Welcome to The New Age

What I Hope Will Come of The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius on December 21, 2020

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston

Collectively, we are in an elusive in-between place. We are facing unknowns by fixating on apparent certainties. We are recovering. We are exploring shadows and finding true light. I feel, with all my being, that we are birthing a new earth. It is a miraculous time.

In seemingly every part of 2020, I’m being told to grieve and fear. But the stars and celestial bodies are speaking to me in different tones.

On December 21st of this year, the winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will nearly touch at a striking 0.1 degrees apart. This is less than the diameter of a full moon. Even if you’re not much into space, it could be of interest that March 4, 1226 was the last time these giant planets were so close and visible to us…and this time around, they will be uniting in Aquarius.

This humble spectacle is being called “The Christmas Star” or “The Star of Bethlehem,” which hits home to where I am on planet earth — Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Christmas City USA.

This heralds the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. What could that look like for us on Monday and moving forward in the future?

Collective Evolution asks, too: “Is it a coincidence that this is happening on the winter solstice? Do major astrological events like this impact human consciousness in any type of way? Are the cosmos directly intertwined with human consciousness? Or universal consciousness?”

Wrapping our minds around “unity consciousness” in the midst of such massive division on our planet is, to say the least, a challenge. Still, there is a thread that ties us. Many, and perhaps all, are honoring the storied shadows of mental health and abuse recovery. This may feel new for some, old for others. The cycles of abuse, both within and without, are all too familiar to this realm.

Thank goodness, for where there is pain, there is recovery. Victimhood can be released for more than basic survival. Survivors can thrive so beautifully.

Recovery is a glorious creation. A mental health recovery journey is often lonely. It is building a relationship between you and you alone. Recovering from abuse is also a journey taken alone, ultimately, to heal from the pain you created with another person or perhaps another entity.

Throughout much of 2020, I have been asking myself: What was the hardest year for me before all this? And how did I recover?

Honoring the Storied Shadows of Recovery

My hardest year thus far was 2010. On the surface, perhaps the pain of my mental health journey does not compare to surviving an abusive relationship. But the first official chapter of my mental health journey was my first big heartbreak, and I was the one who did the breaking.

In 2010, I studied abroad in the City of Literature, Edinburgh, Scotland. It was my first time on my own and my first and only experience living through the effects of a natural disaster.

When a volcano erupted in Iceland, the ash clouded the sky and stopped flights across Europe. Stranded in Athens, my homesickness reached its peak, and at the end of my wits, I haggled my way onto a ship across the Adriatic Sea. On this odyssey from Athens, Greece back up to Edinburgh (known as the Athens of the North), people from all walks of life crowded around a map of Europe pointing to their homes…and I erupted when my home wasn’t on that map.

Then and now, I saw myself and others at their worst and best. I leaned into extremes I never even fathomed real. The mental health crisis that set off my 20s was triggered by a time in history when everything was on pause. Along with many left stranded, homesick, and scared, I chose what to do with that time and what not to do with that time.

History may not quite repeat itself, but as Margaret Atwood has written, “history rhymes.” Then and now, I believe we are embarking on a collective homesickness and a long-winded collective coming home.

During my time abroad in 2010, I also visited the Tate Modern museum in London where a large steel structure loomed in the center of Turbine Hall. This was an art exhibit called How It Is by a man named Miroslaw Balka. Such cavernous, industrial space proved more beautiful than any “wonder of the world” on my itinerary.

Here, I began learning how to brave the unknown. Inside, I got to join the collective shadow and walk back to the beginning with hope of seeing the world through a new lens. I learned “how it is” fumbling through shadow and light with imperfect strangers.

I am still learning, always. This experience will never leave me, and today, as we face the unknowns on the brink of 2021, I hope to instill a similar comfort. If you don’t quite know where you are or even who you are, then this New Age is for you. I don’t know either most days. But let’s not fear the shadows revealed by true light.

The truth is made of all of us. We can do more than tolerate this true light. We can embrace it with open arms — wide like a starfish.

Picture The Age of Aquarius as a bridge, a place

What do I anticipate from the Great Conjunction on December 21, 2020? I am hoping this joining of Jupiter and Saturn is a marker, and I am sensing this is a portal to the New Age of Aquarius. Imagine it less as a time and more as a place— at first, a bridge, an in-between place.

It is a place of altars, crystals, magic manifestations, long hair, lavender fields, and eternal vegetable victory gardens. It is where girls run wild with bucks. It is a place of waking up to write at four in the morning and sleeping until mid-afternoon. It is a place where victimhood is released for more than basic survival.

Here, silence is a place of peace, not suffering.

The New Age is where we grow together, where we speak in silence, where we are finding the shackles in our language that have kept us bound to our egos. Verb tenses are progressive, so we need not call upon our government to force progress. It is where we are deciphering truth from trend and exploring the nuance of that truth.

Truth is objective, truth is explored. It is not declared against all odds. Truth is all odds. Truth is made of all of us, yours, mine, theirs. Truth babbles. Truth grows.

Here in the in-between, we do not silence. We do not demonize; we recognize that polarization is natural. Polarization is needed.

But the north and south poles are cold. They are not meant for the warm-hearted, not for long.

And that’s why I welcome you to the in-between. I welcome you to the New Age where love needs not reign, where love needs not roar.

Love is.

In the rebloom of the earth, we shed while honor “the time before.” This is a place where even reptiles can become real boys, where we are waiting, we are wanting, where right and wrong blur beautifully — where halves merge whole.

It is remembering and recognizing, while also welcoming the brand new. Maybe we’re in the birth canal of the new earth, as both the baby and the mother.

This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The planets are aligning in celebration as we are breathing new life into old ways. Here, ceilings don’t so much shatter and floors don’t so much crumble; to our physical eyes, yes, to a spiritual eye they were never really there in the first place.

Artists know this, and soon we will all know The Artist’s Way. We are all artists in The New Age where the word “all” is met with love, not separation. Every poem is born real, and the ink never runs dry.

I know you are beyond tired. I’m exhausted too. I’m not here, tangled in the wires of a pen, to predict the future. I’m here to tell you to please, be rest assured, that the future lives in the ink of your own pen — yours. The future is yours.

Your Kindness is Not a Weakness

“If you have been brutally broken but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings, then you’re a badass with a heart of an angel.” -Keanu Reeves

We cannot know all the steps that will be taken on every possible timeline. Life is a surprise. Yet, as we work together, we can open our eyes in new ways.

Fellow human: You are here to see and spread beauty, to spread all the colors made up in black and reflected in light, colors you may not yet see, across this gestating earth so that it may be reborn — new, wise, knowing, questioning.

Questioning is key. The world will undergo a period of quiet questioning and riotous crying — it already is — like a baby. The New Earth will be born by relief of the mothers, and it will also be born by the fear of newly born babies.

You have been placed at a particular perspective. We are all pausing and trotting and bolting from different angles so that we may meet more fully.

Be the light and others will follow. You know this. You have proof and yet you doubt, as if walking on quaking magma, that you will fall if you utter a certain phrase or neglect to support every notion that rides past. It’s okay. You are safe. You are supported. You are loved.

Healer: Remember you are a warrior. Remember that good always wins. Good is defeating evil. It is. I like to think of goodness as the light that proves the darkness was never really there to hurt us; maybe the dark just came to teach us. Maybe there are no bad guys (or very few). Here, in the New Age, the evil in each of us is revealed as is the space for it to redeem itself.

Feel everything you need to feel. Release the fear when you can so that there will be less for our children. Let the children quietly teach in this pivotal transition. The high risks humanity, of all ages, is taking is worth the great reward that is waiting.

Prepare your heart. Set an intention to win the war on consciousness within yourself. Embark on an independent search for truth. Only then can individuals who are fully in their power come together as a collective. Individualism could come first, and that’s okay. Unity is coming through diversity as collectivism is coming through individualism.

What is your passion? What part of your core are you most afraid (or eager) to share? Why? This is your superpower. We need you.

Soon, I’m leaving the frigid poles and stepping over to this new place. And I hope to find you in the tropical, sonorous in-between where it’s warm. It is a time for the inner weirdo in each of us to shine — to light the way home.

The Age of Aquarius is letting the veil of illusion fall. It is a place of truth and miracles, of ego death and soul bloom, of death and rebirth. Here, in this paradigm shift, duopolies crash and duality joins the spirit — trinity shines.

Spirit and science marry, art and technology play. Fantasy finds truth. Questions are called upon. Surrender is seen as strength. Sovereignty is king and queen. This is a quantum leap of independence, where an infinity of changes and choices are ready to be made.

This place was just as real yesterday as it is today. All you have to do is step over. Like in the Tate Modern museum a decade ago, the transition will show us all “how it is” fumbling through shadow and light with imperfect strangers.

And if you don’t believe me, look up at the sky tonight. The stars will guide you to a place of light…and dare I say, freedom.

Your words and thoughts, today and forevermore, could manifest into reality. Take care. Be clear. Be with the love that is here, that is coming.

Welcome to the New Age of Manifest Destiny. It’s exactly what you think it will be.

Look Down Here (Then Look Up!)

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