Without The Wheel of the Year I would be confused right now.
It all started in February.
In February, I got clear that the theme of my year would be “letting go”.
Since then I’ve been like Marie Kondo on four shots of espresso, cleaning, clearing, releasing, and making space with the force of a hurricane.
Once Tantrika season began, the clearing simply moved outside.
I spend my time pulling invasive vines out of the woods, getting unhealthy trees removed, burning brush piles.
I prune, I weed, I burn, I compost.
So, my wanting seems inverted. My desires look backward.
Because I want space.
I want to clear.
What does the Tantrika in her bower of abundance say about this?
She says, desire and acquisition are not synonymous, babe.
She points a finger dripping with honey to someone sitting across from her and says, ask her.
Directly across from the Tantrika is her sister, The Wisdom Keeper. (Refer to that image at the bottom of this email)
The season opposite Beltane (right now) is Samhain (or “Halloween”), the season of compost and letting go.
Sitting in a patch of pumpkins surrounded by withered vines sparking in the late autumn frost is The Wisdom Keeper.
She explains, The desire to release is just as potent as the desire to attain. It is still desire. It is the other half of desire.”
There’s something else that teaches us this.
Our breath.
Breath is a built-in, automatic function of acquiring and releasing.
I’m curious, have you ever hyperventilated?
It’s when you’ve taken in and taken in and taken in so much air, so that all you want in the world is to let it go.
It sucks, right?
Our current culture is one of endless “getting”.
We are trained to acquire as a badge of success.
So it’s worth feeling that desire is not one big inhalation, like imagining the pain of hyperventilation.
Desire includes the exhalation, the release.
I’m not talking about keeping things you don’t want out. It’s not a defense, not a moat or a shield.
I’m talking about looking at what you have then declaring, I want to release this.
I want to let this go.
I want to be free of this.
See? It’s different than “I don’t want…”
It’s a cycle, like the breath. I want to inhale, I want to exhale.
Never I want air, I don’t want air.
Wanting can be a means of acquiring and a means of release.
Both.
What do you want to be free of?
Where do you want space?
These are desires too. Just as important as the intake.
What could effortlessly ride out of your life the way a breath leaves your body?
What could you exhale for your community, your culture?
Name what needs to go.
Then desire it’s release.
love & good timing,
kv
