Tonight, we enter into the darkest, longest night of the year.
The Winter Solstice marks the moment where The Sun stands still at it's nadir, for a breath. Our source of light, guidance, and warmth, sinks away to the south, and we rest here, in the quieting depths of winter. Without the stimulation from The Sun to reach, grow, extend, and strive, The Winter Solstice offers us retreat, rest, quiet, and release.
When we align our energy and our actions with the seasons, when we accept the invitations that the cycles of nature offer, we merge with our natural context, and breathe as one with creation.
This Winter Solstice, we honor the call.
We rest into the darkness. We release into stillness. We retreat into quiet.
Breathe. And let each breath bring you closer to your home. You are home. Rest within yourself. Grounding down, and tucking within. Feel cozy, hibernating within yourself, exactly where you belong. Drop your shoulders, and sink down within. Breathe into the darkness, and let yourself be deeply held and comforted by it.
Everything that the year has brought us, all of our ambitions, endeavors, quests and creations, come here to The Winter Solstice to be fully and finally set down. Come, let us set our burdens down, in the liberation of annihilation. It's done now. Let it all rest in the tomb that is also the womb, let us rest in this wintering dark Earth, breathing in the deep aroma of fully mature compost.
Breathe. And practice release. With each outbreath, release it from the fully swaddled comfort that this still and all-sustaining darkness provides, as though it is your last breath. Let each breath drop off, like stepping out of old clothing you've outgrown.
You wont need it where you are going.
Dropping deeper into safety of formlessness; you need have no defenses, when there are no walls. Feeling the elasticity of your body as you breathe, feeling the expansion and release of your spine with each breath. Feel your body softening. Feel the space around you permeate you, as you permeate it. You are, and all is, simply one energy in vibration. Feel as though your breath is moving in and out through your entire surface area, as you merge into an comfortingly anonymous unity.
You are resting, weightless, in amniotic formlessness.
The Winter Solstice invites us in this moment, to forget time, to forget space, forget language, forget our name, the identity we expressed through this past year. We are free, we are safe, we disintegrate into oneness with the void. Our only need now, is to release, to become unknown, and to rest.
There is no need for anything, other than breathing.
You are truly held. You are truly one, in interconnected, permeable unity with your source and your sustenance.
This is always true, even as this darkest night comes to pass.
And as this night passes, let us leave behind all that we set aside, to merge with the void. We do not need it where we are going.
For through this portal of The Winter Solstice, we are made new. Let us not assume we needed what we thought we needed last year. Let us not resurrect that which has been laid to rest.
We are new. We are held, and supported in our tender and quiet newness.
Newborn infants need to rest. And to breathe. And trust, that when we need to act, we will have become the one who has been easefully prepared for the task.
Let the quiet starlit dawn emerge from within, on your next inbreath.
In each breath, practice honoring the tenderness of your newness. You will need to rest. You will need quiet. You will need these tendernesses in order to respect and honor the emerging light within you.
It is not for you to know what your tender, dawning light will come to show you.
It is our job to support its emergence in grace; in protection from our own assumptions and habits, and in faith in the value of the light we carry.
Watch your breath, with love, and tender affection. Your precious rising and falling offers you that deep rest, and pure renewal, moment, by precious moment. As you rise from the depths of Winter Solstice, as you rise from the depths of your internal meditations, may nothing inhibit the reverence with which we attend to the breath of light, as it grows.
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