into new life.

[51:24] Writing Exercise: Mission Statement of Self

So the last thing I wanted to say today and wrap this up with is kind of a takeaway. And that's just fun, kind of a fun, intuitive writing exercise. And that is to sit down and write out a mission statement of self right now, or a sense of manifesto of self, what are you about right now in this world?

What's your purpose? How are you fulfilling it? What do you think you're here for? What do you value, any way that you feel called to do that I've talked about this on here before I love writing manifestos of belief and just like really grounding into what do I value?

What is important to me, but write it out now, at the beginning of this big shift that's going on and put it in a journal, put it somewhere that you can come back to a few months from now, when we move into the fall season, and move into the first eclipse that will be happening in these nodes.

And I think that's in late October, that is going to be a powerful time of not only transformation, but events that will be happening, that will be a reflection of whatever this karmic shift is about for you specifically.

So write the statement out now, come back to it at the end of the year, come back to it in the eclipse season in the spring, come back to it in late December or January whenever the cancer Full Moon is if this is the cancer, new moon, come back to it on the cancer full moon and see what did you birth right now?

And what did that grow into over the next six months? You can come back to it in the next 18 months after the shift and the nodes and see how is my mission statement.

And my idea of myself changed since I wrote about it and July of 2023. That is a beautiful way to ground where you're at specifically right now at this point in time in your life. It is a beautiful way when the Akashic Records talk about this idea that the present is about embracing the totality of all that's already happened.

All that is still becoming an understanding where your experience of right now intersects with that. That mission statement is a beautiful way to take that very poetic description they gave us in grounded and make it applicable for you. And to just really touch base with Who are you right now? Where are you? Again? What do you value?

What are you becoming, and then to see how that begins to evolve and grow. And to understand your journey of self. By looking at these kind of points and time over the greater cycle that is your life. I will be doing that if any form of doing something around that calls to you.

I encourage you to as well by the time you listen to this podcast, the new moon will have passed and so well the nodes shift but Happy New Moon anyways, happy nodal shift to you.

[54:36] Coming Up Next Week

And next week, we will be talking about how staying grounded in our purpose. I'm excited about this topic. And actually what a nice segue, this idea of writing down our mission statement. 

So one of the things that I really liked that the record said today about what this note shift is all about is creating focal points for us to organize our thoughts around to organize energy so that things don't just feel like energy and ideas and thoughts moving and we have no way to make sense of them. When we create things like, here are the seasons, here are the days of the week, here are the calendars when we put structure. Here are these astrological archetypes. 

Here are these planetary transits that we track, here are the moons that we track. All of those ways are a way to organize information and to intuitively work with information and work with energy, so that we can make meaning of it, we can see the themes we can understand it, it's a little bit like language, if language didn't exist, how would we organize speaking to one another? How would we organize stories? How would we organize thoughts? 

So all of these things that we're talking about are systems of organization. And understanding our purpose is another way to organize ourselves in this world and to organize what am I about in this world? And I think so many of us struggle with a sense of purpose, or am I fulfilling my purpose? 

And so we're going to talk about like, how do you create a purpose that is fluid and can grow with you over time? How do you ground and to that when you feel lost? And you feel like I'm so off track right now? Like how can you like bring yourself back to the heart of your purpose? And really give yourself some reassurance like, Nope, I'm okay, I'm doing a good job human being. 

And we're going to be talking about some other ideas around that. So I'm excited. I love taking more metaphysical topics and trying to figure out a way to make them grounded so we truly feel supported and living with more peace in our hearts and living with more grace towards yourself and each other. That will be coming up next week. 

Have a beautiful week in the meantime, and until next time, be well be love, be you and be magic.