Weaving our way through this matrix

Monika Bravo
11 min readMay 26, 2022

ℕ𝕖𝕨 𝕞𝕠𝕠𝕟 𝕚𝕟 𝔾𝕖𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕚, 𝔾𝕒𝕥𝕖 𝟙𝟞: 𝕒 𝕤𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕗𝕦𝕝 𝕨𝕒𝕪 𝕠𝕗 𝕝𝕚𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘

Home is where the edge of the mountain meets the clouds, (near Bogota, Colombia)

Mom can recognize me with her heart, not with her mind:

So I thought I was speechless; with a lot of stirred emotions. Yet, here I am in an attempt to express how it feels. I spent about 10 days back home. Home was the place where I was born. Home was where I developed, and was conditioned into an emotional environment that with time I realized was not really nurturing me. Now that I know what is at stake in my life, and how I’m evolving towards integrating my inner and outer authority that stems from my own sense of responsibility, it was important to be there. I was both objectively observing my relationship to how I feel about that, and at the same time allowing the emotions to arise so I could feel them from the ‘now’ moment. I have to say that I’m speechless for now.

There were beautiful moments of reconnection that happened very organically, that were coming from my heart. When I saw my mother again (I hadn’t seen her in two and a half years) her eyes were sparkling when she saw me and that was a very emotional moment, and throughout the week I spent a lot of time with my her. I don’t think I ever spent so much time with together before because I used to want to run away from her; the feeling I had when I was growing up was that she was overpowering me, and I always felt her intensity was crushing me. I even sensed some competition between us, somehow. It was so big that we both couldn’t really be breathing the same air in the same room. I think that at the very end of this trip, it was like mutual admiration, it was recognition and admiration for two very powerful yet vulnerable souls that have chosen to be part of one another’s lives. And even though I always thought my mom didn’t care about (nurture) me, she did. And this was a big realization on this visit–she always did, she was always gentle and devoted. But in my imagination I had this idea that she was just always making me yield towards other’s needs. This time I could feel, and I don’t even know if I’m making it up, but I can even feel it right now, in her eyes and the touch of her skin, when she was holding my hand, that the love was always there, and she was always so devoted to us, her children, just so devoted… but life situations made her become the care provider, and I felt her love was mostly cold and absent of touch.

My father died quite young in their relationship. She was only ten years married when he died suddenly from a car accident, so she had to devote her time towards making sure we had what we needed, and that made her develop a part of herself that was more like the over-achiever. She was actually quite an interesting innovator, when I think about it, she did so many things that even now, to date, are quite innovative. But when I was growing up I just wanted her to be in a specific role that she was not, and I ended up resenting her way too much, because at the very end, this week, when I had the chance of being with her, and even with no words, I could actually feel the love.

I also did something related to structure, more about how to care for certain things that are inside of my body, which still frames my soul, which when we don’t take care of that framing, it may decay and not serve its purpose. I had to have some dental work done; teeth in the mouth serve a very important purpose in terms of being nurtured, or if you’re trying to get food to be nutritional. You need your teeth to bite and to process, to chew food to the point that when it goes through your body it’s mashed up to be able to provide to the body what it needs in terms of water, vitamins, nutrients, protein, what’s needed to be used/transformed inside of the body. Because of the pandemic I had not been able to go to a good dentist. I chose to have the dental work done in Colombia, and I ended up going to a dentist that I think works more for children, and she was so gentle, so nurturing caring, that I actually embraced the fact that I had to go in every day for a whole week for many hours have some reparations done. I thought it was interesting to see that there’s also a caring side of myself about not letting the structures in my life decay, and if they’re going to decay, or end, they must do so organically rather than because I’m not caring enough. So I’m still processing that.

I had the chance to see my goddaughter, she’s 12 years old right now, and the way we related right now was so amazing and beautiful. She’s aware of many psychological processes and she asked me more than once if I could read her astrological chart, which I did, and we had a very deep reading. She opened up to me as a quasi-adult expressing her fears and her perceptions about her life, and now that she’s coming of age she’s going to have a different relationship to her emotional needs. It was just so beautiful the way we reconnected from the heart.

I’ve been really thinking a lot about the Cancer moon, 4th house archetype, and how does it feel now? I have been visiting mom, relating to familiar environments with a new perspective–really in my case, the ruler of that house is Taurus, so it is a mix between taking care of survival needs both emotionally/in a nurturing way and practically. The Cancer archetype in my chart is ruling my 6th house, that will be more like the Virgo/Mercury house, so it’s really about having a lot of discernment about how I’m going to take care of my body, my frame, my structure, with daily habits, and not just because it is going to be very important for my own survival, not just physically, but emotionally. And my Moon is in the 9th house in Scorpio, there’s this intensity about how I’m always seeking to go deeper into the understanding of how in this lifetime, having my North Node in Cancer in the 5th house, how creative can I become so I can really embrace my line of destiny into opening my heart and not putting so much attention into what is status and acknowledgment. This is a biggie for me right now.

One thing that I’ve seen that’s been different in me is that when I am no longer relating to something, what I used to do before is I would look at it with judgment and say, “Well, I no longer want to do this because this and this and this is bad.” Now what I’m doing is just observing that I’m no longer interested in that road, but I don’t have to completely destroy the way I feel towards it; I allow it because there are other circumstances or people or situations that are being expressed with that energy, but that doesn’t mean that I have to, and I don’t have to destroy them with judgment. I used to reject things by pushing them away and labeling them like “That’s bad, it’s poopoo.” But now I just observe that I’m no longer relating to them with the same frequency, and I almost become grateful that that energy’s no longer there for me, as meaningful as it was, because I’m focused on a different kind of energy right now. So that has been quite interesting, because it was a tendency I had in order to reframe my reality and give myself the permission to be feeling a specific way. By accepting where I am at a specific moment, I can surrender and embrace what is- as opposed to push away or belittle the experience as a way to validate myself.

The place where I come from, in Colombia, people are extremely polarized, I’m looking at all these places where I still have the polarization, where I have made some kind of separation inside of myself, and instead of swinging between these two poles, what I do right now is just stay for a time in the unbalanced situation until i find some sort of integration and synthesis, and then I go, “Oh! Right now, this is the energy I need.” This is something that I’ve seen that was very different this time around because I remember I had been completely taken by the polarization, and I would just do that.

Something else I wanted to talk about was the sense of melancholy, it makes me feel very uncomfortable, but there was this melancholy throughout the week, and the weather was not helping…the mountains were so beautiful, but it was always raining, and even the smell of rain had this melancholy from when I was growing up. Then yesterday suddenly the sun came up and I was like, “Oh, no! Instead of being super happy, this was making me feel even more melancholy!!” So it was interesting to see how I was relating to it. I said, three days ago, how much I don’t like Bogota, and just started accepting it, saying “I actually don’t like this place” as opposed to trying to find positive things. Even saying things like “I don’t like this place” was very liberating for me.

I saw a few friends, dear friends, old friends and new friends– it was beautiful, I felt very embraced. But what I’m noticing is I’m no longer relying on their approval, nor relying on their relationship with me, for a sense of presence or identity. What I think has been happening is my identity, the way I used to identify myself emotionally, has shifted to another level, and I see that my co-dependency is no longer there, so there’s this space that was created, and it’s empty. Not empty as in there’s nothing, but empty as it is wholesome, in a Zen kind of way, the emptiness that is everything, the place that allows me to be presencing at the very moment what needs to be expressed is emerging at specific moments without having to be defined and constrained. It’s a very fluid and shapeless sensation because the fluidity makes it adaptable to any specific moment.

THE ART OF LIFE:

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” -Hindi proverb.

The energy feels new, as if there was a part of our lives that had been wiped out- correct! erased — gone — poof! And now what? new moon in Gemini Gate 16:

“Even a journey of thousand miles begins with a single step”. On May 30th, the new moon falls in Gate 16.4 : There is power in the practice of a skill, until it becomes a habit or part of your life- enthusiasm during the process of learning and executing the skills, leads to mastery. Do recognize and sincerely support the talents of others. The Earth in Gate — [Hexagram] 9.4: Ground yourselves by getting focused with dedication and a disciplined attention to details. Mars and Jupiter meet in Gate 25 briefly on May 27th, the light of one, all-embracing, unconditional love emanates. All living things deserve love in equal measure… can that be applied everywhere and with everyone? mmm…

At the end of the week, we’re going to have the New Moon in Gemini, and there was a conjunction we are halfway to retrograde season because Mercury just moved conjunct the Sun on the 21st, so it’s going backwards, re-entering Taurus, and it’s going to go back to the same degree of the lunar eclipse of 19th November 2021, that initiated the season of Scorpio / Taurus axis. It’s interesting because Mercury is in its own sign in Gemini and just wants to be very curious about everything, and it is going back, as if it forgot something in Taurus, and it needs to be grounded again, some ideas need be revised, and how deep the roots can be grounded so that when it goes back to Gemini and becomes direct it can show so many different possibilities and directions where the mind can evolve.

Another very important aspect is this week, Mars ends a two year cycle through the Zodiac and on May 23rd is crossing the 0 degrees of Aries, its own sign. I was looking back at June 2020 when it last entered Aries and it was a 6 month period where Mars went retrograde in its own sign. I have Mars natally 21 degrees of Aries, so it was a very meaningful moment for me — it was the moment when I decided in a dream that I was going to move away from New York and I was going to come to Miami Beach to live, in the middle of the pandemic. That gave me a very important energy to initiate a new way of living; now I can officially say, “Yes, I live in Miami Beach!” It’s just so beautiful to look back and see how much I was able to gather and how I stayed in a state of presence throughout these two years, and I went deeper inside of myself, I educated myself in many different practices, especially emotional, somatic, and psychological practices that I can now say have enriched my life in ways I never could have imagined pre-pandemic.

Jupiter also crossed the zero degree of Aries a few weeks ago, and I feel very energetic in that side of my chart, 2nd house, and I’m still re-evaluating what my essential needs are, in relationship to my own emotional needs and what is the new way to act upon them, with objectivity, but at the same time with heart. So it’s a very interesting way of having the heart be coherent but at the same time have my mind be objective, and confront what no longer really serves so I can just go and become even more curious about new ways of relating to this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful planet. I was a little bit scared, I have to say, when I realized I had bought the ticket the week of the eclipse, the lunar eclipse in my own Full Moon sign of Scorpio, so I was like, “Oh, this is gonna be big!” And it was big, but Thank G•d for astrology, Thank G•d for somatic practice, Thank G•d for meditation, Thank G•d for opening my heart.

During the lunar eclipse, transiting Saturn on my 1st house squared the lunar nodes: the South Node of the moon is on my 10th house, the North Node in my 4th house- activating the way my Persona (moon on my MC) had been “acting” for the last 9/18 years. (all that dental work is a Saturn thing).

What a powerful transit this is, kicking everyone with a sense of responsibility or accentuating the lack of accountability, I spent part of my therapy session last night addressing how inner and outer authority are my main focus now.

-How do “I relate to my new emotional identity?”

One thing that was quite unique, I now know that I am on my own and not alone. That there is still a bit of “mmm, I got to take care of XYZ, otherwise none will be accountable, just me, not from the Pisces, “I am a victim” mode, but from a Saturn “you got this” perspective, -a caring supporting new feature.

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Monika Bravo

Multi-disciplinary Artist - Evolutionary_Astrology- - Human being - https://linktr.ee/monikabravo I embody my own perspective