FEBRUARY 2024 Update

Welcome February!

A big welcome to the second month of the Gregorian calendar; and a warm farewell and thank you to January for all that you held, revealed and transformed. Last month was exhilarating and challenging—I felt both energies equally. I experienced an interesting push and pull that also extended into me delaying and ultimately foregoing a newsletter for January. Rather than resisting, insisting, and beating myself up about what was coming up, I surrendered and kept moving forward. Thank you all for your patience and grace.

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Although the shortest month of the year, even with the additional leap day this year, February is quite an abundant time. Happy Black History Month! Early Happy Valentine’s Day! Happy all the rain we’ve been getting in my corner of the Earth in Southern California! Happy all the things we choose to celebrate and observe during this time (see Today.com’s list).

On a personal note, my mother was born during this month (on the 2nd), so please send birthday sweetness, blessings, and prayers her way. With almost two-thirds of this month being nestled within Aquarius season, February grants my water-bearing rising self extra permission to be in the fullness of her quirkiness and out-there-ness. Shout out to my Aquarius folks! February was also the first month (in 2018) of my venture into the unknown and working for myself after ending my 15-year career in financial services. Big little month indeed!

The February of 2024 is hitting a bit different for various reasons from my perspective, though I will focus on the aspect of us being in a leap year! The 29th of this month is a leap day. For those who don’t know too much about leap years, this article was informative for me as I did a bit of research: Why do we have leap years? And how did they come about?.

From my perspective, the division of time, as we collectively and currently have it, is a construct we create(d) and continue to utilize in order to assist us in navigating our existence—to ground in a semblance of order, predictability, consistency and familiarity. Even the institution of leaps speaks to this idea. It actually takes the Earth about 365.25 days to move around the sun. The shaving off of time to make the calendar a solid 365 days, though slight from one perspective, is actually significant. A long time ago, it was realized that over enough time what people understand to be their seasons would shift dramatically if some preventative mechanism wasn’t established. Thus, leaps were instituted in order to help us catch/sync up. This practice is not restricted to the Gregorian calendar, nor were days the only increments of time that have been leaped!

It’s interesting to consider what would have occurred had we just kept the timeframes—solar and calendar—slightly out of sync and allowed for the experience of the displacement of seasons. It’s also comical to realize that atmospheric, seasonal, and other shifts have still occurred in light of various factors, including ongoing destructive human behavior. Rather than attempting to control time, perhaps our focus should have been on maintaining reverence for the Earth, and healing the ideas of disconnection with/separateness from it.

Though a human-decided practice, these leaps, like any other permission slip, have the potential to triggers power transformation. In reflecting on the behavior of determining, playing with, and in other ways negotiating with time, Èṣù comes to mind.

Èṣù is a trickster, a judge/discerner of our character—specifically testing if we are really being/doing what we say we are about. He is a co-signer/supporter of whichever path we choose—even if we ultimately don’t prefer it.

Synchronistically, the end of last month up until just recently, my community was fortunate to experience Babá Rychelmy Esútobi of Casa do Mensageiro, a priest of Èṣù within the Candomble/Afro-Brazilian branch of the Ifá tradition. His visit was made possible by Viver Brasil Dance Company (VB), and included dance workshops, lectures, ritual/ceremony and other moments of learning from him, and deepening our understanding of this powerful energy called Èṣù.

After an excursion with Babá, Linda Yudin and Luís Badaro (of VB) to Zuma Beach that included us greeting Yemanja and Olokun at the ocean, I felt altered…like I had shifted dimensions. I have been noticing the feeling of going in and out of time for quite some time now (since 2022 in particular); however, something was unique about this experience. I don’t yet have the adequate words to describe it…I just feel and know it. Prior to then (and his arrival in general), I was already in a state of reflection around the choices I have and haven’t made to move in the direction of my joy; to be in the fullness of my being; to align with fear or trust, and so much more. Since then, the feeling has intensified in some ways, and the doors to other recognitions and reckonings have been blasted open.

I invite you to consider all of the above and really sit with the choices past you(s) made, choices present you is making now, and choices that future you(s) have made that you get to draw inspiration from in order to fuel your journey towards the version of yourself and the world you say you prefer. A great deal is happening all over the world—across the spectrum of positive to negative. This is always the case at any given time. There is no difference between this time or any other time except our awareness, perspective, and choices around it all.

Where is your focus and why? What are you doing with the reflection? The paradox of life is that everything that happens within it is valid and necessary on some level—regardless of our views about any of it. We are co-creating EVERYTHING. It is here, we are here. We get to use our here-ness to usher ourselves and the collectives aligned with us to the already existing versions of Earth that are more reflective of our wholeness and true power.

I choose a place where the only relevant states, choices, and expressions are peace, compassion, integrity, honoring of all beings and the land, music, joy, dance and all others that demonstrate the love, abundance, and expansion of the ALL that IS. I am chipping away at what isn’t that (and isn’t me), one moment at a time (however that division looks) so that I embody it and thus prove to myself that I have always been worthy and capable of being in such a place.

May we all take a huge leap and remember who we truly are.

The choice is truly ours, has always been, and will always be.

Love,

Onyi

News & Upcoming Events

Make sure to check the ONYI LOVE Calendar for upcoming events throughout the month!

Tools, Resources & Offerings

Written Tools

• O’s Corner Blog

• Support Guides

  • Loud Sounds & Explosives

  • COVID & Other Vaccines

Sonic Tools

Sound Healing

• Sound Immersion Library: Complimentary sound based healings (also containing verbal channeling, meditations, or conversations) by/with Onyi that are currently not accessible via social media.

• Soul Cleanse

Recorded music by/featuring ONYI LOVE

Latest Release…

On all streaming platforms. Purchase on Bandcamp.

• Songs of Soothing (album by ONYI LOVE)

• Voices for Ogum (song by Aye Sonidos: ONYI LOVE, Dana ‘Minha Velha’ Maman, Destani Wolf, Emina Shimanuki)

• Usawa (album by Tristan de Liège, ft. ONYI LOVE)

• Usawa Remixes, Pt. 1 (album by Tristan de Liège ft. ONYI LOVE)

• Azure - (EP by Tristan de Liège, ft. ONYI LOVE)

Playlists compiled by ONYI LOVE

• Onyi’s Faves #1 (Spotify)

• Butterfly Things (Spotify)

Conversational Tools

• O’s Corner Podcast (by ONYI LOVE)

• Features Library: Conversations by other hosts ft. Onyi

May you be at ease and heal.

May you stand firm in your healing.