Pisces New Moon: This Equinox Invites Radical Compassion

Mar 8

The Pisces New Moon arrives at the edge of the Vernal Equinox, when light and dark stand in equal measure. You can almost feel the Land loosening beneath your feet. Long before we see any green, water is moving under the surface. Our own inner waters move like that, too—all the grief, longing, exhaustion, and quiet knowing we’ve stored away begins to soften and shift. Explore this season's invitation to build the ground from which Radical Compassion can emerge.

Pisces is the keeper of the collective heart. It’s the part of us that feels what others can’t name and can carry sorrow without scrambling for a quick fix. When this Pisces New Moon crosses the threshold into spring, the line between our inner world and the outer world gets a little blurry. Everything we’ve carried deep in our bones begins to move. The air feels fuller, more alive. Our hearts crack open, and what’s real gets closer.

The Myth of Spiritual Neutrality Under the Pisces New Moon

In moments like this, especially under a Pisces New Moon when emotions are high, many spiritual teachers talk about staying neutral. They avoid taking a clear stance to avoid adding to polarization. Others charge in the opposite direction, convinced that enough pressure and force will fix things. I’ve tried living in both of those places.

“ Over time, I started to notice what each one actually does to my body. Withdrawing makes my world feel smaller. Pushing back just makes everything harder and more rigid. Neither one has the power to create something truly new.”

Carol Sanford writes about this beautifully in her article “Movements or Communities?”on substack. Movements built on fighting something tend to create the very thing they’re trying to resist. Pressure just reorganizes a system around resistance instead of inviting real transformation. What actually changes a living system is creating a container strong enough to hold tension without breaking.

The work of this moment feels different. The Pisces New Moon isn’t asking us to hide from the world, and it’s not asking us to sharpen ourselves for a fight. It’s inviting us to find a deeper capacity—the ability to stay present with what is painful and what is beautiful, all at once.

Radical Compassion Is Not Softness

Years ago, an accident broke my body open. In the aftermath, something entered my awareness that I had no name for. It wasn’t relief, and it wasn’t bliss. It was not an escape from the pain.

It was a fierce, steady presence that held my fear, grief, and will to live, all at once.

My body responded to that presence. Overnight, I healed in ways that shocked my doctors. What stayed with me wasn't the "miracle," but the feeling of that inner coherence. Nothing was pushed away or denied. Everything belonged.

For years after, I thought spiritual maturity meant staying soft. I avoided strong opinions to avoid disturbing that inner calm. I thought compassion required me to be neutral. Life corrected me.

Harm doesn’t just disappear because we refuse to name it. Injustice doesn’t fix itself if we just stay gentle. Slowly, I started to feel another current in my body—a heat rising through my center, a set in my jaw, a protective intelligence rising up from my gut.

What I had felt in that hospital bed wasn't softness. It wasn't neutrality, either. It was something I didn't yet have a name for — a fierce, steady presence that held everything at once without pushing any of it away. I couldn't have called it Radical Compassion then. I didn't know yet that compassion like that isn't something you feel. It's something that emerges — when the ground is strong enough to hold it.

Where Rage and Compassion Share a Root

In the body, compassion and anger come from the same place. In the Taoist tradition, the rising energy of spring—the Wood element—carries the impulse to protect *and* the impulse to care. It’s the same force that pushes sap up a tree and sends green shoots through frozen earth.

When this energy moves freely, it gives us direction and the ability to move. It lets us respond to what’s out of balance without losing our own center.

But when that rising force gets trapped—when our boundaries were crossed, and we couldn’t protect ourselves—it doesn’t just vanish. It settles into our tissues. And it waits.

Frozen Protective Energy and the Capacity to Hold Heat

Under the Pisces New Moon, when our emotions are turned up, and our edges soften, this stored, protective energy starts to swell. If we have the capacity to feel it without just letting it fly, our compassion grows.

“The heart can stay open because it has learned how to hold heat.”

Radical Compassion isn't a nice sentiment. It's what becomes possible when that capacity is real.

Pisces New Moon—Water, Wood, and the Need for Structure

This Pisces New Moon amplifies whatever we haven't yet learned how to hold. Pisces dissolves boundaries and softens our sense of self. Under its influence, what’s been buried comes to the surface. Grief finds a voice. Longing becomes visible. Frozen anger starts to thaw in our muscles.

At the same time, the Wood energy of spring is rising. The liver’s instinct to create clarity and protect us wakes up. When that rising force meets all this formless water, the body can feel completely flooded—emotions moving way faster than we have the structure to handle them.

“Water needs riverbanks. Without them, it just spreads everywhere. When our protective energy hasn’t been integrated, that intensity either turns inward and we collapse, or it flies outward with no direction.”

This is all about what becomes possible when capacity grows. What's been frozen in the body doesn't thaw just because time passes. It thaws through contact — when we can feel anger in the jaw, the ribs, the belly, without throwing it at someone or shoving it back down. As that ability deepens, something begins to shift. The Living Spirit, which has been locked in vigilance, starts to recover its original function: vision, direction, the impulse toward what we love.

From that recovery — not from willpower, not from a stance — Right Action arises. Not manufactured. Not performed. Something that emerges when the conditions are ready. And sometimes, when the container is strong enough to hold grief and sweetness and rage and love simultaneously, when nothing is pushed away and nothing is denied — that Right Action is Radical Compassion. Fierce. Steady. The third force that becomes available only when we are no longer spending all our energy trying to resolve the in-between.

Culture Mirrors the Body—The Thresholder’s Work in Polarized Times

Our culture is a mirror of our bodies. When forces meet, systems brace and harden. When we all withdraw, energy stagnates. The same patterns that shape your nervous system shape our society.

So many brilliant thinkers point to this. Carol Sanford shows us how pushing against something just creates a counter-force. In her book, All About Love: New Visions., bell hooks reminds us that love is a practice, something we do in our relationships every day. Tyson Yunkaporta speaks in Sand Talk about the importance of holding a larger pattern rather than collapsing into a single story. And in his work, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, Resmaa Menakem brings us back, again and again, to the body, where this emotional charge has to be worked through, not just argued about.

We build this capacity in our bodies and in our relationships. It grows when we can stay present with intense feelings without shutting down, and when we can stay connected to each other without falling apart.

This is the deep work of Thresholders. It asks for the stamina to hold tension long enough for something new to emerge.

Why Radical Compassion Requires Structure to Mature

The container that makes Radical Compassion possible needs a structure strong enough to hold both grief and rage in the same body. It grows through rhythm and repetition, by coming back again and again to experiences where we can feel intensity without fragmenting. A moment of inspiration might open the heart, but the ability to *stay* open is built much more slowly.

That kind of inner container is formed over seasons. It gets stronger when we meet difficulty and stay in relationship with it while still feeling safe enough. It deepens when our protective anger is acknowledged rather than shamed, when it’s allowed to bring us clarity rather than being silenced. It becomes stable when others can witness us without either piling on or running away.

As that structure gets stronger, something new becomes possible. The heart can stay open under pressure. The spine can stand tall. And from that ground — when nothing is pushed away and nothing is denied — Right Action arises. Sometimes, that Right Action is Radical Compassion.

Rewild Yourself—A Living Field for Radical Compassion

Rewild Yourself is a place where that structure can grow. It’s a field of practice—a place to return to—where we strengthen our inner container slowly, so it can hold everything the heart is capable of carrying. Through seasonal rhythms, being witnessed by others, and consistent practice, that frozen energy begins to thaw. Anger finds its true direction. Grief finds connection. What once felt like too much becomes workable.

If this Pisces New Moon is stirring something in you — heat in the ribs, an ache that doesn't quite resolve, a restlessness that feels like it's asking for direction — that may be the frozen protective energy beginning to thaw. The ground is preparing. The Living Spirit is remembering what it's for.

Radical Compassion is not a feeling you cultivate. It is what becomes possible when enough has been worked through. Rewild Yourself is where that work happens — slowly, in rhythm, in the company of others who are building the same capacity. Not through pressure. Not through urgency. Through return.

You can explore it here:https://www.romarlen.com/rewild-yourself

You can learn more about my journey here:https://www.romarlen.com/aboutro

Pisces New Moon Reflection—Equal Light, Equal Shadow

As the New Moon crosses this equinox threshold, maybe take a moment to sit quietly and just notice.

Where do you soften your voice to keep things comfortable?
Where do you let intensity rush through you before you’ve had a chance to really feel it?
What does anger actually feel like in your body when you just stay with it?
What might it mean, this spring, to build the kind of ground that Radical Compassion can actually emerge from?

Spring Is Rising—The Future Belongs to Those Who Can Hold

Spring is rising. Sap is moving. What’s been frozen is starting to loosen in the soil and in our bodies. The future will be shaped by those of us who can stay present with all of it—the beautiful and the terrible—without collapsing or hardening. By those who can feel everything, and still look to what matters most to us.

Ro Marlen

Ro Marlen is a teacher, healer, and guide whose work honors the sacred ecology between body, Land, and lineage. Through her courses and private mentoring, she companions spiritually sensitive Thresholders — those navigating spiritual fatigue, chronic illness, and relational wounding — back into right relationship with their natural rhythm.

Her writing is an invitation to slow down, listen through the body, and remember that every season of change carries its own medicine. Ro’s work lives where wildness and tenderness meet — in the space where the soul begins to breathe again.