New Moon INSIGHT
INSIGHT on Beginning Before We Know How
There is a particular kind of darkness that, rather than represent the absence of something, transmits potential.
It’s the darkness required before the seed breaks open.
The moment before the first word of something we have been trying to say for years finally finds its form. The darkness of standing at the edge of something new and feeling the ground beneath us shift.
This is the gift a New Moon offers the body, mind, and spirit when we pay attention.
And this particular New Moon carries a charge.
Something in the atmosphere right now is pushing toward initiation. Better said, countless things are.
We may feel it as restlessness, as urgency, as a low hum of something wanting to move through us.
We need not pathologize that. While it may feel like anxiety, it might just be activation.
The invitation with the INSIGHT practice below is not to figure it out. But to be present to it.
Presence is more than a concept. It’s not a passive state or floating in some calm, detached awareness while life happens around us.
Real Presence is visceral, direct contact. More often than not, especially given the current climate, it can be uncomfortable.
The willingness to actually touch what is here, in this moment, without flinching, that is Presence. To let what is alive in us right now be alive, without immediately needing to manage it, explain it, or turn it into a plan. That can be tough to do. Or not to do in this case.
Most of us have been trained to skip this part. We go from impulse straight to execution or from feeling to doing without even knowing. And we miss the moment where something true was trying to be born.
The New Moon invites us to stay in that moment a little longer. But not in passivity. On the contrary, it is a powerful and decisive threshold, one that allows our intention to gather itself in the dark before we strike the match.
I’ve learned this the hard way. The times I moved too fast, without the care of deeper listening. Without a true presence or connection to my surroundings. The times when I was moving from fear dressed up as momentum.
True initiation feels different. It has weight to it. There is a visceral gravitational knowing that what is happening is real and true.
It’s that moment when you just knew, not because you had figured anything out, but because you got quiet enough to hear it.
That is what this New Moon is asking for.
Get quiet enough to hear it.
New Moon INSIGHT Inquiry
Find a few minutes where you will not be interrupted.
Sit comfortably.
Let your body arrive.
Take three slow breaths. Not in a performative way. Really slow down and feel the breath.
Then bring your attention to the threshold you are standing at right now. You know what it is. We can count on there always being one. And if it is the unknown, that is one.
Something beginning, something ending, something asking you to move.
Ask yourself, with honest, open attention:
Where am I skipping past my own Presence in this?
Not where are you stuck.
Not what should you do.
Just notice where you are moving ahead of yourself.
Where you are already in the future, in the story, in the outcome, and your actual self has been left behind.
Sit with that.
Then ask the deeper question:
What would it feel like to begin from here, from exactly where I actually am?
Not from who you think you should be and not from the pressure of the moment. From here. This body. This breath. This truth.
Let that settle.
That quality of beginning, rooted in Presence rather than pressure, is one of the most powerful forms of initiation there is.
That is the spirit of the New Moon.
With love,
Kevin