Tomorrow I turn 40. All the usual guff abounds… ‘How did I get to 40??!!’;
Weeell…slowly. Messily.
My twenties were me going around in circles trying to figure out who the hell I was, what I wanted, and well, I didn’t really get the answers because I was drinking or smoking.
My thirties started with the end of my old life, and the beginning of building one here. And mostly consisted of birthing children and raising children. So I guess you could say this is the decade I learnt to leave the bubble of self-absorption, put the ego to one side for a bit and learnt the importance of giving to others.
I learnt first hand about birth, and also second-hand about death through losing my father. Both of these I experienced what lies beyond this existence - directly in birth and from a distance during an experience I had in the last weeks of my father’s life. Both were fleeting moments that were so brief you just want to go back and try to make sense of it all, but both have fully convinced me that this life is only a very small part of our journeys.
And so, as my 40th birthday draws to a close tomorrow we get a Full/Super/Harvest Moon Eclipse. In Pisces. So it’s safe to say I am very much feeling the energies around this Eclipse season.
The Virgo/Pisces axis brings the lessons of integrating the spiritual realm into the physical reality we dwell in. As anyone who has either worked extensively with spiritual energies, or simply had an ‘awakening’ experience knows, it can be a place you just want to stay, the contrasting dense and difficult energies of living in a human body on the Earth at this time seeming ever the more like wading through mud.
To me, it’s why we have to temporarily ‘forget’ what was before we came here.
My first spiritual awakening experience was in my twenties, and for a while it was nice to be in that space, almost partially escaping from everyday life wherever possible. But you have to get practical and build the foundations first. Build the vessel to fill up.
And I hadn’t built the foundations very well at that point, having got drink to numb the edges. So down they came and the rebuilding began.
Within the last year, the second spiritual awakening experience has been happening for me, and this is what’s pushing me to go back out again and help others. This time, the foundations feel stronger - but we will see!
I feel we are at a critical point now. More and more of us are joining the dots of the less visible, less concrete parts of creation, existence…trying to shake off the old that is no longer working. But I guess it’s more about integrating…as above, so below. Many cultures and communities around the world have never lost this skill.
In conclusion, I’m excited about turning 40. I think life could dramatically change for me in this decade, whilst simultaneously becoming the most grounded and stable that it has ever been thus far.