It was the sheer intensity of its disconcerting stare

even more so than the light, which was significant

I could feel its attention

As persistent as a mosquito in a warm room on sundown

it bit me – not on the leg, or the arm

but directly within my heart

waking me from deepest sleep

it stared in through the glass

saying nothing

doing nothing

just there

massive, golden and round

just there

for all the world to see

if only they didn’t have their curtains drawn

doors closed

and the covers pulled up high over heads

I was in bed but I could no longer sleep

I stared at it

It stared back at me

and told me everything I needed to know

at 4am

It was quite the show

Have you ever felt someones attention on you to the point where it is impossible to ignore? You turn, stare straight into their eyes and catch them just before they perhaps duck away, hide their interest. It is a human thing to feel awkward when caught in a stare – either by receiver or as sender – a stare is an intense thing to feel.

I often can’t sleep when it is a full moon. It wakes me. I made the error of not taking the full moon into consideration when I spent six nights out camping and hiking through the Carnarvon Gorge a year or so ago. Every night my flimsy tent became illuminated in silver light that made it impossible to sleep no matter how many layers of clothing I wrapped around my eyes. It as if the moon penetrates the layers of the skin, not just the eyes. We become awake in every cell of our bodies. The experience changed me profoundly.

Our bedroom at home has a sheer curtain that is rarely pulled as we like to have the outside feel like it is inside.

But then there is the moon.

And the moon meant me to be awake last night. It didn’t need to shout or holler, it just stared down, golden and ancient and round.

All of that power and majesty and grace suspended in the sky, it felt concentrated on me. No wonder it controls the tides of oceans and women everywhere. Trying to resist it is impossible.

I didn’t even bother to roll over. If I did, it would just beam its attention on my shoulder. Bathe my torso in light, my cranium would become an illuminated lantern. I got up. Came out to the kitchen and made coffee. May as well write something I thought.

It occurred to me that the moon is all about awareness, Its power this early morning came from simply being there, like our own attention, when we are able to bring all of it into a moment. Suddenly we are so fully present that problems unravel as if they were made of air and we can’t see why they bothered us in the first place.

We have these moments in life where we become aware of the harmful or toxic effect of something and declare that we are never going to touch it again. And for some reason – probably because of the intensity of our experience in that moment – despite never having luck giving up this thing before – we just do, it happens. We are lifted and shifted over a peg, a notch, a mile and the shift makes all the difference in our life going forward. Because we brought all of our awareness, like some internal full moon, to something that we desperately wanted to do. And it was done.

This moment isn’t like all the other moments when we said we would this time do ….blank. Somehow it is different. Because this time we have brought our own full moon and shone on it the subject with such deep focused intensity that we burn the vow into our very consciousness,

So much of life is cyclical. We have an experience, we have an aha moment, we read something amazing and think “oh that was amazing” and we determine that we shall follow this new thing to the letter. And then next week or month or day we forget and slip back into our old patterns.

But those moments were not full moon moments.

I have had a few true full moon moments. Things that shifted who I was as a person and how I went forward from that point. And I’ve had hundreds of half moon moments where I would take something up, or drop something and then the world would turn and I would be right back where I began, hardly even realising it.

We are unconscious so much of the time. Our brains full of thoughts, schedules full of tasks, distraction nuzzles in our hands for attention and then another and another follows. Until we are so busy patting all of these stray dogs of distraction that it’s a wonder we get anything done at all.

And then a full moon moment comes along, and all of our being is powerfully present, sometimes just for a split second and it’s enough, enough to cause lasting change somewhere in our life.

My full moon moment this morning showed me that the most perfect thing I can do with regards to change in my life is to be like that moon was for me. To watch myself. A witness, fully present, non judgemental, but in my life, shining with all of my attention gathered into just this one place. Moving from moment to moment. It might be impossible to stay like that all the time. Life happens. But so do moons, and we only see them if we are awake.

This is what I found, and when I say you I am largely talking to myself, so don’t take this as some sort of knowitall advice.

If there is something you would like to change, some small behaviour (or large one) that is driving you nuts then this time don’t try to change it. Because that sends the signal to the brain that you are going to fix it. The brain releases dopamine and carries on as if you have sorted it. To be honest, for most of us that’s it. Maybe a week, if you try hard a month and then back to square one. Instead don’t change, just watch, continue watching with an intensity which is difficult for your bad habit to sustain itself with your constant scrutiny upon it. One day you will look for it and it will have packed it’s bags and left. Just like that your change has occurred and all you did was stare at it. Like children we cannot continue to behave poorly in front of an adult. It’s like doing the wrong thing in front of your parent or someone you admire. Just keep watching and asking why. Why am I doing this?

If your whole self and soul is watching exactly what you are doing, while you’re doing it – it’s going to get uncomfortable. We are pretty intelligent beings most of us. We don’t normally stand there and watch the stupid things we do and continue to do them indefinitely. But we will if we go behind our own backs or mumble that we are “working on it”.

Anyway – perhaps not, perhaps this is just my full moon moment and my chatter is useless to you. Some things make more sense at 4am then they do at 4pm. Some things don’t make sense at all by 4pm. It happens. The night sky tends to make us so aware of magic and potential that perhaps we believe too much. Turn things into reality that had no business being made so. The ancients told stories of Gods that came down and walked the earth. Perhaps they had their own full moon moments, they were certainly closer to nature in those days.

It does make sense to me though and still does at 2pm so chances are it may be lasting. I didn’t share here all the ways that my brain shifted gears this morning, but I did in my journal. Some things are just between us and the moon.

I do wish you, with all of my heart, some big full moon moments over the next few nights while she is at her most powerful in the sky.

If you happen to be woken by her intense tap on your consciousness, just sit, stare back at her gorgeous glowing skin in the way that we humans cannot stare comfortably into each others souls.

Let her stare into yours and unravel you.

Have a great day, and night as well, especially the nights – we waste so many sleeping and sometimes they are the best time to be awake in this unconscious world X

Header photo (which is a stunner) by Jochem Raat Unsplash 🙏😊