Pisces Full Moon: Zen Moon

As a writer, I experience periodic blocks. I don’t think creative blocks are exclusive to artists. People experience life blocks all the time, periods in your life where despite your best efforts and intentions (or maybe because of them) the things you try to do just don’t seem to get traction or go anywhere. It’s as if, as I described the downside of a Neptune transit to a client recently: God presses the pause button. Then patiently waits for you to figure out that you can’t repeat the same thing you’re doing and get different results. Since you don’t have an answer, or know who or what to be yet, you might as well draw a picture, noodle around on your ukulele, chant mantras and play at being Zen. Till one day you wake up to discover you’re in a place of self-acceptance, you no longer have the same problems you once did… and you’re actually enjoying your self.

Amidst this productive, mentally-oriented Virgo season we experience a reset button in the nonlinear, emotional, visionary Pisces Full Moon. Pisces is the siren call to set your carefully laid plans aside, at least temporarily. To nurture the mystic, dreamer and poet in your self. Daydream. Go for a swim. Do yoga. Write poetry, paint a picture, play with your pets, read a novel, Pisces urges. Especially if you’re feeling stuck, impatient, or feel the fire of God at your back, urging you to get a plan, get your life together, why not take a nap instead? Paint your toenails. Let go. There are certain times in life when doing exactly the opposite of what you think you should be doing actually works. That time is right now.

Periodically abandoning your to-do list, your Sisyphean tasks, and heading for the nearest day spa may sound counterproductive to productivity but science now says the opposite. People who take naps are actually more productive and successful, and so are people who daydream, says Daniel Levitin, Neuroscientist, author of “The Organized Mind” (who also says we have become so bogged down with information, yet feel if we stop we’ll get left behind). “There’s a reset button for sensory overload: daydreaming mode. Daydreaming mode is the reset button. It allows you to refresh and release those neural circuits that get all bound up when you’re focused. It’s good to focus on one thing, practice mindfulness, Zen mind etc. but not for too long. You’ve got to give your brain a break.” If you don’t, he adds, daydreaming actually hi-jacks your brain. For instance, if you’ve ever had the experience of driving from point A to B, and having no recollection of the trip, or reading but not digesting the words, that’s daydreaming mode hi-jacking your brain. You may think you’re losing your mind, when in reality it’s just the brain’s way of saying: Don’t push me. I need downtime.

Granted, you can turn daydreaming into another strategy, another key to efficiency, organisation, more Virgo fodder for your life. Consider this: in America, we’re programmed for productivity, pushing ahead, striving. We continually edit our life, adding new things in, eliminating others, striving to make our life more elegant, improved. We work so hard. There’s nothing wrong with striving, but it does get in the way of having a nice aperitif while sitting on a picnic blanket on a moss green lawn, gazing at the azure blue sky, doesn’t it?

Pisces is a spiritual teacher, a master of disillusionment, reminding us that the happiness we experience in the external world is temporary and will eventually disappoint. Only harmony within our inner self can bring us lasting peace. This Full Moon is the perfect time to bring your inner world into a state of harmony. How? You might start by taking a cleansing Epsom salt bath. Retreat, even just for a few hours. Dance. Abandon your mind and its anxieties. Visit a body of water. Drop into an experience of timelessness. For zany, instructive help in shifting gears, and making joyful peace with life’s hurdles and blocks, SARK has a fun series of instructional books like Eat Mangoes Naked, my favorite. Seek the feeling of limitlessness and joy that you have available to you at any time, inside.  Then, maybe, and probably long after you’ve let go of needing to know all the answers, you’ll create the right conditions for Pisces magic to find you.