Capricorn New Moon Reflection

How do you want to set the stage for 2025 with conscious intention?

Whew, 2024.

You definitely pushed us all to our edges. But boy, did this pressure-cooker of a year bring in some deep insights about who we are, how we love, and where we want to direct our energy in 2025.

Here are some gems from this year of life that I have been polishing off to add to my ever-growing collection of experiential wisdom. It’s these nuggets that are setting the stage for the choices I’m consciously making in how I’m entering this next year…

1. We are so much greater, more expansive, and uncontainably infinite than our human brains can fathom. Yet, I have allowed myself to be overridden and silenced by FEAR throughout so much of my life. I was shown during my 5-MeO-DMT medicine journey that if I was the size of an elephant, my fear would be a microscopic grain of sand. I am the one that gives Fear my power. And I am the one that can take that power back.

2. Protective energetic boundaries are non-negotiable for everyone. The more you love and care about this world, the more imperative it is that you have energy-cleansing rituals and conscious discernment around firm boundaries. This is a hard one for many of us compensated “mergers” – those who have a survival defense mechanism where we over-give our energy to others to receive love and to survive. This year, I was debilitated by an existential crisis spurred from my relentless intake of violent images from the Palestinian genocide. I believed that caring meant not looking away. I let it drain me until I was a lost and swirling ball of despair. I became an ineffective ally without boundaries.

3. Never let ANYONE dictate what is “right” or “wrong” for you. Each of our thresholds for pain/violence is different. Only I can know what my body and spirit needs at any given moment. Not my partner. Not my friends. Certainly not the enraged pitchforked masses on social media.

4. We all have the power and agency to shift our energy on demand, no matter what is happening in the world or in our lives. And it’s on us to do so. I have come to realize that incorporating a light 5-10 minute qigong practice in the mornings opens me up profoundly to tackle what’s on my plate with more hope, enthusiasm and inspiration. A 20 to 30-minute kemetic yoga flow shifts my energy so much that I can connect to my heart (and my humor) even in moments of mounting overwhelm.

5. Change happens in the mundane, not in the mystical peak experiences. As an entheo-death companion witnessing the magic during peak experiences in these ceremonies, this is what I live for. The inexplicable. The mystical. The otherworldly. The profound. But that’s not really what creates lasting change. Rather, it’s the tiny little decisions you make daily, inspired by these peak experiences, where change actually happens.

   • I’m feeling overwhelmed by my project. Do I keep pushing through or do I take a 15 minute walk around the block to clear my energy?

   • I’m thirsty and hungry but I’m in my flow and I don’t want to stop working. Do I keep going or stop and honor what my body needs?

   • I am feeling tired after a long week and all I want to do is mold into my couch and zone out. Do I go ahead and binge my show or do I take 20 minutes to do a short yin yoga stretch first?

   • I’m pissed and disappointed that I didn’t get the opportunity I wanted. My inner critic starts chiding me about what I did wrong. Do I attempt to drown out that voice with alcohol or sugar to blow off steam, or do I lean towards it and reach inward to the younger part of myself that is feeling like an unworthy failure?

6. Create what you desire, but leave some space to invite the Universe to come in with the magic. Your mind will be blown by what unfolds. This year, I launched my first JIA medicine retreat for asian women/femmes. The few weeks prior to the gathering in November, I was stressed and overwhelmed beyond what I usually experience. My perfectionism was turned up to 11. My old creative director control-freak tendencies were coming in hot. I had a vision and I wanted the execution to be flawless. I was freaking out about my cooking and getting the asian dishes just right. When the arrival day finally came, my co-facilitator and I stood outside on the earth to do a land offering and invite in the well ancestors of land, lineage and legacy. We placed the retreat in the hands of the Unseen, asking for our hearts to open and connect, for whatever healing needed to happen, for us to receive and FEEL the abundant love around us. Almost immediately, I felt my heart crack open. Tears flowed out of my eyes. And a gush of wind – a sign I always attribute to the presence of my ancestors – enveloped us. I smiled, knowing that our prayers were fully received in that moment. The retreat experience that followed will be one I never forget. Even the weather was supporting us, delivering a veil of fog on the journey day, and an unseasonal snowfall that encased the distant trees and mountain peaks in white when our guests were returning from their journeys. PURE MAGIC. The Universe brought it.

7. Tiny steps over giant leaps. Much like hiking up a steep hill, taking many small shuffling steps helps you keep your endurance up over taking fewer wide steps that cover more ground. In my personal I Ching reading for 2025, I received hexgram 62 – “the power of the small is served by slow and steady advancement, and succeeds through an honest acceptance of its own limitations, without reservation.” I’m keeping this wisdom close as I continue to build and create.

8. Focus on creating the disciplined structure that allows your energy to be fully FREE within. Freedom doesn’t mean doing anything, anytime, anywhere. It’s in the limitations and parameters we set for ourselves that allow us to exercise that freedom and flow with it. If there isn’t a structure in place, the energy doesn’t know where to flow. Containment is what allows freedom of expression.

I have a big vision for my creative expression in this lifetime. There is so much I want to make and write and dream and build. There is so much love I want to share through my expression.

What I desire most is to inspire a return to right relationship between humans and Nature, the Earth, the Cosmos. I desire the end of human supremacy, the root of all supremacy we witness on Earth. I desire for everyone’s creative expression to be liberated. I desire for everyone to embody their fullest sense of aliveness without shame. To fully and unabashedly own their anger, their rage, their joy, their creativity, their passion, their anguish, their grief, their heartbreak, their soulful dance.

These are all expressions of life force…of aliveness…

…of LOVE.

What commitments to self, what structures and containers are you creating on this Capricorn New Moon that will allow your aliveness to be most fully and freely expressed next year, more than it has ever been given permission to be expressed?

I’m so grateful to be walking with you, to have the honor of witnessing you, to be in conversation and to share my heart with all of you. It’s the year of the Wood Snake, holding invitations for profound transformation, strategic growth and innovation, resourcefulness, deepened connections, and intuitive vision.

May we all revel in the expansive magic of our true essence in 2025,

El