Align Your Orbit: Distinct Messages
Align Your Orbit is a series of philosophical and somatic experiments to guide ourselves toward intentionality and impact. Synthesized after years of conversations and now with inspirations from MidJourney, we’re fully embracing our cyborg natures. Find delight in these journeys of exploration. If you would like to receive these offerings as a monthly email, sign up here.
If you aren’t fully sure what to trust anymore, you’re not alone. We are all in the process of a great unlearning and restructuring. As such, developing your ability to hear through the noise becomes essential. Through patience, listening, and critical literacy, we can develop a sense of truth within ourselves and our communities.
Start small with your trust. Build outward from your own body. Recognize the transitions between safety and uncertainty. Foster the observational skills that will keep you calm and focused even in an emergency.
If you’d like to experience these recipes as a playlist, here’s the link. There’s a movement practice in Healing Justice Lineages, which is where we found a few of the listed songs.
New Experiments
1. pause, listen – Start with your body. What messages—pain, discomfort, pleasure—are speaking to you right now? If some of the body’s messages don’t seem to make sense, see if you can reduce the noise. Spend a few days eating vegan to reset your system or do something else that you know provides clarity. How can you bring these strategies beyond your body as you encounter potential misinformation?
Challenge Mode: If you don’t currently have a regular meditation practice, start one by noticing when you transition from an event that is emotionally or physically activating and move toward more intentional isolation or quiet. Take 10 minutes to lay down and listen before you try to reconnect with friends or family.
2. for true generosity – When you offer to help, make sure you are in value alignment with the outcome. Providing assistance out of obligation, guilt, or shame leads to complicating resentment. Identify your methods for checking for value alignment before you offer to share your resources, time, or energy.
Challenge Mode: On the whole, our modern society is headed straight toward an era of even deeper destabilization. The unknowns are everywhere and have bigger impacts. Look around at your support network. Who isn’t there? Who do you need to ask for forgiveness? Tend to your connections with love and patience, knowing they could end at any time.
3. sink in – You don’t need to generate the peace, patience, and acceptance of the universe every time you sit down to meditate or otherwise tend to your body. Universal love and consciousness always exist under the surface—all you need to do is relax into it. What muscles—metaphysical or not—relax when you feel held by all of existence?
Challenge Mode: To get the most benefit out of a stretch, you need to hold it until your muscles stop resisting. Listen for when the moment of release and relaxation happens. How long does it typically take for your body? Pay attention to what factors influence the change in your experience.
4. and prepare – With climate disasters ramping up, it’s more important than ever to know what skills and tools you want available in an emergency. Be prepared to rely on and support your immediate neighbors. Work from where you are in your emergency plan and take it one step further. Check your water supply, rotate your backup food, and make space for your emergency kit so it is easy to find.
Challenge Mode: There’s an unfathomable amount of suffering in our modern world, but for many of us, it is distant and far removed from us. As a result, when you encounter suffering directly, it’s easy to overreact, even to the point of suffering more than the person you see suffering. Rather than run from this pain, invite it in. Ask yourself if there’s a related trauma you haven’t dealt with. Don’t fall for the temptation to rush in and fix everything before you assess the whole situation and what caused it.
Andra’s Recap of Ground Level
The experiments for last time included relishing in the collapse, softening the fall, embracing focal points, and reassessing resilience.
In reading more about how dire our human situation is in every sector of life—from food security and ecological crisis to financial bubbles and cultural distrust—I have found a renewed sense of direction. In my personal philosophy, I have shifted toward offering my activism, hope, love, and skills as gifts toward a new version of humanity and society without attachment for upkeeping our modern conveniences. I have never been so convinced that now is the time to transition away from imperialism, infinite progress, and parasitic relationships with nature.
This continues to prove difficult in a society where much of our food is synthetically produced and imported. This becomes even trickier when you factor in how much of the food production companies are supporting Israel as they continue with their genocide against the Palestinian people. This month, I have said goodbye to many non-local foods that are complicit in the social problems I continue to learn more about.
In inviting new people in to the new narratives and skepticism about imperialism, I have approached the situation delicately. I don’t want to drastically change their view of reality without psychological strategies and safety mechanisms in place to catch them. I don’t just want to create more situations where people feel hopeless. As a result, I have offered small pieces of information about the situation at a time, letting my conversational partner ask follow-up questions if they feel they are ready for more.
Additionally, I have joined Portland’s Neighborhood Emergency Team program (an offshoot of the national CERT program), which I highly recommend. The people in the class with me were all there because they wanted skills to help their neighbors in the event of an emergency or disaster. These people are active, alive, and curious about how to support mutual aid in community. I am happy to be part of the team.
I have had the great privilege this month to be out from underneath traditional, top-down capitalist structures as I transition toward working for myself again. While there are still problematic dynamics in play, as there always are inside of our current predatory capitalist system, I am so grateful for the ways in which I have been able to prioritize my body, rest, connection, and learning during this time of my life. As a result, I have felt more empowered and have been able to recover from much of the stress from my previous job.
Because of that shift in my work-life balance, I’ve been able to explore intimacy, pleasure, and physical connection. I’ve met with a number of people whom I don’t necessarily have physical attraction to, yet we have some common interest, which takes precedent during the interaction. It honestly provides for much more flow into the shared interest, such as rope play and play piercings. These experiences have been trust-building, magnetic, and meditative in ways I never could have imagined a few years ago.
I’ve really had to take rest seriously this month. I took a solid two weeks off from any professional responsibilities, which was difficult knowing that I was going to be launching a political campaign as soon as I returned. However, I was successful and have now been in the process of determining how to sustainably schedule myself for events as I begin to be a more forward-facing public servant in the world. It’s honestly terrifying as an introvert, but I’m working through it.
Laying on the floor, even if only for 30 seconds, has been so healing. Almost immediately, some of my vertebrae pop back into place. It’s so interesting how different that experience is from lying on a bed. I’m doing my best to continue embracing the floor as my natural habitat. I believe this is a habit that will stay with me.
Thank you for reading this month’s experiments!