True Blue

There are  moments in life when we are lucky enough to meet the secret places inside our own psyches, our own souls where hidden reserves of power and courage have seemed to lay in wait for just the right time.

From my earliest memory, I have been afraid of heights. At age 14, the chance of a lifetime- to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and I had to be dragged onto the elevator by a best friend who swore to me I would live with the regret of missing out for the rest of my life. So I went, and while everyone else was “oooolah lah-ing” about the “La Vue Fantastique,” I felt like I was meeting my maker early. Once, while attempting to climb a fire tower in the Adirondacks with an old flame, I may have made it up to the second landing, (the equivalent of a second story building) and already my knees were starting to buckle and I felt a panic attack coming on.

Last week, we drove to the famed Sunset Cliffs where we were going to start shooting new footage. Little did I know that in order to get to our location, I would actually have to scale one of them. And when I say cliffs, we’re not talking little hills. The photographer looked at me, knowing full well about my fear, but started to scramble down the cliff as if he didn’t. In response to my choice words of shock and anger, the most demure of which went something like this, “How the _____ could you do this to me?!” He gave me one confident, knowing smile, clearly unconcerned that this might very well be the end of our relationship, and continued down on his merry way toward the beach. I started protesting loudly and calling after him, chastising him for bringing me to this place where I would have to actually rapelle backwards with a rope, an actual ROPE! to get down. Yeah. Right.

There I sat, perched on the edge of my destiny, and a firefighter appeared on the ridge above me, smiling at the whole interaction, and called down to me in a — now how exactly do I put this? Yes, that’s it —in a decidedly mocking and only remotely sympathetic tone,

“We’ll just send a helicopter in to pick you up and take you down! How about that?!”

Well, that did it for me. I have no idea to this day what came over me, but his words, combined with the visual of my DP effortlessly floating down the cliff was a call to action and brought instantaneous energy and motion to my body, and before I knew it, with some very calm, laser-like precision, in what I would definitely call an out-of-body experience, the body I was living in very carefully started to calculate each step, each rock I chose, to place a foot and then a hand, and there I was: in the zone.

In an instant, I had made the decision to go. Sitting here tonight on this powerful Blue Moon eve, the thing that comes to mind is that the decision to face my age-old fear and mount the attack down the cliff was exactly like the moment I decided that I was going to change my life and move West. The moments before were torture, the pain of the indecision, the “what-ifs” that came like relentless machine-gun fire, and then the soundless floating towards the inevitable, towards the moment my soul knew was that right time.

As I made it to the crucial juncture, the place where I would have to grab the rope to lower myself down a 30 foot drop, I was somehow still eerily calm, and all faculties, all athletic skills rallied to make my descent a smooth one. I felt complete and utter faith in myself and where I was going. I believed in my ability to make it down to the beach without incident.

And moments later, there I was, standing and smiling, feet in the sand, not even shouting, just smiling triumphantly. I felt calm, and I felt happy. Yes, I said it, I felt happy! I couldn’t believe how happy I was, in fact. I had no idea how I would climb back up the cliff after we had finished shooting, but I didn’t care. I was riding the high from  the courage I discovered was ready to stand inside me once I had summoned the strength to call upon it.

And climb back up I did. And once I made it back up to the top, just to test myself, I walked right up to the edge of the highest point of the cliffs, and gazed down.

Not even a tremble! How could it be? After so many years of paralyzing fear, now– nothing. Nothing but happiness. Could it be that in making the decision to heed the innermost voices inside, to follow my bliss, I had actually begun to conquer the demons of old? Had the new me actually started to emerge, or was it really the “true me?!” –The true me who had lived inside there all that time. The fear had come from some outside source-like an allergy that had taken hold in my cells from an early trauma, the fear had been real for over 30 years, easy. And in one fell swoop, it was gone. I had made the decision to send it packing, because my desire to be unswervingly loyal to me, to be true to myself, had won.

And perhaps this is what tonight is about. The celebration of saying goodbye to old, inherited fears and saying yes to what is true for you. A crucial question to ask ourselves, “Who is the true you?”  Strip everything away and what is your true essence? What makes you truly happy? I think fears come from regrets, from betraying ourselves … so I ask you now: What do you have to forgive yourself for to make space for who you really are and what you truly wish to manifest in this life, so that you can be happy, truly happy. Mary Oliver comes to mind: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Tonight, I pay homage to the beautiful True Blue Moon, and to Neil Armstrong who was the first to step foot on it in the Summer of 1969. To his courage, his pioneering spirit and his belief in our ability to go beyond our preconceived limits, I pay tribute to who he was– someone who lived boldly, a man who fearlessly, actively manifested his destiny as a citizen of the planet and beyond.

Tonight I give thanks for the primal force that rose up inside me last week at the cliffs that carried me forward on gossamer wings of hope, faith and truth. Tonight I am pregnant like the full moon, with a gratitude that soars high above and around me, surrounding me, like the pelicans who flew just overhead that day last week at the Cliffs. And I am pregnant with this feeling I had that day- an unswerving loyalty, a deep and genuine desire to be true to myself no matter what … to be true blue.

May we all become pregnant with our dreams and may we each and everyone give birth to the child (our truest selves and or the actual baby spirit in human form) we have always yearned to meet.

“Neptune and Chiron are close to this Pisces Moon, so expect to dream big and find healing in the most unlikely places.  Both Mars in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn lend their tremendous energies to transforming the old you into the True You.”~ Cathy Pagano, Astrologer