Sometimes we just need to stop, feel and let it all unravel. Just like nature does at this time of the year. When the land becomes dormant, the trees naked, the birds silent, deep underneath the soil decays, matures, and gets ready for the inevitable new growth.
With the Winter Solstice (meaning “stillness of the sun”), the earth’s northern hemisphere reminds us of intimacy with darkness, silence and stillness, in times when we don’t know the way forward. Darkness is the landscape of the deeper senses that do not find expression in struggle and achievement, in small talk or social media posts but in inner maturation and fruition.
As spiritual seekers we can get seduced by light, illumination, expansion, and perhaps miss on letting life shake up, undo, decompose our linear thinking and accumulated knowledge, force us to be still and to listen.
Healing trauma means becoming familiar with the darker side of our experience, learning to notice and allow the discomfort of anger, sadness, confusion. Yes—these too are messengers from the depth of our heart!
Before we celebrate the return of longer daylight, let’s also remember to honor darkness for the stillness, maturation and inner strength it brings to our lives.
~ Zaya Benazzo
