Happy Summer Solstice to all you beauties! A time of the planet tilting those of us in the Northern Hemisphere towards the sun at its highest point in the sky and gifting us our longest daylight day of the year and the opposite for those living in the Southern.
It's a time of intense dry light casting the shortest shadows and creating parched arid landscapes. Spring was about building and action, now we have tipped into Summer which is about nourishment and the practice of building light before the darkest days of Winter come.
What causes darkness in all this light? Mostly the negative mind, spiralling us into a labyrinth of self-doubt, inner critical voices and crippling judgment. What causes further contraction of that arid inner world? A lack of belief in anything beyond ourselves, a distortion of our egos that has us locked in a mental structure of the small self of me, myself, I against you, yourself, other - there's no collaboration, no communion, no connection to other or to Spirit here. It's lonely-land, a ghost town of isolation and scarcity - you against the rest with lack of resources running the show.
That energy of scarcity lurks silently in dark corners of our minds. It's empty as a desert with shrivelled tumbleweed blowing across its dusty negative thinking plain. Nothing good grows here. Nothing good happens here. It's trapped light. Life locks down, creativity gets blocked and instead of steps forward, we circle in an inner maelstrom of our own madness. A life with scarcity running the show is an IKEA flat packed world - nothing of worth gets built. What previously felt expansive, exciting and full - the dream - is now packed away as 'nonsense' by the negative mind and lies inert. Any sound that comes from it are dirges in the dark.
It's an energy that needs little excuse or reason to vaporise and permeate its toxic way into our entire being, pinning us down in fear or worse still, solidifying and numbing us. Something external has tipped us into this becalmed state, or sometimes dehydration or inflammation in our cells can literally stir it awake. It's like a bear trap, we were trucking along the the woods happy and free then SNAP our internal state changes for no clear rhyme or reason.
Indeed, It's such an insidious energy that sometimes we aren't even aware we are in it, everyone around us in the same groove, living in the ice palace of our minds, locked down hearts, disenfranchised and disembodied.
It doesn't stop in the mind as a rational concept to be swept away with a broom, instead, like a silent cancer it tricks its way through our bodies, bypassing all our defences and into our cellular worlds. What once was fluid, contracts and morphogenesis results. Our breath shortens, our posture collapses, the liver feels clogged, digestion sluggish and excretion either dry as a desert or full of hot air - we are in a pattern of stagnation as if holding on to the tiny vestiges of things we have left as if more could be stripped away.
So how do you build faith and trust in the unseen numinous liminal space? Well probably best not to buy into any religious patriarchal models as they just don't seem to understand Spirit and energy. There is no patriarchal father figure in the sky bestowing benevolence on our kindness and punishing us for our failures (and I would have been burnt as a witch for saying that some years back but so few women have been allowed a voice of expression to define this power that it's so key to do it today). Energy doesn't have a conscious mind that works in black and white, rules and boundaries though it's fascinating to see how human minds (the yang/masculine) have shaped this into being so and the pinnacle of the ego structure of the psyche to believe some God-like structure would behave or think in any shape or form like a human being might.
To connect to the world of spiritual energy you open yourself to it - like surfing a wave - you enter the flow of it - it's a field of energy, an organising intelligence, if you like, that once you plug into it, you feel it constantly streaming through you. You can lean into it, it's like a beam of light, it supports, it nurtures, it pushes you towards seeing abundance and gratitude in all things however big or small. It makes you understand that there is no separation between you and everything else on the planet and beyond and in doing so you can never be lonely because you're never alone.
When you do embodied movement that connection to the swell of energy amplifies, you feel even more at one with it, when you go to sleep at night asking to be held in that light you feel supported by it and all the abandoned parts of you, you maybe lost along the way, feel united and re-integrated back into you. There's a wholeness a Wholism to you and a surety that even when everything is stripped away the light remains and abundance is in every breath you take. A good yoga practice when done with the right intention is the best place for most people to start...it's a practice that slowly shapes you, gently plugs you in to the lane of trust, love and devotional space (and again not to some entity but to a devotion in ourselves to be our kindest, most compassionate, most humane, collaborative, caring selves and to soften when we feel pushed at our limits to knee-jerk harden.
“Yoga does not just change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees. Be inspired but not proud. Spirituality is not some external goal that one must seek, but a part of the divine core of each of us, which we must reveal. Do not aim low, you will miss the mark. Aim high and you will be on a threshold of bliss. The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind & the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life. Breath is the king of mind. By drawing our senses of perception inward, we are able to experience the control, silence, and quietness of the mind.” - Paramahansa Yogananda
