What's in Your Orbit, Sunshine?
One of things I’m really thankful for in my life are great friends and their even greater ponderings. Like this piece by
on Puppy Meditations which sparks my own wonderings.This week, I’m boarding an American Bulldog named Hank.
Hank is very chill, and on the older side of life. He naps in between sleeps, and is really loving and low maintenance.
Having Hank around in my apartment this week is great; mostly because I know there’s an end to it.
The temporariness of it makes it special, and this made me wonder about the universe we create for ourselves, what we attract and what stays in orbit around us.
Orbits
Imagine yourself as a star, luminous, radiant and life-giving.
Because of your massive field, all sorts of things get pulled into your orbit - planets and their moons, astroids, the comings and goings of meteors.
So, what is already in your orbit today?
Likely, your family and your pets?
Perhaps your work and your efforts?
What lies in between the things - do you perceive it as void empty space or a plenum?
What is illuminated by you, and what’s hidden from you because it faces the other side?
Who and what features as a planet; worlds unto themselves? These may be friends or adult children who have their own lives.
Or, does everything revolve around you? These may be young kids or older parents or a sick relative who are dependent on you right now.
Is your system relatively established?
Or are asteroids and meteors crashing into one another as they figure out their place in this new space?
Are you a new star, bursting and bubbling and changing form, pulling in new things and friends from edges of your system?
Were things pretty steady until recently when a giant meteor showed up in your skies causing chaos?
This isn’t a visualization of what we wish to see, but rather, seeing the people, the efforts and activities in our life as the things that circle us.
Whether we love or detest them, they are in our orbit right now for some reason.
What if we didn’t push or pull at them and just for a little while, behold them right as they are in this second, suspended in space around us?
What if the thing we need to do the most when we are busy, tried and have so much going on, is non-doing?
What would that show us about our life and what’s in it?
Having Hank, the dog, in my orbit this week, is more like a comet through my galaxy. But just because he isn’t permanent in my life doesn’t mean it’s any less activating.
He came by once last year (a bit like a comet), and I was in a very different place back then. I remember being very panicked having him around other dogs (because he is a rescue), and I would pull at him constantly. I also didn’t allow him anywhere in my home aside from the living room as I didn’t want fur everywhere. I was constantly cleaning up and feeling rushed with his eating and walks and my work-day, and it was really tiring having him for the weekend.
This time though, he is sprawled out everywhere and neither of us are pulling at each other, not much anyway. I’ll be cleaning out fur from my bedsheets and couch cushions for weeks, and it’s kinda nice to see a relaxing of my controls and fears from last time. He’s a lot more relaxed compared to last time as well. We even do a little Yoga together!
The comparison seems small but it’s really grand, because it showed me where and how I can relax into the experience even more.
Another feature in my orbit this month is uncertainty.
I can feel change in coming, but I cannot see it. This is a bit like when something looks void or blank, but there is a lot happening there beyond natural sight – a loose and non-technical description of a plenum.
Sometimes things get pulled out of our orbit, even when we want it to stay.
This is one of those hard reminders that we are both magnetic and electric beings. When we focus so much on the lack of what has left, we disallow ourselves our grief and letting go process. As such, we sometimes don’t even notice what has come in.
This is like the fear of job loss and the sense of security we put on that.
Maybe we are meant to figure this out together with our family and move to a different country and have an adventure there.
Maybe we are meant to reconnect with that great contact and start to freelance. Maybe we cash out one of our accounts and just take some rest and reflection time before we figure out our next step.
Here is where we realize the connectivity of all that orbits us.
Certainly, our job is a celestial body and there is a track that it follows around us, but it isn’t separate from our sense of security orbit or the planetary bodies that make up our dreams, our desires and our families.
When something new enters our orbit, regardless of how long it stays for, or how long we want it to stay for, I like to think of it as getting a visitor from another corner of the galaxy.
We have to discern if the visitor is friendly or not sometimes; but mostly, we get to wonder at what else is out there, what may shoot through our galactic corner in the most surprising way, and what is shows us about our own radiant nature.