Reflections on power and powerlessness in the shifting paradigm

Difficult spiritual journeys are like exercise

I am taking a class by the Intuitive Astrologer and holographic intuitive, Robert Ohotto. It is part of the membership he runs which I joined last month. The class is on Power and Powerlessness.

I reflected today, as I listened to the teaching, about the times I feel powerless and what my typical reactionary behaviors are.

I admit that when I am subconsciously triggered by outside events, it definitely shows up in my finances a lot of the time. It also shows up in wanting to control things which are out of my control.

Yesterday, I recognized too late that some part of me was triggered about summer being cancelled. It had been building for a while and I guess I just didn't pay close enough attention. Summer the season, is most definitely not cancelled, it has been 90 degrees most of the week.

What I am referring to are the get-togethers, events and festivals that keep me entertained.

Cancellations

Actually, a lot of things are cancelled or postponed. We were just sent a survey for the St Paul Curling Club last week to submit to them about our plans for the upcoming curling season.

Honestly, it doesn't look particularly good. Now this is a sport that I get a lot of joy from, exercise and camaraderie with people most of whom I have known for over ten years. Last year, I took over a team and became a skip for the first time. It was challenging and we only had one win for the season, which may or may not have been a fluke.

Anyway, I have had many wins in curling, even going all the way to the 1st event finals of a tournament. As a first year skip, I was not expecting to pull off a miracle.

Nevertheless, I looked forward to the respite from the long Minnesota winters, drinking beers, going to weekend long bonspiels and tons of laughter.

It became clear as I completed the survey that business as usual was already not possible. It is not a socially distant sport. Even if the club does 50% capacity and we trade-off weeks and sit far away from each other, it seems so much will be lost. It is also not clear if masks will be required, what might happen if someone tests positive and if we can even stomach the epidemic breaking out in the club.

My team

I reached out to my teammates to gauge how they were feeling. These ladies were willing to play under an untrained skip for an entire season with lots of free beer involved (the winning team in curling purchases beer for the loser). However, the thought of coming to the club with no vaccine for a virus that may ramp up again during flu season was just too much.

One of my ladies, a retired nurse had a loss in her extended circle and another relation on life-support. A different teammate had a grandkid on the way. We also weren't clear we could all afford to financially sustain the club by paying dues for a season we don't have - a suggestion made in the survey.

The grief for me over the entire sordid mess just crept up on me slowly. I thought I was handling it all. I wasn't.

Covid knocks the wind out of just about everything

I had lost so quickly all the outlets for what I considered my rejuvenation, my friendship circles, my events such as music or festivals that I attended. My world suddenly felt small and constricted. The virus, if you catch it affects your breathing.

Existentially we all can't really breathe. That has been the summer theme, I suppose. The theme for all of 2020, let's get real. George Floyd, was stopped from breathing by a cop. People we know got Covid and passed away, their lungs unable to sustain their lives.

Here I am worried I'll be alone in my apartment for a year or more, and hardly see anyone. No hugs or touch. No smiling faces. Laughing at my own jokes because no one is around to share them with me.

Collective powerlessness

Robert was talking about how mask wearing, for some people is the small token they use to express their general sense of powerlessness in their lives. It is easier to throw a hissy fit at a clerk in the store who won't let you in, or go on social media and brag about not wearing a mask than it is to sit in our feelings and admit the truth.

Our society has spent way too long finding ways of escaping feelings -drugs, alcohol, sex, food, endless vacations and politics. Maybe wearing a mask is like a door to feelings we simply aren't willing to touch.

Personal powerlessness

My budget was tight this week, I knew I shouldn't go out. But I went out anyway - several days in a row. My inner dialogue involved something like - it is warm out, the patios are open, I just want to breath some fresh air. I deserve to have a break after work.

I immediately became over-extended and unfortunately debted again. A thing I hadn't done since February.

The cosmic forces - internally and externally - force us to look at our shit. If you act from powerlessness it will have an immediate karmic effect. We don't get a break just because we're nice.

No one is perfect

Perfection isn't the game here. One day at a time.

I feel sad. If I do curl, it won't be with the same team. I may not curl at all. The club may not sustain itself without regular corporate gigs, tournaments and 100% capacity. I may have to take up ice skating or go back to my scrapbook projects.

I guess I will become real friendly with my budget and my finances. I will try to look at summer in a different light - it isn't all about me or a patio, I suppose. We're all not breathing the way we'd like. We're going to have to find new ways to heal and sustain each other. Drinking beers in a crowd probably isn't where power is best manifested.

Winter will be really quiet. We may have to enjoy walking alone in the snow instead of sitting around a table talking about our curling shots.

Power

I suppose in the days ahead, as I continue with the material presented in Robert's class, I will need to consider in my heart where my true power really lies. Is it posting on social about Covid and racism? Is it scrubbing my life for places I have acted unintentionally and sustained white supremacy? Is it writing?

I am not sure yet what 2020 is asking of me. I know it is exacting and difficult. Projects start and stop. People I'd hoped to resolve issues with have disappeared. Others are busy social distancing or doing their own thing.

The fall is unlikely to bring the fun events we all look forward to like the start of the curling season. We may lose more than we gain this year. It could be anything from our health, to our family members to the elections. We're going to be asked to face power and powerlessness over and over again.

What will you choose to do with your own journey with this material? I can speak from personal experience and say, it sure isn't letting me off the hook!

If you need someone to talk to as a coach or you want to try an Akashic reading on your situation, or to find a way to formulate a life that feels more authentic and real, look up some of my services. Any one of them may be something that helps you move through the material towards this new world, now forming.

#personaljourney #Akashic #Covid19 #Covid #power #powerlessness #astrology #robertohotto #intuitive #holographic #transformation #personalpower #healing #shadowwork #trauma #feelings #authenticity #journey #challenges #curling #curlingseason #StPaulCurlingClub

Reflections on 2020 so far, a year of upheaval and change

I started off 2020 with a new job in downtown Minneapolis, as an assistant PM to a Senior staff member. Then a month in, she abruptly left, and I suddenly found myself in charge of a disorganized, chaotic mess of a project that was sorely behind schedule. had to learn the course development business from the ground up, build business relationships necessary to complete the project components and lead project groups through an extreme makeover.

It was intense.

But hey, we were still curling and having fun on weekends. Until Covid 19 became a thing, seemingly overnight even though that wasn’t quite true. Let’s face it the entire country was in denial unless you were on the coasts. I remember my last day commuting to work before we were all sent home. It was a ghost-town in Minneapolis and the busses were empty of commuters like a scene in a strange dystopian nightmare.

At that point, in March we thought it might be a few weeks to a month, tops. Boy, were we wrong. I very quickly had to spend money getting a new desk chair, since the one I had was sorely inadequate for eight to nine-hour stints and was falling apart. Moreover, I had to get used to long periods of time at home - alone. The curling season canceled, and the staff turned off the ice machines, several months early.

In the early days of the lockdown, I would double-time with my Instacart business sometimes pulling in almost $500 a week. I didn’t shower as much, and my body hair started growing out – everywhere. I didn’t wear make-up. I just didn’t care. Most of us joked about how infrequent we were showering.

Then just as we started re-opening states, despite the fact that maybe it was a bit too early, George Floyd was murdered at the hands of a group of cops on a training outing with a senior officer. It was filmed by a young teenager. All of a sudden, Minneapolis was on the world stage as outrage gave way to expressed chaos- burning buildings, protests, looting, National Guard, curfews…

The beginnings of something we still can’t truly fathom, generated from one act of violence that represented the sum-total of systemic racism, police brutality and 400 years of white supremacy.

Buildings toppled, police disbandment processes began, statues representing slavery and racism came down and a new dialogue about how we consciously or unconsciously contributed sprung up on social networks and real life.

These movements were predicted by archetypal astrology and I took several courses presented by the intuitive astrologer Robert Ohotto to begin to understand the wider cosmic forces at play, represented by the tableau I lived each day.

The intensity of walking down my street in St Paul, Minnesota lined with National Guard one week and boarded up against looters while grappling with the personal and emotional implications was exacting. I really had to look deeply at my own complacency in some areas while listening to the stories of others in my networks who were both directly and indirectly affected.

As the protest movement spread from the source, where I lived, to the rest of the world, it became clear that this was neither going to go away swiftly nor be some quiet revolution but instead change was happening on a global scale, and quickly. The one world consciousness, Robert spoke about in class was a real event, a new dawn.

What did my psychic reader say, earlier in 2020? "It is the year of the rat. It is not going to be easy and I don’t know if anything will work out the way we think it should." Great, I thought at the time. Little did I know the depth of her prediction.

We’re halfway through, and there is no end in sight to the turmoil, as another wave of Covid threatens additional lockdown measures in some states. And we aren’t even into the flu season yet! My esthetician, who I finally saw on Saturday, to remove the vestiges of what will now be known as the “Granola Period,” was absolutely prepared for another round of lockdowns in the fall.

We aren’t even bothering with rosy pictures or high-minded positivity. We know better.

I doubled down on my healing work and trauma therapy – what else do you do with your time when everything is shuttered? It became a fruitful time for coming into my own, I suppose. My obsession with decorating my living room knew no bounds. Each paycheck I would add to my collection of living room furniture and organize my crap, which was still piled in the corner from my October move.

Something about getting my environment in line with my LifeBook vision, gave me solace from the remote and quiet lifestyle I’d suddenly been catapulted into. The uncertainty and unknown could somehow be tamed with a new floor carpet and an organized kitchen.

At one point we had six planets in retrograde with Venus being a doozy and now Mercury adding flames to our communication systems. All I can say, is you best be on your toes with self-assessment and a willingness to do the deep inner work of transformation in the crucible of 2020.

If you aren’t conscious about it, it will certainly take you kicking and screaming.

In the meantime, it seems most of us are getting used to life lived by hand sanitizer and masks, social distancing and new methods of connecting virtually for everything from work meetings to personal gatherings. We’re actively pursuing cleaning up our behavior, language and systems of authority.

And the rest of world bitches and complains about those things…2020 continues. We’ll see how the second half unfolds.

#covid19 #lockdown #traumahealing #trauma #racism #GeorgeFloyd #Minneapolis #authentic #personaljournal #authenticity #consciousness #oneworld #RobertOhotto #healing #personaljourney #writing #soul #writing #Spiritualwriting #spirituality

Nine Houses: Lowertown SantaCons through the years 2012-2016

I attended my first SantaCon in December of 2012. SantaCons are held all over the United States with similar themes. A group of revelers dressed as Santa, reindeer and the like celebrating all things Christmas. Lowertown SantaCon became a tradition very quickly in St Paul. By the time I attended my first, it had been going strong for five years with no signs of demise.

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2012 SantaCon V

Author at SantaCon 2012 with Penguin Facepaint

The first year I attended, we crawled to bars and restaurants all over the Lowertown area, accompanied by an MC and a brass band called The Brass Messengers. From Gopher Bar with its surly bartenders and cash-only policy to Black Dog Café and the upscale Chinese/ Asian-Fusion bar Senor Wong’s. There we went traipsing through the snow. Snowflakes falling quickly, landing on noses and eyelashes. We shivered and sung carols between stops, warming up in one of the sponsoring establishments with friends.

Lowertown Loft’s Leasing Assistant, Allison invited us to begin our tour in the main room downstairs with a pre-party. I didn’t have an outfit planned so I wore my red penguin knitted sweater and tan cords. We got our face painted at Black Dog on our stop there. My new neighbors Doris and Dan joined us as well as a few other familiar faces from the building.

We’d had our first snow by the time Lowertown SantaCon arrived.

The nights were chilly but not unbearable. The glittery icicles and pristine snow glistened under the lamps. Christmas markets, work parties, decorations and twinkle lights covering the now bare trees all signified the start of the holiday season. Just a few blocks away at Rice Park, an outdoor skating rink was crowded daily with hockey players and figure skaters, family gatherings and people like me who could only skate in circles.

Unlike California, the weather reminded me of the Christmas movies I loved to watch. The snow gingerly falling on eyelashes and leaving wispy marks on coats. Yuletide felt so much more real in St Paul than anywhere I’d been other than perhaps my childhood home. Maybe that is what it invoked in me – a child-like wonder and inspiration to move beyond my everyday drudgery – work, money, work, getting to work by bus, standing in the cold for hours for a bus. Doing obligatory healing work and dealing with all the metaphysical and physical realities of my existence.

As luck would have it, at Bulldog I ran into the man I’d written the go away letter to. I was hopping around the joint to the brass band, singing carols and in control. I was having a great time at that moment. After all, if I knew anything, I knew I was right. I read situations correctly, I had it all down. I may have been enlightened or psychic and definitely clever. I ignored him on purpose to prove my point. I made sure to emphasize that by talking to his buddy sitting next to him.

Yea, I was right, he was wrong and there was no question. In the hours and days after this encounter, a gnawing dissatisfaction with my approach would develop. In the moment, my sensitivity to the pain I was suffering from being victimized or whatever it was I thought was going on was heightened. I was also pretty tipsy. It was easier to not care than care too much.

Neighbors and revelers at Lowertown SantaCon 2012

2013 SantaCon VI

Author at Lowertown SantaCon 2013

The second-year I went to SantaCon the organizers switched up some of the venues – as the landscape of downtown morphed, so did the available venues large enough to house a growing group of Christmas enthusiasts. Snow, snowflakes, carols, fire dancers and at least one Krampus. Golden’s Deli on 4th and Wall, would turn out to be a multi-year spot for us red-cheeked revelers.

Mr. Golden and his troupe of children, family members and friends-of-friends owned and ran this quirky deli with its bagel sandwiches, Peace Coffee and brunch on weekends. There was a stage, art on the walls and a relaxed atmosphere invoking the nearby artist’s lofts.

Krampus is fairly popular in the Twin Cities due to the eastern European influence. A horned beast with a furry body and menacing visage, who punishes children for misbehaving A far cry and more sinister, perhaps than a lump of coal.

I planned to go on one or two stops of the SantaCon and head into Minneapolis for a DJ night at The First Avenue Record Room. The powers that be had different plans for me that night, I would soon find out.

I dressed as an elf and used some boots that looked good but weren’t really made for ice and snow. I’d had some issues a few times on the crawl with slipping around. When I left the party at one of the venues, I headed up the darkened 6th St to the bus stop on Minnesota Street.

Lost in reverie, excited about dancing in Minneapolis and seeing the DJs, I felt a gust of wind blow out of nowhere. A dark shadow fell. A foreboding thought crept through my mind about having to deal with someone I disliked, who would probably be there too. I huddled against the chill air as I walked quickly so I wouldn’t miss the bus.

On an uneven piece of the pavement by US Bank, a phantom spirit swooped through my body like a slap to my back. Suddenly, I tripped and fell hard on my face, jarring my neck, my bones. People walked by me, as I lay prostrate, flat on the ground, dazed and shaken up. They didn’t stop or ask if I was OK. As I got back my senses and sat up, I felt heat rising and spilling from my chin. I wiped at my face, and away came blood – fast and furious. My hands were cut-up too.

I knew I had to make it back to the apartment, each step excruciatingly painful. Blood dripping from multiple places all over my white coat and onto the snow below my feet. I tried to hold my chin to coagulate the blood, and yet it kept dripping. By the next morning as I assessed the damage – the gash on my chin was at least an inch long -raw and deep. My body could barely move – bruised and battered as it was. I didn’t have health insurance so I did my best to cover it all with Band-Aids.

Doris brought me food from a feast she had hosted. I was supposed to attend. I never did make it out dancing. I wondered if the DJs even missed my presence. Significance, showing up, being there seemed the only way to make an impact. I didn’t think about what I might need. Forging ahead to catch the bus, in the dark, on the ice, with the wrong boots. Was I a friend or a fan? A champion or a nuisance. I never really knew.

The scar on my chin is hard and knotty, dark hairs like to grow there. A constant reminder of the moment the pavement and my body shared a hard and unfortunate bonding. A good thing I didn’t die on impact. I never will know how the night at the Record Room went or who attended. Something or someone didn’t want me to show up though.

Lowertown Lofts neighbors at Bulldog.

2014-SantaCon VII

Author Gina Micek as a "Naughty" elf, Lowertown Santacon 2014

My third consecutive SantaCon, would mark a huge shift in my thinking – whether from the consistent BodyTalk and healing work Kris and I were conducting or other mindset changes, I had moved away from much of the rigid viewpoints I’d previously held.

For SantaCon, I reworked the elf costume with better boots and didn’t plan to go elsewhere. I was knee-deep in my MBA by this point anyway. Too much studying. Never enough funds. I’d just started my full-time job as an Administrative Assistant with a start-up finance firm. I was a contractor. I loved the job but working full-time and school full-time became a consistently stressful event. I was waiting for them to make me permanent and the leadership was waiting for the New Year.

Dan & Doris and the other neighbors who stuck around joined each other for the crawl. The building didn’t really sponsor an event that year. Allison was either on her way out or going and not that into us anymore.

We ended up at the new Bedlam Theater – an event center with a hippie feel that had used a Million Dollar restoration fund to redo the structure and get it up to code. We were hopeful and excited.

The Bedlam was housed in a building with a long-vacant first floor, where a jazz club once stood. I was familiar with the building from my time at Citizen’s League – then housed in the CoCo space on the 4th floor-- it was nice to see the revamped theater. It had been a rough year – for the first half, I was jobless and looking. I started my MBA in February, almost out of desperation. Dived right into my back-to-back eight-week classes.

Our most difficult classes had begun to form my cohort into future business leaders, we were often depleted and running on empty or sick. I let go of my strong desire to move out of my admin career and took the job at Springleaf in order to have a stable job through my time at school.

My curling season had been short, I’d let go of regular teams to make classes and couldn’t do many of the events. The crawl for me was a respite in the sea of intensity.

2015 SantaCon VIII

Author Gina Micek dressed as a woodland fairy, Lowertown Santacon 2015

By 2015 SantaCon went through some major shifts in the route. Lowertown was changing. Big River Pizza had opened on the corner of Wall and 6th Street to take advantage of the revamped landscape of Lowertown with the opening of CHS Field – the Saint’s baseball stadium --and a growing number of new restaurants lined 6th street.

We dropped into Kelly’s Depot Bar – a legacy venue with the greasy kitchen, a connection to the now restored train depot and a dive bar feel. The place was crowded with Santas and Krampus and we stuffed ourselves into the venue for loud brass brand music, cheap cocktails and barely heard conversations.

Senor Wong’s continued to attempt to compete by renaming itself SW Craft Bar and Bedlam Theater remained on the list for a fun conclusion. I was preparing to finish out my MBA in the new year with a J-term abroad in Japan. I’d already taken the month of January off from curling because we were in class several times a week, plus the two weeks we’d be in Japan.

The semester concluded with a stressful event for me in which classmates on a group project had accused me of not working to deadline – a situation I contested due to illness. When I defended myself to their accusations on the basis of self-care, the teacher assumed I needed a mental health break, and removed me from the group project, and class. I had to make it up late and never did recover the grade.

I decided to go all out for the first time and create an entirely new costume for 2015. I reused a Halloween costume I’d made years before, added a crown and glitter, as well as fairy wings. I was now a Winter Fairy. I spent way more money than I had on dust, wings and the like but really wanted to show up with something fantastic.

By this point, Dan and Doris and others I was used to going with on the crawl – were now not going or had moved from Lowertown. I just went on my own but it wasn’t quite as fun or exciting as previous years with a large group from the building. Allison had moved on to run her own event’s business.

2016 SantaCon IX

The author dressed as a woodland fairy, Lowertown Santacon, St Paul, MN

The neighborhood just kept changing. Trattoria Da Vinci was gone. Bin Wine Bar was gone. Public and Green Lantern had opened in the space next to Barrio and Bulldog. The JAX building -one of the major contributors to the artist’s community, had been sold and the artists held a Wake.

While it would be years yet before the building was developed into anything – the artists moved out, the garbage containers in the back alley were filled with the remnants of once vibrant studios. One wondered whether Lowertown could still be called and “art’s district.”

Time waits for no person or city, and in the end, our sleepy little town was quickly becoming a bustling metropolis centered on redevelopment and high-priced luxury apartments. A new era of St Paul had begun whether we liked it or not. Bedlam didn’t last either. Turns out the quirky hippie theater just couldn’t afford the costs of the upgrades they’d incurred to open.

I attended in 2016, my MBA now complete. The wind had, however, gone out of the sails for me. My friends had moved. I was focused on other things and issues. It would be the last year for SW Craft Bar and Golden’s. They just couldn’t keep up with the changing landscape and increased offerings. The artistic, hippy joints and the older bars just simply didn’t have the élan of breweries, new hip eateries like Handsome Hog, the BBQ joint now occupying the Bin space.

In fact, it was the last year for me too. By 2017, I was burned out and struggling with my own issues. 2018, SantaCon almost canceled and went to a one- bar non-crawl event held in the Green Lantern. I didn’t attend either year. 2019, I'd just moved again and wasn't up for going out. What was once an amazing and fun-filled event that I couldn’t miss, had spiraled into decay from the gentrification of Lowertown and the changing landscape of my spiritual and physical existence.

Lowertown SantaCon had seen its time for me and the call of the wild spirit took me elsewhere. A sad effect of the story I have yet to tell about the final years of my living in Lowertown.

Santacon 2016 Santas and other revelers at Big River Pizza

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