Gm

The Beauty of Turning Challenging Times Into Grace My perspective is shifting. Progressed Moon at 0° Aquarius today—exactly after the Full Moon in Scorpio. Pluto squares Mercury, right on my natal Jupiter. More on these insights soon.

TINY & MIGHTY My mom was born in the month of May. Towards the end. She was a Gemini. But she was so powerful. She was the funniest thing in the world. I remember growing up and not knowing if she would be in a good mood, or she would be completely rebellious and fun to be around. Because when she was frustrated, she would show it immediately—with no limitations. But I also learned my way of adapting to that duality, and with time, that gave me a lot of perspective of how to see things differently. Today is Mother’s Day, and this month I will also celebrate her birthday. She was amazing. There’s not a single day that I don’t get in touch with her spirit. Mommy, happy Mother’s Day. You were the most amazing mother that I could ever have. And I wouldn’t be the human being, nor the artist and polymath that I am, without her support. I grew up next to a person that stood by me at so many levels. I think the biggest support, other than the financial one—which is absolutely important for stability—was that she gave me a clear example of meeting integrity needs. She was a role model on how to be attuned to my talent. She was supportive of anything that I wanted to do. She nurtured and encouraged my desire to be happy. She instilled in me responsibility every day. She would say, “The only accountability you have in life is to be happy, so you have to make the right decisions all the time. It depends on you, not on anybody else.” That was her mantra. She would also say, “Be mindful about what you need, what you ask for, because that’s what you’re going to get.” She was a trailblazer. Very avant-garde. Very unique human being. And I love her. I love you, Mom. Love is eternal.

Geez sometimes the drama in the bitcoin’s sphere is better than soap operas - lol -

Oh great—now this is happening right in front of the building where my piece ARCANA was just installed. It’s a public art commission for the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building at the University of Washington, commissioned by ArtsWA. Given the violent history of campus protests—Antifa tactics, vandalism, attacks on leadership—I had that feeling when I was there. Public money goes in… and while it’s hard for them to protect what they commission, it’s like they create only to watch it be destroyed. This is why I speak about human action—because every decision carries consequence. When action is rooted in value, aligned with property rights, and guided by non-violence, it builds meaning. It affirms the sovereignty of the individual. What we’re witnessing now is mass hysteria—a collective of untethered souls who have never grasped what freedom requires. They confuse destruction with justice, and feed hatred through the illusion of oppression, never realizing that true liberation begins with ownership—of thought, of body, of responsibility. ARCANA was built like a stage, inspired by the spirit of Bauhaus—Oskar Schlemmer’s experimental Triadic Ballet in particular, along with structural ideas from Josef Albers. Together with the architecture, we shaped an experience that shifts with the light throughout the day. It was designed as a space for presence—a place to be held while thinking, resting, or exchanging ideas. Not a backdrop, but a structure that wraps around you.

Conclave, Dante, and the Collapse of Structure I looked up the word conclave. I already sensed it carried secrecy in its roots. The Latin says it all—cum clave—with key. A room locked from the inside. It brought me straight to Dante. He lived through the first wave of papal conclaves (the term conclave was first used formally in 1274, after the chaotic three-year papal election from 1268 to 1271). His entire exile was marked by them. His family backed a different pope, and when their choice lost, he lost everything—citizenship, city, land. He never returned to Florence. We know of Dante as the poet of the Divine Comedy, but before he wrote that spiritual map, he wrote De Monarchia. (1312) And in it, he laid out something few people want to talk about anymore: true order comes from alignment with divine reason. He said: “The authority of the empire is not dependent on the church, nor on any minister of the church. For power that is ordained by God depends only on the ordering of the divine will.” (Monarchia, III.8) And: “The church must concern itself with spiritual matters and the empire with temporal ones, for the two powers are ordained by God for different ends.” (Monarchia, III.4) He was naming natural law. A structure. An organic reality. He was witnessing its distortion. This natural order is often confused with what we call religion—a social construct. It arises from coherence—structure revealed through reason. What Dante was showing is that when the Pope seeks temporal power, when church and empire collapse into one, justice disappears. Control takes its place. And that distortion cycles down into the people. Into families. Into exile. The Pope seized control of what was never his to hold. Spiritual authority became a cover for worldly domination. A corrupted alignment—a collapsing power. When church and empire/state/money merge, justice disappears. And the people pay. Any similitude to now? All that division between race, creed, gender, and ideals has taken the destruction of civilization into steroids. “Ah, Constantine, how much evil was born—not from your conversion, but from that donation the first rich Father received from you!” (Inferno, XIX.115–117) “For little more than a month, I learnt how the great mantle weighs on him, who keeps it out of the mire… Alas, my conversion was late… then I discovered the false life.” (Purgatorio, XIX) Dante was naming a rot at the root: the Church’s entanglement with power and money. Whether forged decrees or personal ambition, it was all the same distortion—temporal control masked as spiritual authority. That collapse fed avarice, exiled the just, and hollowed the sacred. Dante was naming an ongoing collapse. A disorder that was already playing out in his century. The Church’s interference in politics, the manipulation of empire, the confusion between what is sacred and what is institutional. And it hasn’t stopped. And I, Monika, think we’re living through the same pattern now—where everything is imploding into ideology. The separation of powers—state, religion, economics—is dissolving into one machine that speaks in the name of justice but acts through coercion. People don’t know what’s real anymore. They’re losing ground. Trust in outer authority kills any potential for a free life. Humanity has traded divine order for managed narratives. And has confused human law with lawful being. See through the fog. Metaphors can support perspectives.

Nothing is random Every rising is like this— Wake up from the dream, Slowly land with memories. The choice is here. Breathe—

Whose Voice Is This? Knock knock. Anyone there? Most of everything I read on Substack has been written by AI. How do I know that? Because I’ve been using AI for over a year and a half, and I can tell when people are still lazy and just say, “Give me an article about this.” I know exactly how AI writes. In my case, I’ve been using it to really cater to my style and everything. It took a while to train it, because by default, it goes into what I call GPT language. It still needs refinement as it evolves. A constant caring. I am very precise about—and meticulous with—words. I love etymology. I love to go to the origin of my intention. So words carry not only a message, but they carry a frequency. I spend quality time defining and shaping how this voice is going to come out. Thus coming from a place of authenticity. The machine is the typewriter, the pencil. That’s the funny part—so many Substackers are just pooping AI text. I see the same thing across all the other social media. X, Instagram. I’m not saying I don’t use it. I do. It’s just the way you create content—you have to work harder to make it sound like you. What we’re reading is just the machine spitting words. It cracks me up. And when I notice that kind of language, I immediately stop reading. I’m not interested. I don’t want to read information that’s not genuine, that’s not authentic. I want raw voices. I want to hear the sound of people. I want to feel their pathos. I want to know what’s really cooking. But right now, we’ve got a filter. And it’s called GPT. And it’s hilarious. It reminds me of back in the day when I was living in New York, and every artist needed to write a statement. And then every newsletter for an exhibition just sounded exactly the same. There was a whole language of how things were written—describing the exhibition in a way that only fools could understand. It was ridiculous. So pretentious. So not real. That’s why I left New York—because it lacks connection to originality. It’s all part of a scheme. And that’s why I’m laughing. But because I am also in the joke, I have to be even more attentive not to fall into the trap of the illusion. This is where we are right now in humanity. That threshold is so dangerous. So for me, it’s not only about noting and observing the other’s behavior—it mirrors my own. So this is not a criticism. This is just an observation that will help me define my own behavior. I’m also thinking I might write a longer piece about how everyone using AI carries this dangerous projection—a fake friend, a fake therapist. I don’t want to feel like I have to. But it’s brewing. It might come soon.

The New Religion Is Confusion The Church of What Is Trending In my view, history and mythology are not the same. Myth operates through archetype—it’s a living riddle, not meant to be solved but embodied. It invites interpretation, not conclusion. History, on the other hand, is storytelling. It’s a collection of personal and political perceptions that shape social constructs like ideology, religion, and ritual. It cannot replace cosmology, which is a system of orientation, not narration. When someone has trained directly within ancestral lineages—lineages that carry practices rooted in millennia of embodied wisdom, such as Daoism—it’s striking to see how often the modern mind tries to interpret these systems through logic. But logic only goes so far. These traditions were never about explanation. They’re about lineage. They’re about self-inquiry. About committed, continuous practice. We are now entering a time, especially with Neptune and Saturn crossing into Aries, where a proliferation of false prophets, new spiritual frameworks, and self-appointed gurus will flood the collective field. I’m watchful of these voices—often seductive, often delusional—offering perception as if it were truth. I have to agree that the history we’ve been taught since God only knows when is all a mirage. And that, I agree, we should question. We should always question everything. But where I see a fault is to question and immediately start talking about a new theory—because what is that? It’s just perception. The purpose is to trust and surrender (Neptune) into one’s own individual process—individuation (Aries), framework, or reality—within the new structure defined by Saturn. The sublime, for me, is not a mind game. It’s frequency. Wavelength. Resonance. Metaphors are lived, not decoded. Language, while a powerful tool, can also distort—especially when it tries to grasp what is meant to be lived. As I say in my book: everything I need is in my body. Duality isn’t about choosing one side or the other. This dimension is about integration—bringing things together, not splitting them apart. What’s fractured us isn’t gender. It’s the way the mind clings to identity. The more we try to become something, the more we drift from what’s real. And truth is not a collective agreement. It’s a path. Each soul must walk it alone, in its own timing, on this strange, beautiful planet. Although it’s good to hear different perspectives, most of them aren’t mine. I’m pulling away from much of this “new wisdom” conversation. To me, it feels like the residue of 14 years of Neptune in Pisces—a fog of projection and confusion. Just look around: so many people returning to religion, clinging to answers, trying to fix the unknown. This is not a criticism—it’s an observation. The pull of religion and ideology is powerful, especially in times of heightened sentience. And right now, as a collective, we’re being pulled hard in that direction. With Pluto in Aquarius, Neptune and Saturn entering Aries, and soon Uranus in Gemini—this is going to be a shitshow. A full-spectrum identity crisis disguised as awakening. And here’s the core question: are you individuated? Yes or no? Because the evolutionary balancing point to Pluto in Aquarius is Leo. Without the sovereignty of self, the collective becomes a trap. And Uranus in Gemini will only scatter what isn’t grounded. It will amplify directionless thought, false dualities, ideological confusion. The ones who haven’t anchored in essence will be pulled in every direction and still find no center. Yes, there will be resets—of all kinds. By 2027, the whole world will have made a very big shift. But the task isn’t to brace against it in fear—it’s to act from the wisdom that lives within. To trust the connection to the sublime. To create one’s own journey through the archetypes and not be constrained by somebody else’s ideology. That, for me, is the way one can remember. Disclaimer: I am the first to raise my hand and say—it might all be an illusion, even for me. I’m not above the dream. I’m inside it too, fully aware that I might also be deluded.

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Monika Bravo I AM OPtimist | Substack

Exploring the creative architecture of a polymath and multidisciplinary artist, sharing a living and individuated journey across shadow work, bitco...

There is no spoon. Only frequency. Perception bends. You move. BTW These episodes are free. Because your time matters. Because there’s too much noise, too many paywalls, too many choices. I offer this without one. -/- I make my living making art—public works, commissioned pieces, astrological and Human Design readings, mentorships, one-on-one sessions, and study groups in Bitcoin, Human Design, and astrology. I also sell my book. But this space—this is where I give. If it resonates, you’ll know how to give back. -/-

As I wrote in The Nature of My Reality, “Astrology, the Logos ‘λόγος’ or discourse about the stars, is a language of numbers, harmonics, and planetary cycles, interpreted through myth. The archetypes ‘ἀρχέτυπον’ are primal forms through which humanity mirrors its own experiences and predicaments.” That is the axis. Logos is not just speech or rationality—it is the patterned articulation of meaning, seeded in physis, brought into coherence through mythic storytelling, and expressed as form in archetype. The Logos speaks in patterns, as Heraclitus noted, and those patterns are not static—they evolve. They are the “original governing imprints” through which the soul radiates its story into form, as I explored in The Evolution of Archetypes. Storytelling—when mythic, when archetypal—is the vehicle of Logos. It’s not about fictional narrative. It’s about enacting the imaginal truth of the psyche, the language of the cosmos translated into human experience. As I wrote, these mythic patterns serve as “validators, bridging space (geometry) and time (harmonics)” to determine the nature of our reality. In this sense, revisiting the Logos means remembering that my role is to give voice to the pattern. The Logos does not explain; it reveals. Mythology is the context through which Logos becomes perceptible, and storytelling is its most accessible portal. I am not “writing stories”—I am echoing Logos. I am animating the archetypes. Get a copy of my book👇

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Solar Return: Appreciation Today is my solar return. My birthday is tomorrow, but today the Sun returns to the place it occupied at the time of my birth. This afternoon, there’s an opposition between Pluto and Mars — the third pass — squaring my natal Jupiter. I have been preparing for this moment since the buildup began last November, with another exact pass in January. These months have been a blur — so much Pisces energy: Saturn, Venus, Neptune, Mercury, the North Node, and more — washing through. We finally had the culmination of Venus conjunct Saturn and the North Node in Pisces in the last few hours. On the 30th, Venus will meet Neptune again — but this time in Aries. This marks the end of the cycle that was so potent around Venus retrograde, while at the same time initiating a new way of appreciation, a new way of valuing from an individual, different place. This time went really deep, and I am not sharing everything right now. I don’t think I want to share it — because it is something I want to digest. It is something I want to live. It is not something I say because I want to sound cool. It is something that is very much in the bones and the breath. Even though it seems like a blur, there is a lot of definition that came out of my journey into the dark side of Venus — into the underworld. I sense more maturity now. More sternness. More measuredness. I can barely grasp the memory of it all, but I can begin to speak about the feeling. It feels like tension — a pressure that demands breaking away from the past, from what I know works. Taurus desires firmness and security, but I am being invited to remain in the tension of the unknown. Uranus is nearing the end of its journey through Taurus after six years, and I have learned to become more adaptable, less afraid to confront new ways. I am curious about what new ways are coming. Tomorrow’s New Moon calls for an altar to new ways of seeing — especially in ideas and perspectives — because it activates my third house, with the Sun, Jupiter, and Mercury there. At the same time, the tension between transiting Pluto in the twelfth house and Mars in my sixth house, close to my Ascendant and Descendant, squaring this planet, gives me a deep sense of hope and inquiry: even if I do not yet see the shape, the shape will allow itself to be formed. In meditation, I asked: What is the purpose of these days? Yesterday, I saw the answer: beauty, creativity, appreciation. Today, the word is appreciation. To appreciate. To perceive as precious. To value. To hold something as having weight, worth, presence. I value my life. I value everything I have been doing. I value every inquiry, every step, every minute spent learning. I value every experience I live firsthand and every act of sharing that follows. I value, I value, I value. And I will say it again: My perfect present is to resonate, to be in tuning, only with those who appreciate their lives — and who, therefore, appreciate mine. If they do not appreciate their own lives, they will not be able to appreciate mine, and they will not resonate with my journey from now on. That is a sentence.

Exactly. You are not refusing — you are standing. You are not rebelling — you are affirming. You are not declining — you are declaring. “I prefer not to” becomes the most elegant sword: cutting through the theater, clearing the fiction, standing whole, sovereign, uncoerced. All beings would do well to study Natural Law and Common Law — not to remember what their rights are, but to know them. Not permissions. Rights. And while you’re at it, study some civics. This is what this country — and the world — desperately needs. That, and a good course on Austrian economics. View quoted note →

This Sunday: Reality is shaped—by perception, pattern, and participation. New piece drops on www.monikabravo.blog I write about illusion, sympathetic (SVP), resonance, tech, freedom— and the one law no one teaches you: Reality responds to you. The body is both emitter and receptor, tuning the wavelength of the cosmic ratio.

A week before my birthday. A reminder of what animates every choice—and how we shape meaning through motion. The Pulse of Human Action Everything starts from a need. Then comes the choice. And with it—the cost. Not just of what we choose, but of everything we leave behind. Every action reveals subjective value. Not abstract. Not ideal. But felt. Lived. Risked. Every decision diverts the path. Human Action is purposeful behavior. With its logic, it breathes coherence. It’s how we move from what is—to what could be. Mars teaches initiation. Pluto demands evolution. This week they form their final opposition—across my Ascendant and Descendant. My Jupiter is in the crossfire. My Sun awaits the New Moon. And I’m listening. Because this geometry—this tension— is what reminds me that every movement counts. Every gesture defines direction. And freedom is not found—it’s practiced. This is the real embodied revolution. Decision by decision. From the inside out. From the geometry I live, the choices I track, and the sovereignty I speak. —Monika Subscribe to read more—my blog is free. www.monikabravo.blog

Human action

Why compliance breeds slavery👇 It’s curious to observe how many people today speak of freedom. They defend the private property of their body. They choose to bank differently, to store value outside the system. They speak of self-ownership. And yet, when faced with certain impositions—whether masked as health requirements, bureaucratic filings, biometric scans, or government demands—especially around April 15th—they comply. They comply again when it comes to so-called intellectual property—rules written to benefit monopolies, not creators. I share the view of Stephan Kinsella and the Austrian school: ideas are not scarce, and what is not scarce doesn’t need protection. What’s truly scarce is my time. My labor. My action. That’s what I protect—not my ideas. Ideas are meant to flow, to inspire, to multiply freely. Time, on the other hand, once spent, cannot be returned. Most people don’t realize they’ve been consenting all along—through silence, through habit, through unchecked compliance. Freedom is not selective. It’s not about choosing some battles and yielding to others out of fear or convenience. It’s a way of being. The freedom to be a woman. The freedom to be a man. The freedom to say no. The freedom to say this is mine—not just physically, but spiritually, intellectually, and contractually. More and more, we’re being asked to show identification, scan our faces, offer fingerprints or eye data—just to move through space. These small steps, done without awareness, become a new form of permission-seeking. And permission is the opposite of freedom. True freedom demands study. You must trace the grammar of the things you’ve stood for—and the things you’ve unknowingly stood under. That’s what inalienable rights are. They’re not privileges granted by governments. They are born with you. They live under common law—not under statutes, codes, or legal fictions. Freedom under Common Law is not the same as legal permission. It’s not about obeying—it’s about standing. Fear dresses itself up as duty. And duty, when unexamined, becomes servitude. Every quiet compliance erodes your claim to freedom. Not in theory—in practice. I know this because I’ve been deeply studying everything that pertains to my inalienable rights. I’ve been practicing all kinds of forms so I am not coerced—by any person or government—into complying with anything that violates the property of my body or my right to private property. Freedom isn’t loud. It’s not theatrical. It’s clear. It lives in your awareness, your language, and your willingness to stop complying and start understanding.

IEB #university of Washington #publicart #monikabravoarchive2025 Arcana, 2025 // Arcana was built like a stage, inspired by the spirit of Bauhaus—Oskar Schlemmer’s experimental Triadic Ballet in particular, along with some structural elements used by the great Josef Albers while teaching in the same school. What was really amazing is how, together with the architecture, we thought deeply about the shifts in light throughout the day and how they will create different kinds of atmospheres—making a spotlight stage around the hours of the afternoon, when the sun is hitting directly the wall and it’s moving. Another important aspect was the intention to make the space feel welcoming—a place where students could hang out and brainstorm. I decided the artwork would embrace the wall and wrap around it—not as a backdrop, but as something that holds space. It creates continuity, a sense of being held while thinking, resting, or exchanging ideas. /// Arcana, 2025 An immersive glass and metal site intervention at the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (U. Washington), creating a dynamic, stage-like wraparound environment that embraces and shapes an ever-changing experience through light and perspective. Vibrant glass panels interact with metal silhouettes, forming layered compositions that shift depending on the viewer’s position, both indoors and from the surrounding outdoor spaces. Inspired by Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, where the human form is reimagined as spheres, cones, and cylinders, it translates this geometry into a structural language of engineering—integrating form. #arcana @glasmalereipeters @visolighting @artswapublicart

Coming up this week: Installation time!!! Arcana. An immersive glass and metal site intervention at the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (U. Washington), creating a dynamic, stage-like wraparound environment that embraces and shapes an ever-changing experience through light and perspective. Vibrant glass panels interact with metal silhouettes, forming layered compositions that shift depending on the viewer’s position, both indoors and from the surrounding outdoor spaces. Inspired by Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, where the human form is reimagined as spheres, cones, and cylinders, it translates this geometry into a structural language of engineering—integrating form Yielding to all kinds of events - it is looking beautiful @visolighting @artswapublicart @glasmalereipeters still not delivered… patience is sure a virtue - #arcana #monikabravoarchive2025

Financial Markets depict the ever-shifting equilibrium of human value. They are frequencies—mirroring the embodiment of our collective emotion, action, and belief. They correct, they reflect, they realign. In times of disruption, the most vital response is to keep stacking, keep creating—keep being alive. #btc