Full Moons are all about tension. The contrast of opposites, the pull of having your arms as far apart as they can go but still connected, muscles shaking as you strive to hold both ends without being pulled apart. New Moons are gorgeously consistent, aligned, and pure – they embody the ultimate unity of energy. Full Moons don’t give us that easy single-point focus. They are inherently dual, divided, fraught.
Tonight’s Full Moon turns out to be the most locked-down, taut opposition of the year. Taurus and Scorpio are the most powerfully inflexible signs of the zodiac, so they symbolize ultimate entrenchment…to opposite directions. Remember the Unstoppable Force and the Immovable Object?
This might be why I’ve been hearing the same word from multiple clients over the past month: Resolution.
“Wow, really? I’ve spent my whole life trying to find resolution on that!”
“But…I don’t like that part! Isn’t there some kind of resolution for this?”
“This feels like crap. I just want resolution.”
The heart of my work is helping people find and understand these tension points embedded in their core selves, and I hear these statements over and over. This tense, shuddering Full Moon seemed to bring it all to the surface for so many of us!
The root of the word “resolution” is “to loosen or release”, and that’s exactly what we’re really asking for – a break from our shaking muscles, from the endless feeling that we’re going to be yanked to pieces. We want to just give in, let go of one side or the other, or better yet, take the side we like least and throw it as far away as possible! (Probably with some choice expletives.)
I’ve also noticed that most of us equate tension with “something is wrong in me”. If we have two, or three, or four strong, conflicting pulls inside us – two or three or four “sub-selves” that want such radically different things – then most of them must be false, right? Just stories, just programming, just something we need to…resolve?
It’s easier to see it that way, and we nearly always do have stories and programming intertwined with those conflicting sets of desires and values. When our truly heroic story-clearing and de-programming work doesn’t create that “release” we’re seeking, however, we get really discouraged. We keep trying to resolve the tension by dissolving one or more of the anchor points, and it keeps not working.
Turns out that our core natures – the parts of us we can’t erase, reprogram, or trade in for new parts – are more like Full Moons than New Moons.
This is a glorious thing, actually.
New Moons are easy, but they are also dark – they simply give no light. It takes the opposition of Sun and Moon to create the light of understanding, to illuminate our inner landscapes. That tension that makes our muscles shake also brings clarity. Having to turn our heads from side to side to see those two hands and what they hold gives us perspective, forces us to weigh and consider those opposites.
The shaking muscles build strength – it’s the only way to do it, in fact.
Straining to hold those pieces of us, to keep from reacting with rage or fear while we listen to each part, makes us grow. We literally get bigger, to make room for the diversity within us. To give each of those parts its own territory. We get stronger, so we don’t get beaten down or taken hostage by any of the parts – “we”, the body and the encompassing Self, we are the negotiator and mediator for our unruly horde. If we try to suppress, shame or silence these parts, they will absolutely pile on the tension until we break. When we listen with respect, weigh all sides even when they seem irrevocably opposed, and find creative solutions that allow all parts to have most of what they need, we become whole.
The tension remains. The parts of us still want different things. The Sun and Moon are still opposite one another, casting their glorious combined illumination.
But now the tension is creative, generative, dimensional. It draws out of us a synthesis that wasn’t there before. We learn to work with the tension, to surf it, to live in the paradoxes and discover where they lead.
I’d rather have that than resolution any day. Wouldn’t you?