Swimming in the quintessence of Pisces
Recently I began experimenting with images created by an AI bot. In fact, most of the images you have seen included in this email since last fall have been generated via text suggestions. It has been a fun tool for me to play with and yet as I have been using it again and again I have found myself coming up against the limits of my imagination. It has caused me to profoundly recognize just how much that part of me has atrophied in so very many ways.
Frankly, it was shocking at the beginning. I was taken aback by how hard it was for me to stretch beyond my imaginal limits. Most people see me, and I certainly see myself, as a highly creative person. One of the most profound things that this has revealed to me is just how much this part of me had indeed withered away from lack of use….and I could also see, within reason, how much this was reflected across my life. It echoed across how I was moving through life, and what risks I was willing to take. It demonstrated just how fixed I had become in my vision of my life, what I believed was possible, and ultimately what I believed, both consciously and unconsciously was allowed to do.
In other words wherever we go, there we are.
There is a story of a man who decided to clean the bowl for his goldfish. He filled his bathtub with water and carefully placed his pet in there thinking “Boy, is he going to have a fun time swimming around in all this space as I clean his bowl.” He returned 10 minutes later only to find that the goldfish was swimming in small circles that mimicked the exact size of his bowl. The goldfish’s imagination didn’t go beyond the invisible boundaries of what he viewed as his comfortable home. It represented the limits of his world.
We often know that we see only a limited perspective of others, we can’t see what lies within their heart, but more importantly, we fail to recognize that unknowingly we see only a very limited view of ourselves. Our conscious imagination, our creativity about ourselves, and our possibilities are very much within that goldfish bowl. Yet as Walt Whitman said in his epic masterpiece Song of Myself we contain multitudes: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
We are in Pisces season; the sign of the fish, which is considered to be the last sign of the zodiac just prior to a new beginning within the eternal circle of animals, proceeding the rebirth of the vernal equinox and ingress into Aries.
We make so many assumptions about ourselves, and it takes a commitment to even begin to rediscover ourselves when we have been living a particular narrative, a particular story for any amount of time. That’s why being an empty nester is so very hard or recovering after a death, breakup, or divorce. The life we had imagined for ourselves is no longer viable, and this space between who we were and whom we are becoming is complex and messy. Most often we aren’t comfortable with the very messiness that is part and parcel of this space between ourselves. We want to be onto the next thing, to essentially have it immediately spin from us fully formed. We are impatient. But where we really are is early within the gestational process. Something new has been seeded and at most has just begun to spout.
In our impatience, and our inability to tolerate the unknown, we often miss the possibility that this womb-like space is a profound opportunity to reimagine our lives. To create something that is utterly new rather than reiterating our patterns from the past, essentially retreading the same familiar ground.
Through this weekend we are still in the gestational New Moon phase of the month that was ushered in during Monday's New Moon in Pisces.
Pisces is one of three water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces) and the only one of the creatures represented that doesn’t have a shell. To swim in the quintessence of Pisces is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to become attuned to something larger than our small habitual comfortable selves and ultimately merge with the vision just beyond the story of our current self. It requires letting go of our fear and taking a leap of faith. It is to fall in love with ourselves and our possibilities with the innocence of a child.
Trust the seeds that are growing within, even though they haven’t taken a clear form yet within your imagination. Don’t try to force them into form prematurely, when we create spaciousness within we are inviting something new to enter our lives.
