Reply To: Joanne’s Prima Materia — Part II

[benjamin@anewpossibility.com]

Joanne – thanks for your patience with my response to this powerful and awe-some share. As I sit here reading it again now, I’m so appreciative to you for taking the time to articulate with such clarity and beauty not only of the transformation that took place for you but also of your actual experience with the medicine.

I wonder how in these past 2 weeks you have continued to integrate your experience and what further teachings the medicine has brought you? Are you finding yourself more aware to the opening and closing of your heart? Are you saying yes more frequently to playing in the “universal chorus of love and pain?” How is it impacting your relationship to others?

I also wonder if you did go ahead and register for the class that Jonathan is offering, which I posted to our network at ANP? If yes, it will be good to discuss that.

I am reminded by your experience of the raw heart opening I have experienced in response to the death of people who I have loved. That pain is a kind of exquisite paradox of deep grief that simultaneously brings such a profound connection and appreciation for the preciousness of life. I’m certain you have experienced what I am describing.

You write,

I have been carefully constructing an invisible fortress around my heart for fear of being hurt, disappointed, abandoned. I pretend to let people in, I pretend to care. I maintain an illusion of openness and love, but in truth my indestructible heart is buried so deeply that nobody can touch it. It feels safe there. But that sense of safety is also an illusion.

Of course, I want to understand this pattern, this tendency, through your chart and I do see where it shows up in the nodal configuration, with Pluto opposing the South Node, Mars in Cancer ruling that South Node. We can talk about that, but what is apparent to me is that certain extreme and painful conditions in your soul’s past surely set up this pattern of defense against further hurt. A kind of isolation as indicated by the South Node in the sign of Aries. The North Node invitation in Libra is to relationship, and in the 12th house, it would be relationship with all that is. The wisdom of the 12th house is rooted in this statement:

… the energy of love and unity consciousness is stronger. The entanglement of our existence cannot be denied or contained.

This writing is such a beautiful testimony to the healing potential of plant spirit medicine, Joanne. Thank you for sharing it. If he hasn’t already seen it, I’m sure @Dtara8 will also be interested in your experience.