Powerful dark moon medicine tonight. A visit from all the parts of yourself that you’re ashamed and afraid to face. Just for today, let them show up without trying to push them away, hide them, or control them. We do so much violence to ourselves in the name of control. Because we’ve learned that certain traits are bad and having them means we’re bad, and we have to make sure that we also feel bad about how bad we are. So we control ourselves in all kinds of external ways to keep the “bad” parts locked up inside. We repress, self-medicate, isolate, punish. And when controlling ourselves doesn’t make us feel better, we go further outside and try to control other people through manipulation or coercion, and on a bigger scale, systematic oppression. Where do you think you got the idea that you were bad, after all?
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Today the Devil is offering up a mirror of all that we don’t want to face, so we can integrate and heal that on a personal level and on a global level. We can pass on something besides shame and blame, but we’ve gotta have compassion for ourselves first. You can’t share what you don’t already have.
I’m thinking of something @heatherhogandc wrote this week: “speaking our shame starves the beast.” So whatever you’re keeping chained up out of shame, face it. Starve the beast that is your conditioning to believe you’re bad. Choose to love all parts of yourself. That’s how you start to break the bonds of repetitive, addictive patterns, and stop doing violence to yourself and others.
Forgiveness and The Devil
Forgive yourself to heal yourself.
There is nothing you can't heal.
There is nothing you can't forgive.
What The Devil card shows us is where we hold shame about something we did that we believe we can never heal or forgive.
Believing something is unforgivable is a way to feel in control of a situation. If you tell yourself that you will never ever forgive yourself for a thing, then you are creating a cage for your own power of forgiveness, not the thing, whatever it is.
Forgiving does not mean condoning harmful behavior or allowing it to happen again. It's about letting go of the story of it, and taking ownership for your feelings. It's about offering healing and love to yourself.
This is deep, hard stuff to work through, but its part of being human. I'm doing it, too.
Big love to @brooklyntarot, @wildsoulhealing, and the rest of the #brooklynfools for holding space for all of us to share these big scary feelings so we can keep healing them.
❤️❤️❤️ @heatherhogandc @darylkovalich @_p_yoon @puhluh @paula__dixon @swellest @anneka.skywalker @stefaniecaponi @margaretyesmargaret (any other Fools on Instagram?)