Full Moon Lunar Eclipse
INSIGHT on Practicing in the Fire
Dear Community,
This evening, 96% of the full moon slides into Earth's shadow in what's called a deep partial eclipse. Along one edge, a thin bright rim stays lit.
I'll be back at the Angeles Clinic today to get my brain and body scanned.
Per the usual post-cancer protocol, it's the blood draw first. Then the CT scan without contrast. Then the iodine, which does what iodine does.
Heat blooming through the midline, and a metallic taste on the tongue. A radiology nurse standing alongside as the table slides you into the ring, and a recorded voice telling you when to hold your breath.
None of it's comfortable.
The practicalities of going in for cancer scans are simply what they are. I can think of 10,000 places I'd rather be.
Here's what has me feeling good anyway.
Somewhere in the middle of all the poking and scanning, there's freedom.
Letting Go of Holding
It isn't so much that I've made peace with the outcome. It’s more like I stopped needing one. The result is already what it is. The scan just takes the picture.
And in the gap between the machine and the results, something in me lets go of its grip on the future and drops all the way down into the body on the table.
Do I seed a positive outcome? I do. I drop into the body and let the vision land there, and what comes back are clear scans. I know what that feels like from the inside.
Some will say that's still an outcome. It is. Seeding an outcome and needing an outcome are two different things.
I'm holding two things at once. The release of any need for a result, and a felt sense of the result I want. They’re different frequencies, and they don't cancel each other out.
If anything, the release is what keeps the seeding clean.
Attachment muddies it.
My story is cancer. Yours may be a result of another kind, or a decision that sits in someone else's hands.
And if that paradox is more than you want to take on right now, here’s another way in.
Returning to the Breath
It's as simple as slowing the breath and getting present.
Which is often no simple thing. Or at the least, it isn't the first thing that comes to mind when we're under duress or being tested.
This is where practice actually shows up. In the discomfort.
For me, today, that's my practice. Right there, under fluorescent light with a line in my arm.
Breathe. Stay present. Be with what is.
Meditation and pranayama are like practicing scales. Living life with presence is playing the song.
The Light That Remains
Tonight the moon doesn't resist the shadow.
The moon isn't being punished or paying some price. Earth moved between it and the source of its light, the way Earth does. On schedule, in an ancient rhythm. The moon goes copper, then comes back. Nothing about it is diminished by the passage.
And that sliver stays lit.
I’ll come back to that if and when my own light is obstructed. At maximum darkness tonight, just under 4% of the moon's face is still in direct sun.
Even in our hardest moments, there's a sliver the shadow doesn't reach.
We can identify with the shadow. Sometimes we need to, long enough to get the information it carries. We can identify with the light. Or we can rest in the thing that sees both.
Call that what you will. I call it the witness. From an INSIGHT perspective, it's a cornerstone, and it’s how we keep seeing what's actually here.
Add a willingness to meet what's here with real listening and love, and even the hardest reality becomes something we can be with.
Lunar Eclipse INSIGHT In Practice
Find ten minutes tonight. Maybe outside, if the sky's clear where you are. Or even if it’s not.
Bring to mind whatever you're carrying that hasn't resolved yet.
Breathe with it for a few minutes and find where it lives in your body. Most people locate it in the belly or the jaw. Some feel it behind the sternum.
Don't fix it. Breathe into it and let it stay exactly as it is.
Then ask, without hurrying toward an answer:
What in me is watching this?
Stay with the question and let it work on you, rather than the other way around.
Whatever's doing the watching is distinct from the shadow.
After a few minutes, internally speak the mantra: I am. Full stop. Nothing after it.
See what happens.
With love, Kevin
P.S. The eclipse peaks late tonight across North America. 9:13 pm if you’re in LA. Don't forget to look up!