Taurus New Moon Musings
Oooooh Taurus, how I love thee and how you challenge me. I find this season really, relentlessly brings me into my body and into my feelings. It forces me to slow down, be intentional, really pay attention and have to apply my values to my lived experience.
Taurus being ruled by Venus has me thinking (and experiencing) a lotttt the dissonance between what I feel, what I think, and what I value. For me, Venus is about how our values work to make our lives beautiful on all levels and allow us to connect authentically with the things, people, and ideas that we care about. Very beauty in the eye of the beholder but like “beauty in the eye of the beholders inherent beliefs” you feel me?
So this has all had me reflecting - especially as someone who dated a Taurus for 4 years, I think I’ve been able to observe and experience a lot of this energy through that lens and what it can offer me especially as someone who really doesn’t naturally love feeling in my body and with the past mercury retrograde also in Taurus really felt like there was sometimes sooooo much dissonance with beliefs and values that didn’t yet have experiential hold in my reality and how to move through that. I have some questions I’ve been pondering and thought y’all might enjoy as well.
Q's & Journal Prompts:
what ARE my values?
what purpose do my values serve in my life?
are my values cultivated from a mind space, body space, or spirit space? Perhaps an intersection?
what is my relationship to what I value?
do I value things that “think” good but perhaps don’t “feel” good? What is the contrast/tension/dissonance there?
how do I put my values into practice through my actions?
how does what I value make my life/experience/relationships more beautiful/full/connected/true?
what are the things I find most beautiful in my life? Whether it’s aesthetically, emotionally, etc. Make a list of the beautiful things.
where have I been challenged in my values lately?
are there any values or beliefs I’ve had to renegotiate lately to fit real life experiences or circumstances?
are my values different in theory vs lived experience?
what is it that I do when what I value and what I feel or experience aren’t in harmony?
I think values are interesting because so largely they are conceptual. For example, I really value being able to have deep meaningful relationships with people in my life and express that love unhindered. I want this for the people I’m in relationships with as well (or the person, but like people at large in the history of my life) and was super confronted this past week about what that actually looked like actionably! I think part of this that is tricky is that we are human, and when we are feeling things and become disregulated our pre-frontal cortex literally shuts the fuck off and it kind of doesn’t matter what we value or believe in - inherently we have this built in desire and mechanism to protect us from what we feel is a threat even if it doesn’t think or align with our beliefs as a threat.
And this can be such a mind fuck - for me it was experiencing intense jealousy about something that I personally experience and display in my own friendships but hadn’t really been confronted with from a partner before and tbh I was acting like a fucking asshole. And with that came a whole host of very visceral feelings like anger, shame, and guilt. So part of my value process was aligned to this understanding that sometimes hurting in life is inevitable - we literally cannot STOP pain from happening all the time… but we are wired for healing. And the hurting vs healing scale is something I value - how can I focus on the healing instead of preventing the hurting.
This doesn’t mean I’m just out here willy-nilly doing whatever the fuck I want because hurting is inevitable. It just means that I recognize being human is incredibly nuanced and our felt experience in the body might be soooo fucking different than the mental and thought out experience of the mind. Although my values were at odds with my emotions, I was still able to show up in other values like humility, communication, and accountability to talk about this and express my needs and experience without having to make my partner responsible for me being activated by something - especially when it felt soooo out of character for both of us. And literally he was like “babe I know you and I know this is fear talking when you’re acting like that, so lets find a solution to what this problem actually is so that we can both do better next time” and wow. was that ever healing! That conversation from a grounded place was aligned with my values and also taught me about what I need to do/communicate when I’m having overwhelming feelings.
I think what I’m trying to say here is that aligning our actions with our lived experiences is never going to be perfect and isn’t always going to be available to us. Sometimes it’s how we show up after the fact is way more powerful than trying to be perfect in the moment - it can actually create suppression, which is what I experienced when I pretended I wasn’t having feelings because I “didn’t agree with them” lol like okay Forest, your feelings are here to tell you what you need they don’t really care if you agree with them or not. This is something I really struggle with - not “agreeing” with my feelings. What does that even mean? For me it’s when I’m having an emotional experience that contrasts my so carefully cultivated values and POV. and sometimes tells me that what I am thinking about something may not actually be the same as what I’m needing in something - which is okay. I can be open to a variety of beliefs and objectively accept certain things and also know that isn’t what I personally need to feel safe!
And wouldn’t you know it, for the first time in FOREVER I was so sick these past few weeks and I’m not a doctor but I would bet good real money that it’s because I was suppressing feelings that needed to be felt and explored and talked about instead of shaming them into submission. Which is so scary and humbling and really makes me also think about the hierarchy in which my values exist, and that above peace is health, and at what point do I have to risk or trade portions of my values for others? Do I risk the illusion of peace within myself and my relationship for my health? Or do I sacrifice what I assume is my peace to actually show up in authenticity, in communication, and actually perhaps find genuine peace by learning my partner is willing to hear me and talk to me and hold me even when I feel like I’m being a jerk or navigating something that doesn’t ~align~. And here’s a thing I’ve learned too - the truth doesn’t give a fuck about our perception of alignment. It cares about being expressed authentically, adequately, and without bullshit.
A Reading:
Surrender / Altar / Smoke Rx / North Star Rx
Sometimes we really have to surrender our grip on control, on being the most cultivated and poised version of ourselves and deeply trust the lessons that are available in front of us. This means being willing to believe that the worst is NOT happening, that perhaps things are not out to get us and there is actually a simple and sweet lesson in really showing up in bravery in the present moment instead of projecting into future fears or past unknowns. The Altar is overall a place of reverence - a conversation can be an altar, an understanding can be an altar, a relationship can be an altar, a lesson can be an altar. How can we cultivate humility and reverence for the altars of the lessons in front of us? It’s sooo easy for the stories of the mind to create friction against our fears and worries - because it want’s to protect us! But sometimes in the act of protecting us it can hurt us or obscure us. It can fill us with smoke, it can create heat and anxiety and inflammation where there really doesn’t need to be. And mostly this is because we’re trying to find clarity, we’re trying to ignite something so we can see what is happening but we have to sometimes be careful about what it is we’re burning in order to do that, and if there is another source of light. Something I had to keep returning to is “as I am feeling this, where does this feeling come from? and what comes from it?” which is to say, was it coming from a mind and a story I was telling myself? Was there any origin at all? When I was actually not ruminating and faced with the truth of not only what I believe and have evidence of, but the meat of the situation itself what was I experiencing? For me, my inner north star or compass is peace. Where do I feel peace? Where do I feel safe? With who do I feel these things? With who is this exacerbated by? Can I access that north star if I’m still allowing myself to be filled with smoke? For me, opening the window and airing things out comes from conversation. It comes from surrendering to what it is I really need help with or clarity with and asking for help in the places and with the people I have evidence of making me feel safe even when what I’m doing may feel scary. Surrender gives us the notion that it’s so passive but I think it’s genuinely something that takes so much energy and courage to initiate - maybe a place that’s more worth of our energy than blowing the smoke.