I recently pulled this card from my favorite Wildwood Tarot deck: “The Wanderer” which signifies a leap of faith – a male/female figure crossing the canyon on a rainbow. Beautiful and so perfect.
So today is Leap Day. It happens only once every four years. An extra gift, an opportunity perhaps to do something unexpected, to take a leap of faith.
Here is the symbolism of the number four:
Four: The symbolic meaning of number Four deals with stability and invokes the grounded nature of all things. Consider the four seasons, four directions, four elements all these amazingly powerful essences wrapped up in the nice square package of Four. Fours represent solidity, calmness, and home. A recurrence of Four in your life may signify the need to get back to your roots, center yourself, or even “plant” yourself. Fours also indicate a need for persistence and endurance.
My personal number is three. Being born on the 9th, I am three threes. Here is the symbolism of the number three:
Three: The spiritual meaning of number Three deals with magic, intuition, fecundity, and advantage. The number Three invokes expression, versatility, and pure joy of creativity. Three is also a time identifier as it represents Past, Present and Future. Consecutive Threes in your life may symbolize the need to express yourself creatively, or consider your present directional path in relation to past events and future goals. Three may also represent promising new adventures, and assurance of cooperation from others whom you may require help. Three typically symbolizes reward and success in most undertakings.
I’m not usually big on numbers, but when they keep showing up, I feel I’m meant to take a closer look. Unlike any other Leap Day that I’ve experienced before, I’m seeing this one as holding a lot of importance for me. It’s sort of a secret, bonus day that’s an opportunity to do something really significant before it slips into the void for another four years. It’s also symbolic of a chance to take a leap of faith into something that perhaps has been an edge.
What’s my edge? What’s yours?
Well, I have many to explore, but today, the one I’m leaping off of is this very blog itself.
I started this blog exactly six months ago and since then have written 170 posts, which is basically one a day (there were days when I posted nothing, and days when I posted three times). This is officially my 171st post, which added up is the number 9 (three threes), so it’s time to move past some fear and into my intuition and faith.
Writing for me is a drug. It’s a high. It’s also a way to know myself. To expand, explore, reflect, re-group. It’s catharsis. It’s union. It’s how I baptize myself. Washing, purifying. I’ve been writing non-stop since I picked up a pen as a little girl, and this blog has been a perfect venue to share all my nonsense.
But even with all that exploration and growth and positive feedback, this blog, oddly enough, in ways…at least lately…cripples me from fully knowing myself.
Why?
Because, lately, every time something comes in (poems, prose, a pretty picture), I immediately feel an urgency to throw it back out onto this blog, into the universe, out to you. I write it down right away and post it immediately. I don’t wait until the next day, or one hour, I don’t even wait five minutes.
I don’t like to contain things. I’d rather give it all away. Or have someone give it to me. Or never take it in to begin with. If I get too ‘full,’ I get nervous. Like I’m taking too much, being too greedy, getting too big, growing too large, becoming the truth of who I am, which is as big as I want it to be, in fact there is no limit to it.
And that scares the shit out of me.
So I write frantically and ‘throw’ it out (away) to you, my dear reader. I write so fast and furiously that I don’t even remember my last post. I’m a whirling dervish. Pulling it in, spinning it right back out. I don’t want to contain it, I’d rather you take it. Please take it from me. Soak it up, and take it off my hands, so I don’t have to hold it – not even for five minutes.
This is different from becoming the ‘hollow log’ or ‘empty vessel’ that is discussed in spiritual practice – an emptying of excess to open to spirit, to the divine. I open to the divine constantly, but I don’t open to myself, or to the divine that resides in me (which of course is in all of us).
I am sneaky about this, and I am outing myself. Because this writing only serves if it serves me first and foremost, instead of functioning to allow myself to escape the work I’m meant to do with myself. (ie, to not continually throw myself away under the guise of ‘sharing’ my writing). A wise person once said that we can only ever truly serve from the overflow. This blog can only serve if I am already full, and at this exact moment in time, I’m petrified to fill up even half way. To take even one sweet, slow sip of myself. What would happen if I embraced my fullness and stepped into my truest dream for my life? Maybe if I give it away, I’ll never have to know.
Early on I was taught to stay small, or that if I get what I want, it will all disappear. So in spite of all I do, I know I still hold back – a lot. Funny I should inhabit a body that is five foot, nine inches – and guess what – I’m always slouched over, and I’m rarely even in my body. I’m still unlearning these childhood ‘lessons.’
The blog also becomes a distraction. The writing. The editing. The photographing. The posting. The checking of stats and comments. Guess what I’m not doing when I’m doing those things? Right! I’m not truly being with myself. Sitting with my fullness. I want you, the reader to see who I am, so I don’t have to look too closely. While you are looking at me, I’m already off writing the next post so that I don’t have to look in my own mirror, let alone contain what I see.
So on this ‘extra’ day that only shows up once every four years, I’m going to take a leap of faith, and abstain from posting – anything – on this blog for 33 days. I will have to contain everything, the fullness of myself. Even if I want to post, I will not.
Yes, I will write. I will write my ass off. And when I do, I will show it to no one. I will offer myself to myself. Be my own lover. Be slow and gentle – or wild – with myself. No one will read it, no one will absorb it, no one will know it but me. Beautiful meals will be enjoyed without the need to take pictures or write about them. Love poems will come, and be written down, though you will not read them. I will meld with the flowers, the earth, the canyon, but those adventures will not be documented. I will hold them in myself.
I will (finally) be brave enough to fertilize my own garden with my own heart and sit quietly, anonymously, with myself (and some tea) and enjoy my own company and my own fruit and blooms and even (I’m sure) quite a few weeds that will need to be addressed along the way. I will do all these things without the option to ‘release’ the experience the moment I have it through sharing on this blog – I will have to experience my own fullness, for myself.
This will be a big challenge for me. Because it’s easy for me to post twice a day and to give it all away. That is literally no problem for me. It’s the containing myself that will be a challenge, which is exactly why I need to do it.
My next post will appear on or after April 1st, April Fool’s Day, the day my grandmother would have turned 99. Hopefully I’ll emerge with some self humor and perhaps the greatest gift I could give myself – a true, quiet, anonymous witness of this one and only mysterious, gorgeous, temporal life of mine.
See you in the springtime…
(by the way, I just glanced at the word count of this post: 1,333)
Numerology info from: http://www.whats-your-sign.com
Holding my own mirror, and holding onto whatever I find.
heading home...
