Go To The Dark Side
On the shortest day, visit your darkest places. The world will be better for it.
Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night in the Norther Hemisphere.
I’m not a big fan of winter. I don’t like being cold; and I long for the long, relaxed twilights of summer in the northeastern United States. So, I celebrate the Solstice. This year, more so than ever.
It seems that dark days are upon my country. Greed and avarice have been celebrated and rewarded with positions of power. The darker leanings of the human condition are out in the open, gleefully displaying hatred of all things not-like-them.
I say we make this Solstice represent a pivot point. As the sunlight increases in 2017, so will our awareness. Our awareness of darkness. Our awareness of our own darkness.
Take a moment today to think through your history and find a moment where you felt “dark emotions.” Rage. Fear. Despair. Grief. Shame.
When you tap into the memory, a part of your body is sure to start dinging out feeeeeelings. Sit with those sensations.
Where do they reside? The belly? The heart? In your shaking legs?
Breathe deep and slow. You are safe. Notice the way your mind furiously tries to translate the sensations into thoughts.
I was wronged!
I was abandoned!
I’m never good enough!
I’m all alone!
From your perch as an observer of this process, see if you can keep “streaming” the physical sensation until it begins to flag. Watch the mind go through its familiar litanies. This is the story you have accepted to go with these sensation.
Now imagine in your heart, a sun is rising. The warm rays lengthen out to tickle the throat, the ribcage, increasing the warmth in your chest. As this “sunlight” increases, let it delve into the physical place where you remember your darkest days.
The light of your heart can hold this darkness. I’m not suggesting you drive it out. Let’s not label your history with “good” and “bad.” It simply is. The darkness is something all humans share. Our deepest fears, being alone, being rejected and unloved, are pretty universal.
As surely as this beautiful blue planet circles the sun and allows us to experience a range of light and warms, so our internal lives continue to have seasons of their own.
The warmth of the heart always returns. The cold is not as scary, and much easier to live with, when we have sure knowledge that we will indeed have warm days ahead.
Take comfort in knowing the political systems are also changing seasons. We will weather it. There are warm days ahead. It is in our best interest to truly see the coldness that is division and fear and turn our faces to the warming light of justice and human dignity.
I invite you to ride the Wheel of the Year with me; find knowledge of your self; experience a deeper sense of connectedness; enjoy the ease of life that is in tune with the song of the spheres. It is natural to join in the cosmic dance.
All of life flows through its seasons and cycles. You do to. Instead of pushing your darkness away, learn to sit with it, know where it lives and what it feels like. The sooner we are at peace with our own experience, the sooner societies as a whole will have peace as well.
No matter your experience, it is but a season and a new one will arise.
I know you’re dying to sing, “Turn, Turn, Turn. So here you go!
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