For many, this has been a wrenching time of letting go…..letting go of all of our old baggage, the stuff we have been carrying around for our lifetime…..I had an image of this like the piles of leaves we now see everywhere. At first, we love all our stuff, we love to think of it, look at it, examine, wallow in it….we might love to jump into the pile of leaves and play in it….but after time, the leaf piles become dank and moldering, as they gather moisture and slime….much like the old baggage we hold onto long past the time when it served our highest good. Finally, the leaves are vacuumed up, or the wind does the job….and vigorously blows them away, clears out the streets, leaving space and openness behind. The trees now have light pouring through their branches, unhindered by dead leaves, their purpose in shielding the earth from the strong summer sun now complete.
We are being stripped to our energetic bare bones, like the trees…the season’s energy has scoured the bottom of the barrels of our beings, scraping away the sludge and gunk that had sunk and congealed. As it rises up to be emptied, it doesn’t look pretty or feel good….but it leaves an expanse of spaciousness behind to be filled with the light of the present, as we release the muck and sediment of the past.
We are approaching the day with the least hours of sunlight, the Winter Solstice on Sunday, December 21 at 6:03 PM EST. The days are shorter now, the light is waning….but the old residue is being dropped from the trees, from our lives, cleared out of the streets, out of our experience, making space, creating an opening….preparing for the day after the Solstice….when the amount of light increases, day by day building toward the Summer Solstice, the day with the most hours of sunlight. This building, illuminating light offers to shine in our being, in our lives, day by day, if we just say yes….giving us the opportunity to fill the awaiting space with light. But first, we must let go, in order to make room for more light. We just have to be willing. We can trust the intelligence behind the process, it is our natural process too. The Light always follows darkness.