“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
Encircling: lunar gatherings
These lunar gatherings are based on the principle of the circle and are aimed at bringing participants into deeper connection with the cycles of nature, our inner worlds and to our environment through meditation, shadow work and ritual in a group setting.
I live and work in deep reverence for the circle, as a symbol but also as a way to understand, organize and be in better relationship with the material and spiritual worlds.
My ritual circles are an opportunity to reawaken connection to divine lunar consciousness. There is a deep intelligence offered by working with lunar cycles. When we are in flow with nature and her cycles, we are as if at “home.”
In a collective setting, we employ a combination of meditation, pranayama, inner guide journeying, journaling & constructive rest to strengthen connection to our inner (lunar) world and to our hidden resources so that our outer (solar) world becomes a better reflection of our highest calling in this incarnation.
These gatherings are intimate, with limited spaces so that I can work more closely with those present. While in times before the pandemic these gatherings were held in my home, now we meet on Zoom.
Why the full Moon
Though we live in a solar culture, chiefly observing time based on our relationship to the mighty Sun, we have a deep and abiding connection to the Moon, presiding as she does over the ebb and flow of waters, conception, agricultural cycles and every kind of coming into being. The Moon - Earth's closest neighbor, her satellite - symbolizes our feminine nature (possessed of by all genders) and rules our emotional tides, our intimate, ancestral and familial connections and more broadly our emotional intelligence. Lunar consciousness speaks to our intuitive faculties, to the merits of the dream world and the gift of nocturnal visions. Lunar power, when healthily expressed, emerges as creativity and fecundity, in the qualities of intuitive insight, nurturance and healthy interpersonal connections.
This moment we are living in is centered heavily in Reason and rationality. But that is not the all of who we are and so we suffer from being out of balance with our whole nature. We are experiential beings as much as we are thinking beings. When we are closed off to the subjective dimension of life, our innate connection to the divine, to source, to our deepest inner knowing feels intangible and we can lose sight of what this earthly incarnation is asking of us. By working with the Moon and her cycles, we engage a different kind of intelligence, one that is more holistic than the intellect. Connecting with lunar flow becomes then a way to reawaken our intrinsic faculties and experience a return to a more truly centered way of being.
It has long been understood that the universe of which we are a part is comprised of energy vibrating at different frequencies. Our ancestors comprehended that shifts in electromagnetic frequencies brought about during new and full Moon lunations have a particularly strong impact upon the behavior of sentient beings. Honoring the cycles of the Moon with ritual and in community is a practice dating back to antiquity, rooted in land and nature-based traditions across the globe. And gathering in circles is considered to be one of the oldest forms of social interaction.
Before my family left the Indian subcontinent, the custom was to gather whole families at the Gurdwara (Sikh house of the guru) on full Moon evenings (Pooranmashi) and recite hymns all through the night and into the morning when they would share in hot prashad, a sweet pudding prepared in the temple kitchen and made of wheat, ghee, and sugar, almost in equal parts. Pooranmashi is a time to reflect on the fullness of being, on the fullness of life and in remembrance of the Supreme Being who fills and permeates the objects of all creation. In equivalent practices, my Hindu and Buddhist cousins observe the Purnima (full Moon) as an auspicious time for new beginnings.
We tend in Western cultural traditions to give more value to the New Moon phase. What we have come to call New Moon refers to an astronomical occurrence. In energy terms, however, until we see luna again in the sky, we are in Dark Moon which is the best time in the lunar calendar to be quiet, still, introspective and meditative in service of waiting for Luna's reemergence and the start of a new cycle. My preference for working in ritual with full Moon is due to the particular quality of energy available to us at this time. During Full Moon, our emotional dimension is brought into stark relief. Whatever feeling state we are experiencing is enhanced. If we're happy, the energy of happiness is emphasized. If we're sad, the energy of sadness becomes emphasized. We can use the energies of full Moon towards achieving mastery over our emotional state and to enhance those qualities that best serve our highest self.
Future gatherings
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What to bring to the circle
A willingness to entertain the notion that just as winter gives way to spring there is no beginning and no end to the circle.
An appreciation for the notion that we each make up the circle and that we carry the circle within us.
A respect for other encirclers, where they are coming from and what they are bringing to the circle.
A willingness to make space for the nonlinear, the unseen and the intangible, for the symbolic mind
An openness to viewing your own life and the world at large through a non dual lens, beyond simplistic binaries.
A note about giving and sliding scales
Thank you to all those who have supported and shown value for my work in all kinds of ways. As some of you know, until recently, I did not make a living from this work (or my art). I still don't really make a living wage from either but I continue to give with my entire being to all of it. Just as I endeavor to honor exchanges of energy in more sanctioned and conventional arenas of this 3D existence, I feel strongly that my contributions should be appropriately and adequately valued - even while acknowledging that this economic system we are navigating is problematic and unsustainable. This ask, I have experienced, is controversial and difficult for some (many, actually) who I surmise are either accustomed to free labour from women (and women of colour in particular) or just don't feel like this work has value in the way that other work has value.
I'm not here to argue with anyone or change anyone's mind about this. I persist in defining for myself what value looks and feels like while at the same time, consciously creating space for as many as possible to avail of my work, regardless of financial means. It is why, for the purpose of these circles, I ask those with means to offer at the high end of the scale so that I can continue to offer the lower rate to those who, in these times, can only offer that much. The measure here - and in all places where a sliding scale is offered - is less how you’re feeling about the work on a given day or what you think the work should be valued at and more what your financial means truly allow. The aim of inclusion asks for everyone’s involvement, participation, integrity and honesty. So please use your discretion wisely and respectfully. Through this process, I have full trust that those who are meant to - and need to - work with me, will.