Things Aren’t What They Appear To Be

Today’s full moon is potent. It’s the first Friday the 13th full moon in 13 years and the last until 2049. The full moon is in Pisces, a water sign and the ruler of emotions, so if you’ve been feeling all the feels the past two days, now you know why.

This moon is also a “micromoon.” It appears smaller because it’s at the apogee of its cylindrical rotation around Earth, the point at which it is farthest away from Earth.

Of course the moon’s actual size doesn’t change. It only looks smaller because of its position relative to Earth.

This is a great reminder that what we perceive doesn’t always reflect the truth of what is. Here are three ways that shows up.

(1) What We See

It’s easy to feel inferior when you compare yourself to what you see others doing. This is especially true in the social media culture, where everyone seems to be sharing everything online.

It’s important to remember that no image or set of images tells the full story. Social media tends to display the highlight reels of people’s lives, not the full details.

The marriage that you envy is really on shaky ground. The friend who seems to be super successful is secretly struggling. Nobody posts the real stuff. Even those “messy” “behind the scenes” glimpses are often staged. Everyone gives their best angle of what their life looks like.

And some of it is completely false.

Shakespeare said it best,

All the world’s a stage; all the men and women merely players.

(2) What We Hear

Every day we hear stories about the world and about our role in it. We hear these stories from the news, from the strangers around us, from people who know us well, and from ourselves.

What stories are you hearing and believing to be true, from the external world and from within?

Where are you buying into someone else’s limiting beliefs or fears?

This micromoon carries a reminder that not everything we hear is true.

(3) What We Feel

It’s been almost six months since I first started working to correct lifelong dysfunctional movement patterns. Many of these patterns originated because my body feared moving in a certain way, often because of sensations that I labeled “pain.”

I believed a story from within and without that told me “pain” equals danger and I should back off.

My physical therapist reminds me almost daily not to listen so much to the sensations I’m feeling and the stories I believe about what they mean.

I have learned that what I label as “pain” and interpret as a warning to stop moving deeper into a range of motion may not in fact be a danger warning. It may be a muscle waking up, learning its role after years of being ignored or overshadowed by a different muscle they did its job.

I’ve also learned that because I’m an empath, sometimes what I feel in my body isn’t mine. It’s the energy of someone else, or the collective. Understanding that I feel the energy of others has been a powerful part of my awakening.

Now, as I investigate those physical sensations and the thought patterns they produce, the first question I ask is: is this even mine?

What we feel in our physical bodies isn’t always about something going on within us. And it doesn’t always mean what we think it means.

The Lesson: Question Everything

Whether it appears bigger or smaller, full or empty, the moon’s size does not change. Only our perception of it changes. Let this full micromoon on Friday the 13th remind you that not everything is as it appears.

That’s why it’s always a good idea to question everything.