Hey ,
Next week's Full Moon is in Aries.
Aries is ruled by Mars, and it's the first sign of the zodiac. Nothing has been softened or negotiated yet.
It's the raw beginning, before caution sets in, before we've learned to hedge, to hide, or to shut down.
It feels fitting, then, that this is the week I keep thinking about something the Stoics practiced, called premeditatio malorum. The premeditation of adversity.
The idea was simple and, on first read, maybe a little unsettling.
Because it invites us to deliberately consider that the things we value can change.
Can disappear. Can be taken from us.
Health can fail.
Money can be lost.
Relationships can end.
The people we love will not be with us forever.
Why sit with that on purpose, while we still have the thing?
One common reading is that imagining loss prepares us for it.
Rehearse the goodbye, the diagnosis, the phone call, often enough, and when it actually arrives, we meet it with less fear.
I'm not sure if that's a realistic promise. I don't even think it's a desirable one.
You can remind yourself every morning that someone you love will die, and still be devastated when it happens.
You can understand impermanence perfectly, in theory, and find that understanding does almost nothing to soften the actual weight of an empty chair, a phone that won't ring again, or a side of the bed that always stays cool.
I often say to myself, grief showing up anyway, doesn't mean the practice failed.
It might mean grief was never the thing it was meant to remove.
Epictetus put it in language that can sound almost severely out of context:
"Never say of anything, 'I have lost it'; but, 'I have returned it.'"
He applied this to property. To a wife. To a child.
While something has been given to you, he said, care for it, hold it, tend to it. But don't mistake it for permanently yours.
He compared us to travellers in a hotel room. You get to use the room while you're there. No one promised you the room forever.
I guess most of us already know this, somewhere, deep within.
We know the people we love are mortal. We know health shifts, homes change hands, whole chapters close without checking whether we are ready for it.
Knowing it in the mind is one thing.
Living as though certain things have quietly become permanent anyway, that's the more honest description of most days.
I think this is part of what a real sound session actually rehearses, in the body rather than the mind.
Lying there, letting a tone move through your chest, your jaw, the backs of your knees, there's a small, repeated practice happening.
You feel a sensation arrive. You let it move. You don't grip it on the way through, and you don't rush it out the door either.
It arrives, it's felt, and then it's returned.
Held, then released. Not lost.
...Returned.
That's the whole practice, really, over and over, one sound at a time, until the body remembers it can do this with bigger things too.
This is what we come back to in my Keepers of Frequency sound bath circles here on the Gold Coast, a fortnightly space for aligning with the natural rhythm of Mother Earth, and returning to the core self underneath everything we carry, hold, and sometimes grip too tightly.
👉 Sun 20th September | Helensvale | 5–6pm
👉 Wed 23rd September | Robina Community Centre | 5–6pm
Whatever you're holding this week, month, year, you're welcome to bring it into the room.
And return it.
See you in resonance,
AK x
PS: If this is calling for 1-1 private space rather than a group room, private sessions are open too, reply here or book directly. I can come to you or visit me at Mudgeeraba.
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