Full Moon Musings - What are you Learning? (Aries, 2019)

Imagine yourself back in High School. It’s the end of May. Finals are only days away. You’re going over your notes and re-reading sections of text to review. You’re quizzing yourself to test your knowledge, because in just a few moments you’ll be asked to prove that you learned something.

Putting myself back in those moments, I feel a familiar swell of anxious nausea.

Most people don’t like being tested, and who can blame us? There’s something about being put on the spot and forced to demonstrate my knowledge in a prescribed way that makes it slip right through my fingers.

Over the past few weeks, I have been on something of a final exam circuit in my spiritual life. It began  in the end of Virgo Season with one of the most precious experiences of my life. As crazy as it sounds, Jesus came to me in a dream. At first, I was completely overwhelmed and humbled at His presence. He had assumed the form of a familiar guide, but I had no doubt in my mind that I was sitting before my beloved Master. As He approached me, He lifted my face and a sense of total love washed over me. All feelings of inferiority and hopelessness fell away. Then He sat down beside me, held a microphone up to my lips, and He said, “Will you tell me the most encouraging thing that you have learned?”

What an odd question to hear from Him! But it opened the floodgates of my mind and soon I was pouring forth every new spiritual principle and theology that I have been learning over the past year. I felt like an excited child telling her father everything that she learned in preschool that day. He listened to every word with a smile.

Waking up from such a visitation changed my understanding of the Divine in such a precious way. There was no feeling of judgement with Him. No timed exam with an answer key--only the loving support that I needed to answer that question: “Tell me what you have been learning.”

Little did I know that my visit with Jesus was not the final exam. It was a review session, you see.

Libra Season came in with a bang--as I think it did for a lot of us. Huge Major Arcana energies of rebirth through The Moon were calling me into deep waters of Ancestral Work and Shadow Work. Things began to feel heavy as I trudged through deep seeded issues and old snares.

I embarked on a Shamanic Journey a few days ago to try and make sense of things. This is a normal meditative visioning practice for me, as it helps me integrate heavy energies and receive clearer messages from Spirit. I expected to meet with my Ancestor Guide and get some pre-Samhain insight, but what was waiting for me can only be described as the final exam of my spiritual school year.

As the visioning began, I found myself alone in a beautiful, hilly grassland. I was wearing a tattered old dress and it got wet in the stream that I was standing in, so I removed the garment and began to explore the landscape, naked. I met a Horse Guide who carried me through the hills, taking me to a fox den where one of my other Guides, a Fox girl, was waiting for me.

Normally I sit and chat with my Guides during these visions, but this time felt different. She had instructions for me--like the proctor of an exam. “You have to go back to the Quarry,” she told me.

My heart sank at those words. The Quarry is a place in my understanding of the Spirit landscape where the evil of mankind is always at work. Where the naked earth is disrespected and stripped bare in search of gold dust and tainted glory. I did not want to go there. For the first time in a Spirit Journey, I felt the anxious nausea that comes with a test.

But there was no choice. “You must go to the Quarry now,” my Guide said firmly. “Come back here when it is finished.”

I knew better than to argue with Spirit. When it’s time for the final exam, the student must submit to the process. So I hopped back on my Horse and made my way into a familiar nightmare.  

At the Quarry, I had to face all of the heavy energies of my life. There’s no way to describe it other than agonizing. For what felt like hours, I faced the violent embodiments of my demons, and I could do nothing to stop it. This was a timed test and I simply had to endure it.

In the back of my mind as the suffering dragged on, I heard the word, “Learn,” over and over and over again.  

When it finally ended, I was injured and my spirit was exhausted. I could hardly drag myself back to my Horse, but I eventually made it back to the fox den where my Ancestor Guide and the Fox were waiting for me.  

All at once, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I began to sob angrily and accuse my Guides for putting me through such an ordeal.

They were quite calm in the face of my rage, though, as if my experience was entirely routine. My Ancestor Guide asked simply. “Did you learn?”

Did I learn? What a question.

But as I thought over the simple query, my sorrow and anger began to fade away. Did I learn? Yes, I did. I learned so much about the passion of Christ; the mysteries that had felt impossibly far above me before suddenly felt tangible. I learned to hate evil more and to trust the process more. And most of all, I learned once and for all that regardless of what comes, all can still be well with my soul.

“You’re not weak,” the Guide said, seeing that I had indeed learned. “It’s time that you get your own clothes.”

I was still naked as I had been all along, but now I was bleeding from a multitude of injuries sustained during my test. The Fox Guide came to me and licked all of my wounds, closing them up with fine scar tissue. Then they told me to go back to the stream where I had begun my journey and lie down in the water to receive a new dress.  

As I embarked on the long journey back to the starting point, I realized that despite the immense suffering my test had put me through, I was still okay. In fact, I felt stronger than ever before because I walked into that exam willingly and came out of it with dignity. As I walked, my Horse beside me, the sun set over the hills and the stars came out. Just before I arrived at the stream, a shooting star flashed overhead.

When I laid down in the warm stream, dozens of see-through fish swam around my body. They wove a garment for me out of silk from their mouths. Eventually the magical experience ended and I rose from the water dressed in a long, see-through, hooded robe. It was a graduation gown, per say, reminding me that the experience is the learning, and the scars are the notes that we carry with us. There is no benefit in hiding them.

I am still working to integrate all of these incredible experiences, but the idea of Learning feels incredibly potent right now as the Aries Full Moon approaches. Aries is often thought of as the most youthful energy among the signs. After the dissolving that Pisces brings, we are reborn as individuals in Aries. This Aries Full Moon is an opportunity to be totally renewed in the lessons that Libra Season has brought us. We are all being called to learn something right now, be it a personal lesson, a great spiritual truth, or a new program. The process of learning things in a spiritual sense will be both sweet and wounding, but it is truly Divine, my friends.

One of the greatest things that we can do with this Aries energy is to allow the flower of learning to finally blossom. Where is your exam? Where can you prove that you have learned a lesson? How can you start demonstrating the changes that you have experienced?

I invite each and every one of you to take advantage of this powerful and personal Aries Moon by donning your metaphorical graduation gown and starting a new spiritual school year--however that looks for you.  

Mantra for Full Moon in Aries

I embrace the lessons that Libra Season has taught me thus far.

I am ready to act out authentically.

I am prepared to blossom and share the lessons I have learned with the world.

I have the support from Spirit to walk away from the lower vibrations that no longer serve me as I move up to the next level.