How Are You Really Feeling?

Welcome to the Thunder Moon

This June 28th new moon is the beginning of the cycle called the buck moon or the thunder moon. This cycle honors the time of year when young male deer shed their antlers and start to grow new ones. It’s also a celebration of the thunder of the summer storm season.

I don’t know about you, but both of these feel very appropriate right now.

I’m MORE than ready to shed the old and start growing the new in many ways. And I’m fully aware of the rumble of thunder in the sky as the electrical discharge of movement and change rebalances itself through the mechanisms of both lightning and thunder.

So, How Are You Feeling Right Now?

I'm asking on more than just a superficial level. I'm curious what sensations you might be experiencing? What emotions could be pulsing in your awareness?

Do you even remember how to check in with your feelings??

If I may humbly suggest, take a moment after you read this sentence and take a deep breath. Set your phone down, or take your hands off the keyboard.

Close your eyes, and follow the sensation of your breath from your nose down into your lungs. Soften the muscles of your jaw, and the muscles holding your shoulders tight in their sockets. Take the pace of your racing thoughts from an unconsciously frantic run down to a stroll - even if just for a moment.

And ask yourself quietly inside, how do I feel right now?

I know it’s a little heady, but if you’re drawing a blank on identifying your emotional state, Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions might give you a good sense of what is possible.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

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While what we THINK does matter, we are living in a world where THOUGHTS have taken over and seem to be running amuck. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of letting our beta state of awareness, with its rapid cycling of electrical impulses terrorizing our existence.

And yet, we’re still supposed to keep calm and carry on with our day-to-day tasks and responsibilities.

The False Separation of Matter and Spirit Cannot Last

We live in a world where we’ve been playing with our technology and our ideas for a good long while now. Like a teenager with a set of borrowed keys to our parents’ car, we’ve been tempted by the evident powers of the mind - without fully understanding the ramifications of the associated responsibilities.

We’ve been tricked into believing in the supremacy of thoughts, ideas, and the mind. And in this rush of excitement and the feeling of power, we’ve been taught not only to disregard the wisdom of our body and our intuition but we’ve been taught to think that these things don’t matter much at all.

Logic trumps emotion. Action is what matters. And the bold and strong will win.

But we are NOT one-dimensional creatures. We are not solely run by logic and facts. We are not governed by our minds alone. And there is more to life than what’s happening on our screens and in our heads.

As living beings and as humans, we are a magical and mysterious alchemical combination of spirit and matter that cannot be compartmentalized into neat little boxes.

To put it bluntly, what we FEEL… matters!

Whether it’s a sensation of temperature or touch on our skins, or how well we feel after we eat a meal - sensation matters.

How we’re feeling in the depths of our souls and the emotions we experience in our guts - these matter. Tremendously!

We are multidimensional beings that have bodies and emotions and thoughts and a relational interdependence with the world all around us. We are connected to other people. We are connected to the plants and animals from which we source our nutrition. We are connected to the air we breathe and the water that we drink.

So everything that is going on in the world right now? It’s going to affect us. As it should!

We are being faced with the opportunity to choose how we want to BE in relation to all of the shifting and changing of the world.

And let’s face it, the vitals of our systems aren’t looking so great right now.

Is This the End?

The economy seems to be tanking. The biosphere seems to be teetering on the edge of catastrophic collapse - especially if you’re paying close attention to all the warning signs. And the conversations about social justice are multiplying in both number and intensity, worldwide.

Will our children even get a real chance to grow up and find purpose and meaning in their lives? Or are they doomed to go down with us in a fiery apocalypse of dramatic incompetence, spiritual blindness, and seething hateful violence?

From the teenage gunmen that dominate the media cycles to the fearful brutality of dominance and control that is emanating from the highest courts in the land - how did we get so disconnected from ourselves? How did we conceive of a society that is so numbed to the feelings and emotions of its members that in the face of a crazy breakdown, we’re all just supposed to find the personal willpower to keep calm and carry on?

How did we possibly buy the story that logic trumps emotion, violence is an effective means of control, and that real power comes from the accumulation of little pieces of paper called money?

How did we imagine a society that is driven and nourished by the creation, consumption, and discarding of physical goods as the driving purpose of life?

Are we doomed?

Or is this what we might euphemistically call, an “opportunity for collective growth?”

Where Can We Affect Real Change?

Take a step back from the world of the mind. Take a moment to unplug from your media feeds and your digital devices. Take your earbuds out of your ears, and unplug the smart speaker. For just a moment.

You know that feeling of endless space that happens when the power cuts off and suddenly you’re thrown offline with no access to the internet, and you start to wonder how long the food in your fridge might last without electricity? That moment where silence beats loudly on your overstimulated eardrums in a kind of reverse noise?

Take a moment to voluntarily plug into that space.

If you can, walk outside and plant your bare feet onto a patch of earth.

Plug back into the reality that is always there, but is so often ignored.

Ask yourself, “How am I feeling right now?” and spend some time soaking in your emotions and your physical sensations.

You might not know how you feel at this moment. You might feel a bit numb to the parts of yourself that aren’t in the rapid oscillations of the alert, beta states of conscious awareness.

But learning to reconnect to how you’re actually FEELING is a vital first step to reconnecting spirit and matter within your own self.

Yes, We Are Going to Need More Than a Single Solution

I’m not suggesting that by feeling all the feels and sensations we’re going to instantly solve all the problems the world faces.?

But I AM suggesting that this is an important first step to a fractal process of reconnecting spirit and matter. And that this process of reconnection is a VITAL part of healing what collectively ails us.

I AM suggesting that the reconciliation of the physical material world with the myriad states of consciousness we can experience as living beings on this planet at this moment, might be a vital step we can take towards healing the collective trauma and chaos that are overwhelming our news feeds as well as our constant inner dialogue.

I AM suggesting that as a first step, it’s really important to start remembering how to check in with how each of us are FEELING. And that perhaps the hours of our lives spent in pursuit of this thing we call MONEY could be parsed out in a more effective and more balanced way.

Because we’re not going to be able to address our collective challenges if we’re all walking around in our heads while disregarding the importance of our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

It’s just not going to happen.

And herein lays the opportunity for growth!

So, Here’s Your Question -

I’d like to know how you’re feeling today. If you’re willing to drop a comment on this post, let me know if you’re feeling sad or happy, scared or inspired. Tell me what it feels like to be in your body today. Tell me about the physical sensations you might be experiencing at this moment.

I believe that reconnecting with our full selves is a vital part of bringing the collective society back into balance with itself. And the good news is - you don’t have to sign up for any fancy seminars or take any fancy classes to help you start the journey.

All you need is a moment to be still, the intention to check in with the parts of yourself you usually ignore, and someone who’s willing and eager to get a real answer to the most mundane of questions.

So how are you feeling?

Happy diving!