Transmuting Physical Pain and Notes on Vesta in Pisces

Vesta in Pisces March 28, 2015 – June 6, 2015

From some travels recently I have something to share. It only recently became very clear to me that just as we work through waves of emotional stress or pain (and come out stronger or more whole within ourselves), so we too can move through physical pain.

I’ve had a few conscious experiences with this now – the first most educational one was a sweat lodge experience where I first learned this kind of ‘technology’ – how to use the pain to focus very intentionally on a prayer. The more you focus on the prayer, the less pain you feel, and then the prayer is very powerful. Either immeidately or in the coming days, the answer or resolution comes with a power that matches or even seems to exceed the intensity of the place the prayer came from.

The next time this happened, I had an upset stomach before going to bed and it was the last day of the Capricorn Sun cycle. Because I was in a lot of physical pain and it was the end of the Moon cycle too (so a bit wearying of a time to begin with), my liminal-before-falling-asleep dream imagery was stressful as well – and so I started to use the sweat lodge mindset because there was no way out but through.

A lot of the pain is simply the resistance to the pain. The healing can come through moving THROUGH the pain, instead of trying to move away from it.

So I prayed for all of my pain to be transmuted into a dream that would tell me what I needed to know, and I ended up having one of the most powerful dreams of my life that brings me comfort now continually and strengthens my faith every time I need a reminder.

The Mind Body Spirit connection is just that -connectivity. I have been more mind-heavy in life as my tendency, and it’s been really exciting to learn that similar principles of working with the waves of emotions in the mind can work with waves of body emotions, both of pain and of ecstasy. Ecstatic body emotions like tantric practices, sex magic, intimacy, are also powerful places to manifest and create from.

Vesta, Goddess of the Hearth and the Sacred Flame, just moved into Pisces, and while Vesta represents a few things, I have often come to associate Vesta mainly with the temple of the body and how the body is shared. Themes of suffering and transcendence come up with Pisces, the lesson continually being that suffering is not the end point nor the end goal. In suffering, though, there are lessons to be learned, and we never need to seek out suffering. There is enough of it in the world. What we can do, however, is move through our pain (also our resistance) and figure out what the treasure is inside, beneath, below, behind that pain.

Sometimes pain can show up for us to show us where we are needing to devote more nourishment to ourselves. The pain can act as a messenger. Also, as an ally – an energy that carries us into our depths where we connect to those depths, rewrite the soil and the roots, and come back up rejuvenated, more deeply aware of ourselves.

From Wise Woman Herbal Healing Wise by Susan S. Weed:

“I was confused about my health as a child. My parents had to ask a stranger if I was healthy. I was confused about my health because the stranger said if I was healthy. I was confused about health because the stranger said I was healthy and then gave me an injection. No one ever asked me if I felt healthy.

I was confused about health as a young adult. There were so many ways to stop pain, feel good, look my best, and enjoy life, and sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t, and how could I tell what really helped anyhow? I was confused about health because some of the ways others tried to be healthy seemed to harm me and some ways of staying healthy I tried seemed to contradict or undo the benefits of other ways. I was also confused about the validity of claims and studies and folklore and my own experiences of being sick and staying healthy. What could I trust?

On my own as a grown-up, I attempted to clear my confusion. I was confused by the damage I saw from drugs and surgery, so I rejected modern medicine and its doctors. I was confused by the damage technology did to people and the earth, so I left the city and went to live in the country, where I built, by hand, a cabin – no plumbing, no electricity, no phone, in a meadow in the Catskills. I ate what I grew and what I and others accidentally killed on the road. I became a goatherd and cheese maker. I practiced yoga. I meditated. I cut down trees to dry and burn for winter warmth. I made love. I went for long walks. But none of this exempted me from illness and injury.

I continued to be confused. Sometimes I had my health, and sometimes I lost it. Sometimes I had accidents, and sometimes avoided them. Sometimes I overextended myself, overate, and overworked, yet I often remembered to relax and reward myself sensuously and well. If I did all the “right” things, would I be healthy, happy, and free from trouble and pain? If living simply in the country and avoiding chemicals wasn’t enough, what was?

I studied alternative health. I read Jethro Kloss, Bernard Jensen, Arnold Ehret, Ann Wigmore, Adele Davis, Dr. Walker, and Euell Gibbons. I worked in several health food stores as a resident herbalist. I was still confused about my health.

Like the customers of the health food stores, I thought of health care as being either traditional or alternative. Traditional medicine was M.D.s and the AMA. I was victim: powerless, drugged, and cut open. We would have none of that. Alternative medicine was enemas and wheatgrass juice and vitamin pills and personal power; and we were all doing it. But I became confused when I saw the loss of vitality in people on severely restricted diets such as strictly vegetarian, only raw foods, or extended and frequent fasting regimes. And I was really confused when I saw that everything and anything helped some of the people, some of the time.

In a seemingly unrelated part of my life, I fell in love with women, the Goddess, and myself. And I pursued my love completely, committedly, devotedly. I turned my vision to see the Goddess in all. And as I looked for the Goddess everywhere, in everything, and especially in all women, I saw that “traditional” and “alternative” healing were not so different. Just as suddenly, I knew there was another way.”

The reason I quote this story is because it speaks to me a lot of the Vesta in Pisces frequency. There is an idealism of health, and a projected Ultimate of what health means. The dualistic idea of health we have that anything that is not-health is evil and scary, is just a construct. But when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. This book, as it got deeper into it, brought up several alternative ways to view dis-ease and healing. What I take from it all is that pain and discomfort is not simply just this terrible thing we have to be scared of. We intentionally move for happiness and health. When we experience something that doesn’t resonate with that, we work through it to glean the message and connect with our wholeness.

~Monarch

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