Between the Moon - 11. Season Finale: The End is Also the Beginning with Wilka Roig

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with my dear friend and colleague Wilka Roig. Wilka and I met about five years ago, and the synchronicities of our connection continue inspire awe in me:) I am grateful to get a chance to share this conversation with you - it's so profound and explores our relationship with dreams, endings, the lunar cycle, eclipses, and redefining grief.Wilka is a transpersonal psychologist, she is a death doula, a grief counselor, a dream worker, an educator facilitator and an artist in many mediums. She's the president of the Foundation in Central Mexico for the work of Elisabeth Kubler Ross (EKR México Centro) as well as an end of life doula and instructor and the co-chair of the BIPOC Advisory Council for the International End of Life Doula Association, or INELDA. Wilka is a coordinator for curriculum and faculty for the Institute of International Studies with the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath and Death. And she's also been a part of reviving green burial practices in Mexico.I hope you enjoy this conversation and that it sparks your own curiosity about your relationship with endings and beginnings!Links mentioned in the episode:Visit Wilka's website to learn more about her offerings with Dreaming, Healing, and End of Life: https://wilkaroig.com/Death, Dreams and Yoga: https://www.ccld.community/events-1/death-dreams-and-yogaInstitute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death: https://birthbreathanddeath.com/Center for Conscious Living and Dying: https://www.ccld.community/ The Institute Ireland Trip June 13th – 22nd 2023 https://retreats.behumanitarian.org/product/exclusive-ireland-retreatjune-12th-22nd-2023/Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation México Centro http://ekrmexico.org/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themoonismycalendar.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome, dear listener, to Between the Moon, a podcast about self-study in relationship with cycles. I'm your host, April McMurtry, founder of The Moon is My Calendar. In today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with my dear friend and colleague, Wilka Roig. First, just to give you an idea of her perspective and work in the world where she's coming from as she shares on today's theme and topic of endings and beginnings, that the end is also the beginning. Wilka is a transpersonal psychologist. She is a death dula, a grief counselor, a dream worker, an educator, facilitator, and an artist in many forms of through music, photography, performance, jewelry making, silversmithing.

She's the president of the foundation in Central Mexico for the work of Elizabeth Kubler-R. So the Foundation Elizabeth Kubler-R. or EKR in Mexico Central. She is also an end-of-life doula and instructor and the co-chair of the bi-pocket. advisory for the International End-of-Life Dula Association or Ennilda. She is a coordinator for curriculum and faculty for the Institute of International Studies with the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death. And she's also been a part of reviving green burial practices in Mexico. So I hope you enjoy this conversation and that it

sparks your own curiosity about your relationship with endings and beginnings. First, I love the fact that we are talking about this as we enter into the dark moon phase, like right before the new moon, as we begin to see less and less of her and less and less of the light that she reflects. Because it is a time of going inward. Right? So the moon is a perfect guide to help us understand the cycles of endings and beginnings. And how essential, I mean, the dark moon is my favorite phase, you know. And I think I was born in that dark phase of the moon as well, or near that time anyway.

So it makes sense. It is that time of disorientation before we can reorient. It is a time of reset. It is a time of actually acknowledging. that we are no longer the person that we were, even two weeks ago when we had a full moon. So the space between endings and beginnings, something that you said,

just in addressing the grief that can be felt as a part of endings and the work that you're doing evolving into, how can we decouple or, unlabel grief and endings. So something that you said about this in a short video is that life is made up of surviving losses and evolving through the process of having a loss, not knowing who we are, and discovering who we can become. And that process is what we know as grief. And so I wonder where this conversation can take us when we look at that space between the endings and beginnings.

And so I'm wondering, what is that gap? Like, what is in that space and how is it that we can evolve into a different relationship with endings? And death is a part of that. I mean, it's woven into our conscious or subconscious or whatever it might be of like that it's better to avoid something ending, like to preserve something. all costs because endings are hard or painful or anything else that might be associated with them. And just to bring this into the context of the moon and between the moon and the lunar cycle as the teaching of the moon, the teachings, which are many, but that visual reminder that the moon is there. And at the end of the cycle, the moon is nowhere to be seen for three days,

gone, like, and maybe never going to come back. And that's what many of our ancestors had that experience of, well, maybe the moon won't come back. So what offerings do we need to bring or what sacrifices or what is it that will sort of ensure this return? And when we can be connected with those natural processes and cycles in life, to see that happening, like your work in what you share can be this orienting to this other kind of framework or paradigm or lens or however to describe it that can offer a different relationship with endings. So I wonder what you feel called to share about that. I've been thinking a lot about the, you know, this, I am not the same person I was and how

death and rebirth are occurring all the time. That reorientation is happening all the time. That process is happening all the time. Nowadays, because we have had to adapt to so many structures and stories and concepts that organize our societies, we have developed grief. But inherently, this is happening all the time, and there is no grief required. There is just the process of transformation that is taking place. But because we're so disconnected from the fact that this is happening all the time, that the moon is teaching us and reminding us of this every month, that we think it's a tragedy every time, that we stop being who we were and begin to be

who we are becoming. So right now, it's a little bit hard for me to actually live that with every breath, right? But every expiration or every exhale is the end. It's letting go of life and it's a death. Death is the final expiration in Spanish, expirate. in Spanish, in English exhaling, the last exhale. And the first thing we do when we are born is take a breath in life and death. It's happening with every breath.

That's a little too much to ask right now, to be like, okay, who have I just been and who am I becoming in this breath? But what has been sitting with me for several months now is that we can practice this more actively with sleeping, dreaming, and waking up. Right? So when we surrender into sleep, it is a form of dying. It is the closest thing we will ever know

to what dying feels like. We are letting ourselves shut down. And there is something about our day that finds release and relief in just letting go and shutting down. So we are done. to something of that day when we go to sleep. And then we enter into the in-between,

that bardo state, that grief place, if you want to call it that, that in-between place of reconfiguration through our sleep. And there is restoration that occurs in our sleep time. There is complete darkness and very little that we remember. Right? But there's a lot that's going on when we sleep. And then as we are on our journey back from, in our rebirth of waking up, we remember something, fragments of things that come to our attention. So we awaken with a little sort of to do list of what to tend to for this day, for this lifetime that is this day that I'm being born into.

So if I trust that all of the part of my sleep that I don't remember is a restorative and regenerative time that then refocuses my attention and my purpose, even so that I can become who I am becoming, and I wake up with the directives from my dream that say, pay attention to this. That's what we need to work on today. that's what we need to resolve today that's what we need to celebrate today that's what we need to connect with that's what we need to get rid of all of that we are being reborn with a very particular roster of awareness intention learning for the day and we could go to sleep at any time and reset if we want right or go into meditation to reset and re-reborn again And so to me, I can look at life that way. It's happening all the time.

And it's giving us an opportunity for something. The issue is the grief comes because I want to still identify with the person I was before I went to sleep. And the person before that and the person before that. When I go to sleep, so many things are reconfiguring. My dreams are telling me you are no longer that person. Look, do you see? And if I'm not paying attention, nightmares will come to say, hey, wake up from this.

You're not that person anymore. Wake up to the person whom you are. No, who you are, whatever. Right? Wake up to that. And then what is grief? But no, I insist. I was that other person.

I am not this person that's being born now. I'm not this person who was healed and evolved and transformed and transcended, all these things. No, I'm still that other person. And that's where grief comes. You know, at least, you know, that's just one sort of superficial way, superficial way of making sense of it. There's many others, but what do you think of that for now? Well, I'm wondering in what you're saying, too, that there's,

when there's that resistance, a kind of a holding on. And, yeah, it makes me sort of question those, the messages or the orientation that I I think I got somewhere as a young person of this knowing yourself means sort of being the same or being a predictable version of yourself of like liking the same thing each day or I mean, again, superficial, but like liking the same music or the same song or whatever it might be that there's some desire to create like a cohesiveness of identity. And so when the opportunity is presented of, I love how you said, okay, each breath, that can be the stretch. Each day and waking up then is the practice of reacquainting ourselves with ourselves with some new information or some new input or some reminders.

I mean, as you spoke that waking up to something, there was someone's name this morning. You just, when you said it, then the flash of somebody's name was said right as I woke up. And so I just wrote it down in this moment, not knowing what that means. And so, you know, the work that you do with dream work in the ways that you can help support, it's almost this making sense of how are we making sense of even the messages that were being given when I'm like, who is this person? What is this name? Not knowing.

And you've talked about this a lot. I mean, I love you for so many reasons. Your relationship with the unknown and how you speak of the unknown is there's something both familiar in it, comforting in it. The reminder of that's this primary relationship as we move through life is like, well, I don't know what it means yet. And so we could make some blocks around that or protect ourselves from not knowing. But, you know, I see in your work and what you share too is like, no, open that up. Be in relationship with that. Yeah, so when we're talking about that in between, it's the place where the new can generate, what is unconscious can come into conscious awareness.

And, you know, we can talk about the sort of the default, you know, image of the seed as, you know, potential for life that goes into the darkness. and then who knows what's happening in there. It's a whole mystery of if it's going to even sprout and then what happens from there. And we can think about, of course, you know, the womb and we can think about the darkness of the moon or the dark face of the moon. And we must think about the value and the beauty of that darkness

and that unknown. There's some predictable factors maybe. There's some things that we may know about it, but ultimately the mystery is part of the beauty of it all. And I always say like if we want to create something new, truly discover something new. We cannot go by anything that we already know. Otherwise, it's not a discovery or a creation of something new. It's just a reiteration or reverberation of something already known.

Right. So in order to really be truly creative, we have to not know. we have to go into that space of I'm not prepared. I haven't projected any particular outcome so that anything can be possible. And it makes me think about, you know, these conversations that you and I tend to have where we don't come prepared and we come receptive. And we may have a longing or maybe we may have an inquietude or we may have something that is kind of poking at us and we bring that and then we let that guide the exploration it's an exploration you don't

know i don't know we explore together right and in that space of not knowing if we give room to that space which is that same space of the in-between endings and beginnings at that space of what we now call the process of grief that is where if we are patient enough being in it which i think part of the other issue, right? Grief is because we don't want to be in it for this long because it's not convenient because it's taking too long, et cetera. But if we just let it, incredible things that were previously unknown emerge. And that is where the magic starts to happen. Right? This is where the unknown becomes known to us. And that's where we are becoming aware of who and what we are becoming, you know.

I love that what you just said of showing up. It's not about showing up being like prepared with all the answers or here's all the bullet points or here's how you do it or, you know, whatever the expectation might be of how we learn things or share things or have this exchange, but to come receptive. I mean, that is really, that just feels like the key. How can I come receptive to this moment with this person or to myself to my own life? And having some theme, some orientation, right, of like I reached out to you and asked, do you want to talk about this phrase of the end is also the beginning?

There's so much in that. It's not that it's easy to say, but it's like, okay, the end is always. to the beginning, how to really open that up and feel into it and what does it look like to live with that knowing, with that understanding and all the emotions that come up as a human of like self-preservation being one of them or just a fear instinct to not go towards the unknown, to notice how that is tied up in there. And I would say that in our nature, in our original nature, we are driven more by curiosity and wanting to see what it feels like and what it is like than we are longing for the assurance

of a particular certainty. I think that has been imposed on us. And, you know, if we go back to the foundations, our only true fears as organisms, as living beings, are fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Those are the only true fears. Everything else has been conditioned in to us. Hmm. So when we're talking about fear of the unknown, that is really not an ultimate truth for, you know, our human nature.

It is something that has been fabricated and that we have carried on first centuries that the unknown is something we don't like. But it's only through the curiosity of the unknown that we've discovered everything. Wow. It'd be so interesting just to like even grow deeper into the origins of that impulse for control because that's what it feels like. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

And with the lunar cycle, like, it doesn't feel like there's a choice. I, what if I, I'm not ready? I don't want this cycle to end and I just, I'm not ready for it to end. But whether I like it or not, you know, I was up early this morning, saw the crescent moon, and had that feeling inside is this might be the last day. You know, I might not get another chance in this particular cycle to see the moon before going to that dark place. before that death. And I know in my own journey, that's part of the healing with the lunar cycle.

Is that coming to terms with and accepting something that maybe I'm not ready to accept. Yes. And I absolutely love and feel like it's such a blessing to live with the unavoidable nature of that. I mean, and it's interesting because we're talking about, you know, the death and rebirth that is happening in breath and then the one in going to sleep and then the one with the cycle of the moon, you know, like we get bigger and bigger and bigger. And one of the things that had brought that to me originally, I can do it more now as you just described. But, you know, I don't know. I want to say it was maybe, I don't know, like 2011. or something, or I don't remember, more or less around that time when I was beholding a full

eclipse, and it wasn't a total eclipse, but it was enough that I got to see for the first time the moon in this other way. I mean, I spent many hours just like waiting for it and then being in it and then seeing as it was fading out and just being like, when will be the next time? Will there be a next time that I get to witness something of like that. it was such a revelation. It felt to me like something incredible was being revealed. And what had me there was curiosity. Like, I don't know, I don't even know what to expect.

I don't know how I'm going to feel. But I'm going to write it out and just see what happens, right? Going back to the eclipses and just the experience of an eclipse, eclipses as revelations and eclipses as this inversion where either night becomes day or just this moment that's out of the ordinary and eclipse is being something sudden so the lunar cycle gives us this gradual unfolding and releasing of phases our breath has a certain predictability of like the inhale and the exhale with an eclipse coming in, it's this, what seems like this out of the blue, something sudden, right? Something unexpected, even though eclipses are rhythmic as well,

that there is a pattern to them that has been known, you know, and documented and tracked when skywatching was a part of daily existence and relationship with the movement of planets and the repeated nature of eclipses. But if we take, you know, taking an eclipse as something that's sudden or out of the blue or a, like a sudden death, like a, wait a minute, it's not the new moon, because the new moon gives us this every 29 and a half days, that's going to happen. just as like a routine maintenance of some, you know, of the cycle renewing itself. And eclipses being something that may be, you know, even just symbolically in life that we might feel kind of blindsided by. Eclipses are powerful and just how you described at the revelation when you're coming with that curiosity of what is this experience?

countered by so much, you know, from whatever the messages are about fear around eclipses or the taboo nature around eclipses or don't go out during an eclipse. Culturally, there's so many different messages depending on what the either cosmology or mythology or whatever it is around the meaning of an eclipse and why to avoid it or why there might be this taboo that's there. And I feel like it just creates a missed opportunity for something like so powerful, so almost like it's, I mean, I'll use the word ceremony only because it's out of the ordinary. But just even just bearing witness to an eclipse has something so powerful. And with you sort of bringing that up, I wonder just even bringing in that symbolic

nature of how an eclipse differs from that other in-between time, that liminal space between endings and beginnings. Yeah. Well, as I'm listening to what you're saying and just kind of revisiting my experience of that first time that I just was like, this is happening and I'm going to hold space for it and however long it takes. Because you were talking about, you know, this sudden thing. of it because it only happens, you know, twice a year and there is some rhythm to that breath

as well, right, of that death and rebirth. It's just at a different sort of syncopated, let's say. And it feels sudden when you're not in connection to the rhythm. Yeah. Right? that in itself to me just blows my mind right now because the invitation then is to connect to all of the rhythms. There's so many layers to that because when we are connected to those rhythms, we begin to feel how everything prepares for them. If we're disconnected, it's going to blinds blindside us. But the reason why I do this work today and for the last seven years is because

I started to observe experiences of that shadow of the whatever that happens before the moment of the big change. And what struck me was I was doing dream work with people who had no way of knowing that they were going to die. And the work that we did for months before and for years before even was preparing for that moment. It was like there was a very gradual and progressive preparation and foreshadowing. But if we look carefully, it was there. And it was because it happened several different times, disconnected one from the other.

it led me to look closer at that. And now that I've been doing this kind of work for all these years, I see the evidence of it a lot more. But it has to do with connecting with those different cycles of life, death, life, you know, death, transition, rebirth, to be able to flow with them and not be taken by surprise by them. So what is grief, if not an adaptation? because we've been disconnected from those cycles,

and therefore every single change blindsides us. And every requirement to transform with the change suddenly is some inconvenient imposition, right? But when you tell me about, when you remind me again of that particular moon, the beauty of it is that I can't really see the nuance of what is happening when it's so bright, right? So especially the full moon eclipse reveals something

because something else covers the light so that we can actually see. And it's interesting because I want to talk about light and dark a little bit. We have this association that light is the preferred thing and darkness is not. and that there's something bad about the darkness and that there's something bad about future faction and there's something bad about whatever's going on under the surface of things whatever's going on, you know, in what we cannot see, what we cannot know. And that's a whole other thing that has been imposed on us. You know, there was a higher chance of being eaten by some animal or something in the middle of the night,

maybe at one point in our evolution. But apart from that, there's nothing, there's nothing bad about darkness. Plus, we get to adapt and navigate in the darkness if we allow ourselves to be in it. So why are we avoiding it so much? It's one of the best places to be, right? So, you know, somebody responded to something I shared about being in the darkness

by like, oh, sometimes the light is so dim that we can't see it. And it's like, there's absolutely, in fact, yes. And that's the, that's the good thing about it. You know, like, don't tell me you're sorry for my loss, please. Because my loss is what allows me to grow, allows me to get to know myself, allows me to go into that putrefaction that allows to like transform things. What is what is future faction if not, like creating the compost for the life that is coming? So yeah, transforming our relationship.

relationship to these is essential. Yeah. There's so much there to just be with. And you shared that following the thread of overtime in your work, the dream work and the preparation, what prepares us for what we don't know is, you know, coming or down the road. And I'm just wondering if there's anything kind of to share about that of being in that place of not knowing, being in the process of the awareness or the receptivity or the openness, both in our dreams, in our waking life, that can guide, I think for maybe somebody who hasn't

had this experience or practice in this way or just kind of becoming more aware of, you know, what I call an experience as that self-study that's in relationship to these cycles. You said it's all a rhythm, those ripples out from here's our breath cycle, the day and night cycle, the lunar cycle, then the eclipse cycle gives us these six months, this halfway point between the yearly cycle, you know, all the way out to our life cycle, um, that appears to have this ending and this beginning of like, I was born here. And in many ways in schooling that teaches us, here's this timeline of drawing out,

like here's the start of some time. And then there's this line with dots along it and the end is really like far away from wherever that line was where it began to reorient to, okay, I'm studying. me myself, my awareness of symbols, synchronicity, things that maybe don't seem connected, but then following the thread makes sense maybe in hindsight to see how that that line, that timeline of our life, the beginning with the breath and then the expiration, that one end then is actually connected up to the other. I mean, I know you've had so many experiences of this of kind of following a thread to then

see what unfolds and then in hindsight other meaning that's able to be made. Yeah, if any examples sort of stands out about describing that process for somebody who's interested of like, I want to do this more. What is this self-study? How, what am I looking for or, you know, that kind of question. Yeah. There's so much that we could like pull this thread or this thread and then see what comes out. So in terms of just being more practical about what can be done, I think one of the things that we can do is not just look at the first beginning that we can recognize the moment of emerging from the womb, taking our first breath, and then this unseeable ending of like, you know, taking the last breath. But to begin to

recognize the endings and beginnings in our life. And maybe we still are not ready to do daily like, oh, I go to sleep and then I wake. But we can always look at the trajectory of our lives and look at the major losses, or the major changes or the major transitions. And observe in that we have already lived, you know, what were the losses. And there's usually a whole, you know, different layers of those losses. There's the primary. thing that was the big change, whatever that was, like I graduated or I moved or a relationship ended or, you know, a relationship began. And that also implies many loss. So we also have to think about how loss comes with gain and gain comes with loss always because there's always an implied

change. Right. So we are always thinking, oh, something ended, it's a bad thing and we don't realize that there are good things that are coming with it. And then we're also being blind to all the things that end when something quote unquote good happens. But it's always both. It's always both. So if we look at that big changes, they don't have to be good or bad. And then with those changes see what was lost, what could no longer continue because of that change. And then there was a period of transition in that, no matter what it is. Right. You got the best job. ever, you're still having a moment of transition to find yourself in that. And there is loss and grief involved in that, even if we don't acknowledge it. And then who did I become? And so the more

that we do that, the more we realize we have died and been reborn many times in a lifetime. And then, you know, that's one of the things. And then if we are ready to, you know, engage our dreamy, of course, we can, of course, do it with that. And we don't have to be all elaborate about it, but just to start noticing and start to say, okay, I really want to notice more because the moment we are willing to be receptive, more becomes evident to us. And the more we notice it, the more it becomes evident to us. And so this was something that came up the other day about, I don't know if you've heard how, you know, like the original peoples of the Americas could not see the ships of the colonizers because they had no point of reference. So their brains just didn't

even register that. It was not part of their reality. And in the same way, you know, the colonizers had no point of reference for many of the things that were obvious to the original peoples, because that was their reality that they navigated. And, you know, so to me, it's also a practice of expanding our awareness and having an intention of being able to perceive more. And then we begin to perceive more. You know, like, this is another one of those very good, I don't know, examples. Like, you know, you research this one thing that is the best thing for whatever it is that you're looking for.

And then you find it, but you didn't know it existed until you searched and searched and searched. And then once you find it, you realize it's everywhere, right? This happens all the time. It's that recognition, right? once it comes into your field of awareness, it's like, oh, gosh, it's everywhere. Yeah, exactly. And that happens both for the, for the things that enhance your life and for the things that

need to be let go so that you have an enhancement of your life. You notice what they are. They're everywhere. You have every opportunity to say, okay, thank you, but no, thank you. Well, all of, you know, all of this speaks to this kind of this continuity of seeing within every gain or new beginning, almost like making an inventory or list or however for ourselves to see to acknowledge

that there were losses that were necessary for that to even happen. And within that continuity, you know, this other piece of the endings and beginnings and the loss of what feels like no longer being in relation, relationship with somebody when there is a death of a physical form, right? That that feels like, almost like what you said earlier that like, I'm sorry for your loss, that that is built in and layered on top of this relationship with death, that it falls into this binary of bad,

bad versus good. Life is good. Death is bad. And when there's a wholeness, like we can't have one without the other. And I would prefer for the people I love not to die, ever. And I know that's not possible. And also, I think because your work accompanying and being a companion to that process of release and end of life, that there's a relationship that continues, even when the physical is no longer. to be with that without the resistance or without the overwhelm that loss can bring for people,

whatever form that loss takes. Well, you know, as you were saying with these binaries or these polarities that we're talking about, one or the other versus both. And we assume that ending is a finite thing. even the body transforms, you know, even the elements of our bodies, everything from like the earth and the water and the air and the fire that are in our bodies transforms when the body ceases to sustain life and sort of withers and becomes the soil that then is the space for new seeds to grow in and to feed new life.

So the fact that we assume that death is an end, a finite certain end where there's nothing more, that does not correspond with anything else in nature. We can observe the universe and the galaxies and the planets and we can observe the nature that we see as it sprouts and grows. and it's never an end that stops existing. It just transforms. So, you know, and people might want to have arguments with this, but to me, it's not about me believing anything.

It's just what I have witnessed. And in my personal experience, whether this is something that we do in order to generate comfort or whether this is something that is true, universally is beside the point, right? The important thing is how do we build a relationship with it such that it is comforting to us, right? And in my personal experiences,

and the reason why I'm in this work in such a comfortable way, of being comfortable with the discomfort of it all, and being willing to just go with curiosity and with receptivity and all that into you know, what other people might consider horrifying, is that, you know, a lot of the experiences I've had, both with my own near-death experience, let's say,

which I had when I was a child, and then every death that has been closest to me that has been sudden accidental freak situations, there was no, there was no ending. It was a continuation, right? And not only that, there was a choice in the matter. in my own death, I chose to come back. Right?

So to me, then already my experience, whether it was generated from whatever, you can say and think whatever you want about it, not you, but in general, people can. There was a choice in the matter of being like, all right, I'll give this another shot. And I think I regretted it for several years before I actually was like, right, fine.

I am in fact still here. Anyway, but so there's this. that, but then when when people died suddenly, they were on another realm in relation to me. And that was my experience. And I know that not everybody has that experience, but because that was my experience, I never felt like there was an end. It was just a transformation. And it was a little bit challenging at first.

And I think I've told you the story of that first time. But now I'm remembering other things from earlier on in my life where I was like, oh, actually that was happening earlier earlier on but i you know i discounted that as a no i was too young or whatever but where you know there was that moment when something stopped and something began immediately right so um and you know what it makes me think of it makes me think of for some reason about being underwater and emerging into like air um there's what we that's that's what's below the surface and then what we see that to us is what's evident. There is something else that is there as well.

And a lot of it is a big mystery to us. So I think that there's thresholds, just like that threshold between water and air, that at other dimensions, because my experience has been with these kinds of situations where somebody dies accidentally, that I'm communicating and they're communicating with me immediately after. So it's just they're not physically here, but something else is happening. And the thing is, I think, because of the nature of my early experiences, maybe I already have an expanded perception about that. There are many things I may not see.

There are many ships of conquistadors that I will not see. But this is one thing that to me is very evident. So I think a big part of our work, depending on what kind of relationship we want to have with the end, and new beginnings is what are we willing to perceive beyond what we already know so that we can have a new experience that is just an expanded experience, right? Yeah. And to be in that space, that in-between space, I mean that between the moon space of the dark of the moon, of when maybe there's no visual evidence where it seems like the moon is gone,

and possibly never coming back, that mystery that the moon has, I mean, I'd say lived, lived out or played out or or shown to humans and all of life on Earth is like this demonstration or this dance or this visual reminder. And there's that gap. And in the lunar cycle, it's three days. And in our life, it's hard to know what that amount of time is going to be. Where we have to, like you've said, like sit in and be with whatever that discomfort is of wanting something that's no longer or longing for something that hasn't come into form yet. You know, as you're talking about the dark and something else you just said, it makes me think of just the very literal practice of being in the dark.

You know, if we don't have like that evidence of what I see and of what I can eat, easily grasp, there's something else that happens if we let ourselves. And can we allow ourselves to discover that? And I was a photographer for many years back when it was what I think is true photography, going in the dark room and all of that. And I loved being in the dark for hours. And especially when you do color film and printing, you have to be in complete darkness, you know, with black and white, you still have a red light. But in with color, my favorite thing about working in color wasn't really having color photographs. It was about being in complete darkness. And I would spend hours and hours and hours as much as I could in complete darkness. And just seeing what I could discover about myself, about being in silence, about not being able to lose my eyes. And then seeing what happened to my skin and my,

my capacity for perception in other ways. And, you know, it's incredible what happens. And I think that, I don't know, just to work with that as ways of how do we expand or begin to play with that, where is that boundary that was only set by the limitations of my conditioning? That expanded. awareness beyond the physical form yeah something to play with i think my experience with the dark and as i got more comfortable i often will close my eyes like even when it's dark then i'll close my eyes to feel around um and have a sense can i find can i find things like getting up before the sun and to do that in the dark with my eyes closed and find those things as just a regular practice.

That's only come from more of an ease or a relationship, whereas I would tense up more or have that fear. I need the light on to be able to find something. If the light's not on, then I can't find it. And something that's shifted and working with the moon and all of this work is like, no, I can either there's, it's dark or I'll actually just close my eyes and then let that site. sort of transfer go into another part of the body to then sense or feel and find something

that it's looking for without being able to see it. So the end is also the beginning. I have been wanting to sort of end the first season of the podcast that it felt like, well, is this going to end? Does this keep going? Do I want a pause? And I have to make a decision about that. and kind of going around in circles and not deciding for several months, not that anyone is telling me what I have to do or not do, but just having this sense or this feeling of what would it feel like to bring closure to a season of conversations without having known when I started between the moon what the plan was going to be. It was like, is there going to be a certain amount of episodes?

and then being in relationship and listening and feeling. And so just having this feeling of, okay, there's a season that wants to, just to bring something to a close or name it as an ending. So that whatever wants to come next, which I don't know, maybe this is it. Maybe this is the season that's just one thing that's all on its own. And yet there's some bubbling underneath

about other conversations to have. but I think this is in what you've described as well, I'm seeing in this practice, listening to that early kind of shadow of the beginning of the end of something that wants to be done in some form so that it can begin again. Or what it might feel like to leave something open-ended, even that word open-ended is interesting, right,

where it feels like, oh, a tendency to be, bring closure to something feels complete. And yet in life, there are a lot of things that don't naturally have closure or may never have closure or never feel complete that are open-ended. Because there's always something more to explore. There's always a whole other universe of experience that comes through us if we allow it, right? And that's what I think life moving through us is, right? As we move through life, both things are happening at the same time. And so my teacher, Jeremy Taylor, used to say, we will bring this to an arbitrary close because the truth is that nothing ever ends. Well, thank you, Wilka, for just sharing this journey through these realms

of the beginnings and endings and helping us to look at what our relationship is to those, how we feel about them, how we've maybe been conditioned to feel certain ways, and what else is possible? Thank you. If people want to find your work or know how to work with you and to explore this and many other realms of dream work. So I would say there's several things. So there's always the creative dream work class, which I think I'm only doing once a year in January. I may reconsider and I am working on a revamped version of dreams, death and life after death, but I think that's not going to air until 2024.

And then we have, yeah, this incredible opportunity to go to Ireland with the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death. And, you know, on the Elizabeth Polaros Foundation that I lead here. and while there we will be working with, you know, symbolic language, dreams and birth and breath and death. So the whole thing. And actually, just recently, there's this new opportunity that just kind of was born out of an ending, which is that I'll be connecting in person with Amy Wright, Glenn, and Aditi Setti from the Center for Conscious Living and Dying and the Institute for the Study of Breath and Death and Death and Death and Death and Death and Death and Death and Death and Dreams and Yoga. Because the yoga part is the part of breath and, you know, death and dreams.

And then we're talking about thresholds and we're talking about that in between, specifically, in fact, of that between endings and beginnings. So that's happening in outside of Asheville in North Carolina mid-March. So yes, there's a lot more that's coming, I think, from that. I'm going to put all of the links for anyone who's interested in the North Carolina area or wants to fly there for this in-person opportunity. It sounds amazing. Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing today, Wilka.

It's such a pleasure to connect. Yeah, I really, really appreciate these explorations that you and I dive into on a regular basis. So it's nice to be able to share them. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with a friend, all the things to help it reach more people who will benefit in some meaningful way. I'm April, and I'll be with you next time on Between the Moon. new.