love is a moment
As usual, love has been on my mind. I’ve been thinking about what it means to love in the present moment—how to not love without future ambition or with the buildup of past resentment, but how to love exactly in the moment you are in: seeing the person in front of you as they are now, letting the moment slow down, holding the wonder of the day. How to love and let change, and be present for that change enough to receive someone as they are, to not only see them for all of their past selves or what they could be in the future, but exactly as they are now. When I’m able to love like this I feel like time slows down, a kind of presence I long for.
There’s a song I really love called ME2U by Lou Val, and part of the hook goes ‘god is a woman/ god is a woman/ love is a moment/ love is a moment.’
I love this lyric so much. Love is a moment, a collection of beautiful fleeting moments that we get to spend together, with the world, with ourselves, with the divine. Letting each moment open into the next moment, letting each moment carry you as far as it can, and then seeing what is beyond the edge of that.
A few days ago in my tarot reading I pulled the Five of Air, which is a card I historically have a hard time with. The fives can be hard for me because they usually indicate some kind of strife or conflict, and as a conflict avoidant bish I get scared! But I’ve also been trying to understand the fives as a moment to think about what wounds need tending to, and what might be underlying some of those wounds.
The suit of air is typically related to the mind, intellect, and consciousness. It corresponds to the Swords and to the Spades. My family has always praised intellect and the mind, and I have also, often at the expense of my own body. In the last few years I’ve really been sitting with the double edged sword of that: how beautiful the mind and intellect can be, but how, when unchecked, it can turn on itself. For me, that’s often shown up in the ways of perfectionism, mental entrapment, and also relying too much on logic at the expense of the body memory, intuition, and the unseen.
A message that I associate deeply with the Five of Air is the idea of the cost on being so insistent on winning, on being so insistent on being right that it comes at the expense of the connection. And for the shortsightedness of winning in a moment at the expense of the larger relationship.
A card that I also pulled in my oracle deck the same reading was Amaroo, which comes from the First People of Australia and translates to ‘the beautiful place’. I’m not Indigenous Asutralian, so I only learned about this concept through my oracle deck and don’t have the full nuances of it. But in my understanding, it is about a concept of paradise being a place where each individual person and being’s songline is unique and upheld, all threading through the universe in harmony. The idea is that each one of us has a unique songline that threads our paths through the worlds, and with that, a unique purpose and perspective that is built shifting and built to hold all the nuances of each of us.
During my reading, I thought a lot about how Amaroo feels like an antidote to what I typically associate with the Five of Air. How important it is to honor our unique truths, perspectives, and songlines, even when they are in seeming conflict with each other. How that honoring allows for space, for possibility, and for us to move closer towards a beautiful place. Where, inherent in the Five of Air is the idea of the guards coming out, the swords being drawn, and the cost when the battle is over, even if one emerges victorious.
To me, I see these cards as having oppositional tensions in their approach to understanding of conflict. Whereas the Five Of Air warns of the pitfalls of individualism, self, and one’s own truth at the expense of the relationship, Amaroo encourages us to think of collective uplifting and honoring of many truths, of many uniqueness’s, and the patience and increased empathy to sit with all of them.
A mentor of mine also expressed to me once that sometimes people gaslight each other unintentionally when they’re own truth hasn’t been heard, and they are so insistent on making sure that their truth is heard and validated that they make it the only truth that can have occurred, and thus wipe out any nuance that exists, or alternate experiences of a moment or other perspectives. How important it is to validate our own feelings so that we can observe them as they are, and not need to grow them beyond control or minimize them. Again, I think of Amaroo, of honoring our own songlines, so that we can honor each other’s songlines as well, so that we can learn from all of these songlines and let them breathe, let them continue to evolve, and let them be unique. Letting each one evolve and evolve and evolve, meeting it in the moment that you are in, and seeing it for what it is then, in its own glory.
I think in my ever-growing concept of unconditional love, it includes loving people even when your experiences of the same event are drastically different, and honoring those differing experiences without having to squash one down into submission. Without having to say one is more important than another. And letting them all vibrate in their own right, all of us creating our own gold, all of us lighting up our little patches of Earth with exactly who we are, in this moment.
xo