It’s beginning to look a lot like… Winter and these months can be dark, cold, and long… It is easy for us to become vulnerable during the transition period between the Fall and Winter seasons.
And the accompanying holidays can be a particularly difficult time of year. Shorter days, seasonal depression, reminders of past traumas, and other challenges can have significant impacts on mood and a general sense of well being.
This season can feel unfamiliar and even unpleasant. In the stillness of winter, old latent agitations can arise from the memory. Year after year these feelings can get associated with wintertime and then winter doesn’t seem like a pleasant, delightful time of stillness and peace, but rather becomes heavy with depression. Winter’s energy can tend to make us more inward than in the summer. This going-inside season is a quieter time and it can also be one of the most wonderful and delicious times of the year when we know how to savor the sweet bliss of our inner silence and peace.
Just as in the natural, spiritually we experience winter, spring, summer, and fall in virtually every element of our lives; marriage, spiritual growth, business, finance, relationships, etc. These individual aspects of life will experience seasons similar to what we face each year we live. Winter is a time of uncomfortableness, a time to get warm and intimate within our HEART, a time to rest physically and to exist on what has been stored from the previous harvest. It is a time of gaining direction for planting, to glean from past mistakes, to repair and prepare for the coming spring.
The winter season and especially Winter Solstice is the time when the energies are most potent for humanity to awaken the Sacred Feminine within. The day of the Winter Solstice, December 21st, is a time when the sun turns northward. This is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The Winter Solstice is a festival celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, as the sun starts to shine longer. It symbolizes bringing to light our inner potential. Since Neolithic times it has been celebrated and honored as a sacred time of renewal and rebirth. The Winter Solstice is nature’s physical equivalent of a spiritual awakening and enlightenment. The Winter Solstice is a celebration of being “born again”—not of the flesh, but of the spirit. ** The rising of the sun on the Winter Solstice, out of the darkest day of the year, echoes the birth of the light from the dark void on the first day of creation. The birth of the sun also represents the birth of the spiritual sun within an individual in the process of enlightenment. It is born into the time of most darkness—the physical sun gives life to the external world; the spiritual sun gives spiritual life to the individual. In Ayurveda, the 5,000-year-old sister science of yoga, this period is known as Vata season. A time when the elements of space and air dominate our environment and being. The ability to stay grounded, centred and calm becomes increasingly important in a time of a Vata imbalance.
**part of this article is from Belsebuub’s, for more info read here
No matter how we choose to celebrate and integrate this time of the year, we are all touched by the energies of this season, consciously or not. We can use the energies of the season for spiritual development and use its mysteries to gain access to great power within ourselves.
In the stillness of winter, we can rediscover the powerful space of inner stillness and train our mind and body to love touching this space every day. Winter then will not be a time of dull depression or anxious business. It will be a sacred time of self-communion and retreat. We’ll start to look forward to the long, dark winter months as a time of year when we get to be silent and still every day.
In the past year or so, of intense self-discovery, It quickly dawned on me to SLOW DOWN this winter to integrate all that I’ve transformed and initiated. It was a lot of trial and error for the past few years until I just realized how best to get used to, experience, cope and enjoy this winter month. I am so glad that I found a way to adapt to this season and use its energies, insights, and darkness for my highest and best.
All of us, in various ways, are standing at some sort of crossroads, meaning “place of decision.” We all make decisions every day that produces the road map of our lives. So, therefore, my wish for you this Winter Solstice is that you awaken to the sheer brilliance of your being, the very essence of Life that you are, your innermost nature. And that with this new found strength you delve deep into the darkness, deep into your shadows and fears, and shine on them the light of awareness with love and compassion so that you can embrace each crossroad with humility and confidence.
JoyLightLove,
Natasja
