Where Are You?

I feel a strong tug at my intuition, the foreboding kind where you just know something is wrong.

A Glimpse of Death

…I feel a strong tug at my intuition, the foreboding kind where you just know something is wrong. The days and minutes leading up to this moment have already challenged my trust in “people,” as I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt unless otherwise experienced. I am pulled toward my most sacred objects, which have been carefully stored away. To my horror, I go to pick up my Peruvian mesa prayer bundle, and it disintegrates before my eyes. As I peel away the layers still intact, a thousand moths fly out from the darkness in every direction, taking my breath along with them. Death, rebirth, transformation. The medicine of the moth represents change on the deepest levels of being…is there anything left of me?

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It is dawning on me that I’ve been traveling since the end of June. For some reason, I haven’t felt on the move in my mind as much as my body now informs me. The saying, “Wherever you go, there you are,” is my home base, especially in times of significant change. Although I can mentally and physically keep up, I’ve started to feel the consequences of living outside of routine. Walking by St. Marks church in the East Village yesterday, I heard myself ask, Where are you, Ciela?” “St. Marks” didn’t feel like a sufficient response, and I understood why I was asking myself this multi-layered question.

Alchemy in NYC

To say the last week has been unearthing is an understatement. Life is changing, and I am moving from where I’ve been nestled for the previous couple of years. Traveling for a few months has helped soften the cultural and energetic blow to the New Yorker in my heart, and I keep reminding myself that I am just beginning my journey in this exemplary city. Just because my address changes doesn’t mean I can’t be bi-coastal curious. I am honored to have shared powerful and joyful experiences with humans I cherish deeply in this fantastic realm and have also had my fair share of bitter medicine with others. As many of you know, this city is a forge that has the intensity of a fire so hot that it will alchemize you if you allow it, and if you don’t, it will simply burn you.

My love affair with NYC is anything but over…and simultaneously, my heart now beats to another rhythm, one of genuine, authentic, and meaningful partnership in a way I’ve never known. That is a big deal for me, and I wonder—as we begin to wrap up the Aries/Libra eclipse cycle by next Spring, what your relationship to partnership is and how it has changed over the last 2 years. For me, being in one is the most significant change. To truly feel partnered and have a chance to work on myself in a healthy reflection instead of a dysfunctional one is a victory.

A Firey Election Season

Beyond my NY/CA troposphere, yet still focusing in on the US, we are nearing the end of what feels like a Biden Bardo…a stuporous calm before the storm of whatever will be or won’t be revealed on November 5th, election day. People are losing sleep and patience, anxiety is high, tensions are fueled at the workplace, and friends and family members are getting disowned right and left because of their preferred candidates. A gentleman was walking, or maybe stomping a little, down Madison Ave last night wearing a MAGA hat, and people were literally crossing the street not to walk near him. On the one hand, I admired his boldness in this pulsating mecca of liberalism; on the other, I was curious about his actual motives. Was he representing his chosen candidate or pressing for a disturbed response from others? I also observed my question at this moment and wondered why I cared.

The Self/Other dichotomy is only getting more pronounced. Unfortunately, it could be that after this election, the opinions of anyone else who doesn’t conform to one’s beliefs may cease to be tolerated at any level. The temperature is heating up, and astrologically, this trend will continue until 2026. Clients and friends are asking me if I can see who will win this election. My response is that I am bracing myself. It is close; it is unpredictable. I do have a sense of who will win, and I don’t want to say it. And honestly, we will not know for some time who the “winner” will be and who will be ushering in the storm mentioned above.

Regardless of the outcome, I encourage you to prepare for a frenzy. With such a divisive sentiment pervading our society, at least half of the nation will be in a dangerously low depression that may fuel unprecedented levels of aggression, numbness to the point of being checked out, and uncontrolled dramatic outbursts. All of this forces us to rethink Leadership in this new era.

And a new era it is. Two weeks post-election, on November 19th, Pluto moves into Aquarius…drum roll, please! With any new era, its shape will take time to comprehend thoroughly and objectively. Look back over these last two years for clues in your own life as to where you are embodying changes around the theme of power, the reclamation of it, and the learning to wield it.

A Disorienting Return

So, where are you? I’m not referring to where you find yourself physically as you read this, although that is also good to note. For me, this question went many layers deeper. And when I received the question, it hit my heart with a powerful thud.

Wherever you go, there you are. Topically since June, I’ve traveled from NYC to the Bay Area, steeped for days in Obsidian mines in Northern California, spent a month in the central highlands of Mexico (24 hours or 24 eons in Wirikuta—hard to say which), explored family constellations and permeating soul truths in Truckee, reunited with my God-family in Northern Idaho, relished time with my blood family on Whidbey Island, hopped over for a heart filled farm fresh stay on my sister’s farm in Maui, red-eyed to Austin, TX and co-facilitated a Dangerous & Divine Women’s Retreat with amazing women, found my way back to CA to begin the search for a new home, found one, deepened my study and love for Qi Gong in Truckee, and ended up back here in NYC. Ok, noted.

But when I arrived home, it was a very disorienting return, offering me pronounced tastes of metaphoric death, and one obstacle after the next began to present itself as if saying to me, “Your time has come to let go of what has been.” Without going into the gory details, I’ve had to deal with someone lying to my face without any sense of humanity. And through those lies, I’ve uncovered webs of destruction that have deeply woven toward and touched my core.

And this is why I ask, “Where are you, Ciela?” Where am I not present in my faith, how are some of my innermost sacred treasures accessible to the unconscious of others, and how can I be more present in my life to avoid this error ever again? Self/Other…the dynamics that present themselves in a relationship on any level. Karma plays out here, as do the opportunities to see the best and the worst of ourselves in the process.

I can feel it. The heat is on…and not just astrologically, within varying climates, or in current politics. The fire within me is burning to such a degree that I can no longer simply be disappointed by the actions of others and can only honestly look in the mirror to understand where I am and what I need to do to go from here.

All my best to you, and please receive the piece of my heart that lives inside these words,

Thank you for visiting my inner world. If you want to learn more about my work in the outer world, enjoy cielawynter.com and listen to Season 1 of my podcast here.

Ps! I am offering an inner zodiac mentorship (now slated for early 2025) for those of you curious, called, and, of course, sense that it is written in your stars.

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We cannot change the world until we accept we are the world. This is the new conversation.