Hi Five!

In the northern hemisphere, where I hail from, Spring hits its stride in April. The quality and intensity of the light, the radiance of the sun’s glow is riotously self-evident. Everything glimmers and, not coincidently, everything beckons.

But even if you are in the southern hem, there’s a freshness that comes with the rains, and a brief relief from the heat of the summer. Welcome to April, universally a Five month, occurring in this tradition-busting Universal One year.

April exhorts us to add adaptability and pliancy to our toolbox of life. Foundations are good…necessary…but adjustment—CHANGE—is plainly a vital part of life as well. Too rigid a stance can augur a tumble.  Freedom-seeking energy in a stiff-legged life can be breezy,  but too much loosening of the reigns is no good either.

I strike this note of caution about April because both the year and month are odd numbered, twining the reverb. One and Five…it’s a warrior-like momentum combined with the unabashed restlessness of seasonal transition. The two vibrations are pulsating in tandem in our figurative China Shops. Such combined energy wants to expand multidimensionally, refusing to be contained, cajoled, caged.  And as it seeks to increase precipitously…there is the possibility for eruption, sudden and shattering.

The Questions
So, stipulated: April’s innate ‘throbbiness’ has the potential for indiscriminate destruction. Sure, calcified conditions are shattered and that’s the point…but an arbitrary doubled impulse toward freedom can randomly splinter all that it touches. Recovering from such a misguided aftermath can take a long time…and involve more effort than is necessary or more problematically, than is available.

How might we intelligently deal with the reality of destabilizing energies in our lives?  

How can we acknowledge April’s liberating presence without deploying a wrecking ball to everything?

How can we effectively initiate the release of the combustible pressures of a Five month in a One year so that they are not just destructive?

The Lessons
*Be more progressive than is comfortable.  In a One year, it’s rarely a good idea to shy away from innovative ways to approach a situation. We need to be open to trying what hasn’t been tried before.

*Get motivated to let go what has outgrown it’s usefulness. Where is your over-the-top stash?  Energies of the One and Five shine a light on our problem areas.  Divest early, with resolve.

*Be willing to accept that some of your beliefs may be incomplete or wrongheaded, even if your heart is in the right place. To be human is to be flawed. Proactively reckoning with our ideological shortcomings is the hallmark of maturity.

*Be patient. Five energy is designed to expose us to fresh knowledge, novel experiences. Welcoming or at minimum tolerating the unfamiliar as a necessary exercise in growth helps us mature. If we can reserve judgement in favor of learning from this month-long period of experimentation, we become trailblazers, which is a fundamental part of April’s lesson.

*Be smart and play nicely.  Exercising our right to freedom isn’t an excuse to overindulge or revel in obvious excess.  It’s also not about rampant thoughtlessness in the service of our own privilege or intemperance.  Check yourself hard when a freewheeling attitude is wielded at the expense of others.

*In the throes of your personal metamorphosis, be kind to yourself.   All change is stressful.  Apply appropriate self-care measures as needed.