“The great bliss state is the state of reality – where we actually are, right here and now.” 

~ Robert A.F. Thurman

The weeks between the Lunar Eclipse in Pisces and the upcoming Solar Eclipse in Virgo were profoundly insightful as they helped me recognize the most significant evolution I have undergone in my entire life. 

No, I haven’t reached enlightenment. My kundalini hasn’t been awakened, and my consciousness hasn’t been transported to another realm of lights and colors. It has been the most mundane, ordinary, and gradual experience. 

So what has happened? I’ve realized that I will never be fully healed, I’ll never fully love myself, I’ll never stop having negative emotions, and I’ll never stop having negative thoughts. 

No matter how much I learn and evolve, how often I meditate, or how healthy and sober I become, there will always be some wounds that will remain unhealed, there will always be icky feelings, self-doubt, fear, longing, and frustration. 

The result? I’ve never felt so good in my life, especially since I embarked on my spiritual journey. 

Why? Because it made it okay to feel angry when I think about a friend who has hurt my feelings, or to feel disappointed when the marketing plan I’ve worked on all year had to be postponed because of technical issues. 

It made it okay to feel insecure about whether my husband loves me, or to want to prove myself to people who rejected me, and show them how wrong they were in not valuing me enough. 

For years, I was aiming to be a Buddha, or more accurately, a misguided image of the Buddha – always blissful, always happy, accepting everything with equanimity and love, never feeling any resentment or anger. I expected myself to be fully healed and to love everything about myself. 

But there are things I don’t love about myself, such as my struggle to cultivate healthy and long-lasting friendships, and my wound of not feeling loved. Being honest about it and allowing myself not to love certain aspects of myself has been so liberating – it’s okay, I am allowed not to love everything about myself, and I don’t have to feel ashamed about it. It does not mean I am failing the spiritual path. 

Deepak Chopra said that “awakening is not about changing who you are, but about discarding who you are not.” I am not the person who loves everything about herself. I can discard this pretense image and finally be me, what a relief! 

Jack Kornfield wisely said, “Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.” I’ve learned to accept that there is no point in life where we are fully healed. There is no point where we fully love ourselves. There is no human being who only has positive emotions and thoughts. This is the honest truth. So why do we keep having these false expectations that cause us only suffering?

Weirdly enough, it is so hard to accept our honest reality and to realize that there is nothing better than what we experience right now. We all initiated our spiritual journey with the hope that it would lead us to a state of continuous happiness and self-love with zero negativity and wounding. We haven’t noticed that this expectation is the very thing that has taken happiness away from us. 

We have rejected our desires, our thoughts, our emotions, and our psychological wounds. We have tried to deny, solve, or overcome them. We have pretended to be content, to want nothing and need nothing. We have struggled to accept everything as it is – but we took ourselves out of the equation! 

By saying that we are happy and content all the time, we move away from accepting our honest experience, and thus, away from the bliss that exists in the messiness of life as it is. The bliss of being wounded, of not loving ourselves fully, of having unfulfilled desires, and feeling pain as well as joy.

Virgo is the sign of the simple, grounded truth of enlightenment. At its worst, it’s criticism, but at its best, it’s complete acceptance. 

This week of the new moon and solar eclipse in Virgo, ask yourself:

• What aspects of yourself do you reject? What thoughts, emotions, wounds do you push away? Can you make peace with them and view them as friends rather than enemies? 
• Do you expect yourself to be fully healed or to love yourself fully? Can you accept that this is an unrealistic expectation, and that there will always be open wounds and aspects of yourself that you don’t like? Can you come to terms with these facts of life? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts,

Wishing you a wonderful week,

With love,

Yael