Getting Caught up in the Flow, and Forgetting About the Ebb.
The ebb is hitting me hard right now, the slowness, the drag, the quiet, the ache. It creeps in, always unexpectedly. It doesn’t matter how many times I seem to go around this merry-go-round, I always forget about the ebb.
The last few weeks have been full of flow, full of mojo, of motivation, of abundant joy and living life. I love the flow. I’m here for the flow. I’m a manifesting Queen and the Moon speaks to me clearly without need for a translator. I have ALL the ideas, ALL the inspiration. I feel like I’ve really got my shit together, finally. And for some unbeknown reason, I always forget about the ebb.
The ebb comes time and time again. Like the tide, we rise and fall. We dip in and out of mojo, of motivation, and we feel like we dip in and out of magic. The truth is, it’s all magic. It just feels like the ebb is the part that sucks the magic out of us. Really the ebb is there to remind us that the magic is within. It’s a portal into the darkness, into the stillness, the quiet, the shadow. I often mistake it’s arrival for fear, for fatigue, for paranoia. I sometimes blame the Moon and her waning cycles, her questioning Quarter Phases, and sometimes I even blame myself. I’m not enough, I’m not there yet, I’ve gone backwards.
As I write this love letter to myself this morning, in the hopes of processing the ebb and of releasing all the other things, those last two seem senseless.
I’m not there yet….Not where? Where am I trying to be? There is no end game. No final stretch. No finish line. I am ever evolving, ever changing, ever moving around the wheel and this compulsive need to externalise everything, to get there, to have that, to be something else before we begin to live and to exist in this timeline is not only exhausting, it’s bloody damaging. I’m exactly where I need to be. In the middle of yet another ebb. It is not the first and it certainly wont be the last, and I will almost definitely forget about it again and again and that in itself is a lesson.
I’ve gone backwards…Positively laughable. There is no going backwards. We never go backwards. We might trip, we might stumble, we might revise, but we never go back. We can’t. It doesn’t exist anymore. Every moment changes you and you are forever changed. You can’t undo those changes simply by feeling a way you felt before or by experiencing a thing you’ve experienced already. You are changed by it, and you will respond differently this time, in some tiny subtle way, you will do it differently. And that in itself is another lesson.
I forgot about the ebb. I forgot it was coming. I forgot it always comes. I forgot it serves me to go within, to re-find my magic over and over. I forgot it was for me, not against me.
Does it feel like fun and abundance and joy? No.
Does it feel like sticky, aching, ughness? Yup.
Does that make it bad? No.
Does that make it more challenging than flow? Yup. Yup. Yup.
But life is forever with its challenges. That's the point.
These ebbs and flows will come and go in a myriad of ways and timings. Days, weeks, months, years. Some overlapping, causing massive ebbs that make you feel like you drowning. You’re not drowning. You’re just being dragged by more than one of the ebbs at once; a sucky time and sensation but it will pass. It always passes.
I think I’ve mentioned before, my tattoo on my left arm that read Post Tenebras Lux.
The sun always rises.
Yet another cycle, the flow of the sun and the ebb of the moon. But we never question the return of the sun. So why do we question the return of the flow?
So today I will sit in the ebb. And maybe tomorrow too. I will not get lost in the questions I ask myself about my worth and my value and my timing. I will just sit in it. I will lean into her squishy walls and close my eyes against her darkness and I will breathe in the stillness and the quiet and I will rest with her a while until she feels she has served me once more and the wheel turns again.
I hope you find yourself enjoying flow and not fearing the ebb. I hope if you are in the ebb, or in one of many, that you can trust it will pass. And if you cant, lean into her. She has something for you, even if you don’t know it yet.