I love this time of year. I’m sitting at my desk looking out at the snow-capped mountains and swathes of horizontal hard rain, now turning to hailstones, bouncing off the garden wall. And the bay is obscured by mist for moments and then everything changes dynamically again into light.
I love this time of year, as we approach the shortest day and the maximum darkness, I am contacting an inner stillness which feels deeply fulfilling. Winter is the time when all the energy of nature goes back into the ground, back to the roots, to rest and renew. And it’s from the depth of this rest and renewal that the next cycle of growth will flourish.
We humans don’t seem to have learned this simple lesson from nature very well. For many people, Christmas, far from being a celebration of the return of the light, or a simple birth in a stable, has become a rampage of busyness, stress and over-indulgence, leading to further depletion.
In the natural cycles of life and creation many of us have forgotten how to celebrate completion. And when we don’t fully complete, we can’t begin anew wholeheartedly. When we finish a project or an activity we immediately rush on to the next thing on the to-do list. We even eat on the run. The old paradigm culture has spawned a mass addiction to busy-ness as well as over consuming. And this addiction destroys lives and our planet’s ecosystem. Perhaps true resiliency and sustainability begins here in this simple inner act of honouring the natural cycles and taking the time to complete fully before we move on.
At the end of two-and-a-bit years of sitting with grief and loss, I am realising once again how challenging it is for most of us to enter our grief fully, feel the intensity of our loss, and complete it. And yet how vitally important it is to do so, not only for our own health and well-being but also for the health and well-being of future life on Earth. I have come to see how making the choice to grieve well provides vital lessons and practices in letting go so that we can come into a truer alignment with our real strength, vulnerability and wisdom.
As we complete with the past and let go of what we no longer need and what is not serving our vitality, and we come to a place of completion, there is a natural pause before the next desire and action spontaneously arise. This pause is a space of still ness and emptiness which can be a very beautiful and fulfilling place to rest and renew.
I made this recording this morning for my Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Programme and I am moved to share it more widely. It’s an exploration of emptiness and not knowing, and how, learning to sit with our inner emptiness can open the way to true fulfilment.
I invite you to find a quiet space where you can sit for these 12 minutes and join me for this exploration.
Find out more about the Sitting with Death Programme Here
thank you Rose
always appreciate your wisdom and vision
bless
j