What does this photo of Nate Ruess have to do with the Full Moon in Virgo meditation, other than the fact that he was singing under the February Full Moon at Universal Studios and he’s a Pisces? Funny that you should ask. First, a little story about manifesting “cool things,” and then I’ll take you through a meditation to get you off your butt, onto your feet, and moving rather than letting life move you along to something not as FUN for you.
For some time now, I’ve not felt I could take off a few days from work, regardless of how much free overtime I’ve put in. Both my daughters have actually moved a couple of times without me being able to take a long weekend and see their new homes (guilt, guilt, guilt), even after one was in a near tragedy (more guilt, more guilt, and even more guilt). Things changed a few months ago and my new boss welcomes my attempt to re-balance my work-home life. I’ve spent the last two months catching up on long-overdue house repairs and rather important doctors’ appointments, relaunching my publishing career, and taking side trips/weekend adventures. I announced in late December that I would visit my daughters on the weekend of 20 February and we’d have some adventure, though I really had nothing planned at the time but to see their homes and take them to dinner. After a few weeks, I added “Let’s go down to Universal Studios and see Harry Potter World.”
Harry Potter World’s Dragon puffs fireAs usual, I was busy with work and life up until late the night before I hit the road and still wasn’t sure what cool adventures we’d have but left it open to whatever cool things might manifest. On the long road trip, I decided to restart my monthly blog post on Full Moon meditations, something that was quite popular when I stopped several years ago because my attention had turned so heavily to my day job. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got, but the Sun had just passed into Pisces, my birth sign, a few hours before and the ideas were flowing easily. In fact, I wrote and recorded an entire meditation in the car, which I’ll provide below.
I visited both girls’ homes and then we headed to Orlando to Universal Studios, home of Harry Potter World. We got there later than expected and figured we’d spend a few hours and head somewhere else as part of our weekend adventures. My younger daughter, a powerful Law of Attraction manifester, commented that she’d started the day with wondering what unexpected cool things would unfold during our day. She was talking about this around the time my eyes trained on a poster of musical acts performing at the Universal Studios Mardi Gras, and I squinted at the name on that day’s 20 February date: Nate Ruess. It didn’t hit me at first who this was…I wasn’t expecting it. I knew the name but somehow didn’t connect it with this particular venue. Then I thought, Hey, wait a minute…Nate who sings the most played song in my iTunes library? That Nate. My daughters had never known his name but quickly realized we were talking about the lead singer of their favorite band, The Format, which broke up before they got to see the band in concert, and seeing the band in concert–including hearing “Dog Problems” in concert–was on their bucket list. How do you hear your favorite song sung by the lead singer when the band’s no longer intact? This. This is how.
We waited five hours–two hours camped out in front of the stage–to hear Nate’s old hits and the songs from his new album, Grand Romantic. There’s probably no other singer that all three of us wanted so badly to see for different reasons, and the three of us had an absolute blast, all from something cool and unexpected that unfolded in the course of our day, something none of us anticipated. We sort of stumbled upon something that made a memorable and fantastic time for the three of us and checked off some boxes on all our bucket lists. It was almost as if something magical had been plucked out of the air and made real, something wonderful that we could not have dreamed to ask for that day, though we’d all dreamed it at some point in the past and were willing to let it come to us…or to Orlando in this case. We were spent when the night was done, but all that pent up energy was gone, with only the full moon overhead left in its place.
Deeply romantic Pisces songs from Nate RuessNow remember that story because it sets up the atmosphere of this full moon perfectly. First, a few basics.
February Full Moon Details
The February Full Moon, aka the Full Snow Moon but sometimes called the Hunger Moon, occurs in Virgo on 22 February at 12:19 PM Central time here in the Florida Panhandle. This Full Moon, I feel, is all about…unexpected magic as the moon waxes, if we are willing to let it in, but perhaps some missed landings if we don’t allow ourselves to be open enough to jump at an opportunity when the door opens. There’s a little bit of Wheel of Fortune Tarot card in this Full Moon, as if everything is whirling and shifting until for a moment everything lines up and something magical happens if we are willing to take advantage of it when it presents itself.
For example, we could have ignored the Nate Ruess concert and opted for a trip to Ikea instead or over to Disney instead of waiting five hours, but by being willing to jump when the opportunity presented itself, we had a magical night. It was all a choice. What good is a bucket list if you don’t take advantage when the opportunity so oddly manifests?
Virgo, an earth sign, is generally practical, perfectionist, analytical, and—sometimes—woundingly critical. This particular full moon will herald some release of conflict or tension, I think, because there are some strong influences around it, in particular the Uranus-Pluto (upsets, regeneration, blowing things apart) square and a conjunction of Sun and Neptune (mysticism, uncertainty, magic, spirituality, deception). I had already written and performed my meditation the day before the concert, so I was able to release of lot of pent up anger, frustration, and conflict by taking advantage of the magical moment when it appeared. I could just as easily have passed up the moment and returned home just as frustrated as when I left and released some of that tension on the people I work with. Something was going to be breaking wide open amid my stress for everything I did to be 100% perfect, if I didn’t find a positive way to release it.
If you cannot find a positive way to release the tension that’s built up in recent weeks or months, then you could be looking at a destructive result. If you don’t take action to get to a better place, the world will whisk you right on along a less positive path. Your choice.
Side note: If you like working with Sabian symbols in meditation, the symbol for 3 Virgo is “black and white children play together happily.” There’s a feeling of innocence and idealism to that symbol.
Full Moon Meditation
For those of you who remember the meditations I’ve written before, you know how this works. I share this unraveling of images and you’re welcome to use what makes sense to you. You may wait and read the meditation for the first time when you’re ready to meditate on this scenario or you may prefer to read it, mull it over, and use it as the basis for your own meditation. It does not have to be done at the Full Moon and is appropriate for any time you feel led to use it.
You are first aware of the darkness, the pitch blackness all around you. And then you are aware of the gentle rocking, swaying back and forth. The darkness is familiar. Sometimes it seems you’ve spent half your life here, whether with your eyes closed in sleep or your eyes closed in fear. There is comfort in it, even though you know not what is around you.
There is comfort, too, in the rocking, a gentle bumping along, swaying from side to side as though still in the womb, still protected, not yet knowing the fears and hardships and hungers of the outside world.
Your eyes are open now but the darkness is no less dark, whether eyes are open or closed. You blink, sense the things around you. It’s not cold here. If anything, it is warmer, air stagnant. Sweat and stiffness rule your body as though you have been hunkered down for a long, long time.
Gradually, with your eyes open, you are able to distinguish the difference between the darkness a few moments ago and the darkness now, the difference between eyes closed and eyes open, other than the simple awareness that your eyes are indeed open. There is still darkness, but there is now awareness and knowledge in that awareness.
Thin shafts of light pierce the darkness. Long rays of sunlight outside, then occasionally a ray of sunshine reaching across the expanse of darkness, blinding you and then passing along.
You are moving, moving forward, but not under your own command. You are being whisked along in darkness, being rocked back and forth, lulling you as though you could fall back asleep, to close your eyes, to be comfortable in the darkness, knowing nothing.
You turn your head slowly to the right, back to center, to the left, and back to center again. You realize you are in a long, dark room, moving, with your back against the wall, rocking from side to side. You are seated, legs in front of you at an angle that is just stable enough to keep you somewhat in balance, not that you can’t be rocked over to either side but you are able to adjust, to stay upright, at least most of the time.
You lay each hand on the floor beside you, near each hip. Bare hands on bare floor. You feel the wood underneath, the grit under your palms. This room is not hot, but it is stuffy. The air does not feel fresh as you breathe it in, yet this is where you have spent your darkness. Your hands on the floor beside you steady you. You find your balance. Even in the darkness, you find your balance.
Your eyes adjust. The long shafts of light piercing the walls here and there, coming and going, illuminates enough of this small dark room that you get a sense of its structure, how closed in and constricting it is. You lean forward, away from the stiff, straight wall behind you, rolling your shoulders, twisting your back, enjoying the stretch after such a long hibernation.
Using your hands as braces against the floor, you twist your body onto your knees. The room rocks too unsteadily for you to stand and find your balance so you crawl on bare knees across the grit and bare wood of the floor, toward the tallest and brightest of the slats of light. You reach out in the darkness, find the cold steel walls, colder than this room is warm, and you find a metal handle against what must be a door against the darkness and the light, a door not so tight that the shafts of light cannot on occasion pierce the darkness.
You find the latch with both hands, pull yourself to standing position, holding your balance against the steady rocking and clacking that soothes and lulls you, calls you back to sleep. You suck in a deep breath and with every ounce of your strength, you shove the door to the left, opening it a little at a time, letting more light in, blinding you enough that you close your eyes against it momentarily, feel the breeze on your face, and push once more. The door is not open wide but enough that you could fit a shoulder through if you wanted. You hang on, white-knuckled, to the metal frame on either side of the door, and blink into the windy sunlight.
A train, you realize. A train.
You have been inside a train car, in the dark, sleeping, moving forward but not of your own power, going where you’re taken.
Your eyes adjust to the bright light. You push your nose out of the doorway just enough to sniff the air, the freshness of it, springtime, flowers, rain…smoke? You smell smoke.
As the train moves along a long slow curve, you look to your left and see the engine in the far distance. You look to the right and see the rear of the train, the tracks where you’ve been. In the farthest distance to the right, you see more smoke, dark and heavy, the smoke of the town from which you’ve come, smoke of your own handiwork. This is smoke you walked away from, destruction you were a part of whether you wanted to be or not, but you could not see the smoke and the debris you left behind until this vantage point. These are the structures of your life that you built but burned down.
There is no going back. There are regrets that you think about and those that you don’t, but whether or not you remember those regrets and honor them, nothing from the past is changed. Rubble is still rubble. Ash is still ash. Even the beautiful palaces you blow-torched because the walls were rotten inside and you had no other choice. All still regrettable but nothing that can be done now except moving forward.
You turn again to the left, looking toward the front of the train, and in the far, far distance, you see that it falls off its tracks and into a chasm at the end of your life. You have the choice of staying on the train, closing your eyes and sleeping, letting the gentle forward motion lull you back into the darkness of sleep, or you can step out in the sunlight, flinging yourself off the train. You grab hold of the steel frame of the door, lean out in the fresh air, smoke clearing now.
You cannot go back, and the future has a nothingness of its own. You can stay on this train, with your eyes closed and asleep or simply sitting in the dark, aware that there is light outside but with your back against the wall and breathing stagnant air, or you can make a choice. Your choice is that space between past and future, in the space of NOW.
You study the landscape before you, the rise and fall of hills, the rivers beneath the train, the rolling pastures, the dark and mossy-laden woods, the wide open grasslands, the orchards, the meadows of flowers. You note the speed of the train, the rush of the wind, the speeding landscape beneath your feet. Some landings will be more treacherous, others an easy roll on lush, green grass. Some will be bruised knees. Others a wet splash. Some a brick wall.
You study the terrain, calculate the right moment, and then with everything you are, you fling yourself out the door.
Suggestion for the Full Moon and Beyond
Watch for opportunities to release built up tension in a constructive way. Take action to take advantage of those opportunities before they pass. If you don’t, expect a release to come anyway, in a less desirable form, and for you to see the imperfections rather than the idealistic, mystical interpretation that is available if you grab it first. The doors and opportunity open and close quickly. Jump through while you have the chance. You have more control over your life than you realize, but it’s a choice to take action in your life to improve it, and if not action, then a choice to change how you perceived your surroundings so that a more positive situation can come to you.
Key Takeaway: Take the opportunity when it presents itself.
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