☉05° Cancer | 52.2 | 06-26-25
☿ 00° Leo
it’s not been a week since the completion of my (very first!) online course, and already i am in egoic no-man’s land.
it’s an odd experience inhabiting a vessel whose identity seems to be in something of a constant state of flux—never fully this, never fully that. almost immediately after i’m foolish enough to believe that i’ve finally landed somewhere, the foundation of my personality is yet again ripped away and i am left being no one.
having been on this ride for a long time, i knew that this ego death was coming: not only have i just finished the largest and most public piece of work that i’ve ever created, but Jupiter has just finished its year-long transit though my first house, making way for Uranus to enter within the next couple of weeks.
i wonder if this is the way all humans experience themselves, though from what i’ve gathered, it’s not. some people seem capable of walking through most of their life with a solid, unwavering concept of self.
to me, a solid identity feels more like a cage that my energy cannot help but free itself from. this past year has been one experience after another to help teach me this lesson: i—whoever that is—cannot be caged.
the last few instances of being forced to watch my sense of self dissolve and slip through my fingers have not been fun. each time i was frustrated; each time felt extraordinarily—almost hilariously—inconvenient. and for all my talk, i was hastening the process along, hoping to emerge as my “new self” as quickly and clearly as possible.
this time feels markedly different.
this empty space where “i” used to be feels like a sigh after years of holding my breath. i feel spacious and unbothered and unhurried, strolling across this bridge instead of sprinting to the other side.
and even as i say that, i wonder if there is another side. if there is, i find myself uninterested in it. knock on wood, but maybe i’ve learned The Lesson. maybe the bridge never ends. maybe the moments of clarity are too brief for my vision to ever be called clear. maybe every time i’ve proclaimed that i finally figured out who i’m supposed to be was, in fact, me loudly proclaiming that i fell for it again, and that’s why those moments of clarity never lasted. maybe the serene peace that i feel now is here because i don’t feel like i have anywhere else to be.
there’s no destination for me to get to. i’m content living in no-man’s land. i’m content being a mystery even unto myself.
and within this, i find a sudden lack of expectation. if i don’t know who i am, i don’t know what to expect from myself; if i don’t expect anything from myself, then i can’t disappoint myself, and everything that i do is a wonderful surprise.
maybe a lifetime spent trying to live up to who i believed myself to be was a lifetime missing the person i actually was.
i write, it feels, at least once a season about my experience of an ego death. this time, i might not bother resuscitating!
from earth, with love
xoxo Lizzie