A Soul Perspective On Dignity, Triggers & the Nervous System Response While Living in the Aquarian Age
As I’ve been moving through the last couple weeks, the post eclipse integration phase, I’ve been led to a pondering on the word dignity. What does it mean for a person to have dignity? Can someone really lose their dignity? Can anyone else take away our dignity?
It is my understanding and felt sense that we are moving through the early developmental stages of the Aquarian age. This is a new level of consciousness steeped in the archetypal energies of Aquarius, and it is emerging in our awareness as a collective humanity. With Aquarius, our collective consciousness is being drawn to themes of equality, finding our unique geniuses in order to serve the collective of humanity, finding our communities/Soul groups to create innovative changes that will evolve the collective of humanity, technological advancement, a bird’s eye view of our human experience, and a complete questioning of all the structures/values/ideologies we’ve been brought into, welcoming whatever level of chaos or disruption that is required to breakdown the old that no longer serves our collective evolutionary experience.
Whether you know about the archetype of Aquarius or the idea of being in the Aquarian age, I’m sure this doesn’t surprise you to read. We’re questioning the role of gender, exploring and experimenting how it’s serving humanity. We’re grappling with the residue of the power dynamics that created the world we live in today, exploring and experimenting what a societal structure can look like when we’re not unconsciously basing it off of a power-over value system. We have the technological advancement of the internet where it’s now the norm for each and every person on the planet to feel like there’s a place for them to express their unique genius and connect with likeminded people. And at this point, we’re experiencing disruption within all of our known ways of being as we go to this bird’s eye view exploration and experimentation of what it means to be a human, to live collectively on this planet and share resources, and to govern ourselves and one another.
The ages in astrology are an archetypal representation of the evolution of the consciousness of humanity. What themes are we exploring on this earth? What energies & experiences are we being asked to embody in our current life experience? So, here we all are, being asked to explore and embody the archetypal energies of Aquarius.
So why did the contemplation of dignity come to me? Well, it’s important to say that in this current stage of shifting into deeper levels of embodiment of the Aquarian age, we have Pluto, the god of the underworld, activating the first degrees of Aquarius. Pluto represents the unconscious or aspects of our own or the collective shadow, our understanding and use of power, and our psychic abilities - our ability to know something or connect with wisdom that is beyond the rational mind. So with Pluto bringing his energies of deep excavation, profound truths coming to light that were previously blocked from conscious awareness, our psychic capacities coming online, and a beckoning call to reckon with our relationship with power, meeting the Aquarian age energies of exploration of the old and experimentation into the new, I was led into my own direct experience of what this means for me. This is how the contemplation and experimentation of the felt sense of dignity came to and through me.
Through my personal healing journey, doing shadow work - bringing the light of awareness to deeply wounded places within me to re-integrate the life force energy within them back into the whole of my being, and learning & embodying the language of astrology, I have been able to re-establish a conscious relationship and embodiment of my Soul. This, I believe, will be a lifetime process. And, the level I have been able to show up for the mystical journey of returning to the mystical aspect of my self that is Soul, has already brought an incomprehensible amount of clarity, alignment, and deep satisfaction to my life.
Notice, I didn’t say it was easy, but I will always say it’s worth it. There is no better feeling than coming home.
Which is a perfect bridge leading closer to this exploration of dignity…I shared about my deepened connection and embodiment of my Soul because that process has led me to a profound, clear, and undeniable gnowing (gnosis knowing, whole body/whole being knowing) that the way the Aquarian Age is channeling through my Soul so that I may play a role in this collective evolution of consciousness is through the realm of relationship and family.
So while some people are deeply called to emerge in the political system as a voice that represents archetypal energies of Aquarius - breaking down the old outdated structures to bring new & innovative forms, or other people are called to embody the exploration of what it means to carry both masculine & feminine energy within and how this might expand the way we view the role of gender, and other people are driven to explore this realm from the other side - defending the sacredness of sexuality and how it emanates in physical form as the two polar yet synergistic opposites of male and female, and on and on and on, my Soul has come to explore and experiment the evolution of consciousness of the Aquarian age in relationship and family. We’re all being called somewhere…wherever you feel a burning fire, a driving passion to pour your life force energy into, whether you’re acting on it or not, this is the realm your Soul came to embody the evolution of humanity at this time.
So, in the recent weeks of massive upheaval of this eclipse, which was particularly focused on relationship with self and other and the sacred balance between the two, I was in a massive moment of the opportunity to expand into the higher level of consciousness my Soul came here to embody. I was being deeply challenged by the state my partner was in, challenged to go into the learned, programmed, and passed down response of self-defense. I was feeling his heart being closed down to me, to life, and it is a pain so deep to feel your beloved othering you. My ancestral and cultural response would be to intensely defend myself against the pain body fencing he was directing towards me.
However, the evolved response I have been experiencing my Soul asking of me is one of surrender. Not of giving up, not of being a victim, but of so fully accepting the current experience of life expressing before me and within me that I accept and embody it no matter how challenging it is. For me, to sit in that place of seeing my beloved closed off from his heart, to feel myself being othered by him, feels like death. It feels like death, so my nervous system does its natural and healthy response of activating. Of course, because our nervous systems learn from those who cared for us when we were young, we don’t always have the most relevant or supportive responses. My nervous system, healthy as it is to activate when responding to stress, has learned to respond in fight. So for me to be in an experience that feels like death, to feel my nervous system activating in its organic nature, and to instead choose the expanded consciousness and wisdom of my Soul inviting me to the opposite response - surrender, was tremendously powerful. I felt myself 100% alive, fully present. It took tremendous effort to stay with all the parts speaking - the pain, the instinct to a fight response, the fear, and the small quiet voice beckoning me into a new way - beckoning me to trust her, to trust that embodying her more would bring the love and connection I was so longing for in that moment.
Because of my devotion to my healing journey, to learning the language of my Soul and practicing the tools that support that learning, I was able to stand in the fires of alchemy in that moment, to walk through the eye of the needle.
I stood before him as he was in a space of fear and closing off of the heart - an experience akin to death for me - and I stood there in surrender, in softness, in the fullness of my expressing heart in the reality of the experience I was in, being the love in the room.
It didn’t change the situation instantly, but something in me was forever changed. There was a moment after I showed up in surrender and was met with the resistance and othering where I felt that the inspiration I had had for the day was lost. That I could no longer feel that inspiration, access it, let alone continue to be led by it. There was a moment where the opposite end of the fight response tempted me - to collapse. To feel deflated of my sense of being, sense of connection with Soul and her guidance, to feel robbed of my dignity.
But as that moment sparked, offering itself as a well-traveled response I could easily fall into again, my Soul had enough space now to offer a more expanded response. I felt myself move through the spark of temptation into engrained ways and into a new response - I can still feel my inspiration. I can take the blockages to following this inspiration that have come towards me from the state my beloved is in and continue to forge forward, trusting that my Soul will continue to create a magnificent experience for me. My Soul is not limited by blockages…it is beyond space and time, it is animated by creation energy - life force energy - that continues to create eternally. So I chose to trust that still, small voice again because I could feel the life force energy there, the vitality, whereas the collapsed response felt deadened, stagnant.
This still, small voice - my Soul - led me to the grove of trees it had originally inspired me to venture to. Despite the odds - the heartbreak, the pain, the blockages - I arrived at the experience my inspiration was leading me to. And as soon as I arrived, as soon as I stepped onto the Earth leading me into this grove of trees as the birds sang lyrically, tears ushered their way out of my eyes and onto my cheeks. They weren’t tears of collapse, of defeat, but of arriving home. I heard my Soul. I listened to her. I trusted her, and she led me to a place, an energetic experience, that felt like coming home.
It was here in this magical place in nature where the understanding began to unfold. I felt met there by Fae spirits, the Little People who have guided me to and through my journey in Peru, the benevolent Spirits of the land, and my own circle of well Ancestors and benevolent Spirit Guides. I felt welcomed into the arms of a family I’ve never touched with my bare hands, but who have held me and guided me in ways my human family has never been able to, bless their human Souls.
Being in this container of immense love, a tangible sense of magical possibility, profound presencing, multidimensional wisdom, and belonging, I was guided through a deeper and more multidimensional understanding of what just unfolded.
This is where the word dignity really made itself known to me. Dignity, dignity, dignity…what does it mean to have dignity…
Through this process of opening up to Soul language and wisdom that is far beyond the rational mind, a simple enough understanding was brought through in metaphor via the word dignity to support my mind in understanding all that was unfolding.
I realized that what made this part of me want to go into a fight response, desperately fighting in defense of my dignity, was actually the underlying belief that somebody can take away my dignity by treating me as though I am not worthy of dignity.
And there was the breakthrough moment…I felt in every cell of my being that dignity is not something that can be taken away. Dignity, I came to recognize on every level of my being, is god-given, nobody can take it away.
“Dignity is the fully gnowing - knowing in the felt sense of your body and Soul - that you are a child of God, a being directly connected to Spirit, infinitely seen & held, an embodiment of the eternally creative life force energy of the universe that is love.
No matter what is being experienced in your external reality, no matter how a person is managing their energies and emotions in relation to your presence, no matter what experience of pain you may be having, you are dignified in your existence just for being alive.
This means, you are never cut off from love, you are never cut off from creative potential, and you are never abandoned to suffer alone.”
This led me to the most peaceful & empowering gnosis moment - I chose to incarnate into humanity at this time gnowing that humanity is as traumatized and distorted as it is. I chose this experience, and in it, I always have my dignity. Sometimes I am the one closing off my heart to my beloveds, other times I am the one experiencing the heart-closing of my beloveds. Yet, my dignity is unshakeable - that is, my experience of being a Divine creation of the universe - of being the embodiment of love and life in form, and how embodying this reality allows me to experience endless creative potential, awe no matter what experience or emotion is expressing, and the thread of inspiration that is my Soul’s tender and wise guidance.
When I remembered through gnosis that my dignity is god-given, that nothing and nobody can take it away, then it was a natural response to not collapse or go into the other extreme of fighting - I could just be in my dignity amidst the heartbreak, the heartbreak that stems from the felt experience of a violation of universal law - one heart closing to another.
When I returned home later, I was able to look at my partner not with fear (collapse) or rage (fight), but with the compassion of the Great Mother - like seeing your child in pain, giggling lightly at the silly confusion, and feeling immense heart energy for the experience of suffering they’re moving through. I could do this because I gnow what it feels like in my own being. I could do this because I already met myself with compassion for the suffering I was experiencing. I could do this because I gnow it means nothing on the measurement of my dignity. I could do this because I fully surrendered…I surrendered and allowed a wiser, more expansive aspect of myself to guide me back to love regardless of what my external reality was presenting.
While this experience was deeply personal and internal, its wisdom struck me as a powerful remedy for the current state of the collective of humanity.
I saw myself in the people who are showing up for the Soul-fire callings driving them to action, whether it be about gender or the environment or race. I saw how just as I am so acutely driven to this exploration and experimentation of evolving the level of consciousness in relationship and family, these people are doing the same thing in the realm they’ve been called here for. So when I look to these people and sometimes recognize what feels to me like an extreme - a fight response or a response with so much force behind it I feel it’s missing the wisdom of the middle/the eye of the needle - instead of judging and dismissing, I see myself when I am in the same moments. I see myself in all the moments I shut down my heart for fear of fully feeling the heartbreak in that moment and instead choose to fight. Or instead pour that massive amount of life force energy to push the focus in the opposite direction of that feeling. I recognize the precious human aspect of myself that does that, that just wants to experience peace and justice and love amongst humanity. I recognize the faultiness of our humanity in our brave attempts to embody these massive asks of the evolution of human consciousness while we continue to live in these old, deadened structures, narratives & roles.
It’s a time of great exploration and experimentation, can we be brave enough to fully surrender to the felt experience of heartbreak that’s been denied being felt for generations on generations? Can we be brave enough to have eternal amounts of compassion for ourselves and all our brothers and sisters in humanity in each of our direct experiences of exploration and experimentation? And from this place of surrender - which is keeping the heart open no matter how painful the experience, and of radiating compassion for self and other as precious children trying to do the seemingly impossible, can we then go out into our lives and the world, into the places our Soul-fires are calling us to bring evolution of consciousness?
Because I truly wonder how we will evolve our entire world, our entire reality, without the consciousness of the heart - surrender and compassion - being at the core.
It doesn’t mean you won’t disagree with people, it doesn’t mean you won’t be called to speak your Truth even when it differs from another’s, but it means you will do it from a place of dignity with your inherent Divinity which then breeds unity with all others…realizing they have that very same dignity you have. They are fighting the very same fight you are of evolving this collective human consciousness, they are coming at it the best way they know how, and they fault into extremes and self-defense and fear just like you do. Just like you do.
So, speak your truth, but do it from the multidimensional wisdom of your heart so that we may truly embody the love we are seeking to experience in the world.
What if there was nothing to protect yourself from?
What if you could just embody the love in the room when you see it’s being forgotten?
What if you could see yourself and all your fellow brothers and sisters on this planet as in the exploration and experimentation phase, often pendulum-swinging too far to the other side of fighting for something that’s been lost, and instead of othering them, recognize how and where in your own life you do the same thing?
What if you were able to look at yourself and your brothers and sisters with the compassion of the Great Mother, seeing the confusion and the fight and the suffering with immense love and a sense of lightness as much as a sense of purpose and call to action?
To me, fighting the good fight in the Aquarian Age means to truly come from your heart through embodying the power of surrendering to the felt experience, while holding compassion for all beings, at the same time that you speak your truth. It’s feeling the interconnectedness with all other beings and how they mirror reflect parts of you - even & especially those who you think are so different from you - while you embody your unique genius (speak your Truth) from a place of unconditional love for all life.
