I feel for some the information in this talk is well understood and well practiced, but as I feel it is the foundation of future talks, I wanted to cover all our bases in this series on integrating everything we have learned in new and more empowered ways as we head forward. ❤❤❤
These are the notes I wrote and used as the basis of this talk:
Have you ever thought about your own brilliance? How do you express your brilliance? These questions came up for consideration after I sat for the most recently posted weekly messages. What do I even mean by brilliance? Simply put, I am using the word to mean radiance, shine, and/or bright light. To very quickly recap, in that reading, I talked about ownership; ownership being the awareness that we show up from who we are, not because an external source justifies that behaviour, nor does it negate it. The light it takes to have this kind of self-awareness, I refer to as brilliance.
I’m going to take you on a trip through this notion and what I mean, having taken inspiration from Aquarius season, the other fixed signs and the hosts of the nodes, Aries and Libra.
In communities such as ours, where we are committed to personal growth, greater self-awareness, self-development, our self-expression and self-empowerment, I think it is not hyperbolic to state that we are experts when it comes to our shadows. Most of us have spent years delving deep into those less visible and less acknowledged parts of our personalities, emotions and beliefs, in order to bring awareness to, reconcile and integrate those darker, often rejected aspects of ourselves. This deep self-reflection eventually becomes a process and remains an integral part of how we navigate and make sense of the world and our place within it.
Before we get back to your brilliance, I just want to talk a little more about the shadow, after all, the shadow most definitely plays it’s part in what you radiate, and that which you radiate, also yes, highlights, but can also deepen the shadows. There is no doubt in my mind that shadow work can be a powerful tool for self-exploration, self-discovery and growth. However, as with everything, it has it’s limitations.
Just because we have the willingness to dive into our own shadows, it doesn’t mean we’re always prepared for what is unearthed there. That which lies in the shadow, does so for a reason and it can be emotionally and mentally distressing, no matter where we are in the process, or however long we have been ‘doing the work’. I have found in my own explorations, the deeper you go, the darker and sometimes even more distressing the discoveries. The seasoned fisherman who goes out to sea is more likely to encounter a shark, than one just starting out in streams and ponds. The same way we may need help to reel in a big one, dealing with those kinds of inner discoveries can also require the help of another.
Discovery is one thing, for even when we have the help of an expert in identifying what lies within, and are ready to explore ways to integrate these into every day life, awareness is not always enough. Incorporating changes in a sustainable way can prove extremely challenging. Yes, while some existing situations and relationships will most likely be ready to be overhauled, as anyone who has changed knows, not everyone gets the memo that we’re ready to show up in a new way. This need to practice our new moves on a dance floor of work colleagues and loved ones who are still sticking to the old choreography, poses a real challenge. Sadly, often our options can get reduced down to reverting back to the old dance steps or just abandoning the known dance floor and having a complete cast change in the stories of our lives. I say sadly, because even though neither recourse that I have described is inherently wrong, this too can become a pattern. We can get stuck in a loop of either one of these; trying and failing to change or perpetuating a ‘swipe right’ culture where we deny the fact that relationships are built and require effort, and instead venture forth alone, finding it increasingly difficult to maintain and enjoy relationships with others.
I believe the only solution that truly works is to recognise at some point that it is our commitment to how we show up that will help us to incorporate the changes and sustain healthier new habits. There will always be relational, societal and even systemic changes that need to be made outside of ourselves, but I believe these are best achieved as expressions of our own individual changes, rather than being seen as the sole solution. It could absolutely be argued that the two, inner and outer change, would ideally need to go hand in hand.
In the same way, I do believe shadow work, on it’s own is not enough and it needs to go hand in hand with what I could call light work, but that term is loaded with other meanings, so I will call it brilliance. In fact, the more you endeavour to show up from a place of your brilliance, the more the need to implement the insights of years of shadow work.
So what is one thing we can do right now to embrace our brilliance and make a commitment to showing up in the most radiant way possible? I mentioned it in the weekly message, we can take complete ownership of who we are and how we show up. This may sound like we’re still facing the same old dance floor dilemma I mentioned earlier. On the contrary, this removes the dance floor and dancers completely, at least from a place of awareness. I also want to add here, I am not suggesting more ‘go work on yourself’ in isolation and in deep reflection. This can all be done even as we interact with others. In the movie ‘Dirty Dancing’, when Johnny Castle is teaching Baby to be his dance partner, he says “Look, spaghetti arms. This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine. You gotta hold the frame.”
How do we hold the frame? Well, to be quite blunt, before we can criticise or judge or even discern anyone or anything outside of ourselves, we must be aware of what we are doing and why. No matter how many years we may have spent on a practice, introspection, therapy, study, self-knowledge etc, if we are trying something new, even shifting our awareness, it would be foolhardy to expects ourselves to be experts at minute one, day one. You hear me say often, we cannot rest on the laurels of our past victories, and this applies absolutely to whatever individual pasts have gotten us this far. Our past failures do not hinder our ability to try something new with courage, well, neither do our past victories mean a thing when we attempt something new. We need some humility and no expectation of getting it ‘perfect’ or being acknowledged for our Herculean efforts outside of ourselves.
I ask you to imagine the High Priestess from the tarot. She invites us to access her secrets, but the only promise she really makes is that we will find ourselves, and the path ahead involves walking between her black and white pillars, which represent both opposing and complimentary forces. We are neither good, nor bad, not right, nor wrong, and I hesitate to say that as I would not want this statement to be confused as moral relativism. The High Priestess is not the Hierophant. Where the latter represents traditions and established and structured authority, the High Priestess is our own inner wisdom, witnessed through our own intuition and unconscious. She is not about what is right or wrong, good or bad as that is very much the domain of the Hierophant, she is telling us why we, in ourselves feel or see things a certain way, without making it about the external person or situation. Therefore, true intuition is not really about anything outside of ourselves. Yes, I say that not despite the fact that I have made a living for years on using my inuition, but rather because of it. You have heard me say many, many times, every reading I sit for is a message first for myself before it is for anyone else, that’s the High Priestess part and as the card numbered 2 in the major arcana, she must have her dues before incorporating number 5, the Hierophant. It is the combination of both, that allows us to make effective use of our inner wisdom in the outside world. I do believe that to be true as a tarot reader, but also as a human being, navigating relationships, work, society and this complex web of reality.
In this context, when I speak of brilliance I do not mean what you do, but why you do it. The tone of voice, the words chosen, the reaction, the very decision to act or not act in a certain way, we must be aware firstly, that we had a choice, and secondly why we made that choice. Please note that here I am speaking to general interactions in day-to-day life. There are incredible one-of situations that can trigger our very physiological fight or flight response, but one would not expect to encounter these often. I am aware that some people do react to mundane daily life in this way, I know this because I used to be one of them. The cause of this for me was a neurological chronic illness, and I know of others who suffer from a traumatic stress disorder. In situations such as those, more expert advice should be sought to address our own particular ailment.
Now that we have thought about brilliance, let me go back to the other question I asked at the beginning: How do you express your brilliance? Are you still stuck on thinking about what makes you brilliant? Let’s use an example, am I brilliant because I am a master tarot reader? Or because I am here sharing this? No, they have nothing to do with my brilliance and are just ways I show up. I’m going to use a very general, simplified, quick rule of thumb that we can refer to when taking ownership of our experience, ask yourself “why?” You can apply this to anything you do or even don’t, think, feel or say. Remember the invitation of the High Priestess; you will find yourself behind that curtain, adorned with pomegranates, the symbolic representation of hidden mysteries, fertility, the seasons of life, death, and the underworld, through their connection to Persephone. But remember, not all truths are revealed, as some require a deeper understanding to unveil, and that is why there is no end point to self-discovery, just completions of cycles within cycles of our own self-awareness.
So when you answer the “why?” does your answer come from ownership? Is it about you? Remember, every statement is an I-Statement anyway, so we may as well overtly frame it as such. It can be tempting to say “She is so rude, now I feel hurt, I’m sick of being a doormat and am going to stand up for myself.” It definitely shows a pause to take ownership of making a choice, but no matter how good giving someone a piece of your mind feels or what mental gymnastics we engage in to frame our behaviour as self-empowered, it lacks brilliance, and if it’s not clear yet, I believe you are immensely brilliant.
Let’s go back to that sentence: “She is so rude, now I feel hurt, I’m sick of being a doormat and am going to stand up for myself.” If you have ears to hear and eyes to see, this sentence is not wrong, it is an I-Statement that tells us a lot. It goes from the outside in, you just have to reverse that and go from the inside out.
Let’s take the points in reverse and frame them from a place of self-awareness and self-expression. From a place of brilliance: “This is currently the only way I know how to react when I feel defensive and like I need to stand up for myself. I feel that way because I am sick of treating myself, and thus letting others, treat me like a doormat. I do that because I don’t know how to deal with my feelings of hurt. I brought all of that with me to this interaction and thus, I found this person rude, rather than a person who probably has their own very similar dynamic to mine going on.”
Once you begin to hear your own I-statements, you will automatically hear everything you encounter in that way. But, here’s a word of advice from someone who did get stuck here for a while – this is just the High Priestess portion. This is the understanding, this is the brilliance. If we do not also bring in the Hierophant, we can get stuck making excuses for others and ourselves, enabling behaviour that is not supportive of a growing relationship under a misguided sense of empathy and not dealing with or changing anything. It is a powerful place to start, yes, but knowing why we all dance the way we do doesn’t change the dance. All we are talking about today is the brilliance part, the rest we can talk about on another occasion. The other pitfall to this awareness is going around diagnosing each other – it is always an I-Statement, especially when we think it isn’t, so it’ll always come back to us, it just may be a little more difficult to see that sometimes.
I’d like to wrap this up by framing what we have looked at today in the context of the current astrology, which I mentioned at the beginning. I hope it is not too much of a stretch to see the High Priestess, shadow and deeper unconscious aspects as relating to Pluto and Scorpionic themes. The brilliance of course, comes from the full moon in Leo. How do we show up in our true brilliance if we are still externalising everything and taking it all personally? Especially when the nodes are in Aries and Libra and themes around relationships and how we show up are very much part of the collective path we tread at this time. Our brilliance is the very thing that we take into our shadow for that deep self-reflection, but it is also how we show up more completely and authentically in the outer world. This is the realm of the Hierophant, and with a new moon in Aquarius coming up, squaring Uranus in Taurus, that will be a talk for next time.
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