August 1st, 2024
When the moon is full, and the fullness of our tide is pulled deep into her body, the shore is left for us to explore in clear light. What will you find that you discarded off the side of the moving vessel of your heart and mind? What did you hope the sea would swallow up? What has the sea spit back at you to call your own, to make medicine with?
I am sitting out on the tenth-floor balcony in a resort in Puerto Vallarta. It is around 6 am. The balcony where I write sweeps around in a half circle offering views of the pacific and both the mountains along the coast to the south and north. In the south the moon is sitting right on the edge of the mountain with a little cloud topped on its head like a beret. In the time it takes for me to write this line, the moon disappears behind the slope, leaving in its place a poof of a light. With one breath I missed my chance to take its picture. There is also thunder out in the distance over the ocean while spontaneous lightning electrifies the horizon with long lines of golden light. In contrast the sea is as still as glass. It begs to be disturbed. I am a jumper. I always want to leap off high things. I long to take off from the balcony like a bird, fly smooth and fast, then dive deep into the gray-blue stillness to merge with the ocean, moving it into a labyrinth of ripples that includes me. It amazes me that a creature can fly, then dive, then swim deep in the water. While in Iceland on a whale tour, we visited an island of Puffins. We learned that Puffins mate for life and if their mate does not show up at the designated breeding spot in a timely fashion, they chose a little side fling to mate with for the season. If, however, their mate happens to show up late, they promptly kick their side fling out of the nest and resume their relationship with their first and only love. Puffins can also dive down an impressive 200 feet to hunt, hold over ten fish in their mouth at the same time while hunting, and fly over 25,000 miles during their migration period.
But puffins are mostly solitary and spend most of their time floating on the surface of the sea. They only go to land to breed. They are adept at catching currents on both water and wind. By surrendering and resting and even sleeping on the helms of these elements. They are capable of easily traveling over 25,000 miles, trusting that they will be cared for and carried by nature back to the very spot to rendezvous with their first and only love. There is something to this we can learn from. In the amazing podcast On Being with Krista Tippet, Krista interviews Janine Benyus and Azita Ardakani on Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity.” During the interview, these three wordsmiths inspired me to call up the transcripts of the interview so I could slow down, re-read and capture the vocabulary they used that gave words and meaning to only feelings I previously had. One word they used was biomimicry. Janine Benyus states, “Nature solves problems and performs what appear to us as miracles in every second, all around: running on sunlight, fitting form to function, recycling everything, relentlessly, creating conditions conducive to life.” Biomimicry studies how nature solves problems so that we can solve our problems more elegantly and organically. It is “the conscious emulation of life’s genius.” Does that land with you? Isn’t that so good? Janine Benyus proposes, “What in the natural world has already solved this problem? How can we try to emulate that organism or that ecosystem and hopefully come up with something that helps us live here more gracefully.” (I have included the link so you may enjoy this for yourself. Conversations like this will never happen with AI. Only humans can converse and keep you on the edge of your seat and this gives me great hope for how we are evolving. Here is the link for more.)
Nothing holds mores biomimicry hope, more genius or helps us solve problems better than the moon.
The moon calls us out to sit in its mysterious and luminous light. The moon affects us on such a subtle level that it is hard to study. We know if we sit in the sun too long, we can burn or if we go without the sun too long we can deficient in vitamins and minerals. Without the sun we have no food, no life on the earth. But what does this moon do to us and why does it still only exist as important only in the realm of the mystical? The moon after all is the sun reflected toward us at night.
On a technical level the moon stabilizing the earth. It holds the earth gracefully in its gravitational field. Without the moon the earth would tilt randomly, and we would have no seasons and just extremes in temperature with the north and south poles at times facing the equator. The earth holds us perfectly in a place where life can exist, and we can interpret and thrive in the sun rather than burn or freeze in extremes of ice and fire. Without the moon, our water would be everywhere instead of predictably lapping at our shores. Our climate, though changing, is still more or less stable compared to other planets. The moon also protects us from asteroids and meteors by pulling them toward with its own gravitational field it as they get closer to the earth. The moon protects us and holds us steady.
Metaphysically the moon helps us connect our subconscious to our conscious. It allows us to feel deeper and contemplate our reactions to people and events. It helps to illuminate the aspects of ourselves that we keep in the shadows. In the Celtic Runes, Othal is the essence of the moon and translates to property, meaning that we have an inner sanctuary that no one can penetrate, an inner sacred grove, a place that is ours. The moon brings us deep. The moon helps us to make big decisions and organize ourselves from within. If we look to how nature responds to the moon, we can learn a lot. Basically, the moon affects nature in three ways: time, tides, and light. The spawning of brain coral on the great barrier reef during October and November, shortly after the full moon, is so spectacular it can be seen from space. Without a healthy coral reef our seas would suffer, and our fish would go extinct. My father, a master scuba diver, went to witness this once and used weights to hold him down on the ocean floor to view this phenomenon during a night dive under the moonlight. What he witnessed moved him to tears. He said, “It is strange to cry in water while lying at the bottom of the ocean.” From the ocean floor, the spawning coral luminescent in moonlight mimics the solar system, reflecting light like millions of stars. Moonlight also offers light for the nocturnal world to hunt. Seventy percent of all animals are nocturnal and are essential to our carbon food chain. The moon is essential to helping them hunt, forage, and thrive. Dung beetles rely on moonlight and starlight to roll their dung balls in straight lines to navigate. So do sailors. Imagine taking a ball that is eighty times larger than you and rolling it in a straight line. Scientists have tried to mimic this with much smaller balls and can only go in circles. In particular, the Scarab dung beetles are considered holy and are found over the heart of ancient Egyptian mummies and in the art found on the walls of the Pyramids, indicating their metaphysical power to transform and decompose the “shit in life” and turn it into sustenance. This powerful talisman is often given as a gift to people when they are going through deep personal transformational work.
On our path to regulating the powerful urges we have toward our inner evolution, it is the light we most often seek to guide us through the dark, unsure places. Who are we when the light of our full personality is tucked away, and we are left with the manure of our day? How do we talk ourselves through a long sleepless night and roll back to sleep? Can we find the goodness left in the waste of our life after the tower crumbles and death comes to take what we love most? It is the moon who shows up with hope for us in the dark night of the soul. It is the moon that helps us in the nocturnal world of our spiraling feelings, and it is the moon that holds the tides of our extreme love so we can be gentle and constant on the shores of our most important relationships.
