Several weeks ago, I reached capacity on my iCloud storage plan. Since then, I’ve been going through a big project to move my photos and videos to another storage service so I can delete them from iCloud.
In the meantime, new photos and videos have remained on my phone.
Then, the inevitable happened: my iPhone reached capacity.
With my iPhone storage full, my phone went into the equivalent of a “nervous system shut down:”
- It offloaded apps I don’t use frequently
- It started running hot. It would no longer charge until it returned to normal temperature.
- Because it had no space, it wouldn’t download photos and videos in order to upload them to a different cloud service.
- I couldn’t open email attachments. Other apps started crashing.
Essentially, it had no space to work.
No matter how fast I deleted photos and videos, it hardly seemed to impact the situation. That’s because the photos and videos weren’t actually deleting.
How Your Phone Deletes Photos and Videos
In case you didn’t know this, here’s how it works:
When you delete a photos or videos on your phone, computer, or in most cloud services, whatever you delete doesn’t get deleted right away.
Instead, they get put into an album called “Recently Deleted,” or the trash bin on your computer.
The iPhone also has an album for “Hidden Files” — the photos that you don’t want to see but don’t delete.
Whatever is in your trash folder or deleted files album is taking up space on your device or in the cloud. Eventually this limits its capacity to take in new files.
You Are Like Your Phone
Human beings also can fill to capacity.
You might be familiar with this in terms of your schedule: the complaints of having “no time” and being “too busy” are commonplace.
But time is usually not the big limiter we think it is.
Often what is filling our space is emotions that we don’t want to face.
We may have pushed them away because we learned that it was “wrong” or “bad” to feel such emotions. Or maybe it was uncomfortable. We didn’t learn how to process those emotions.
As a result, whenever those difficult emotions arise, you push them aside. You numb out, you avoid the discomfort, you distract yourself in order to feel something else.
Like the deleted photos, all the parts of ourselves that we disown, reject, or seek to change still exist within us.
They form what psychologist Carl Jung called the Shadow, living in the realm of the subconscious.
The Shadow occupies precious space in your system. It takes up cognitive, emotional, and spiritual bandwidth, preventing other important functions from flowing.
When we reach our capacity for what we can hold, our nervous systems start to shut down all but the essential functions that preserve life.
When you reach capacity, like the phone, your nervous system turns off anything not crucial to your immediate survival: executive function, logical reasoning, ability to process new information, capacity to take on more work, and ability to move physically with ease.
Suddenly you may feel depleted of energy seemingly for no reason. You’re tired. You lack motivation and focus. You can’t get yourself to do the things you know you need to do — even things you want to do, for outcomes you desperately desire.
What you think you’ve deleted is actually running the show of your life, directing your actions, causing you to avoid or distract yourself from what you don’t want to feel.
Needless to say, this can keep you stuck, unless and until you venture to the dark corners of our lives to look at what’s in shadow.
Eclipse Season Reveals What’s in the Shadows
Each year, we get two eclipse seasons. Eclipses invite us to visit the metaphorical “Deleted Files” albums in our psyches to clear out what we previously deleted but perhaps didn’t fully deal with.
The ancients viewed eclipses as ominous occurrences, as the light of the luminaries was blocked. In an era before electricity, an eclipse felt like a power outage on a massive scale.
When the sun’s light is blocked, it can feel like the world is falling apart, shaken to its very foundation.
Shadow work is similar.
Just like bad photos, nobody likes to look at shadow. You pushed it away for a reason: it’s uncomfortable, perhaps painful.
It requires a radical honesty with yourself about how you show up.
Deep introspection and shadow work may reveal to you the fallacy of long-held beliefs that have formed the foundation on which you’ve built your life.
A solar eclipse generally marks a major ending and a new beginning.
This clearing out is necessary to make space for what is to come.
What Parts of Yourself Are in the Dark?
This week’s eclipse in Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, brings focus to our core self.
The sun represents how we shine. It’s our public identity.
The moon represents our soul and emotions; who we are on the inside.
As the moon blocks the light of the sun, we turn off the spotlight on our public persona to consider who we are within.
The darkness of an eclipse gives us cover to have that moment of radical honesty with ourselves.
- What parts of yourself have you disclaimed in order to present a certain persona to the outside world?
- What has been the cost of pushing away those parts of yourself?
At Nylon.com, astrologer David Odyssey explains:
As the first sign of the zodiac, Aries reboots the entire cycle. When the Aries sun goes dark, it’s like a brief powering down of our identities. As you power back on, notice what feels old, dead, and outdated. What narratives about you and others no longer feel alive?
It’s Time to Review the Deleted Files
This week’s new moon eclipse occurs in a tight square to Pluto, which is sitting at 0º of Aquarius. It also occurs one day before Mercury stations retrograde in Taurus.
Pluto is the planet of transformation — of death and rebirth, and Mercury’s retrograde period is about reviewing and retrieving what we may have left behind, so that we can move forward with more coherence.
Collectively, these cosmic happenings are sending a message:
It’s time to go into those hidden file folders in our psyche. It’s time to review what we have deleted, what we’ve kept hidden from others and from ourselves. This will likely be uncomfortable and time-consuming. It may feel like a giant detour from more urgent matters.
But clearing the cache and retrieving all parts of ourselves is the only way to expand our capacity to restore our internal systems and free up the bandwidth we need to receive more from life.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...