There is so much to discuss from the past couple of weeks – a wonderful anniversary trip to Vegas punctuated by coming home with COVID, which almost prevented me from seeing my kid graduate. There’s Ulvade and continued threats against my trans friends and family. But what has my attention today, what came to me as I was writing out the interpretations this week was the perverse narratives that drive many of those conversations – a pocket of resistance to the elevation of humanity. The snaggle-toothed, perniciously anti-intellectual, anti-emotional thorn embedded within our friends, families, and systems that thwarts us from the change we need to survive as a species.

It wasn’t until I was writing out the interpretations of the cards that I began to see how utterly sinister the messaging of that so-called resistance is. They believe themselves to be freedom fighters – “resisting the programming” of an authoritarian regime, of the “trans agenda”, of the “groomers” and “cabal”. It is much easier for them to imagine themselves the victims of some vast conspiracy than to recognize how they prop up some of the most authoritarian, misogynistic, surveillance state policies – the very thing they think they’re working against. For all their bluster and bombast, their bold red-white-n-blue-ish liberation is narcissistic escapism. The only thing they’re actually resisting is the mirror.

Giving in to these dualistic interpretations of humanity signals their uncritical obedience to patriarchal definitions meant to reinforce illusions of separation. Repackaged as warmly vague success stories to sway those too scared to encounter their own humanity, they will die on these tiny ant hills of capitalist productivity and American-first toxic masculinity, fragile white woman tears, and 2nd amendment pro-lifers who will stop at nothing to sacrifice themselves to escape accountability to their own souls. These messages reward conformity to an original separation, and abeyance to the almighty ego. They comfort themselves in the warm embrace of mediocrity and are willingly submissive to manufactured scarcity. The only way they are assured of their special-ness is to drain the color and variety of others.

It makes me think of our recent trip to Las Vegas. A study of extremes. On the one hand, we have the unbridled exceptionalism of the place – opulence and grandeur that is immediately accessible to those who have little to none. We play the slots so we can have a taste of what winning feels like, all while surrounded by others so desperate to win at anything in life that they’ll give whatever illusion of accumulated capital to escape what they’ll always lack. On the other side, we have people so willing to conform to the Vegas fantasy, so obsessed with reliving their Miami Beach spring break regrets, that they’ll purchase cheap weed from a random kiosk, get sloshed drunk, and fall in the middle of the busy intersection, all while posing perfecting to declare on their insta stories how great they’re living.

But they’re not living. They’re spending their whole vacation dragging their boyfriends into impromptu photo shoots, stopping foot traffic in the middle of the block, or ordering shots that cost $10 each. Three days later someone else will rotate in taking their place. Nothing special, nothing new. The casino staff sees a hundred of them a day – there’s nothing special or memorable. Vegas is quite good at giving us the appearance of being special without any of the actual substance of it. Vegas is popular because we have plausible, pleasurable experience to distract us from the raw emptiness of shame, and fears.

And don’t get me wrong, we had a great time in Vegas, but while I was more focused on savoring the food at Best Friend and Morimoto, it was clear that the work of actually feeling special and rare is just as much my responsibility in Vegas as it is anywhere else. The illusions of special-ness are presented with a wink and a nod, presented impeccably on porcelain plates, the same as everyone else’s.

And that’s what the cards revealed this week as the motives behind this anti-CRT, anti-feminism, anti-trans pushback. They think they’re reclaiming something special that was “stolen” from them by shame. They are so desperate to cling to the illusions of their special-ness, that they’ll scrape, claw and push their way through the dingy, dirty alleyways of their morality just to cling to whatever illusions they had of their superiority, and thus the only thing that actually made them special. Instead of putting the effort into looking at their own lives, holding the mirror with broken courage, they shield the shadows of their own bloody lineages from exposure, thus delaying the true remedy for the wounds.

Recognizing, processing, and releasing interpersonal and intergenerational guilt and shame is one of the keys to our collective healing. And we can’t do that if we’re constantly relying on superiority to be “special” or “exceptional”. With GOP naysayers using “we shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of ourselves” is a denial of the very thing that we need for the earth to finally evolve, for us to outgrow capitalistic nightmares of scarcity and embrace the fullness of our collective humanity.

When we harbor secret shames, when we carry the wounds of our ancestors’ regret, when we embody the living memories of trauma without the tools to examine and ultimately extricate it from our decision-making machinery, then all we’re doing is ensuring we continue to give and take the same levels of trauma. When we hang onto the past, we give it permission to act for us, to act in such a way that conforms us to whatever will keep us safe – which is usually burying it even deeper so we can label it “other” and blame it for all our troubles.

No, when we unearth the shame, we finally give ourselves permission to release it – through repairing the ways we benefitted from its projection and dissociative actions. When we do that, we can finally heal from the same actions in others. It is a cycle – one that is being very deliberately disrupted by the patriarchy in its last desperate campaign to save its final kernels of control.

That’s why it’s important to find your own interpretation of the cards I share. What do those symbols mean for your own life? Symbols may have an archetypal nature, but they’re seen through the lenses of culture and experience. So what stands out for me, may not stand out for you, etc. Use these messages just as a jumping-off point.

Which is how I’m using the Rose Oracle by Rebecca Campbell this week.  What radical reflections come through for you this week? What ways in which can we allow these images to inspire us to let go and truly feel our collective humanity?

See more below…

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Undercurrents & Final advice

The true undercurrent here is that we are inseparable from nature. We may have created mythology where we are superior to “lesser life forms” but in the end, we were born of this earth and we’ll return to her when our lives have ended. We’ll be sculpted into a new form and we’ll start all over again. The sooner we allow ourselves to recognize that our true nature is embedded in the earth and her in us, the sooner we’ll find peace within our existence, and harmony within our hearts. Surrender to that which is actually natural – not the separation of sexes and labeling of humanity, but the joyful union with our natural, earth-given rhythms of life. Bloom as we were meant to.

So many of us are waiting for a sign, a blessed event that will smack us across the face with enlightenment. We want our holy grail moment – finding the rarity in our vision and accomplishing something big. We want that confirmation from the universe that we’re on the right track, that we’re special. But why continue to look for validation and confirmation outside of ourselves, when we could be listening to our inner knowing. We don’t have to be on a big Quest for the Holy Grail in order to obtain enlightenment or significance in our lives. In fact, we already have all that we might need or want, wholly available to us within. Search the innermost corners of our heart to retrieve our magic. We have permission to grow roots and stop the endless searching. Time to learn from our own selves.

Blessing

We have been carrying too much for too long. It is time to lay down our burdens and allow ourselves to integrate back in with our deepest, most natural selves. May we find the freedom that comes with surrendering ourselves back to the earth, allowing her to nurture, cleanse and hold us safe while we unravel the knots of emotion that we swallowed to please an unforgiving pressure for conformity and approval. May we find that we have all that we need to nourish ourselves and create a world where all have enough of what they need to be their best selves.

I am with you always in love 💖

So may it be.

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