I am OPTimist

Monika Bravo

I am OPTimist. I am not willing to be defined by a few words—what I do is a living journey. I am a multidisciplinary artist, empirical polymath, writer, evolutionary astrologer, libertarian/Bitcoiner. My philosophy integrates Eastern, ancestral, and cosmological traditions with psychological inquiries, praxeology, and Austrian economics, emphasizing liberty, value, resources, and self-worth in the quest for individual and societal service. I create public art commissions and immersive environments, facilitate dialogue, and explore freedom, shadow work, myths, natural law, Bitcoin, and the architecture of time. This podcast is a reflection of my living and individuated journey. If you are curious, there is much more to explore in the About Me section.👇☝️ www.monikabravo.blog

  1. 3d ago

    Shattering reality meets consensus

    The first of the two eclipses of the season just passed, and I have decided not to talk about it without feeling it. There's something quite clear for me: reality has been shattering. It's been broken into many, many different crystals, and each crystal projects its own perspective, its own possible reality that can materialize. Now, there are two things that are very important to question in oneself: Where do I stand in my value?What am I consenting to? I’m going to explore a little bit the recent ingress of the North Node in Aquarius, with Pluto in Aquarius, and the South Node and Sun and Jupiter in Leo squaring Chiron in Taurus. This choreography has been creating both a crisis and a tough confrontation that is so welcome in the collective at many levels. I’m going to choose one subject very specifically, but this also applies to any other subject in your life. I’m going to be speaking of consensus, bitcoin, money, value, but you could take this apart and put health, medicine, Pharma. You could also write schooling, academics, herd mentality, and r3tardation, because I can give you examples today of many things that are happening that are shattering reality. I’m just going to give some hints so you can identify the same ideas also personally, because it all depends if you’re going through this on a personal level. Even though it’s personal, there’s always going to be a reflection of how you relate to the collective in your community. A shared field held together by independent nodes. Consensus belongs to the Aquarian realm when we understand it as a coordination among sovereign individuals. Yet, consensus itself is not automatically Aquarian. It can also become conformity, ideologically captured, or the unconscious rule of the group. In Latin, Consentire means to feel together, to agree to share a perception, and in Bitcoin, consensus has an even more precise meaning. Each participant independently verifies the same rules. No central authority declares what is true. Agreement emerges through verification. But when consensus acts through mandates, imposing itself against property rights and the body, it turns against the individual it was meant to protect. Is consensus something that belongs to the realm of the collective, to the shared field held by many, or does it always risk breaking into a single voice, a single decree standing in for everyone? I feel the pull of the future, the pull of my own sovereignty, my own singular frame, and I have to ask which one is actually mine to protect. A rupture is occurring now, just watch how the earth is shaking around the globe realigning tectonic plates via volcanic eruptions and earthquakes across many continents. I observe this shattering landing directly inside the values Bitcoin was built to protect. When value is held within the relationship, it becomes the meeting point where giving and receiving are embraced. Together they press against a shared intelligence I am watching form in real time, a pattern moving through the network I am part of. This pressure could be the crisis that creates an opening, that confronts my chance to relate to consensus as liberation, the way the world met it as submission six years ago. I know I did not allow the pressure to give in. I am looking at the chart of Bitcoin and its transits right now. I observe where its value is stored, and I ask whether the structure holding it is proven or only assumed. Harmony and relationship meet strategy and clear sight at its very root, and I know peace cannot be bought by giving up the principles that built it. I observe the original emotional image still alive in that chart, the first impulse, the memory of direct action, independence, self custody, the beginning of something that asked no permission from anyone. I watch that territory being claimed again by the collective mind, institutions, labor, infrastructure, hierarchy, regulation, the machinery required to keep something running. I ask whether the commitment behind it still holds together, or whether a shadow has fallen over its purpose while everyone waited for someone else to guard it. The most important thing here is not what other people are doing, but how I am revaluing my own commitment to what Bitcoin really is. Bitcoin does not move forward or backward until the individual takes responsibility for where they are standing. What is money? How am I taking care of my own needs? What just happened > a shattering reality is revealed I watch every actor arrive on stage now, the miners, the developers, the custodians, the corporations, the governments, the influencers, the guardians, each one declaring themselves the keeper of what Bitcoin was originally for. I ask myself if I am one of them, performing guardianship instead of practicing it. Can the individual remain sovereign while participating in the collective field? I do not agree because I trust the network. I agree because I can verify. There’s a fork splitting Bitcoin right now, coming from BIP-110, and it has people fighting over who is right about what Bitcoin even is. We have the clown, or the spook, Michael Saylor calling Bitcoin "digital capital" while turning STRC, his own company's preferred stock, into what he calls "digital credit," paper Bitcoin dressed up as innovation,⁸ and we have others insisting all spam should be stripped from the chain, which is its own kind of discrimination, deciding from the outside what belongs and what does not. Where the needle is, and where the needle should be, is decided by each individual, not by the consensus of everybody. There's a war over what sound custody is, coming from somewhere unannounced, as everyone silently agreed on trusting the field. It’s putting pressure on whether you should be in custody of your own coins, because there have been not one but several security breaches in the last ten days. Self-custody is not something that can be assigned to a third party. Once you choose how to take care of your own value, you become responsible for how that is done. One could say there is an attack coming from the outside, and why not, everything is at stake right now. And that is where I bring the early Pisces lunar eclipse on Bitcoin’s Venus, at 2° Pisces in the seventh house, arriving August 28th. That is the question of how we relate to the agreements we are making, the alliances, the value shared between parties, where we sell ourselves short. That needs to be questioned, and we need to put light into that, because without this discernment, we just merge into a blob without any possibility to choose individually. The eclipse squares Uranus on Pallas Athena in Gemini in the eleventh house, an opportunity for a radical re-patterning of collective intelligence. This is exposing how narratives circulate through the network and how quickly consensus can become manufactured, and that is exactly what is happening. People are taking sides, and people are scared, because what they were standing on before is no longer solid ground. We do not agree because we trust one another. We agree because each of us can verify. What I'm observing from my point of view is that this is happening across many different disciplines, not just Bitcoin. I'm watching it in medicine, and despite the evidence confirming what we, as conspiracy theorists, knew was right because we were following our instinctual protection to our bodies, it was overridden by the consensus of the very weak. They not only signaled us as being murderers. I do not blame Fauci for any of it. I blame the people who complied without ever questioning, the ones who let another man's word replace their own verification. I’m okay with it because I never felt rage, and I felt a sense of relief and release when 99% of the people that I knew walked away from my life. It was actually a very good flush. It was like, “This is what it needed to happen.” I'm also watching it in academics, in the credentials everybody clings to. DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, is f*cking nonsense, nothing but more division, more judgment, more discrimination dressed as virtue. We're watching the fall of a man put on a pedestal, caught in the very thing he preached against, who chose to end his life rather than stand inside the consequence of being seen for what he was, a mirror of inflated ethos built on the hunger to be seen, not on integrity. A sad story for sure. I am not saying he, or anyone, followed that pattern exactly, this is my own interpretation, laid over a grief that is not mine to carry. But it stands as a mirror of what happens when a whole group of people follow rules so far from their own standing. There is a family grieving, and questions that remain unanswered. I dare to say this despite a person having died. What is it about the collective that you are pursuing without knowing who you are as an individual? The same question stands for every mandate, every rule adopted without asking whether it was ever yours to follow. None of this is a verdict on anyone's life, only a mirror held up to my own. What am I consenting to?What am I verifying for myself?Where have I delegated my authority to the consensus image of Bitcoin?Beneath all of it, what is money? Because the future of Bitcoin may depend less upon achieving collective agreement and more upon whether sovereign individuals still understand the value they are agreeing to preserve. Dialectics, or Why Language and Context Matter The word traces to Greek dialektikē technē, the art of philosophical discussion, from dialektikos, of conversation or discourse, conversation, rooted in dialegesthai, to converse. The deeper components are dia, through or across, and legein, to speak. Dialectic refers originally to a dialogue between two people who hold different points of view about a subject but wish to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument, using logic. They advocate propositions and counter

  2. Aug 2

    Choose Life: Entropy,Order,& Alignment

    What organizes human life? What preserves agency in an age of increasing entropy? How does a human being create order without surrendering freedom? When there is entropy, we create a system. We create an alignment. Order Order requires deliberate, sustained effort. Entropy is the tendency for structure to dissolve when that effort is absent. Let's say that it operates in different contexts. In physics, it is a natural tendency of energy to become more dispersed and less available to do work. In some other kind of information theory, entropy is the uncertainty or unpredictability. In living systems, entropy is the drift towards disorder unless energy is continually invested to maintain organization. In human action, entropy is the gradual decay of coherence, relationships, habits, institutions, or knowledge when they are no longer cultivated. So a concise pairing could be: Order is the sustained investment of energy into coherent structure. Entropy is the spontaneous drift away from that structure. Or in a more philosophical form, order is maintained. Entropy is what happens by default. This distinction is important because entropy is not "evil" or a force with intentions. It describes the statistical tendency of systems to move toward more probable, less constrained states, and less energy and information are continuously applied. Order demands continuous energy I would say still that entropy is one of the most misunderstood concepts in science. Often translated as disorder, chaos, randomness, they don't really describe it in a useful way so it describes the tendency of systems to move toward states that require less organization, left on its own. A garden becomes overgrown. A house gathers dust. A language changes. A body weakens. A civilization loses coherence. Nothing has to attack these systems. The absence of sustained work is enough. Every organized system requires a continuous investment of energy to preserve its structure. A living cell constantly repairs itself, the immune system patrols the body, muscle strengthening only through repeated use, memory requires reinforcement, trust requires action, freedom requires responsibility. Therefore it is an ongoing process, not a static condition. Life itself is an extraordinary example of this principle because every organism exports entropy into its surroundings while maintaining an internal state of remarkable organization. We eat, we breathe, we repair, we eliminate waste, we sleep and move because remaining alive is an active process rather than a passive one. From a psychological perspective health is the body's continuous capacity to preserve coherence while adapting to change. Aging may be understood as the gradual accumulation of entropy that eventually exceeds the body’s repair mechanism. Entropy appears whenever attention fragments. Relationships deteriorate through neglect more often than through conflict. Skills disappear when they’re not practiced. Values become slogans when they’re no longer embodied. Spiritually entropy invites another question. Intervals Gurdjieff described this exact same phenomenon. A line moving straight ahead eventually loses power. The entire system implodes. He mapped this process using musical scales. The half-step intervals like mi–fa and ti–do act as cosmic speed bumps. Momentum stalls at these points; evolution stops, decay sets in immediately; a deliberate shock changes the outcome. External effort forces the system onto a higher level. Conscious action overrides automatic decline. Chaos, entropy, and what Gurdjieff called the interval are not interruptions to life. They are moments in which our existing organization is no longer sufficient. They invite observation, calibration, adaptation, and choice. Crisis then becomes more than disruption, it becomes the threshold through which a new alignment can emerge. Objective View Evolutionary astrology offers another way of observing entropy. The sky reveals a quality of a moment in time. It provides a symbolic language through which we can observe recurring development patterns, both individually and collectively, and whether they are in resonance or dissonance according to the relationship they establish between them and between who is observing them. The recent Full moon across Leo and Aquarius illuminated precisely this tension. The Sun and Jupiter in Leo brought attention to the individual, the identity, creative expression, and sovereignty, and the capacity to radiate from one's own center. Opposing them was Pluto and the moon in Aquarius, exposing the forces reshaping the collective institutions, network systems of belonging, and the structures through which society organizes itself. It was creating a T-square with Chiron in Taurus, making anything that is related to value, and needs very vulnerable. Entropy appears whenever an existing form no longer carries enough coherence to sustain itself, so sometimes this becomes visible in our personal lives. We recognize habits that no longer reflect who we are. We discover relationships that have lost reciprocity. We realize that the identities we once inhabit have become too small for the person we are becoming. The same principle unfolds collectively: institutions reach their limits, borders are tested, economies reorganize, technologies redistribute power, and social agreements that once appeared stable begin to reveal their fractures. These moments are not evidence that order has disappeared. They reveal that an existing order can no longer contain the complexity that has emerged. The current nodal axis continues to sharpen this process. As the attention moves towards Leo, each person is invited to examine the coherence of their own center: How do I create? How do I value it? Where do I seek validation? What is authentically mine to contribute? The collective can only reorganize through the quality of the individuals who compose it. Aristotle understood the city as a political community oriented toward the good life and shaped by the character and actions of its citizens. The purposeful behavior of individuals and the policies through which a city organizes itself describe the collective. Every civilization is ultimately built from Human Action. Every human action begins with a choice, and every choice either strengthens coherence or contributes to entropy. Invasion & Pledging the Fifth Just watching 60,000 young male Moroccans illegally crossing the borders of Spain in Ceuta in 24 hours was quite astonishing, seeing that Europe is being invaded. There is no way that order can be created, so that's another form of entropy: how you disorganize a system by allowing open borders and not understanding that this is going to create chaos in society. Economically, you cannot sustain that. You cannot just allow so many people to come in with no structure and then demand the country to give them documentation, give them jobs, and give them food. At the very end, in all socialist countries, the question is: who's going to pay for that? That, for me, is entropy. An institution decaying from within provides a clear picture of societal entropy. Anthony Fauci, who received a presidential pardon, sat before Congress this week and repeatedly pled the Fifth Amendment. This situation presents a clear oxymoron: a pardoned public official taking refuge in constitutional silence. The White House now confirms what critics like myself labeled a "conspiracy theory" from the beginning. The entire scam pandemic response operated through unlawful mandates, forced vaccinations, and public deception. The primary figure responsible for these policies stands before Congress and mocks accountability. Yet I also assign responsibility to everyone who complied with the mandates and helped Mr. Fauci become so entitled, detached, and behaved above natural law. This complete erosion of institutional trust shows entropy dismantling governing authority when integrity ceases to maintain order. Bitcoin seed phrase Bitcoin offers a fascinating counterpoint to the way we normally think about entropy in biology. We preserve life by creating internal order. In cryptography, we preserve security by creating predictability through randomness. When generating a Bitcoin private key or seed phrase, entropy is not something to eliminate. It is precisely what must be maximized. The security of the system depends upon randomness that cannot be predicted, reproduced, or manipulated. High quality entropy ensures that no meaningful pattern exists for an attacker to exploit. Those 12 to 24 words represent an astronomically large space of possibilities. Their security depends upon the absence of recognizable structure. If that randomness is compromised, even slightly, entropy decreases, and as entropy decreases, predictability increases. As it increases, security begins to erode. What appears to be a technical problem is also a philosophical one. Every system carries assumptions. We often trust that those assumptions are sound until an unexpected event reveals where coherence was only apparent. This is the time that we're living in, because the ruler of the North Node is Uranus in Aquarius, and Uranus, right now, is in Gemini creating waves of shock. Security is ongoing. It's a wavelength that needs to be taken care of. Every advance in our capacity to build is matched by an advance in our capacity to discover hidden patterns. Artificial intelligence accelerates that search. It recognizes regularities that human beings often overlook. It compresses information. It detects structure inside what we assume was sufficiently random. This latest attack involving Coldcard seed phrases in the Bitcoin sphere, which is, according to many and to me, one of the major snafus that ever happened in Bitcoin history, revealed that the wallet firmware had failed to provide the entropy upon which the security of the seed phrases depended. The seeds appeared

  3. Jul 27

    Standing in Your Own Place

    Note: I know I said I was taking a break from writing about astrology, but this is too significant to pass over. So here it goes. The shift is full on. On February 20, when Saturn and Neptune met at 0° Aries, I wrote an article exploring why that conjunction marked the beginning of a new cycle. Looking back six months later, I find those observations even more relevant as the nodal axis shifts into Aquarius and Leo. “Coherence is the internal harmony of all parts moving together without fragmentation, and alignment is the intentional positioning of that integrated system along a chosen axis of meaning, timing, and direction.” From January 2025 until July 26, 2026, we had the North Node oriented toward surrendering, toward accepting. What were we accepting? The things we were discerning, editing out of our lives because they were no longer making sense. That was the main concept of the North Node in Pisces and the South Node in Virgo. The nodal signs describe the collective evolutionary direction. They reveal the telos of the evolutionary process: what has become familiar and what now seeks development. The planetary rulers show how the process is being carried. They reveal the mechanics through which that evolutionary intent unfolds. Now the nodes have turned. Until the spring of 2028, the North Node is in Aquarius and the South Node is in Leo. The last time this happened was from the end of 2007 through the spring of 2009. We have to remember what was happening in our lives then and find the correlations between that time and now. Life is a spiral. We never repeat ourselves unless we fail to see the connections. The Aquarius North Node can make you more aloof, more objective. It can make you disembodied, dissociated, disconnected. At the same time, it can make you capable of seeing across timelines because it sees the whole. The Leo South Node can make you more drama-driven, more self-centered, more tyrannical. It is about integrating both. The Moon symbolizes the ego, our sense of identity. It describes the emotional lens through which we react to and eventually learn to respond to reality. Leo, ruled by the Sun, describes how identity validates itself through its own creativity simply by being the Sun. The Sun does not look at itself in the mirror. The Sun radiates life. It is about how you integrate your solar self, how you have been able to validate yourself through what you naturally create and what you genuinely do well. When you come back into the collective, how can you be seen as yourself and not as a poor replica of someone else? How does your uniqueness contribute to the good of humankind? It is about finding that synthesis. Saturn and Neptune in Aries work together with this nodal shift. Neptune dissolves the familiar identity. Saturn builds the structure through which a more authentic one can emerge. Carl Jung called this individuation. The individual participates in the collective by enacting himself. Aquarius becomes the field of participation. Leo becomes the source of creative radiance. Their synthesis allows individuality to become a conscious contribution to the whole. Perhaps this is why we are witnessing so many ideological realignments. People gather around ideas, identities, and movements while the deeper work asks each person to stand in their own place. The collective changes when individuals stand in their own place and contribute from their own center. Last but not least, this week’s Full Moon at 6° Aquarius, where my Ascendant is 😊, becomes the first one under the new Aquarius–Leo nodal axis. It is the first clear expression of the cycle that has just begun, one that will reshape us both collectively and personally. It also falls on the very degree where the solar eclipse of January 26, 2028, will conjoin Pluto, making it one of the defining signatures of this entire cycle. The last time eclipses in Aquarius and Leo aligned with Pluto was in 1785. We are witnessing the beginning of a much larger chapter. Pay attention to what becomes visible now. These are the opening notes of a story that will continue unfolding over the next eighteen months. The rulers of the Full Moon are also the rulers of the nodal axis. They carry the same evolutionary narrative, allowing us to glimpse where this cycle is leading. This full Moon conjoins Pluto in Aquarius, illuminating the emotional patterns, psychic entanglements, and collective allegiances that have quietly shaped our perception of reality. Across the sky, the Sun conjoins Jupiter in Leo, expanding the invitation to stand in your own creative authority. Authority arises from knowing who you are and expressing it through your own nature. Venus in Virgo forms its first-quarter square to Mars in Gemini, marking the first point of friction between discernment and action. New ideas ask to be tested. Intention and discernment ask for commitment. This Full Moon reveals where your identity has been inherited and where your own nature is ready to emerge. Standing in your own place becomes the bridge between who you are and what you bring to the collective. Saturn has also stationed retrograde in Aries, forming a square to Mercury, which has just turned direct in Cancer. Think back to your own Mercury retrograde. What emotional insight settled into place? Which conversation or realization reshaped your understanding? Saturn now asks you to give that realization structure. The first-quarter square marks the moment when understanding becomes embodied through action. Your life begins to reflect what you now know. Uranus forms a harmonious trine to Pluto, the Moon, and Juno, supporting transformation. Its trine to the Sun and Jupiter encourages authenticity. Neptune sextiles the same configuration, bringing trust into the process. This is an extraordinary opportunity to step into a new timeline, aligning with the frequency that already belongs to you. The astrology is an atmosphere. The real weather is inside. Related Essay This essay continues a conversation that began on February 20, 2026, when Saturn and Neptune met at 0° Aries. That article explores coherence, alignment, the nervous system, self-authorship, and why this conjunction marked the beginning of a new 36-year cycle. The Aquarius–Leo nodal axis builds on that foundation by asking how your individuality becomes a conscious contribution to the collective. Personalized Readings If this article resonated with you, this is how I read charts. Every session is a dialogue. We explore your natal chart through the lens of Evolutionary Astrology, weaving together current transits, secondary progressions, and Human Design to understand the larger pattern unfolding through your life. Every reading reflects the unique moment in which we meet because your chart speaks differently as you evolve. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

  4. Jul 25

    Four Questions and a Nap

    Hey, I sat down and I wrote two articles a few days apart. Just when I was going to start recording, I’m like, “Mmm, this doesn’t feel right because there’s something that has shifted in me. Every time I want to say something, do something, or create an awareness of the relationship I’m having with the thing, situation, or person, I’m asking the same question: -Is this solar? -Is this coming from my heart? -Does this need to be spoken? -Does this need to be published? It’s not that I became a doubtful person, but right now I’m confronting a reality that my identity has shifted or is in the process of transformation. Therefore, I’m also taking time to realize how it is that I want to encounter the other. So instead of publishing what I wrote about economics, or God only knows what I was talking about… (even the Nodal Shift this weekend, any other major thing, or anything astrologically that’s going on, or what’s going on with Bitcoin), do I want to write about that? Even if I have a lot to say, do I actually want to engage with it this way? That was a question. And the answer, after a long nap because I’m very tired these days, was no. So here I am writing about not publishing what I’ve written. My first piece was about economics, and it was very different. It was stating positions and asking the reader to agree or disagree with them, or build an argument to be defended or to be let go. This time around, it’s not an argument about anything. It’s just barely an observation of a shift, and so by observing it, is what’s becoming the content. It is enacting the very question that it poses rather than answering it from the outside. The four questions that I posted, I feel, really come from a place where I am being loyal to myself. These are not rhetorical questions. Each one is doing something different, and together they’re tracing a real sequence of discernment rather than the four ways of saying the same thing in the way triadic anaphora often uses. As it ends, it holds without resolving. I do not arrive at a lesson about the voice or timing. I arrive at the fact that I took a nap because of fatigue, and then the piece is naming its own existence as a result of what is not. I must say that I also arrived at the declaration too fast about identity shifting, because it is something that is coming from something that I’ve been experiencing, but I have not been able to convey. Again, as I listened to it and I reread it, I say, “Hey, Monika, hold on. I don’t want to sound absolute. I don’t want to have the last word.” This is part of this new relationship to how I relate to my needs, how I listen to them, and how I become aware if what I’m doing is a performance or is something that is genuine and coming from my heart. My body speaks to me these days, and it basically supports the direction. The second article was about the Nodal Change, and I will or will not eventually make a comment about it. For now, I prefer to live those changes, to embody them, to enact another perspective, to be able to turn my neck in a way that I haven’t been able to since I came from Vancouver. As I’ve been releasing and receiving, releasing, receiving. Anyway, that’s my poem of the day, and I will leave with words of gratitude. Afterward-> When the outside turns very noisy, turn to ancestral wisdom. The Greeks endowed the West with a marvelous mythology and culture. They set up the principles of how man acts. Below, two excerpts from my new book, The Art of Synthesis and the Architecture of My Value. L3, The Radiography of Culture. 2026. I am designing it now and will drop it after eclipse season. ust dropped: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

  5. Jul 17

    An Ongoing Wavelength of Change

    BE BOLD 7/13/2025 I just woke up, but I have this sense that things are moving underneath and between. Whatever calm I thought that was, there is some turbulence underneath. One that shows me that indeed things are different, and more undulation calls me to surge again. This is between the real waves of the ocean hitting, the long ocean swell that leads me to adapt, to calibrate. Some of the tides are just moving along, so I am floating, surfing, yet I have to maneuver, step by step the wave of technological change, responding with agility capturing the momentum of future unfolding events. Still within that movement that has a rhythm, at times there are moments where the wavelength hits something, and I need to settle suddenly and make a maneuver. I stay navigating: I do not sink, I do not jump off the vessel, I do not stay still. Those are the navigation skills that I have to bring forth every other day, so the sensation does not cease the current, it adapts, I submit to it. I could see how now it is not entangled. It is free, so it is just opening my hands and letting the last piece of thread go slip through my fingers, loosening now belonging to the wind. Trust. Trust nature. Trust my life. Trust the circulation of energy. Trust the movement. Trust the space that opened. A new relationship within me, I can feel its dimensions without sensing someone's breath near me. The space expands through my own presence, and I begin to recognize the distance between who I was when I held the thread and who I am as it dissolves and washes away. The thread becomes part of the current, my hand remains open. The wind carries its movement, opening space around as it is visible, oh what gesture! I had the devotion, the guilt, and the dedication, I had the care, yes I over extended at times, I did not know how to measure care, without a container, it diluted and was wasted. the sequencing started to become a motion in itself, I started to maneuver the waves, and that is when I started seeing things all connected, different kind of threads. Form shaped the container through small shifts, a displacement here, a dynamic turn there, flow migrating yet always in a wandering path. Each adjustment created another point of contingency between the wave and the vessel, between the space and the fill-in moving through it. Between the silence and joy. In 2008 I made a series of encasements Time-Piece: Be here now, that were aligned and arranged on the wall and had short phrases containing the word time appear and disappear from behind a two way mirror. These short sentences were synched within a span of a minute, then followed by 60 short vertical lines that would count every second. The words faded in and faded out in a digital calligraphy, of yellow green color, one phrase moving through seven different boxes across the wall. One of them was simple: time is motion of the mind. There was a sound, that of a sonar, that would call you closer revealing slowly both words and your face in it. By the time you noticed the words shifting, they had already faded. You were pulled in by sound of the sonar, then revealing the truth of your presence. Because the animations were all encased behind a mirror, as a viewer you were forced to see yourself through the appearance of these words. Whatever reflected back was your own image, seen by itself, the one mirror already given, your own presence enough to validate itself. If you stayed long enough in front of the glass, the piece revealed itself as the moment you caught yourself looking. The mirrors held the image of an individual observing time. The wave holds the movement of a person inhabiting it. I can now see my solar self for the first time through movement. The image emerges through the way I steer, through the way I respond to the pressure of the water, through the way I remain present inside the changing distance between one crest and the next. Time-piece: Be here now, seemed easy then. I now know it has encapsulated the last 18 years of my life. A full nodal return, where in this new cycle I stop hiding behind “otherness” and welcome a full radiant transformation, I now reckon this time elapsed bringing forth my unconscious into consciousness. Art has always been the way I process my emotional body. I am not attached to the object itself, to the materiality of light boxes or mirrors or storage units where things get lost. I am in flow with the process, not to what happens the moment the piece delivers the information I needed. Dreams work the same way. They come to me clearly, carrying messages from the underworld, and when I can see the image plainly, I let it go and move to the next moment. There is also a wave that stretches, showing itself as slow maneuvers that time with undercurrents, meeting other airy currents that may rock the boat and actually give space for a new sensation never felt before. Calibrating, tweaking, allowing the current of the waters to come through and move the wave so I do not lose the equilibrium. I instead embrace the place. A wavelength measuring the distance between one crest and another. Rhythm, repetition. I meet myself again across that distance with another perception, another maneuver, another relationship to the space I occupy. Time is motion of the mind because the mind recognizes the distance. It remembers the previous crest, senses the one beneath the vessel, and perceives the movement bearing everything forward. This summer is showing up as a solar potential. We have let go of old masks and aligned with more attractive perspectives. Unknown, yes. The courage of embracing them gives the pulse to the wave. This is how it feels to be solar unafraid, trusting an invitation. one that moves through the wavelength. I feel it through the distance that has opened between one version of myself and the next, with both belonging to the same ongoing undulation. I am not selling you a book. I am inviting you into an unusual journey. 7/15/2026 I just finished writing my book, 16 months of dictation, days of insights, walks along the Venetian islands, silence, uncomfortable feelings that learned to calibrate and rewire my nervous system, how do I feel? F*****G GREAT! Pre-launch a couple of weeks from now. In the skies Every astrologer is talking about a basket-shape event, so what? What is this information good for if you cannot apply the goodies to your own evolution with awareness? The age of the influencer telling you what to do next is way gone. Some are going to jail, (yup) some are desperate selling peptides, others are changing the game, write X so I can send you a link, while ChatGPT writes the copy of the next article, reel, etc. Fake it till you make it is not working anymore. Every astrologer is talking about a basket-shape event, so what? What is this information good for if you cannot apply the goodies to your own evolution with awareness? The age of the influencer telling you what to do next is way gone. Some are going to jail, (yup) some are desperate selling peptides, others are changing the game, write X so I can send you a link, while ChatGPT writes the copy of the next article, reel, etc. Fake it till you make it is not working anymore. What skills have you honed in the last year? Not sure yet for the tone or the necessity. 😅 There is an excitement about my internal life that is changing, but there is a lot of drag about the outside world, because I do not relate to it anymore. I am actually looking to start resonating with people at a different level. Jupiter is about to cross my descendant on the next full moon (July 29th). The planet Jupiter takes almost twelve years to go around the sun. Since 2019, it has traveled from my twelfth house, ruled by Capricorn, through my first house all the way to the sixth, the lower part of the chart that represents the intimate self in all modalities: individuality, values, needs, communication, emotional resonance, creative outlet, and last but not least, habits. It has been diving into my unconscious, restructuring it, in search of meaning and truth. This time around, since 2014, the journey has been dense, scary and then delightful as I played my favorite game: the professional hermit. I am ready to confront my solar self versus the sticky collective that in the past swallowed my self with no boundaries and gave me the impression I needed to hold everyone's needs, NOT! I am ready to play authentically and let go all ways of relating that no longer offer anything beneficial. I am stoked and ready to meet you, and you, and you!! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

  6. Jul 10

    Contingency

    “In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal city, but while he constructed his miniature model, Fedora was already no longer the same as before, and what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe.” -Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities I woke up this morning with the word contingency in my mind. So after breathing a little bit, I started to decipher its etymology and the meaning of how this beautiful word, which root is tangere, to touch, is joined with com, together. Therefore, it is a thing whose next form depends on contact that is yet to be made. The last weekend, a new cycle between Mars was completed and initiated in early Gemini with the great giant Uranus in my fourth house, it is this exact mechanism: the meeting is generating a feeling that I cannot know in advance. It is both curious and surprising. It is contingent on how I show up somewhere, on how I meet the other, the mirror, on how the reflective meeting touches me back. There is excitement here, and there is dread also, both at once, because nothing is fixed yet, and everything depends on the next contact I make. The outcome lives in a curiosity I cannot determine ahead of time, and that same unknown carries its own safety because what wants to be fulfilled in these days is a slight movement of perspective. One I can already feel forming, one that is going to build an entirely new way of relating, and it is going to expand in the years to come (more on Jupiter in Leo oppose Pluto next week). There is a new moon in Cancer that is closing a cycle that started at the end of June last year, when the same new moon conjoined Jupiter as it had just entered the sign, and conjoined my north node at 3 degrees in Cancer, giving me an expansion, a direction, an orientation of how to express creatively, where to bring forth the beautiful energy of safety and home in all my creative and solar endeavors. It is a very beautiful closing next week, because I have really cared very much about my environment, to the small habits I used to overlook, how I slowly gave myself the space I never had. I am grateful. Last year the new moon was also in a quincunx with Pluto, a hundred and fifty degrees, that allowed the transformation through slow calibration. This year the new moon is conjoined with Mercury retrograde, approaching Jupiter, and Mars will eventually pass through as well. Reaffirming that since June last year, these slow movements, attention to detail, fascia and breath work, and everything I am doing with my body have opened the relational space. New perspectives incoming, my life has really changed since 2014, when Jupiter was just in the same place. Within the last year I have really been focused on every little habit, how I relate to my body, how I metabolize, how the emotional body has stopped this constant wave of thought, meaning that my body was always wired to think too much, to synthesize, to explain, to share, to be reactive, as opposed to now that has all that space. I am excited about it because I can see the change. These challenges are what move me to another level in this video game that is life. The mantra in the last months has been: -Is this radiant, is this solar, Monika? -Is this coming from your heart? There is no more mirror to make me feel alive! I am very excited to launch AI Study Group. It came to me unexpectedly, and now that I think about it, I have been building toward this for a while. Take a look!👇 Efrat Fenigson always brings receipts!👇 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

  7. Jul 6

    THE AUTONOMOUS LOCAL ENGINE

    BUILD ONCE, OWN FOREVER I am very excited to launch this today. It came to me unexpectedly, and now that I think about it, I have been building toward this for a while. THE SCOPE This is a highly selective study group (or a self-study, or 1:1 option) of two to five people who want to build a local database and dashboard that runs entirely on their own hardware. This architecture operates on a low-time preference. Modern tokenized platforms charge you for every single query, action, and refresh - trapping you in a perpetual rental loop. True technology is inherently deflationary. By dedicating your own time, attention, and proof of work right now, you eliminate the meter entirely. You build the infrastructure once. It runs on your computer, on your terms, at zero token cost, indefinitely. This program is specifically engineered for individuals pursuing technological sovereignty. If you prefer running AI software through paid cloud platforms, this is not your path. This environment is built exclusively for those who demand a local, agentic system running directly from their own hardware at zero token cost - independent of the internet, where what belongs to you stays yours. The pricing of these paths is deliberately structured to serve as a bridge. The goal is propagation - the more humans who operate independent, decentralized local systems, the stronger the network of human autonomy becomes. ABOUT ME I am an artist and a polymath who reads patterns across systems. The same methodology used to read an evolutionary astrology chart, a Human Design body graph, a financial chart, or to design commissioned environments for the public realm is the exact logic stream required to decode a local database. It is a process of disciplined doubt and understanding used to conceptualize and solve structural problems. My intention is to inspire humans to operate authentically. This page initiates that architecture through a brief series of questions to determine if this ecosystem aligns with your needs. Answer what you know and skip what you do not; identifying gaps in your knowledge is equally valuable data. My history with artifacts spans analog work I have practiced for decades alongside everything I have built digitally. In the early 90s I designed my own website out of necessity, working directly in code, in the pure semantics of language itself, with no visual tools between me and the structure, learning through trial and error. That same period moved me into digital media, where I went from photography into animated images and learned to build the machines that produced them. These past few years I have been doing the same thing again, building this system by trial and error, applying that same discipline to a new structure. I have always applied the technology available to what the moment actually needed, and that is exactly what I see now, building according to our own needs rather than the needs a platform decides for us. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

  8. Jul 4

    The bicentennial catholic nun

    In 1976, I came to the United States of America to spend the summer. The funny part is that my mom, after my father died, decided to hire a Catholic nun from the United States. When I said “hire,” she actually sought an agency to see if there was a nun that could come and live in our house so we could practice English while my mother was working and would help us with our homework. Alas, that didn’t last very long because we drove the nun, Sister Mary Hubert, crazy. She was probably around 55 years old, a good woman, a good nun, but maybe her ways were too stiff for these four little devils that, after my father died, unconsciously unleashed the worst possible behavior that any children could have, ages 4 to 10. What happened in the following months upon her arrival was like a tug of war between kids who did not want to be disciplined and a mother who was constantly absent because she was in the office taking care of her affairs, so she could not be the authority she would like to be. She gave the reins to the nun, and the nun lost her grip within six weeks. We got her drunk, saw her naked while she took a shower when we hid in the bathroom closet. One after another incident led her asking for asylum in a nearby convent/Catholic school that was next door to our house. That worked perfectly, because then the nun was sleeping there. I think my mother was paying the school for her stay and her food, and she would come in the afternoon, so that made the arrangements a little bit better. By the end of the first year contract, she stayed in Colombia, but she went to work in another school. From time to time, I would see her at the school bus on my way to school, and sometimes we would meet in that corner. I was a little devil, so I don’t know, but anyway. Some of the things that happened with her coming to our house were that the first year that she was in Colombia, my brother was sent the first summer to her hometown, St. Louis, Missouri. He stayed there for two months in the house of some kids. My mother paid for that, and my brother was amazing. He just had the best of times making friends. My mom had given him some money for the trip, and he came back with almost all of it still in his pocket. He hadn’t spent a thing. It was my turn to be there in 1976. I had heard about a bicentennial commemoration of 200 years from the 1776 Declaration of Independence. I didn’t actually know what contract my mom had negotiated before she put me inside of that plane, or whether what followed was part of her arrangement or a direct reaction to my outrageous behavior. The nun actually came along with me on the flight, and we started by staying a few days with her sister, an older woman. But then her niece and grandchildren started coming over, and things got chaotic. I made friends with Theresa, and we ended up having wild fights with pillows and baby powder until, I think, new arrangements had to be made. They sent me to Theresa’s house, and from her house, I was handed off to the house of Mr. Baine, a father of the household who was running for the state Senate. I think he was from the Democratic Party, so it was interesting for me, my first long summer in the United States. I was there with this family campaigning for the elections, getting $2 bills, having barbecues, and waving United States flags. In a way, it was a very beautiful way to understand what it means to be in this country for the Fourth of July, which is today. Long story short, I stayed the whole summer. I had a blast. We ended up going to a house they had in the Ozarks. I learned how to water ski. But what stayed with me is this relationship that a lot of born Americans, unlike an immigrant like me, have with a flag, with the First Amendment, the 1791 Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. The First Amendment and freedom of speech, the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms, the Fourth Amendment and the right to be secure in your person, house, and effects, the Fifth Amendment and its protection of property from being taken without just compensation, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and the rights and powers they reserve to the people and the states, these were seeds planted on that 1976 trip. Living those principles and codifying them are two entirely different paths. I then came about studying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and it fully connected me back to that first memory. That leads back to Aristotle and my love for the definition of politics, the definition of collective behavior, and his understanding of eudaimonia, the flourishing that the Declaration of Independence itself carries forward in the phrase life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That thread runs forward to John Locke, who gave me the definition that you own your body first and the land you homestead second, property as an extension of the self. This led, years later, to Ludwig von Mises and Human Action, and thereafter to Rothbard, who made me aware of what the state can do the moment you comply and hand over what is yours. Hoppe, and then Ammous, my teacher, moved to teach me the importance of understanding that property rights are at the core of the principles of civilization, not a policy position but the axiom underneath it. In the case of violence, defending yourself in the homeland is something that one has to do, because if one does not have that agency, one is dead in every sense that matters. So here is to the grand experiment that sparked it all, the land of the free. Happy 250th anniversary. Coda When Mars and Uranus meet at the beginning degrees of Gemini, the field is receiving a signal that ruptures. We can see this across the historical echoes of 1776, 1861, to 1943, years that smell like cannons, firearms, and conflict. Similar patterns: a declaration, a split, a mobilization, a new nervous system. Gemini carries the word, the code, the route, the message, the document, the transmission. Mars is electrifying this action while Uranus breaks the circuit open. It changes the direction into one that nobody knows, unpredictable. They could end up as innovation, propaganda, computation, or purely myth. The target was perception itself. The 20th and 21st centuries have rearranged the human mind around systems of persuasion and rapid obedience, using the same forces that created codebreaking, pharmaceuticals, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. They are also training the psyche to receive reality through mediated signals. Today, standing at the same degrees of the sky that stood over 1776, 1861, and 1943, with Mars and Uranus returning to the early degrees of Gemini, Pluto is moving through Aquarius, and Jupiter just entered Leo while opposing it, completing a triangle with this conjunction, we’re asked to pause and read the wiring architecture behind all this noise. While all this moves through the mind, we’re also asked to show up in a solar way, in full expression, even as we hold the discernment to see what is underneath. Who’s controlling the signal? Who’s writing the narrative? Look for the strings of the puppeteer, because you will realize that the one who benefits from this fragmented, inverted language is the one selling sovereignty back to us as a product. We’re being asked today, also, by Mars and Uranus squaring the nodal axis in Pisces-Virgo, an orientation to surrender with discernment. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monikabravo.blog/subscribe

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About

I am OPTimist. I am not willing to be defined by a few words—what I do is a living journey. I am a multidisciplinary artist, empirical polymath, writer, evolutionary astrologer, libertarian/Bitcoiner. My philosophy integrates Eastern, ancestral, and cosmological traditions with psychological inquiries, praxeology, and Austrian economics, emphasizing liberty, value, resources, and self-worth in the quest for individual and societal service. I create public art commissions and immersive environments, facilitate dialogue, and explore freedom, shadow work, myths, natural law, Bitcoin, and the architecture of time. This podcast is a reflection of my living and individuated journey. If you are curious, there is much more to explore in the About Me section.👇☝️ www.monikabravo.blog

Information

  • Creator
    Monika Bravo
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    179
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Monika Bravo
  • Show Website
    I am OPTimist