It seems that my whole life I’ve had an affinity for the moon. I usually attribute that to my namesake (Cynthia is another name for Diana, or Artemis – a moon goddess). As a child one of my favorite books was James Thurber’s Many Moons (which probably also contributed to my love of pen and ink drawing). The first piece of jewelry that I remember owning was a crescent moon necklace. I just loved the moon. Or maybe I should say that I loved moon shaped things and trinkets and stories about the moon. The attention that I paid to the actual moon was haphazard at best. Hit or miss. Like occasionally I would notice how bright she was, how full she was, or what a tiny sliver she was – all by happenstance. I could never have just told you what phase the moon was in at any given time, not back then.

Until about a decade or so ago. For whatever reason I started paying more attention. I began by faithfully noting and celebrating the New moon. It made sense for so many reasons – my Jewish heritage honors a lunar calendar and the new moon, or Rosh Chodesh, is often observed as a special women’s celebration. And, besides – my namesake is a moon goddess, science agrees that the moon affects us humans (you know – our human bodies are more than 50% water and the moon does control the tides and all), and well, magic – any decent magician knows that the moon phases can support magical workings.

So, a few years ago I began observing the moon phases in earnest. Closely paying attention to each particular phase of the moon. Researching and acting on whatever tidbits I unearthed dealing with magical timing and rituals and what works best and when. (Sidenote: An amazing book I’ve owned and used for almost 20 years is called Moon Time: The Art of Harmony with Nature & Lunar Cycles by Johanna Paungger and Thomas Poppe – published in 1996. It is astounding the information this book covers relating to moon cycles – such as the proper time to build and plant and refinish floors and have surgeries and you name it – seriously a thorough examination of this topic!)

After a year or so of passionately observing the lunation cycle and living according to its rhythm I got so jazzed up over the results I was seeing from just this one act that  I created a program called MOONLIGHT to support others in observing this beautiful and powerful cycle.

I’ve learned a lot by living in the flow of this cycle, and following the waxing and waning of the moon has taught me something that feels especially valuable right now. I’ve been learning about life’s ebb and flow in a deeper way. Experiencing LIFE’s “waxing and waning” on a whole new level. It seems amazing that everything we learn can be learned in deeper and deeper ways.

Years ago I heard someone say that “pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” Life has painful moments – pain is inevitable. However, we don’t have to suffer, or at least we don’t have to suffer nearly as much as most of us do, if we realize that contrast can actually support our experience of conscious creation.

Contrast – defined quite simply as “what we don’t want” – can actually be the best informant of what it is we do want – but so often we spend so much time resisting the contrast, fighting against it, complaining about it, fretting over it – in a nutshell: suffering – that we don’t use the contrast to its best advantage – namely recognizing the life changing information the contrast is showing us quite clearly regarding what it is we’d actually like to create.

Science has taught us that everything is energy, and since everything is energy, everything changes when we shift the energy in our experience – and the fastest way I know to shift energy is to get rid of tolerations. Sometimes this looks like clearing clutter (best done during the waning moon by the way) and sometimes it looks like reinventing relationships. Most of the time it looks like stronger boundaries.

We get what we tolerate. And when we are tolerating things we suffer.

Life has an ebb and flow. The tarot (another of my obsessions passions) has a card called The Wheel of Fortune. I sometimes inadvertently call it “The Wheel of Life” – because that’s what it always seems to represent to me. Life is a montage of experiences that cover the gamut of polarities – and just like the range of emotions we have – all experiences can be useful if we let them.

One of the seven hermetic principles is the principle of rhythm, explained in the Kybalion (a text of hermeticism) by the following quote:

“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”

A very useful thing we can remember is that there are no mistakes, there is only human experience.

This one belief can radically shift your experience from one of huge “pendulum swings” to an experience that feels more even, more constant, aligned with the flow of life instead of wildly swinging from one extreme to the other (feast or famine) or swimming against the tide (constantly resisting what’s happening).

The way of nature is the way of least resistance. The contrast we experience doesn’t have to produce endless suffering, but can be used to inform us of what we really want. Contrast is a messenger that heralds the way towards releasing tolerations and creating more well-being, more ease, more flow, more alignment – more magic.

One of the things I constantly emphasize in my MOONLIGHT course is that the lunation cycle lasts approximately 29 days. A new moon, a full moon, and then…a new moon again – all in the span of 29 days.  Considering the average life span will allow most of us at least 900 moon cycles,  we can surmise that it’s really never too late to make a change.

We can take away a great lesson from this beautiful cosmic clock – life has an ebb and flow, as one cycle begins another ends, and then it begins again. Whatever you wish you’d done differently, chances are you’ll get another chance. Don’t be afraid to take it! It might not come in the way you’d expect, but the wheel of life does keep turning, always bringing the possibility of a new perspective with each revolution.

I’m excited to see what the Moon will teach me next. Apparently, the sky’s the limit. (*wink*)

Love & Magic,

P.S. MOONLIGHT – A Course in Manifesting Love opens again for registration on October 19, 2017.