Nova Luna Center

SoulCollage card by Michelle Villanti

Recently an extended family member shared a reflection on one of her relatives who we both love and know differently.  She said “something is missing inside him.”  How true is that reflection of all of us who have felt that something inside of us is missing somehow.  It seems especially true for empaths, artists and sensitives (one could say they are all of these) and how it is that in the intensity of the human experience, we feel separate from that essence of belonging to ourselves and to all that some consider ephemeral, other worldly or just plain “unreal.”

In that state of separateness, we lose connection with what is eternally us - that which lives within us and cannot be found “out there” even though people spend their lives searching for it in every place and person other than in themselves - their inner divinity.  The person mentioned who has “something missing inside” sought and seeks to create beautiful other things that come from within him yet he searches for outside of himself.  Many are those things and people...eventually to be left on the side of the road, “kicked to the curb” when they are “discovered” to be lacking the connection, spark, beauty, peace and love that he craved but has failed to embrace within himself therefore he cannot find it in anything outside of him.  He and any and all of you are not alone in this experience of wanting and seeking “out there” what lives inside you always.  I felt it most intensely in this man whose unmet parts were faced with my unmet parts in a perfect mirror.  I do think I was in need of the painful awakening I received in meeting the unmet parts in this other person...Even in the connecting there was an intense shakiness and fragility - like I was always about to fall off a cliff into the abyss of annihilation and nothingness - which to me felt worse than the slow pricking pain of being unmet, in all the ways people abjure and diminish those they have drawn into their lives, when the emptiness wakes them up and puts them to sleep all at the same time.  That was him and that was me.

Even so, people are always communicating with us, even in their absence.  You are only to listen in to yourself and you will find them and they will speak to you and you to them.  You are in essence them, and they are you and anytime we think it...we are and they are.

To meet my unmet parts, I first needed to befriend them and be curious to know them.  Next came compassion, suffering with them...the true definition of compassion means “to suffer with.”  Oh and that word suffer is an experience or feeling that many people run like crazy from.  Industries thrive on relieving people from their suffering, be it the media, cosmetics, diets, foods and drugs…”Buy me”...”Sup with me”...”I will take away all your suffering?”  Even the offerings that are elated like music have their dark underbellies for so many.  Some will choose to martyr themselves in their suffering and yet its all “blah, blah” - talk and rhetoric so they can seem to dive into it, but really they stand outside of it, jeering and mocking it so they don’t have to move through it.  “No thanks, I’ll bypass it.”...”No thanks, I’ll drown in it.”  The fear of swimming through it keeps many people from traversing the waters of their “suffering” and coming to a place of rest within and without.  Yes, something’s missing...I have felt that.  I sit here writing about it, and reflect on where I am in the deep swim through it.

“All throughout history, tears have done 3 works:  called the spirits to one’s side, repelled those who would muffle and bind the simple soul, and healed the injuries of the poor human bargains.

Tears are part of the mending of rips in the psyche - where energy has leaked and leaked away.  The matter is serious, but the worst does not occur - Our light is not stolen - for tears make us conscious.  There is no chance to go back to sleep when one is weeping.” - from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Tears, the great healer...the balm to pain.  Who has not cried in their lifetime and how after allowing the tears to flow, there is eventually a great sense of relief and release.  It is a disease in our culture to mark a person as weak who feels and expresses grief, shame and fear through tears.  It’s in giving ourselves permission to express our pain or joy through tears, that wounds and elations are given a voice and process to let loose the depths of ourselves in crying; out loud or quietly.

I am so grateful whenever I can cry or witness another’s tears because in this experience I feel compassion for myself and another increase and flow.  I am more concerned when myself or another is so frozen that they cannot melt the hardness of their pain and complexes, and as a result, other psychic or physical illness set in, if it has not already taken over the person’s life force.  When we hide or bury our grief, sadness, depression, shame, anger, fear and terror, we lay waste to ourselves.  We may as well be physically six feet under because we are deadening our spirit and vitality to remain a hungry ghost in search of anything to keep us numb or falsely distracted, and untouched by creative turpitude and freedom to be our wild true selves.  I know that when the time of the dark night of the soul comes up, I am in the process of shedding and releasing the old dead skin of my snake self and can only get through that night with the assistance of my tears...be they the sobbing kind or the quiet weeping into my pillow.

SoulCollage card by Michelle Villanti

Heartbreak is irrevocably life altering.  It changes the inner landscape of a person’s psyche and the outer world is seen through new eyes.  These new eyes see more shadow and shade...the contrasts are sharper and the divides wider.

To create bridges between the two feels like massive undertakings and cannot be traversed alone.  And yet it is a solo journey...the heart’s mending cannot be done using the old worn out ways.  Once a heart is broken, the needles of its mending must be larger and the threads so much thicker and stronger because they are pulling together parts of the heart that will remain forever asunder - never again looking as smooth and unblemished - or as innocent - as before.  

Heartbreak seems to be an initiation into a world that must be reinvented and re-occupied by a host of otherlings, some so foreign it’s as if one has arrived in an utterly new universe with otherworldly beings whose ways in this world are strange and not yet seen as wondrous, though in time they will be seen as such.  

Heartbreak does not discriminate - all are welcomed into this land if they chanced having an open heart that loved deeply and truly.  Heartbreak is only a temporary outpost in this greater journey that requires courage and the vulnerability of tears, grief and release.  There are no clocks in this world and the process and journey takes as much space as necessary before moving on - reborn...the new skin is in place, the inner glow evident.  

When gratitude is realized, then the next leg of the journey is possible and all manner of conveyances arrive to take you onward, inward, skyward, deep sea bound...you choose.  You know after all this you can choose them all because at the end of the world you find...there is no end of the world.

Some of us who have been raised in older, more tribal communities may be acquainted with ceremonial rituals.  I came upon it later in life and most recently in the past four years have had many changes disguised as losses, upheavals and passion plays.  In growing through and from them, I had a mentor who showed me new ways to pass through and beyond what needed to be let go of...to shed the old snakeskin and go deeper than I ever had into the transformative process of emotional and spiritual growth.  At the very edge of the old year (2018), I performed a sacred ceremony in fire to bless and release a part of me and my greatest teacher to date.

I share it with you as a template or example of how I put it in words, read what I wrote to that teacher and gave myself and him the honor and love that we both deserved.  After this writing, speaking and burning I drew SoulCollage cards I’d made and asked them to speak to me, speak from me as the chapter was at last celebrated and then closed.  This is so personal and soul defining for me and I share it with you in love, humility and honor.

Here it begins with what i am choosing to call the Compassionate Magical Incantation.  How it begins is how it ends:  

To My Greatest Love “I Love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me and Thank You.” I realize that there is love everywhere God is all Surrounds us What you think of me is none of my business and I am here to say to you that I accept that this was all perfect. Only the present is real - Now. In it I affirm my love for myself with every breath and I love you in every breath and send you love.  I release myself from the feelings of pain, loss, emptiness, fear, anger and resentment toward you and myself.

I choose love in this moment.  I choose to know that love is ever present and everything else is an illusion that causes pain and suffering.  I release myself from who I was in my past that is no more.  I release who you were and who we were separately and together.  I bring this karmic pain to an end now with no expectations that you must do or be anything other than who you are in every moment.  

I choose love. I choose peace. I choose joy I choose God I release the ideas that you be or you do now and ever anything that you are not called to, but is my ego wanting, lacking and deluded.  There is only Love between us, Love for me, Love for you.  

It is all that is…

I embrace love.  I embrace loving me.  I embrace loving you.  I release all past harms, misperceptions, expectations, judgements and staying stuck as a victim in this illusion that there is anything, anything other than True Love - here, now and between us - Love.  I choose to be love.  I choose to see love in everything and everyone - in you, in me - for the greatest good of all.  I trust God, Love and Myself.  “I love you...I’m sorry.  Please forgive me.  Thank you.

I forgive me. I forgive you.

These are the SoulCollage cards and their words of wisdom in the order they were chosen.  

There are seven cards:

The Empress

Rebirth of the Wolf Teacher

The Wounded Fire Goddess

Your Eternal Lover

The Resurrected Goddess of Redemption

The Karmic Lover and Transformer

The Living Fire Goddess of my Soul

The Empress I am the Empress The one with the true heart I am the Protectress The “you shall not pass” Queen Sun Fuck Who holds my precious heart I am wise and regal, Poised to rule and Stand in my truth I am the fiery beauty Who is not afraid To bare my heart and Trust in the new I am the lioness, The Priestess and the Sage I will carry you on and forward I am amazed

Re-birth of the Wolf Teacher I am the one who is reborn I am always watchful and all seeing. I am the one who buries What must be laid to rest And resurrects the Phoenix Of endless love I am the one who is courageous And wild natured Rainbows hidden in white light Falling snow and starlight I am she and he And all one

The Wounded Fire Goddess I am the one who bears your pain And waits in the shadows to be reborn. I am the Pele of your heart And eternal fire who tends the hearth Of all my children and watches Over them for all time I am the one who has the deepest compassion, the empath Who senses your wounds and Takes them within for healing. I am the one who holds The world in my hands and Also the small child who cries For my love. I am love I am your dearest Inside friend.

Your Eternal Lover I am your precious heart Who writes to you in my dreams I am the one who sees your pain And asks you to forgive I am the one who writes The poetry and blows kisses To you in my pillow I am the one who shouts to You to love me while I push you away. I am the one who remains but You can’t see me I am the one who sees another way And who will hold the truth For all time.  I am the one Who no matter appearances, Love you forever because I love me All ways

The Resurrected Goddess of Redemption After the burn… And finally it is she The transformed The Kundalini rising To the highest high The eternal flame My Pele within Death giving way To Rebirth No longer am I Blindsided She comes and takes back What is hers And I rise I age I become Eternal Immortal All Love

The Karmic Lover and Transformer I am the one who has laid Us to rest amidst the burning earth Aching to be reborn I am the one who reveals Those lifetimes to you and Turns away to start anew. I am the passionate fiery Temptress who could not Say no to the old painful story. I am the one who died and Preferred death to grieving The loss of you.  I am the one Who stands at the final Graveside and mourns The repetitive wheel of karma...I am the one Who at last sets it All on fire And transcends all times...I am love Eternal…

The Living Fire Goddess of My Soul Here I am now Raven in hand Fire and water And molten earth At my feet I am magical And other-worldly Wise and ageless Loving the fire And birthing new land Waterfalls of passion, bliss And joy - embracing Timelessness and change Witchy fire water sprite Grateful to be alive Knowing, living and Being Eternal Love

SoulCollage card made by Michelle Villanti

All things run their course, if we let them.  If we stop an energy in motion out of fear of it, we are then hooked.  I know when fear comes up that I am hooked to the outcome of the particular situation, or person...Even more hooked to the outcome.  When I’m afraid of someone because I anticipate that the encounter will not give me what I want, it is then I am in non-acceptance of them and the situational outcome that I wish or hope for.  Its something I’m attached to having… “The what”:  That they won’t love me, like me, understand me, give me “the thing” that I have to know in my deepest self, that I am not giving to myself.  And it goes further than that.  I don’t want it from myself because I see myself as lacking and its only from another that I believe will fill “that thing” I am not embracing in my self...So often I doubt that I possess it or that even if I did, it wouldn’t feel as good as if it came from another.

That “other”, that “one” is within me and all around me...It abounds in all existence but I fail to know this because of all the stories I’ve told myself and been told by others.  The biggest realization I had was when I discovered that “Everyone is you”  We mirror each other and there is nothing I’m seeing “out there” that I myself do not possess within me...So even the dark and ugliest other who victimizes me reflects a part of me that I do not see (or want to see) and I victimize myself from the inside out.

Whatever and whoever I fear, calls me to greater love for myself first, and then for that and them.  Love like light (one could say is light) dispels darkness and is the antidote to fear.  My greatest fear is that I will not love myself enough in time to show love to those I most fear.  Even if that love must be sent from a distance because the person is estranged, lost or dead.  I would say my second biggest fear is of being deceived or lied to because it is in my own self-deception that I am in the greatest darkness of the light and truth of myself.

Words are powerful...they express feelings and thought forms and convey energies that created connection or separation, fear or love.  And yet, of all these things, it is only love and connection that is real.  I once heard someone say that FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real...Because it’s not real, it is an illusion that is so seductive and ensnares so invitedly that we go around chasing and pursuing shadows of our own making because we Believe they are real, We believe the story...And yet, we live in a world of duality for a reason and to wit, the reason we give ourselves is how we can know the light, the truth.  To be in spirit or In-spired; to come together, to not be separate from our source of all we are and all that is.  And in the in-between of knowing and being without the story is where wisdom lies..to discern our truth out of the confusion of the stories and parts which must be welcomed and embraced.  We must all sit at the table and allow that central unifying spirit as the hub of the wheel to hold all of it.  Within that central point of spirit all is possible, all is creation and love begetting more love and creating more and more realizations that we are all connected, all one and finally know Love is eternal, everlasting and real.

SoulCollage card made by Michelle Villanti

I have over the years avoided writing about the 1st of the New Year as so many articles pertain to those ubiquitous “New Year’s Resolutions” which remind me of some short torrid affair that ends within 3 weeks and all parties walk away feeling anything but “Resolute”...done but not finished.  Even the word “resolute” somehow seems to be a set-up for the breaking of it.  How resolved are we ever anyway, and in the idea of a “thing” being resolved, is it truly “put to rest” or has it in fact been “put aside”?...to then resurface in some other configuration when life brings us the inevitable, unexpected and often “unwanted” event or person in yet a different guise.

Yet, in the visitation of that unexpected moment, person or situation, what adventure might be born?  Another chance to experience a missed opportunity, to go deeper, dream farther, cry again and go forward in ways that we could never have imagined if we where to remain slavish to the “resolution”, which feels so final...like standing in the graveyard of our own or someone else’s spent life...

Personally, the idea of “going to ground” has always intrigued and delighted me because what is then buried or planted will often give rise to an entirely new being...which would have been impossible if we were unwilling to face the death or ending of whatever had run it’s course…

It’s in the letting go that something new is supplanted in its place, and in that fertile soil we may birth all manner of strange and wondrous creations...beauty, love, music, magic, spirit...Endless singing in and bringing in the voice of the heart and the depth of the spirit of soul and light and wonder.

In the winter of the year, past the marking of the brave, new, yet unimagined world of 2019...I call to all of you to reach within and carry forth the eternal flame that burns in us all and ignites a fire to see us through the darkness...as more light is born day by day and brings us to the unfathomable, unquenchable ever-renewing life force of Love...to enchant, to bring joy and peace and keep time to our inner workings so that we may connect to people from our truest heart of hearts.  If this be a resolution, then I confess it...I whisper it into the eons of my many lives and loves...I call forth my most precious secrets to bring into the world now, and affirming this daily...I will be all one with the universe and everyone in it...This is my New Year’s gift to you…!

Image sourced from Google Images

“Cast a pebble on the water, watch the ripples yearn the spreading…”   Lyrics from Michelle’s Song by Elton John“

Sunday morning.  A Sunday morning.  The Sunday morning. Always start where you are.  This one I started differently.  It was my psyche speaking that I needed to do it differently this morning.  Not the same routine. (the sane routine...or is it...sane?)

When I was struggling with an eating disorder everything was laid out like clockwork.  The internal workings of the clock were complications and I was in such fear of chaos and being out of control that I had to hold to a routine as rigidly and strictly as if my whole existence depended on it.  Because in a way it did.  I felt I would not exist or be able to bear anymore out of control chaos externally because the contrast and haunting of my internal chaos was so machinated and encompassing.  It took gargantuan effort to conform the wild workings of my “not normal self” so I could make myself and others think I was “together” and fitted into the world I felt outside of always.  Feeling outside something that may not be congruent with your true self is not inherently a thing to be mended, No.  The grace to step back and neutrally observe (if neutrality can be mustered) is helpful as much as one has the space to know, to intuit the what, where, how and why of anything.  One’s instinctual nature can be so easily drowned out in the enmeshment of the sensitive soul essence that feels the outer and inner so profoundly, deeply and delicately, that only in the space between...the breath...the silence between the notes of the music, can a person truly discern the resonance of self and others and know we/he/she is both...separate and one all at the same time.

There is something so genuinely soothing about being able to hold what appears at first glance to be polarities and yet are the “flipside of the same coin”...Is it separate but equal?  Or just equally so..equally true?  I had heard many years ago that all great truths were paradoxes and at that time I could only intellectually comprehend that.  I could not then truly feel or embody it because I was too attached to the duality and the drama that came with the oh so many movies of my own and others’ lives.  I could not step apart from it then and was so attached to the idea of the “other” being my sole reality and truth that I could not step back out of the fear of annihilation...that I was nothing without an outer reflection that I was something...often just anything so I could say I deserved to be...I did have moments where in those in betweens...the space between the breath, the glory of nature, the euphoria of music, the colors of the majestic beauty of this life that I would stop knowing and Become...To Be and need no explanations..no talk...the voice of truth that would lie in the silence of the oneness to All.  Then and only then did I see.  When all the rhetoric, the musings and poetry are set aside, or not, but embraced in their entirety as all paradoxes must be...there is one abiding force that is present always and eternally:  We, here on this planet....We call it Love...When all illusion and distractions fall away  this love remains, and is eternal and all.  In the end, my reflections and complexes and daily dramas are only those vehicles that I believe were necessary, and divinely appointed to bring me ‘round back to my Self which is in the end, a drop of water which is one with the sea...and all abides in thee...this Love, this God...This God is Me.

“Throughout the whole of Life one must continue to learn to live”, said Seneca two millennia ago. “And what will amaze you even more, throughout life one must learn to die.”

It is also clear that the farther one travels on the journey of life, the more births one will experience, and therefore the more deaths — the more joy and the more pain.

This wisdom brings me to the next sparklet of truth...Scott Peck defines love as “The willingness to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.

I have believed the above to be true about love since I read the Roadless Travelled for the first time in 1980. I have since re-read this book at least 30 times. Every time I re-read it I learn something more about myself and others. Since that time however, I believe I have only fully loved three people in my personal life this way: myself, my son and one other man. In my career as a therapist I believe I have done it over and over and each extension of myself has given way to a more expansive and compassionate version of myself. Extending myself in this way personally has been the most difficult, frightening and beautiful experience of my life! From this place I have made my most painful of decisions in saying “Yes” when it was an utter act of surrender and saying “No” when it was the greatest act of love I have ever given to someone in my life. 

I have experienced the deepest of sadness in giving up my ego, and my attachments to what my little self wanted in order to hold those I most loved up to the light of Source, surrender, humility and vulnerability. I could never have done it without going through the darkest nights of my soul. I say nights because if only it could have been one night... Night after night of staying with myself in faith, believing if I held to my truth in alignment with Source, it would be for the greater good of all. Believing through the tears that all would be revealed and all involved would be set free. I stood in my belief that we are all one and connected even though it looked and felt like my heart was broken irrevocably into many pieces. 

Death, rebirth...Love is never lost. Love is eternal.

I recently heard that in Japan there is a practice of repairing a broken plate with gold, which glues the pieces of the china back together. The plate is then considered all the more beautiful. In that case, I must be a glowing golden orb, given the number of times my heart has broken. Every time I figuratively picked up the pieces and glued them back together, it was a spiritual and emotional funeral process of honoring every break, every piece that had fallen assunder...the spinning plate that landed hard and shattered into countless pieces. Yet here I am whole and shining, like a beacon, continuing to illuminate the darker and darker recesses I am traversing with every dip into that well of love that grows ever deeper, ever purer. 

How is recovery effected? How does gold run through the marrow of our bones? How in living we experience loss and in order to grow, we must grieve and lay our sorrows to rest...deep in the fertile ground of deathing...redemption is born. Tell me how. You asked me. Here is my answer.

There is a process in Grief. It is not linear. It is not logical. Yet it is predictable like the waves of the ocean that ebb and flow: the full rush of high tide beating the shoreline...movement happens, scattering the crabs who burrow in the sand and all things move about, forever changed in their places. Then it ebbs and the tears stop, the raging dies away until the next waves of pain, sorrow, loss and anger rise up again to be reprieved by that deep breath of relief that for a time it has passed...It will surely come again until all of the edges are softened and the inner world of the Self has settled into a newness, a lightness...freedom born from change and pain. Such is the process and beauty of Grief.

Photo by Yi Luo, courtesy of Flickr

The following sparklet is a reminder to all that Nova Luna is a school of magic and mystery...think Hogwarts on Maui...the house and its grounds are enchanted. It reflects the wisdom and learning we seek to inspire in the world.

At Nova Luna last week, we gave a talk on body image. Within days we noticed a beautiful red cardinal beating itself against the side mirrors of our car.

We watched the bird over many days as it beat its precious, beautiful body against the mirrors over and over, attacking the image that it didn’t recognize as its Self. The bird appeared to find its reflection threatening and horrible, not only attacking itself in the process, but also defecating all over the car as it couldn’t pull itself away and take care of its basic needs. 

How metaphorically, this bird — like many of us — self-harm and harm the people and things around us out of not seeing or recognizing who we really are and loving ourselves.

It’s like attacking aspects of ourselves that we are seeing through a distorted mirror. The distortions are our parts that have in essence, a life of their own, taking us down the proverbial rabbit hole to the core wounds that have not yet been brought into the light. These parts have come to believe they are ugly, worthless, unloveable, intolerable, wretched, and despicable. Thus, like this bird, attacking one’s Self, because these parts believe they are threatened, threatening, and in need of obliteration.

How then to meet that beautiful bird — how to save it? How to facilitate it saving itself? In order to save our car in the short-term, we covered the mirrors with a towel; not really effective long-term. We aren’t going to kill the bird obviously. For that matter, the bird is effecting its own demise if it can’t STOP attacking itself. We can’t remove the mirrors. The mirrors in our lives are everywhere. We must address the internal distortions: the parts that see the illusion rather than the truth, the light, the beauty and brilliance of our Selves. 

That beautiful red bird is our radiant Self. It reminds me of my favorite Hogwarts bird Fawkes, the phoenix whose tears of love healed the most toxic wound from the serpent who bit Harry Potter. And remember Fawkes, as a phoenix, looked mightly sorry before he burst into flames and died — only to be reborn from the ashes of its old self. Radiant, Rising...In this process no one will tell you there is no pain, but we can promise you there is redemption, there is looking in the mirror of all that surrounds us and seeing that everyone is you, and that we are not “alone” — we are “all One”.

In celebration of ‘red birds’ everywhere, including the Red Sparrow (if any of you have seen the movie), Recovery and Redemption are possible and Oh So Awesome!!!

"La Primavera”, Sandro Botticelli / Public domain

The descent to the underworld can manifest as chaos, depression, illness, addiction, or simply a felt sense that a once vital and juicy life is now desiccated. When we feel ourselves spinning down, we often feel something is terribly wrong. We can’t cope, we can’t cut it, we’re not on, we’ve lost it. If we were good and competent people, we wouldn’t have these horrible experiences. But if we do, we’d better fix it right away because who in their right mind would ever define success as falling apart?

In our blindness, contemporary culture seems to have forgotten that descent is archetypal, honorable, and visionary. We make no collective ritual space for the experience. Instead, individuals who endure the disorientation and despair of an underworld Journey are left to find its meaning mostly on their own and for themselves.

In addressing this vacancy in our culture, Nova Luna seeks to provide a container, a reparative process where all have received an invitation to a Hogwarts-type school of mystery and magic to recover lost, exiled parts and take the Hero’s Journey to those places and parts and transform them.

In the process of recovery, healing often comes through giving positive attention to the wounded and disenfranchised Inner Child; and also giving up the addiction to “acting out”, dramatics and histrionics, the emotional roller coaster. Recovery means reclaiming and championing the lost or disowned Inner Child and healing the toxic shame and low self-esteem that binds one to the addiction pattern, keeping one essentially a prisoner in a dark cave, metaphorically speaking. We must learn to give up control and enmeshment, love ourselves, reframe mistakes and self-criticism, and find support and validation in positive ways that don’t lead to self-destructive or self-defeating patterns. This develops awareness and changes our self image.

To do this, we must grieve our original pain, re-own our disowned parts, move through our fears and allow ourselves to feel again, rather than bury our problems. We have to get in touch with how depressed and angry we really are, and feel the unresolved grief. It also means connecting in a way that is positive for the whole person with a Higher Power, a transformative vision, one’s own form of spiritual awakening or rebirth, and finding bliss in non-attachment.