004—As Above, So Below
Hello! Sorry for the delay—I unplugged and spent the Mother’s Day weekend with family. Happy (belated) Mother’s Day to all the mamas out there, across time and space, physically with and without us (spiritually they are always here, and always a mother), and to those maybe defying strict definitions of being a mother, and who dole out motherly love anyway. I celebrate you!
To celebrate my own mama, Mary, I spent last weekend in Naples, on the southwest coast of Florida, with her, my dad and our family dog, Wilma. My brother was traveling so he met us back in Miami when we all returned on Sunday and had a lovely Castillo Clan dinner :). Last weekend near the Gulf, for a good long while one afternoon, I sat out on the patio in an egg-shaped, latticed, cushioned swinging chair, feeling a nice warm breeze coming off the gently flowing small lake ahead of me, my view of the water framed by two adolescent trees, whose names I’ve not yet learned. I could hear bluegrass music coming from one of the houses across the lake, as well as the wind chimes on the patio—one a relaxing gong—and the small pool fountain from the house next door. And, as we approached dusk, I could hear a distant owl hooting, paired with the chirping of at least two other songbirds. The fresh air tasted nice, and the slightest bit salty. The feeling of it all: gratitude. Grateful for the space to not do much, rather to just be. Grateful that I was able to spend Mother’s Day with my mom. Grateful for all that she does for me, my brother, my dad, Wilma, our whole family and friends and acquaintances and strangers. Grateful that, despite us butting heads a lot over the years, something in me changed over the last few months and we’ve gotten much closer, our bond growing stronger. We are very, very different, and I’ve come to love, respect and truly appreciate those differences. Like deeply in my gut and heart, not just at an intellectual level. Our relationship is our own and I love it and I wouldn’t change a thing.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve felt a bit out of sorts. I’ve been feeling a lot of strange, seemingly unrelated aches and pains in my body. I won’t get into too much detail here, but when I’m not feeling frustrated about these random symptoms, I do understand what’s going on at a deeper level. My body is undergoing transformation just like the one my spirit is going through (though those symptoms appear more as dreams, visions, signs and messages). The body is one leg of the three-legged stool that is every human: body, mind and spirit. There’s a delicate balance between the three aspects of the soul. When something is out of whack in one part, the other parts, too, get thrown off to try and get back to equilibrium. One leg of the stool has been chewed down by termites, say, and the other two legs crack and collapse from carrying the extra weight. There’s the same delicate balance in an ecosystem, the biosphere, and the cosmos as a whole. It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings: As above, so below.
There are several interpretations of what this ancient paraphrase means, but the one I’m always drawn to is that the microcosm is mirrored in the macrocosm, and vice versa. For example, how a human neuron looks similar to a galaxy cluster. Or how the human brain looks like the Universe. (Please do yourself a favor and Google this. You’re welcome—and I’m sorry—in advance for the rabbit hole.) I also associate the phrase with the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence. Essentially, there’s an order and balance to things in nature, even if it seems chaotic. And things always revert back to finding ~balance~. So I’ve been thinking a lot about this—balance; as above, so below. Our world is going through a lot of changes, chaos, if you will. And the nature that lies within this world—its people, animals, plants, and everything else because everything is made of matter and is energy and thus is nature—it’s all seeking balance. People, as a microcosm, can feel this reshuffling of balance and energy, especially the more sensitive among us, who can feel this most acutely.
In the microcosm that is me, Jessica, here in the macrocosm of planet Earth and the greater macrocosm of the Milky Way Galaxy and the still greater one of our Universe, I’ve been trying to balance me out. Because I’ve been feeling all sorts of off-kilter lately, I needed to do something to rebalance, to harness my growing and strengthening creative intuition, to, in turn, manifest these ideas in the physical world. My dozens of ideas and to-do’s and inspirations racing around my head a million miles a minute, I upgraded them from a jumbled entry in my iPhone Notes app to a full-on, color coded time-blocking Google Calendar, replete with drop-down menus—literal drop-down menus—of task lists and bulleted tasks and subtasks. With some grounded structure, my zillions of ideas could begin to take shape and I could tackle them more easily. Man, did that help me feel more balanced.
The saying ‘as above, so below’ is also connected to The Magician card in the Tarot. (I’ve been learning more about Tarot and its applications and underpinnings in human psychology as well as spiritual traditions.) A major interpretation of the card is related to applying your intuition, super-consciousness, higher-self knowledge—which itself is ethereal and amorphous—to manifest things in the physical world, in this physical reality. To bring your higher awareness from the heavens above to create something in the earth below. As above, so below.
This also implies balance. Balancing thinking and feeling and doing. It’s not enough to be fully in a learned state of blissed out spiritual enlightenment sitting in a cave alone, just as it’s not enough to live a solely physical life without ever questioning things or finding meaning in your actions and the actions of others in the world. There’s a balance that’s needed. The enlightened one will benefit themselves and others by sharing their wisdom and higher awareness through actions they take in society. Similarly, the more grounded, terrestrial one will benefit themselves and others by knowing how to make manifest their ideas in this physical realm. Each side supports the other: one knows how to think higher and deeper about things, and the other knows how to create and make tangible those higher thoughts. Balance.
As above,
so below.
<3
These last couple weeks I’ve been:
Reading: A story from the Los Angeles Times about a treasure map to hidden gold under a California peak (I learn about such bangers of articles through the killer House of Spoils daily newsletter). I finished reading Trees, a lovely little illustrated book by Kelsey Oseid. I’m still reading Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway, nearly done. I started reading Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack. I also read a startling story in the New York Times about a children’s book author and her conflict with Scholastic when it wanted to license her book to use in classrooms across America. An editor asked her to remove language in her Author’s Note that references long-standing racism in the U.S.—deemed ‘too political’—in her already published book about her grandparents meeting in an internment camp during WWII when Japanese-Americans were were rounded up and forcibly relocated to dozens of incarceration sites.
Writing: Morning pages, always. Also I did little freewriting about an apple on my desk. And I finished a solid draft of my query letter to send to agents, pitching them on Julia’s Orchids <3 I shared it with my writing group (aptly called Unicorn Mountain Collective) and they gave me great feedback, as always. I’m incorporating their feedback, reading a few more resources on query letters, building my spreadsheet of agents to query (!) and plan to start sending these off by next week (!!).
Watching: The NBA playoffs: the Miami Heat is already killing it at the Eastern Conference finals. I watched Baby J, John Mulaney’s latest Netflix comedy special (I’m a fan). I also rewatched Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery with my family. SPOILER ALERT: I found it entertaining, but the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I wanted it to be. Still gotta watch the first Knives Out movie.
Photographing/Photo Editing: The last of the photos for my cousin Isabella’s college graduation, the ceremony and celebratory dinner. I’ve also been editing photos from a trip to Iceland I took with five friends last September, an incredible way to spend the last 12 days of being 33 (see below for a little sneak peek!). It’s one of my favorite places on Earth and I can’t wait to go back. I’m prepping the photos for my website, Instagram, and Print Shop, which I’m so excited about! I soft launched the Print Shop a few weeks ago and will be doing a hard launch soon. Stay tuned!
Listening to: My Brain.fm subscription. The Floating Through Space Spotify playlist. My YASSSSS Spotify playlist, which includes everything from Palace and Kings of Leon to Petite Noir and Doc Watson. I also listen religiously to the Astrology of the Week Ahead podcast with Chani Nicholas (thanks as always, Jen!). And, thanks to my friend Megan’s recommendation, I started listening to the Life of Marianna podcast; the latest episode is ‘Practical Tips for Balancing Your Hormones with Food, Recipes, Supplements and More,’—it’s all about balance, including understanding and supporting your body holistically (kismet strikes again).
Here’s a little more of a sneak peek of Iceland photos because it is truly one of the most magical places I’ve ever been to.
xo,
Jessica ♾️