66: PERFECT PLEASURE
TUES 19 Feb 15.53 - Mooning Monthly goes all in for the pleasure of perfection.....
Valentine's day salutations dear Mooners
This Mooning missive is delivered with more advance warning than usual to make the most of the run up to a Virgo Full Moon next Tuesday teatime. The period in advance of a full moon is considered the most effective time in which to harvest the juiciest, heartfelt fruit of our intents. We here at Mooning HQ have heard the lunar call for some self empowering fruit picking this coming week and the request of a watchful eye thereafter. We are simply passing on the message.
Full Moons are always something of a purge for the system and we can observe in ourselves, and the reflected world around us, things coming to conclusions, often in uncomfortable or exaggerated fashion. Passions are generally running high at full moon, decisions are likely to be made in the heat of the moment and we can regularly find ourselves doing all manner of remedial work to mop up the mess in the aftermath. A conscious approach to the coming week may help to prevent any extreme post full moon ugliness.
This impending Virgo New Moon is all about perfection. As a concept, perfection gets a bad rep. It's something most of us have discounted as an ideal, that has very little bearing on ourselves or the world around us. We believe there's far too much crap in both for either to ever be considered perfect. We occasionally enjoy 'perfect' moments, episodes that define high points in our relationships and life experience, but they are fleeting. Retrospectively, we try to recreate and recapture those illusive magic moments. We attempt to manipulate circumstance into yielding that perfect 'buzz' and when we fail, as we inevitably do, we become dissatisfied with ourselves and our world for not giving us the idealised experiences we felt sure would make us happy.
This behavioural tendency has been acutely reflected in the rise of social media and the insidious fakery that their platforms encourage us to perpetuate. Facebook empowered self-delusion has been with us now for 15 years and market research in the UK found that only 18% of 2000 people surveyed said that their FB profile accurately represented them. 31% said the face they presented on FB boiled down to "pretty much my life but without the boring bits", and 14% said FB made them look "much more" socially active than they actually were. Men, it seemed were more likely to depart from the truth: 43% admitted to fabricating some aspect of their online selves. Further surveys show a third of women admitting to "dishonesty" on social media. One in four admitted to lying or exaggerating about key aspects of their life online between one and three times a month, and one in ten said they lied more than once a week. 30% of women lied about doing something when they were really home alone, and 20% were not truthful about their holiday activities or their jobs. (Article: Death of the Private Self link here)
This Virgo New Moon is likely to focus its illuminating spotlight on the ever deepening web of deceit, individually and collectively, as we chase bogus notions of the perfect life, home, relationship, body, family, pets and kitchen utensils. Our privately held frustrations in not being able to publicly provide the perfect happiness we seek without lying on Instagram, could take a nasty, self depreciating turn. What can we do to arrest the negative self-reflections compounded by everyone else's 'perfect' lives, courtesy of their latest selfies? Can an antidote be found that rekindles a joyful pride in our unique idiosyncrasies, life experiences that exist in no one and nothing else but ourselves: our own incomparable, legitimate version of perfection?
By asking these questions in the run up to the Virgo New Moon, it is our intention to help redefine our relationship with a perfection devoid of comparison or judgement; to reclaim a personal knowledge of our perfect selves and each perfect moment that we experience from the excoriating distortions of prevailing external opinion. It's potentially the best week we'll have all year to celebrate our perfect uniqueness without falling prey to the influence of mass media perpetuated lifestyle facism (deeply imperfect). Our unique perfection, once recognised and intimately accepted, can be honoured, treasured and expanded upon through the rest of 2019 and beyond. That's a good thing for everyone.
After Tuesday, the surface veneer of any unresolved, self worth issues may start to crack again under the strain of one too many posts showing bikini clad friends lazing on tropical islands. The advice is to act now, finding reasons this week to love yourself wherever you are, whatever you are doing, happily on your own if alone; safe in the knowledge that your needy peers are most probably posting their photo-shopped images from rain drenched internet cafés in Margate.
In practical, confidence building, self-love inducing terms, up until next Tuesday's Full Moon the suggestion here is to consciously cut out the messages, actions and people that might promote our worst self judgements:
This IS NOT the week to visit Mother (father, auntie, sister, brother, besser...etc) if all she ever wants to know is when you're going to find a decent partner, settle down and have kids because everyone else has. This IS the week to gently distance yourself from 'friends' that you inwardly recognise help to undermine your self worth.
This IS NOT the week to be a needy parent, partner or friend by requiring certain behaviour of your children, partners or friends. This IS the week to give space to your offspring, other family or friends to define their own version of perfection, in whatever form it takes.
This IS NOT the week to join Instagram. This IS the week to bypass ALL social media.
This IS NOT the week to purchase or read lifestyle magazines. This IS the week to discover the gnome like joy of Eckhart Tolle.
This IS NOT the week to find things to do to distract yourself from being alone. This IS the week to actively seek out time alone and enjoy your own company, to engage joyfully with your inner 'freak'. Your freak will sooo love you for it. It will feel like reconnecting with the instant 'imaginary' besser we all dreamt of but lost touch with somewhere in childhood. It's time to reunite offline dear Mooners....although Freaks Reunited® certainly has an entrepreneurial ring to it if anyone fancies starting the crowd funding campaign.
This IS NOT the week to pick up the phone and find out how your mates are getting on in life having not spoken to them for a while. This IS the week to start chatting to yourself about the good things in your life and enjoying the sound of your own incessant voice.
This IS NOT the week to start new projects or relationships. This IS the week to bring projects/relationships/employment and contract situations to manageable, beneficial conclusions.
This IS NOT the week to ignore your reactive, repetitive patterns of negative behaviour that lead to more of the same. This IS the week to consciously examine and accept your foibles, yet commit to change in alignment with the greater good of all existence. It's a considered process of allowance (non-resistence or surrender) that we like to call, on these pages, Mooning.
This IS NOT the week to watch telly. This IS the week to do a large, almost impossible, jigsaw puzzle.
This IS NOT the week to think you can heal anybody else. This IS the week to keep your 'healing hands' to yourself by making stuff creatively (painting, cooking, gardening) and getting well. "Physician, heal thyself" has been quoted through the ages.
Finally, this IS NOT the week to rush anywhere. This IS the week to slow down; to meditate: to STOP: concentrate solely on your breath until the gaps between your thoughts lengthen and your awareness rises to the true experience of the moment - the sensations of being alive without judgement. Hang out with full awareness of those sensations for as long as you wish. Mmmm - lush!
Essentially, dear Mooners, we would maintain you are perfect simply because you are here, experiencing this perfect moment in the ever perfect continuum of life in your perfect body, whatever shape or physical abilities happen to characterise it and whatever your circumstances. Your thoughts and actions, and on a wider stage the thoughts and actions of humanity generally, might be deeply flawed but Intelligent Evolution, of which you are indivisibly a vital part, most definitely is not. The closer we can align our individual and collective thoughts, words and deeds with the perfect, naturally progressive movement of Intelligent Evolution, the more harmonious or recognisably perfect our experience of it can become.
When we discover the path to loving ourselves because of our perfect uniqueness (pardoxical flaws included) not in spite of it, our lives can become fertile ground for positive change. These positive inner shifts will manifest equivalent shifts in the outer world of our day to day lives. Love begets Love. Love spreads. It is the very same expansive movement displayed by Intelligent Evolution. They are the same unified flow in which all creation is formed and carried. In truth, that flow is all there is.
In short, to love ourselves is to love the entirety of existence dear Mooners and as we approach this Virgo Full Moon, the suggestion is to witness every aspect of your unique, peculiar perfection and do the intelligent, decent thing - fall in love with it all. Clear out any remaining subconscious clutter that's still shouting for external validation and relax into the knowledge of your true self worth as a vital constituent of the unified whole of existence. There is no other. There is no separation. You are It; It is you. There is unlimited joy to be found in these assertions.
With love, 'til next time
