On Letting the Spirits Come Through You…
Step one, banish self doubt. And open this email (invitations inside).
(Enjoy the Voice Over, subscribers! There are a few little extra nuggets of fun in there for you).
On Letting the Spirits Come Through You…
I did a performance recently at an art show called Boil, Toil, and Trouble, and for various reasons – before it happened – I panicked.
You see, the curators found out about my work and invited me to participate only a few weeks before the show opened. Some of my favorite artists were in the show (Wangechi Mutu, Lita Albuquerque, Bruce Nauman). I didn’t have much time, so I “knew” I was really going to have to bust my ass to make it good.
I remember feeling a sense of urgency and self doubt as the date of the show approached and I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do.
Speaking with a friend of mine – an artist – I said, “I need to go into the studio and work really hard and figure this out.”
But they said, “Maybe not. Maybe you don’t need work hard to figure anything out. Maybe you can just go in to the studio and trust what comes through you.”
When they said that, my Tower collapsed.
I was like, “What??? Trust what comes through me??”
Trust that I am enough? That my connections to the realm of inspiration are enough?
Huh??
As anyone with ADHD (and/or dyslexia or any other form of neurodivergence) is probably all too aware, trusting what comes through us is not our go-to solution. For most of us, our early life was characterized by people telling us that what came through us was wrong, scrambled, too much, bizarre, unworthy, crazy, etc.
Trusting ourselves wasn’t on the table.
The coping mechanism I developed (as I wrote about last week) was to work harder. To do extra research, to spend extra time, to perpetually say “not good enough. This has to be better”. And grind on.
My creative conjurings were acts that required a blood sacrifice. My blood. My sweat. My tears. My peace of mind. My nights off.
It’s ironic of course because when you don’t trust what comes through you, when you worry it won’t be enough, your muse clamps up, your creativity shuts down.
Only a trickle can come out of a clamped up muse. In your thirst, you worry there won’t be enough inspiration to go around, so you clamp harder. It’s a cycle.
But the more we practice believing that only our rigidity and control will get us results, the more our habits become a superhighway to self-doubt.
But this year is my Death Card year. It’s a time for making radical changes. I’m breaking habits and exploding patterns. Sending what’s no longer working to the compost heap. And I’m so excited to share my process with you…
(If you’d like to find out about your own Card of the Year and how you can work with it, book an appointment with me here).
…the medicine of the Death Card is this: rather than trying to control everything, greet change with curiosity. The life force that pervades all things knows more than you do what needs to be composted, and what needs to come through, in order for new life to flourish.
As it turned out, when I went into the studio and let the inspiration pour through me, the idea that I received was about inspiration itself, and how it is a substance (awen) that moves through the work of artists and mystics. We can go and drink from these waters of inspiration. As long as we keep the flow of inspiration moving, as long as we share it, these rivers of inspiration have the power renew the world.
It’s important that YOU find a way to let what needs to come through you come through.
What happens when you greet your creativity, your intuition, your spiritual practice, your relationships, or your business with curiosity rather than control?
Maybe it would be fun? Maybe it would be easy? Maybe you’d get a better result than you think.
Friends, greeting messages from your inner world with curiosity is the theme of Pisces season. Now’s the perfect time to experiment with listening to your inner voice. (Paid subscribers got a whole PDF about this last week).
The Virgo Full Moon guides us to use the elixir of inspiration that wells up when we trust our inner voice, and form it into something beautiful, which we can use to serve the world.
More about this coming up during my Full Moon ritual next Tuesday evening (see below). But in the meantime…
Trust Yo’self!
Yours with love,
Amanda
P.S. I’ve got big news coming up re: paid subscriptions. Aries season is going to be so exciting!! Stay tuned.
Full Moon in Virgo Ritual
Trust What’s Coming Through You
Mark your calendars, subscribers. The Full Moon in Virgo is coming up on Tuesday at 6pm PST. At our ritual we will be:
Practicing a meditation to access our intuition and trust what is coming through this Moon cycle
Crafting and developing the messages we get into rituals we can use throughout the month
Learning about the 12th House / 6th House access in astrology and how it affects your creativity and daily routines
Developing our trance techniques and using them to support our creative process
Defining the CRAFT of witchcraft
Getting an embodied sense of the Pisces / Virgo dyad
When: Tuesday 7 March, 2023 at 6pm PST — those who can’t attend in person will receive the replay.
Zoom link will be sent out an hour before the ritual. All paid* subscribers welcome to attend.
* Paid subscribers make my work possible, thank you dear ones! For those of you who are experiencing financial difficulties, we want you to able to join us. We have scholarships available for you if you email us at guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com
L.A. Event: Lit Angels
Lit Angels is a new online literary journal edited by Francesca Lia Block that carefully curates short fiction, novel excerpts, memoir excerpts, essays and poetry, by new and established writers.
Come out to Culver City’s Village Well Bookstore this Saturday, March 4th, 5pm for readings from Lit Angels Volume #3, “STAR F*CKER: ASTROLOGY, TAROT & MAGICK.”
All the readings will be on magic and witchcraft. Come for the magic, stay for the books! Hope to see you there.
When: Saturday March 4th at 5pm
Where: Village Well Bookstore, 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City CA, 90232 USA
Dear Subscribers,
I’m so excited to hear how things have been going for you after our Live Chat last Friday. If you’ll recall, we spoke of ways to build creative and/or witched habits into our daily lives…