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listen to mindy tell a story at the moth

OPEN THE MOTH AUDIO PLAYER

watch mindy perform poems at westside school for the desperate

Upcoming Shows & Workshops

October 2020

Oct 15 2020 - Nov 19 2020

Fall Storytelling Intensive at Literary Arts

Online

Oct 18 2020 - Nov 08 2020

Moon School – A Generative Poetry Workshop with AGW

Online

Oct 21 2020 - Mar 24 2021

Western Mystery Schools Study Group – Fall & Winter

Online

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The Feed

Happy equinox friends, we made it to fall - respec

Happy equinox friends, we made it to fall - respect 🙌🏼 This particular equinox feels like a powerful reminder that balance isn’t static or necessarily peaceful. Balance requires constant change and adjustment, constant receptivity and humility.

As the darkness catches up with the light and prepares to overtake it, the sun in Libra is sitting directly opposite a retrograde, agitated Mars in Aries, and Mercury is squaring Saturn & Pluto. This astrology is not smooth jazz. It’s ready to unearth fresh challenges. It’s ready to humble us. It’s here to show us our new growth edges, possibly in the dark, by having us feel what’s sharp and painful. But I don’t have to tell you that, you’re living it. Same! Hi. Yeah. Fuck.

This is not a time to give in to despair. Nor to pretend to a strength we don’t have on our own. This is a time to stick together, gather support, and remember our basic practices - slowing down, focusing on the out breath, making art, resisting voter suppression, turning out progressive voters, forgiving ourselves so we can keep going & doing better, etc.

If you want to take a workshop with me while this abyss continues to peak, all my fall workshops are all up on my site, and there’s a link to my fall newsletter is in my bio. There’s a storytelling intensive for Literary Arts starting October 15, a poetry workshop for Awful Good Writers I’m coteaching with husband genius Brian Ellis starting October 18, and a fall/winter cohort of the Western Mystery Schools study group starting in November. If any of these are oddly pulling on you, tapping your soul glass, I would love to work with you - sign up through thecultofmindy.com. And thank you to Mary Oliver for the reminders and the fuel, regrammed from the high vibes of @rob.brezsny._.truthrooster ✨

All hail, all grieve, the great Ruth Bader Ginsbur

All hail, all grieve, the great Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who carried liberation forward, has died.

The new moon reaches peak darkness Thursday mornin $The new moon reaches peak darkness Thursday morning at 4:01 am PST at 25° of Virgo. How tired are you? How also strangely grateful? For all my fellow left coasters, how is the summer ending in literal flames going for you? How nice would it be to get a lungful of fresh air and curl up on a bed of moss in a forest of tender spirits that “get it” and are downloading new powers directly into you and also bringing you exact instructions for what to do next with your life? This Virgo new moon is coming near the end of Virgo’s time ruling with the sun, just as its finishing its work transitioning us out of one season and into the next. Virgo is a deep systems analyst, a master diagnostician. Virgo has a deep sense of the right way to do things, what’s needed to heal a system, how to optimize a spiral of growth. Coming just before next Tuesday’s equinox, the official start to fall in the northern hemisphere, this new moon gives us an opportunity to set an intention for how we want this next descent to go. Is there a personal or collective pattern you long to heal and let go of? A new practice or vibe you long to deepen? Are you interested in liberation? In designing systems that enable everyone to share in our collective prosperity and sufficient bounty? In building authentic communities of radical and practical eccentrics, where love and accountability nourish each other? Let’s all use the small fraction of our minds we can control, to influence the quantum potentials, to stack the deck in our favor. Let’s plant seeds of healing, justice, peace, love, enoughness, joy. X-ray of a nautilus shell by Julian Köpke, transcend art by @ryancarlostudio, Cooper forever, wisdom repost from the brilliant @tash1ko.$

The full moon arrives tonight at 10:23 pm PST at 1

The full moon arrives tonight at 10:23 pm PST at 10° of Pisces the cosmic forever fish. As with every full moon, we receive some madness or assistance from an archetype in opposition to the current sun sign - in this case, a strong hit of Pisces’ dreamy emo poetry in the middle of Virgo’s practical systems healing. In the northern hemisphere, Pisces and Virgo have very different jobs to do - Pisces rules the end of winter and prepares us for rebirth of spring, softening the frozen earth, opening channels. Virgo rules the end of summer, sobering us up for the harvest, grounding us in the reality of what we have to work with and how to work with it in the best possible way.

If you’ve been reorganizing closets, writing deep plans for fall work, feeling the call to chill on the sugar and alcohol, integrating antifascism and antiracism more deeply into everything you do, you’re under the Virgo influence. It’s possible that you’ve been digging these disciplined back-to-school vibez, particularly after the Leo pressure to live your best life (in the middle of a pandemic! and spreading paranoia and fascism!) and that you won’t appreciate the dissolving boundaries and strong feelings and deluxe hallucinogens of a Pisces full moon. But used wisely, Pisces will get anything unstuck.

If you were witching back on February 22 for the Pisces new moon, you set some intentions for your healing and growth this year, something the fall and winter had revealed to you. Reflect on what has come to pass in light of those specific intentions - what did you call in? What insights then arrived? What has come to pass, in spite of / because of / in relationship to the pandemic and civil rights uprising? Where are you at in your integration? Pisces is potent medicine. It will loosen knots. Dissolve blocks. Restore flow. Deliver messages from ancestors and spirit guides. Ask it tonight for what you need - for what we need. Let’s honor and let go of what’s in the way of the work ahead. Let’s clear the channel.

Happy birthday to my everything @brianstephenellis

Happy birthday to my everything @brianstephenellis ❤️

‪Tonight, at 7:42 pm PST, is the new moon in Leo

‪Tonight, at 7:42 pm PST, is the new moon in Leo. For me the Leo energy is a current in my body. Something in the electric blue neon orange fire genre. Something that feels itself fully and also feels the world fully. Something wild and old and young at the same time. Something that wants to sniff, lick, stretch, pose, strut, show and tell, show off, show up. Something that also wants to nap epically. I feel it in my back, behind my heart, exploding. I feel it strongly behind my shoulders and neck and head, holding me up, cocking my head. I feel it in my solar plexus, some kind of burning planet or sun, holding me down.‬

‪I haven’t always loved my body, or even felt really connected to it as a “me.” I was taught early that my body was “just” a physical container for “me,” which was more of a “soul,” whatever that was. I was also taught that my body belonged to others and was an object I needed to manage to please others. Adapting to that shit created a lot of internal conflict and boundary-confusion and self-hate and shame. I’ve spent a good number of adult years repairing my connection to my body and developing skills for noticing and rejecting external and internalized cultural messaging trying to interrupt and violate this simple, holy, positive regard for myself and my-body-that-is-myself, for that current of lifeforce.‬

‪All manner of misery and evil comes from judgmentally comparing our bodies either favorably or unfavorably to others’ bodies, both consciously and unconsciously. When Leo season comes around, I always feel an invitation to find out what might be possible if I stopped doing that, even more, and allowed myself instead to just be, and move, and sleep, and eat, and work, and love, and be loved, and whatever, without judging all of it as too much or not enough. I especially feel that invitation now, in this time of pandemic and struggle and adjustment. There is so much we can’t control, and heaven and hell are right here, right now, in how we accompany ourselves and each other through this. Here’s to our bodies accessing a little more of that Leo fuck it, a little more yes and joy and enough. ‬

Art by Tino Rodriguez 🙌🏼

The full moon at 11° of Aquarius came this mornin

The full moon at 11° of Aquarius came this morning at 8:59 am PST, giving us a breath of fixed winter air in the middle of Leo season’s fixed fire. The Leo/Aquarius axis can teach us a lot about the tensions alive in this moment. In the northern hemisphere, Leo is summer heat and hair metal and high noon and monarchy. Aquarius is wintermint breath crystals and Moog and starlight and democracy. Leo is intuitive self-mastery and full-bodied expression and Aquarius is intellectual clarity and utopian social theory. On the exaggerated shadow side of the axis, it’s Donald Trump vs the Borg.

We can personally use this full moon to take a pause and reflect on our broken hearts and our activated complexes. We can breathe and remember the intentions we intuited this last winter for our own personal and group evolution this year. We can collect our bruised and scattered selves, and practice seeing things from the cosmic point of view, letting our defensive responses deactivate just a little, just enough to get some inner space.

How far have you come in the six months? What can be acknowledged and celebrated about how you/we have adapted and evolved this year? What weaknesses and imbalances have been revealed?

To get through what we need to get through, this year and in the coming years, we need to invite in greater integration of the opposites and increase our tolerance for their paradoxes. We need passionate action and mindful reflection; strong intuition and healthy, rigorous science. We need to fully embody our agency and fully feel and enact empathy for how our agency impacts and restricts the agency of others.

Remember - the changes we wish to see in this world are not, in fact, radical. Tap into the Aquarian knowing that we are more like conservatives from the future - a future where we have reformed societies around agreements to aid and fend for one another. A future where care has been taken to imagine, design and implement sustainable and self-healing systems for resource use. A future where we were taught how to channel our selfish instincts into collective ambitions, and our fierce love for beloved others into fierce love of the whole world.

This morning, at 10:33 am PT, we have our second n

This morning, at 10:33 am PT, we have our second new moon in Cancer in a row 🌑🌑 The first was on June 20, at 0° of Cancer, and also solar eclipse. This one returns but at 26° of Cancer, making directly opposite contraction-bringing Saturn in Capricorn. The vibes are pretty Sysiphean right now. The labor and struggle feel relentless, perpetually frustrated by setbacks. We are seeing (again and again) just how large and ongoing the task is of undoing entrenched systems of oppression and supremacy. We can feel how long it’s going to take, this work of staying awake and unlearning our conditioning, so that something new can be born.

The Cancer archetype is about mothering and resourcing and emotional labor, and also home, containment, protection, guardianship. Fully realized, it provides us a kind of deep safety and access to right defense that we take with us everywhere we go - the crab shell. The new moon arriving in its waters twice, we are getting a deepening of its teachings and gifts. At this moment, Cancer wants us to embrace radical adaptation. We have radically adapted this year - whether all our efforts have gone/are going well or not - and we will continue to need to radically adapt. We have the power to change, to release anything that we don’t need anymore, anything that isn’t working under fresh conditions, and to then develop new strategies. If we havent fully let go of a harmful perspective or pattern or behavior, or if we’ve tried new ones that didn’t quite work, we keep at it. We try again. We create better conditions to support the change. We practice practicing. Saturn in Capricorn is about nothing if not perserverence.

If you’re tired, deeply, cellulary, that makes sense. Take a break today, on this new moon Moonday, contract fully, reset. Focus on the outbreath until you’re grounded. Then, breathe in. Imagine new adaptations and defenses awakening and coming into being. A glittering, permeable, intelligent armor, to protect and sustain you, to make it safer for you to continue loving and fighting and healing and building. Rest, re-membrane, remember what you are capable of.

The BREATHE Act was unveiled today: “Imagine sc

The BREATHE Act was unveiled today:

“Imagine schools free of police and full of trained counselors and restorative-justice programs, where all our children are kept safe and their needs are met.

Imagine easy access to trained, trauma-informed interventionists who can be called on in domestic-violence situations and who are equipped to facilitate long-term safety, healing, and prevention.

Imagine 911 operators dispatching unarmed mental-health experts instead of police in situations involving behavioral health crises, and callers being allowed to request responders that connect to the gender identity of the person in crisis.

The BREATHE Act offers a radical reimagining of public safety, community care, and how we spend money as a society. We bring 4 simple ideas to the table:

-Divest federal resources from incarceration and policing.
-Invest in new, non-punitive, non-carceral approaches to community safety that lead states to shrink their criminal-legal systems and center the protection of Black lives—including Black mothers, Black trans people, and Black women.
-Allocate new money to build healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities.
-Hold political leaders to their promises and enhance the self-determination of all Black communities.

Uprisings around the country changed what was possible. What felt impossible two months ago is being accomplished now; what seems impossible today is doable tomorrow, and we will be the ones to make it happen. We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

#breatheact
breatheact.org

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