It has been a while since a personal reading I did for a client inspired a public post, but such has happened this week, and the subject matter is quite fitting.
I have a relationship with everything. I, like you, have a relationship with myself, my values, my possessions, my family, my friends, my partners and colleagues, my work, my career, and my community (at all level).
I also have a relationship with concepts, ideas, doctrines, and events I perceive around me either in person or via any media.
My relationship with myself is purely personal...yet it is affected by things I would label as public. For example, I am a gay man. My view of myself cannot fully separate itself from the public and cultural view or opinion of those aspects.
Beyond being male and being gay, people would identify me as white (or more accurately Mediterranean). I often describe myself as metaphysical and intuitive. People who know me would likely apply the label conspiracy theory, which I am happy to wear with pride. The list of adjectives I may apply to myself or others might apply to me is long.
What you can already see playing out in these early paragraphs is the public pushing on and affecting the personal.
As a somewhat psychic but highly intuitive person, even what is unsaid by others can be perceived or felt. Yes, I don’t have complete accuracy here, but I do notice in a glance or gesture what someone might be thinking about me.
Many years ago, I was active on an online forum. In it, I shared my astrological writings. For weeks, I perceived hateful energy directed toward me. I had no idea where it came from or who was projecting it, but I felt it.
Then one day, I received confirmation. Someone on the forum, another astrologer, attacked my writing and my character. The attack wasn’t personal, she didn’t know me on that level, it was public.
In my 55 years, I have “come out” a number of times. As a teenager, I came out of the closet, choosing to no longer hide the fact that I am gay. In the 2000s, I came out as a metaphysical man who believed in things like psychism, channeling, energy healing, and divination. To be honest, I was well beyond belief even then. Others would say I believed in these things when I would clearly say I have experienced all of them.
One of the more difficult coming out experiences is what I had in 2020. That was when I came out as a Trump supporter. I had never followed Trump before that year. I had never hated him. I didn’t even suspect him in any way; I just stayed out of the whole subject matter. Because I saw so many hating him back in 2016, I steered clear.
But in 2020, more so than any time in my life before that, public happenings affected me personally. The most profound and most traumatic, believe it or not, was the masking. I had never felt more violated by society than then. My mind, my body, and my soul despised being forced to wear a mask. I pushed against the trend, and got flack for it. I got yelled at by strangers and friends. I got unfriended more or less in real life as well as online.
I was not just traumatized by having to wear a mask (those early months before I grew brave enough to not comply), I was also traumatized by the abuse of children I was seeing, and the self flagellation I saw all around me. People were so manipulate by fear, they were literally hurting and harming their own bodies and the bodies of their children.
In 2020 and 2021 and perhaps even into the first half of 2022, I lost any semblance of balance between public and personal. I did have separation between the two: being totally alone (and thus hiding away from public), or at the mercy of it all. I can honestly say that many of my personal relationships have not really recovered from that time.
And now, in my opinion, we are about to catch the second part of that wave.
Before I explain further, let me share with you three images of balance.
1 – A wine bottle sitting on the counter is a relatively stable version of balance. One can still easily knock the bottle over, but it will not fall over unless a large enough force acts upon it.
2 – A wine bottle placed upside down on the counter. This form of balance is very tenuous. Even the slightest puff of air can knock it over.
3 – A pendulum. A pendulum exhibits balance over time. It swings to one extreme, stops for just a fraction of a second, and then swings in the other direction. When you average out its position, you see the balance.
A pendulum at rest is also at balance.
To the unfocused observer, one might describe 2019 as a pendulum at rest (or possible the wine bottle sitting upright on the counter). In 2019, life felt stable. Yes, there was still public chaos, but it all seemed to be far away from us.
In 2020, it felt like the bottle was turned upside-down. Suddenly, the stable balance turned into pending doom.
More accurately (as viewed from now), I would say a better analogy was that the pendulum was artificially pulled all the way to one side. I also think there was an attempt to hold it that way.
It takes energy to hold a pendulum in an extreme state. Its kinetic energy is minimum (zero) but its potential energy is maximum.
Somewhere in between the beginning of 2021 and now, that pendulum was released (and not by [their] choice).
For a while now (measured in months), an unfocused observer could perceive that life has returned to normal. This is because for those individuals, their personal life is seemingly normal. To those like me who are more focused on the public happenings, the pendulum is clearly swinging. Is it speeding up or slowing down? I can’t tell. But I think it is moving from that extreme position in 2020 to the far opposite end.
This is not a discussion of left versus right, so don’t go there. I am not labeling the two extremes. Both extremes are chaotic.
Perhaps another visual is a hurricane. 2020 was the first half of the storm. We have been in the calm for a while now. And I suspect the back half is approaching.
This time is going to be different. In 2020, personal was invaded by public. Actual, tangible chaos caused some to lose their job, aspects of health, or friends and family. Others of us were only accosted by conceptual and emotional chaos. We were hurt or traumatized and perhaps betrayed, but not physically harmed.
I think many of us have figured things out. We won’t react like we did.
The public side of things can very possibly impinge upon us in a major way again soon. I won’t even get into the many possibilities here. Are we better equipped to separate public from private now? I think I am.
In the reading I did this week, I struggled to find the right word. Conceptually, public and personal are dichotomous. They are discrete. They are two different things that we perceive as opposite.
But they are not only related, they are connected.
This realm sets it up this way. Each of us is having a first person (and thus personal) experience of life within a collective (and thus public) reality. Even if you are locked in solitary confinement, the public still exhibits itself as the walls of your cell.
When public matters became a powerfully active force striking my personal experience, I most wanted to protect myself by building a boundary around me. The walls of my house was that boundary. The shunning of communication with people “on the other side” was another. For some, it was the masks on their faces, the plastic barriers, and the so-called social distancing.
I often remind people this: the very same walls that protect, also imprison.
There is another way to separate public and private. One needn’t build a wall in between them.
We can, like a Gemini, hold both concepts in our minds at once. Just because we see both and experience both, doesn’t mean we have to blend them. We don’t have to allow the public to violate the personal. Or, more realistically, we can exhibit the balance of the pendulum. At times, public forces will push us. If we don’t also push in that same direction, we can swing a bit, then swing back. Even when the public is actively pushing on us personally, we can lessen the effect.
A healthy tree will swing in the wind. Its branches bend and sway. An unhealthy tree is more brittle. It can’t bend very far before it breaks.
Whatever may come at you, choose your response. Respond more and react less. Inaction is a choice. Avoidance is an option. Turning the other cheek can be chosen from empowerment.
Hone your intuition to be guided into optimal action. Spirit can move you out of harms way well in advance of you even sensing its approach. (This happens all the time beyond our notice).
If and when you choose to engage with all things public (be it people or concepts), be mindful of your own balance. Pace yourself. Choose to fight if you are up for the fight. Step away when you are not. Pick your battles. Know your limits. Yes, stretch your perceived limits, but notice when you are nearing your actual limits.
I am not afraid of what’s coming. I am much less afraid of public than I was a few years ago.
I am not predicting doom, but I do expect activity to increase. There’s just too much evidence that its moving in that direction.
I hope this has been helpful and not too long.