The Tower and The Star

In this episode, I once again voice note you, the listener, directly, sharing a continued update in what’s been a part of my personal journey the last couple of years - which is much death and rebirth - everything changing. I share some of what’s been meeting me, initiating me, gracefully, messily, into deeper trust and surrender and movement in the often crumbling yet luminous dark. I also share what is one large glimmer of divine rearrangement and new inspiration, a creative vision I know I will follow - to begin shifting my writing focus to include writing plays, first a musical (!), and also to work towards establishing a new theatre in the place where I live, offering theatre as story, portal, lighthouse, and love. 

I’m marking this moment of genesis that also coincides with an energetic time of many things breaking and falling apart by asking for listener support, in ways ranging from our possibly exploring working together professionally on a book project or coaching, which helps fund my ability to follow such creative visions, to considering becoming an active supporter as a theatre patron, investor, contributor, or potential collaborator. 

I end the episode by touching briefly on the astrology of the last two years as it connects to the journey I’ve shared. You may see pieces of your own shifting life in some of these astrological flashpoints I reference, and I’ll plan to open the astrology up more generally in another episode, where I explain how you can consider it through the lens of your own astrological chart. 

Thank you for being part of the small community listening in as I offer these pieces of heart. If you feel called to get in touch, please send me an email at robin.bethel.lovesong@gmail.com. :)

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You can also support my creative work on the show, if you'd like, by visiting here. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to Voice Note Me, a Lo-Fi podcast sharing beauty, one human at a time. Your conversations unfolding in solitude. In other words, through VoiceNotes. I'm Robin Bethel, a writer, a lover of voice notes, and your host. Thanks for joining me. In this episode, I once again voice note you, the listener, directly, and continue sharing the story of what's been unfolding in my life in the last couple of years. It picks up where my last love letter episode ended in October of 2025, and I just open more into that continued journey up until now, up until today, and all of the death and rebirth, initiation, and surrender, trust that's happened and continues to happen. I also share about new and large creative vision that is one of the rebirth glimmers, which ties into turning some of my writing attention into writing plays, and one in particular, High Priestess Ramona, and also building a theater in the place where I live that offers theater a story, portal, lighthouse, and love is how I'm thinking of it. So this is all exciting to talk about and share, and it's going to take a lot, especially as it's in a moment of so much crumble. So I'm using this moment to mark the genesis of this vision and ask for help. So I talk about that as well, and then I tie in the astrology a little bit into the story I've shared. I think I'll do another episode soon where I talk about the astrology more generally and help you connect it to your own chart. If you have any interest in that, I recommend it because the themes are really interesting, and you might even be able to see something based on some of the dates that I mentioned today. So that's what this episode is about. This was my first episode I've done in a while. I haven't been doing a lot of podcasts lately, and I was sitting on my bed up in the ideas, and there's a lot more background noise than usual, so just you know, from touching the sheets and things like that makes crinkly sounds and stuff. So I hope that you could roll with the extra lo-fi aspect, the Robin way, even more so.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

So thanks for being a part of this community, listening in, and here it is. I don't feel quite ready to record this podcast. There's so much to say.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Um but I also feel like this is the time today when I'm supposed to record this. So here it goes. Another voice note just to you, whoever's listening. I thought first I would kind of do a quick summary of what brought me to my last episode that was a love letter, where I also for the first time just voice noted you, the listener, sharing a poem, a few different thoughts, and just a little bit of a grounding and where I was in a larger trustful journey. So for anyone that hasn't heard that, I'll just say that in uh late summer of 2024, I followed an intuitive call and had a conversation with someone that I worked with closely, and we decided to part ways professionally, and that felt like the right thing, and I didn't know what was behind it, and uh I just listened to that guidance, and since then it's brought me on this trustful journey with work and money, and it's also coincided with rising creative visions and creative output. And when I recorded the last episode, the love letter episode, I think October of last year, 2025, I could feel I had gone through a lot of fullness in that. I had come to really deep levels of trust and surrender, like even on nervous system levels, in the space of difficult moments. And that's where I was. I could feel it felt like something was was on the verge, and then I needed there to be a shift, and there was a small shift, and then coming into this year, then there was a pause again. Um also 2025 saw me follow a lot of podcast visions. I kind of moved my creative energy from writing to starting this podcast and releasing this and starting another one, Sacred Conversations with a good friend of mine, Nicole Dolan, and also putting out some guided meditative imaginings on another one, Imagine and Flow. Um, and you know, toying with starting a YouTube channel and different things like that. And you know, just what I needed would come in to support me financially, but always on the edge. It's been a trustful journey that has been being held, um, going to my edge, and also that edge coming to be a place that now involves someone else and it putting them in a difficult position, which I don't want to be part of the trustful. As this journey unfolded, I simultaneously was doing a lot of different creative things and just following all of the threads, all of the heart energies, feeling really called to just create with love. And that's what I did. Um, and allowing the paid projects to come in as they met me, and they did, until that kind of got to a point of more drying and more pressure, and also my feeling around podcast shifting, it feeling like I was meant to bring my energy back from that space and bring it back more into writing, and especially a screenplay I was working on. So let's see, then we go more through the year. I have a threshold in June where I feel like it felt like a completion in terms of surrender that was asked of me. Details to be to be skipped over, but it felt kind of like the culmination of trust and surrender, and just allowing and even holding like an excitement over what would what would be that would make this work. I brought myself to a certain edge, and after that, it felt like there's a completion in that space of really just being asked to surrender and trust, of course, always to still surrender and trust, but then it felt like I was in a time where the surrender and trust asked of me also um also could involve other things and other other movements, and so there felt like there's a completion there, and yet after that, there still was what is in tarot called the tower, and so that's the name of this episode. The tower and the star. The tower is the 16th card in the major arcana, and it notes well, it can note a lot of things, it can note just sudden change, a death in some form. Um, but it's essentially like a crumbling, a turn, you know, something falling apart, the tower falling down, essentially. And this doesn't always have to be catastrophic, you know, it can be in different ways, but I know the most classic interpretation of the card is like the crumbling. And so after coming to that sense of completion in my extending like trust and surrender at a level that felt like pretty radical amount in a certain situation and going until I thought I was meant to there. Then after that, then came like the full tower. So tensions brought to a climax, money things continuing climax, basement flooded, water damage, house foundation cracked, um, literally all of these external foundational things, like that being jolted and shook, then also at the same time, kind of an inner storm that was really, really significant too happening at the same time. And that tower is still where I'm at. Kind of that absolute, like everything Christian doing. Part of that, though, has been coming into that and then regrounding in both stories, kind of this inner storm that relates a lot to kind of cosmic love story in a way. Um, and then also this outer circumstance. It's like the trust falls in my life relate to this love story, and then they relate to this money work story in the last two years. So both of them kind of came to this falling apart in new levels place, and then both of them in different ways, um, kind of like the regrounding and still being with just the absolute trust, and trust in my intuition and knowing that all of the pieces on this journey are what they're meant to be, and whatever they're leading me to is where I'm meant to go. And even the greatest falling apart moments belong in here too. Um, and somehow these two things are all mixed up as well, it seems like. So that is kind of the summary from up to my last October episode, and then continuing from that, the thresholds of trust and surrender, I feel like they're pretty large. Um, and they also like I feel I have opened into so much deep trust in a way where I will follow it, walk invisibly in the dark for quite a long time based on what I feel I'm supposed to do. And at the same time, there's also imperfection in that. You know, I've had I've had times where something happens and I meet it with such deep inner peace and almost like a bliss level of peace, knowing okay, like something else then is coming in. I've had moments where it almost felt like it was the pinnacle of kind of like a perfection of inner posture, like a perfection of trust and surrender, where it's a level that goes down through all of my skin cells and through all of my body and my nervous system, and it's just so deep on every level, and coming to moments like that, and then continuing to be in things, and then having moments of worry or flickers of doubt with what I'm doing. And I also came to feel that that imperfection was probably important. I think I should be aware of the imperfection of it, but yet at the same time, I feel like I'm being continually refined more and more and more. So I'm meant to hold some imperfection and I'm also meant to go deeper and deeper and deeper. And it, you know, kind of plays back and forth. And I also just think it's really important to acknowledge in this journey that part of this journey, this trust fall, has impacted someone else in my life who has helped me and has become a burden for them too, which is never my intention and not how I entered into that help. But then that's what the situation became later. And so in the shift, I feel like now is the moment, you know, especially after coming to that completion that I felt, where it has to shift one way or another. However, that happens through my actions or what meets me, combination of both. Um, first because I don't want this to continue being unfair to somebody else who has helped me when I need it. And also because it has in the towering, it has come to be something that now takes my energy into this space of dealing with all of the crumble. And I think part of what all of this is about is my energy is meant to fully be in loving and creating with love. And I know we all have different energetic gifts, and I know I have really intense gifts in these places, so now everything is snowballed so much to where I have a reminder still to like lean on divine, like I feel like their person next to me supporting me, and that is an important lesson, too, to return to. I've been present with that a lot, and then when things kind of grow and crescendo, sometimes not feeling that as much. So returning to that, as all of this is happening. I mentioned before my creative energy kind of shifted this year. My desire to podcast really grew quiet, and I wanted to bring more attention into the writing space, and I was thinking about my screenplay kind of first, and then I ended up helping someone else with a screenplay, and that was really exciting and fun. And my attention in terms of writing is some poetry, and then working on a novel and screenplay, and this is where it's been, and then recently I had another vision take hold, and it feels like the flow of all of these things coalescing and coming together. I felt like I was meant to start a theater, which it just sounds so funny, even saying it's such a large undertaking and vision. It's coming, it's rising in this space of spending a year doing so many different creative things, and then spending the last six months being very quiet in that space of like creative output and putting something out in the world, and it just coming to because I I hate AI. I hate AI, and I'm surprised I haven't done a podcast about it. But I feel like with rising AI, I think people are just going to become less interested in digital spaces at all and you know what they see on a screen. And I love movies, I love movies and TV shows, but I think this space is kind of polluted by rising generative AI stuff. And I think that we're just going to have so much more craving for being in a physical place and seeing story and art, you know, with people right in front of us. And so I feel like the theater is a space that is calling to me, that I think is kind of like this glowing beacon in the world as it moves. And it also brings people together in local community, which is another thing I think about this moment in time. I think that as larger things fall, I think that we really need to bring our attention into local community that we can see and touch and build that space and learn to take care of each other and nourish each other on this small scale and let that be a magic that grows in the world. And so I suddenly felt like I was meant to create this theater. Well, actually, I'm sorry, I framed that wrong. I was actually driving with my son. We were going through a drive-thru, and I had pop into my head the name of a piece of a story, and it was called High Priestess Ramona, which is so funny, it's so specific. Ramona, a name I never think about. I don't know why this name popped into my head. I know why the High Priestess part did, and I'm not going to share that in this episode. But I had that name pop into my head, and then I thought, I wonder if it should be a play. And I'd actually thought about writing a play before. Um, some friends and I had talked about it'd be fun to do that and do like a table read at a coffee shop, you know, and maybe do like a theater troupe. It was actually something that was kind of a crackpot, silly idea without energy put into it, like a couple years ago. Then I had that name pop into my head, High Priestess Ramona, and I thought maybe this should be a play. And I started thinking about it. And then I asked a friend who also writes screenplays if she would want to write a play with me, not collaboratively, but each of us working on a play and just kind of working in tandem and supporting each other through it. And then I thought, and maybe, you know, we write it, we can get a group together, do table reads, and maybe if that's fun, maybe eventually we can, you know, get like a theater group and just kind of joking, and then we were gonna get together and talk about it at some time. And then by the end of that day, I had brainstormed for three hours. The idea went way further. I knew what I wanted to do, I felt called to do it, and it wasn't just a theater group, even though maybe it could start that way, but it was a theater, you know, like a space with a lot of my writing shifting to being plays, play formats, and it being a space where you know that would be where I could share that, and the line that I kind of have in my notes under that. Right now, I mean that the name of the theater could be anything, it could change, but the only reason I'm even saying one of these is because it kind of underscores another thing, but um bright night theater and then theater as story, portal, lighthouse, and love. And I feel like I want this place to be a place where people come gather together and see plays, stories, right? For the beauty that is art and story, and then like going a level beyond that, I also want to have things that aren't maybe traditional plays, um, but also have this in more traditional plays, but to have it be expression and art and beauty and humanity, and also to really emphasize like experiences of art, communal experiences of art that act as portal, you know, like thresholds that help people open into new spaces, you know, kind of psycho-spiritual spaces, or that word sounds technical. I don't really even like that right there, but um open deeper into their own hearts, open deeper into themselves, open into new ways of seeing and things, which is so much of art, but like really having that be a guiding vision. And um lighthouse, I just love that. I feel very called to like help people trust in the dark, move in the dark, see in the dark, believe in the dark, all of which why I feel like a big piece of this journey, this trustful journey, is not only realigning my work, but also taking me through this journey that I feel like I'm meant to reflect in the world imperfectly. And so the lighthouse piece speaks to that, you know, like in bright night theater, if that's what I end up wanting to call it, just you know, this. Light in the dark, which I think is really important for this piece of time that we're living through and are destined to live through. And then theater as love goes without saying love is at the heart of all of our cores. And I just I envision it being a space that can gather community in other ways too. And you know, I have so many thoughts, so many ideas, really excited about it. And it also felt kind of random in a way. I mean, but then on the other hand, not random. Like when I was five years old, I wanted to be a movie star, wanted to be an actress, and then I've had a few moments with that draw as well. And I don't feel that draw now, but like that sense of performance, then my writing going from I mean, not that it has left space of novel or fiction, but like growing to also encompass screenplay, and then that shift being brought to play, which honestly, I love movies, but I just feel like this is the space for the moment in time that we're at. And also it's a space where we can create art together and not need something to, you know, get the approval of businessmen, you know, who are going to spend a hundred million dollars on a project and only care about receiving that back. So I feel like to me, returning to the micro, returning to the community level, returning to sharing without a need to have, you know, eco-validation and worldwide fame or anything like that, but like have a meaningful space to create and share at a local level feels really alive and really like something this moment is calling for. So I'm really excited about this. And then I did kind of ask for guidance around it, just wondering, you know, what this idea that I'm suddenly so passionate about and feeling really drawn to, and it feels kind of funny, um, and definitely an extension from my usual space in a lot of ways, and asking for guidance around that, or not I don't was I didn't ask for guidance, I just asked for a note on that. And I have this deck of Mother Mary oracle cards, and they're really beautiful. I do feel a connection to Mother Mary, but really it doesn't matter what that is, it's just like divine feminine, divine feminine within the divine, and whatever soul or energy you know you feel with that. It's that's kind of what the cards are encompassing. They're really beautiful and really specific. And I shuffled them, and the one that flew out at me was Our Lady of New Vision, and it was all about you know, when you receive a vision, it being something divine you're meant to act with, and that the support you need would come, and even if it seemed large or unrealistic, that you received it for a reason and you were meant to. I'd never gotten that card before, and it came right at that moment, and it just felt like confirmation that yes, you're supposed to follow this right now. Whatever it leads to, exactly, you're supposed to follow it right now. A few days after kind of sitting with this, maybe a week after, and really just feeling it so very much. Then I went with my friend to go see Hades Town, which is a Broadway musical that then they filmed and brought to movie theaters for a limited engagement. I almost feel like I could just talk about that in another episode, but it kind of collided with me in my trustfall journeys. Um, one being this space around work, money, creative vision, what I follow, and the other being like this soul love song, love story. And some of the lyrics to songs just met me really deeply, and then you know, the notes of actually, I don't want to give it away, but kind of like it echoing, sounding this note of you know, like take it to the end and and how hard it is to take belief to the end, and um it was just really amazing, and it also led me to see that musicals, especially a fully sung musical, really had a lot of poetic power, you know. I know a lot of books can feel like poem, and a lot of movies can feel like poem, but then I saw the unique way that plays, you know, in a different way from other things could really feel like poem too. And I love poetry so much, and so it was just it was so beautiful on many levels, and so here I am in the tower, and also like I have been for a while, just also like in the new, like in the radiance at the same time as in the crumble, and everything just mashing up, and being at a place where there has to be a shift, however, that comes, and then also being in this place of having this new creative vision that I'm passionate about and feel I'm supposed to start working towards, and so here I am sharing the update on where this journey has taken me. Oh, and I didn't say the star card is in tarot, it comes after the tower, and it's number 17, and that's also that number figures a lot in my soul story on a few different levels. So the star has always meant a lot to me, and it's like a very specific meaning, but it also more universally just signifies hope and you know, like divine everything coming together, and it's that that light coming after the storm, the tower, and then the star it falls apart, and then it comes together in divine alignment. And so I feel like in this, I'm giving you an update about the towering, bringing us to the deepest towering, and also how out of that space of like Lloyd and uh Crescindo and just flow, right? Flow of how one thing is connected to another. It's like this light emerging and this vision to build this theater and bring my writing attention to writing plays, the first of which High Priestess Ramona, which really centers on themes of the feminine and divine feminine, and where that divine feminine intense energy of love and devotion flows to, and where it's meant to flow to. And yeah, that play in particular, which I feel like I've gotten so many confirmations, like I have to write that one first. It's funny. I had that name full in my head, and then that same night we came home and we put on a TV show, and on the credits, the first name that flashed, the writer, her name was Ramona. I feel like this is not a name I usually see. And then I started reading a book by the writer of Hades Town, and her daughter is named Ramona. So I just, this is a thing. I'm supposed to write High Priestess Ramona. But, anyways, this is where I feel like I meant to bring a lot of creative energy now. It just feels like a deep call, and I'm going to follow it through writing the play and also through starting to explore how I can build this theater. And I am at this juncture where I feel called to ask anyone listening if they want to help be a part of this. I don't know who is hearing this, but I do know a chunk of people do hear these. And if you feel like you would like to support me as I move through this and follow this vision, if you've ever wanted to write a book and have someone help you with the process, um, gosh, I know we've talked about this in earlier episodes, but certainly not usually. But I'm a book coach, I've helped people write books as their ghostwriter. And you know, one of my favorite ways is actually as co-writer, where we're both working on it together and uh as editor too. So if you have a call to write a book and you feel like you want someone there with you, helping that process who's very soul-centered, soul-oriented, let me know. I would love to work with you if we're aligned, if we're a good fit. And you know, if you want to write a book and have me co-author it with you, then that would be a great support in my creative journey in this other space. If you also have any interest in just seeing what it would be like to be a patron, an investor in something like this, or just someone who gets involved, then let me know. If either of these call to spark something, I feel like I've used the word call so often in this, then let me know. Send me an email. My email will be in the show notes, but I'll also say it's robin.bethel.com. And yeah. Enter into the fray with me. Um, I feel like I am in a place where I need to ask for help and realizing this vision and just in this moment, just sending this out there. So I send that out there. I also really want to talk about the astrology of gosh, everything behind what I've just been talking about. It's really interesting. We are in crazy astrological time right now. We're in eclipse season as I record this. We still will be when I release this. I think I'll release it really fast. We had one on August 12th, and then we're having one on August 28th. And I will just say the one on August 28th is the very last one on the Pisces Virgo axis that we've we had been on for a while. The first one happened in August of 2024. Wait, was it August or September? August or September of then 2025. And now here's another one. So it's the closing note in this story, which is really interesting because the things that have happened on these eclipses have been like related to love story and related to this space, the space when I had that conversation with someone I worked with, where you know I received most of my clients. That was actually at the eclipse in 2024. And at the same time, there was relationship ending. And then in 2025, there was something energetic with that ended relationship. And so now here is the closing note in this story. Oh, and I was just looking back in my journal and the eclipse last year, where I had kind of like a new energetic space in that ending with someone where I felt like they they let something go. It was like a piece of freedom, then energetically. Then also I wrote down something within days of that eclipse or on the eclipse that is like the theme for High Priestess Ramona, essentially. And now here we are, and I've had another something, like the karmic cycle that I felt with that person. I feel like I had closed it, and now I feel like they have closed it for them. And now I'm deep in High Priestess Ramona, everything, and whatever you may have felt in August, September of 2024, then August, September of 2025, it's kind of touching like the last note in that story in a way, and I always think of eclipses as pivot points, like destined pivot points. And so here we go. That's all I'm gonna say astrologically. But I reiterate: if you have ever wanted to write a book and have someone help you, if you're drawn to working with me for book coaching or just soul cauldron transformation coaching, I love that. Um, that would be supportive of this journey. And I love working with people who are soul-centered and heart-centered. So if you think that the way my heart flows would align with how your heart flows, then it could be a good match. Or if you just want to try and be a part of creating this theater, I should say in Boise, Idaho, so then let me know. And I know this energy, I mean, I'm closely connected to a few people who are deep, deep in the death and rebirth too. And you know, I've talked about this before here and a lot on sacred conversations, but in a way, it's felt like for me a crucible for the last eight and a half years in various ways, not all the same thing. Um, not all the same story that you know has been the last couple years here, but just so much, so much. And it feels like it's coming to the place where it's meant to change into something else. And I feel like it's brought me to a place where I'm really ready to offer all the soul gifts that I meant to, and I needed to go through this really compressed piece of transformation and expansion, which did not just start eight years ago. I feel like all that started more when I was 26 and 44. But, you know, then it was one thing like dissolution, reconstruction, okay. And like a few years, and another thing, okay. But I feel like the last eight years has kind of been continually one thing after another, and I know other people that feel that way too, or if they don't feel it for eight years, they feel it at least with this more recent period of time. There are some of us who are feeling this really intensely and really are in this tower. And so if you are in that too, I hope that you can really believe in the card that comes next, the star. It's a beautiful card, and so often when things do fall apart, that's what gives us the space for new things to come together. You know, especially in a way that we wouldn't have planned. So I'm sending you lots of wishes for that, and I hope to hear from some of you if this sparks anything for you. Alright, that's all for now. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Stormy names don't stay. From the moment that we met, you went away. Oh, this could be the best thing that I would ever know.