Presentation
On December 19th at 8:43pm, the Moon was New for the last time in 2025 – just before the Solstice and the other winter holidays, so there hadn’t been a lot of time for introspection. In fact, it felt like life had been supplanted by the struggle to keep up the pace.
January has brought physical and emotional quiet though – and a gentle re-centering. The last New Moon post was on November 20th, and dealt with the theme of Paths. During that time I was experiencing changes in both my Spiritual and Professional Paths – these were unavoidable, and I don’t hold any grief or remorse – but they are still changes to fundamental aspects of my journey. In the post I recounted how noticing a dime or encountering a dog named Zeus actually helped to ground me through these transitions.
It still left me with a wonderful sense of “what could happen next?” There wasn’t fear or anxiety. Sure, there was uncertainty, but not knowing isn’t bad. Not knowing that you don’t know? Yeah – that’s not good.
For a long time I didn’t know that I did not know who I was. I was moving through the world in the microcosm of my own consciousness, largely unaware of the fact that the Sean I was Presenting was a construct designed to adapt to the world he was living in. In these posts we’ve talked at length about my being who I thought others expected me to be. Yes, a lot of that was reaction to external stimuli – someone’s body language (or energy) shifts, so I would adapt to realign. This got to the point where it was rarely even conscious. Much like swerving to avoid something in the road, the reaction happens as a conditioned response.
I’ve been noticing things about myself since I’ve been out of the hospital which have shown that this kind of behavior was far more pervasive than I recognized. It wasn’t always reactive – there have been times when I have been aware of people and their patterns or perception, where I have tried to tune myself to their filters. Person A likes this, and has experienced that; so if I present myself as this other thing, I will be more readily accepted. I can almost grant that as part of normal human adaptation. But I took it much further.
My grade school had a very small library – I think it was the size of one or two classrooms. There were a variety of books – not all “children’s books” either. There was a section on aerospace science and rocketry that seriously appealed to me when I was 9-10 years old. I wanted to be an astronaut, but I knew I had to be something that I wasn’t. That “something” wasn’t special training or education – to my mind, it first had to be about Presentation. Before I could be seen as knowledgeable or even interested, I had to rise above and be “seen”.
So I checked out those books. Repeatedly. I don’t know that I ever read them – I don’t know that I could have; they were at least at a college reading level. But my name was in the check-out card in the back. So someone would know that Sean was very into this thing.
As I look back at patterns of my life – this was persistent. I subscribed to magazines, I created accounts on websites; I left breadcrumbs and footprints everywhere to lead to a very curated version of me. To the point where, looking back now, I wonder if anything I’ve done hasn’t been part of that paradigm. That is a disturbing lens through which to view your life.
So the theme for this cycle is Presentation. Who is Sean versus who is this created public-facing version of Sean? No wonder “peopling” wears me out – I am (still) constantly on stage. How can I be more aware of this drive toward Presentation and how can that awareness nudge me closer to a life rooted in authenticity. There was a book I read years ago called “Choosing Truth: Living an Authentic Life”, by Harriette Cole. I read it, and I tried to live closer to it – but I don’t know how much of it I ever really embodied. I was always on the Path of curating a Presentation – reading the book, or being known to have read the book, was part of that.
Presentation, as opposed to being present.
This is another lesson from the time in the hospital though. My very survival depended on me being completely authentic. Sure – there was no way for me to reframe CT scans or bloodwork – but I had to be nakedly honest whenever anyone spoke to me. I had to be vulnerable, and scared, and trusting, and brave – all at once. I had to “be”.
There was a song that was stuck in my fever-addled brain for weeks – and it is now the companion song for this cycle – “Swimmers” by Zero 7. It’s a song that has gathered more meaning for me as my recovery has progressed. As a musical brother described it at the time, it represented “Being pulled where the current takes you.” It also speaks to me about existing inside uncertainty without trying to escape from it. Being. Digging deeper into the lyric, there’s a sense of living before fully arriving, or, to paraphrase the lyric, living as ghosts as our stories unfold in reverse. Not being afraid of the passage of time, but using it to give the courage to live authentically the time to develop. All of this represents who I was in the hospital – but in the macro view, it’s who I am discovering today.
So for this cycle I have been focused on how and when I create a Presentation of myself, and the effort that goes into that. It’s a constant river of shadows and light – and in it, the striving to know the reality behind the Presentation.
Categories: New Moon
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