Solstice

Marking time has been an important part of being human.  Understanding how the passage of time effects us, binds us, moves us, has expressed itself in creating all kinds of ways of marking time.  We have earthly calendars made of stone, buildings that line up with stars that count the precession of the equinoxes.  Today with our Julian calendar, we forget sometimes the daily rhythms of  earth and nature.  We spring from nature, are a part of it.  Its great truth moves in our veins every second of the day.  The electromagnetic field of the earth which pulses and moves, protecting us from the solar wind mimics our own inner magnetic fields created from the iron rich blood in our veins building this field around us. We are a model of the earth with its molten core.  Our own cores made of iron rich blood helps to build and propagate this important field in our bodies. It is what gives our presence a constancy here on the planet. It makes life possible in the way that we know it. This energy field in our own bodies caries information all through it like a vast nervous system and it is a field that can be seen by sensitives in what is called the human aura. Since we are made up of this electromagnetic field and operate within its guiding force, tapping the planetary flow of information simply is not foreign to us.  You very likely haven't had enough experience with it to be able to identify it when it does happen to you, but if you were to spend a day or two with me I think I could easily point out a couple of instances in your experience where I say "There; what you were just describing....THAT was your feeling something in the flux flow field of Gaia....Mother Earth...."  This is where you would cock your head realizing this sense is not a thing, but more a way to feel.....and this is what keeps this thing often so elusive for the simple fact that they often can't or wont trust their feelings or anything that seems to transit the gateway of their imaginations.  Like a giant magnet, we are in its flux flow.  We are all part of the other.  We are a cell swimming in a sea of planetary cells within the heart of the cosmos.  And if you think that sounds like so much mystic mumbo consider that some of the leading physicists of our day are beginning to come to the same conclusions. The world is far more fascinating a place than we every allowed ourselves to even glimpse. What if, as the ancients have been asserting that everything we see is but one small part of a living breathing awareness that we sheepishly try to call god or goddess or any number of other names?  I know; it can get hard when someone is suggesting a different name than the one that your family tradition has held to for generations.  We are nothing if not creatures of habit but in a world where our understanding is rapidly advancing and evolving, our understanding of what our deity or source of all life is to us should be expected to change too. For myself, I see the deity as a huge flux core of immense energy.  Maybe a bit like the sun.....and like the sun only gives without any need for return.....

So it is with this day, the marking of the Solstice, that I pause to consider how the turning of the days can keep us rooted and grounded in the rhythm of life here. However we each choose to see it, however we each choose to allow its broad meaning to flow, we are all bound in this world of cycles and circles. Sunrise, sunset, equinox, solstice.  All are part of a vast clockwork that is our lives.

For myself, this day coincides with reclaiming of personal power.  For me, in this longest of days, the greatest of light, I reflect on how I have sought to help others while being blind to my own short comings. I have sought to take power from others in what I mistook as some grand gallant gesture of generosity and kindness. It was neither kind nor gallant. Some grain turned in me which I felt for in order to grasp instead of resolving.  Perhaps I needed to reap what I sowed in order to learn from it.

The universe is ruthless.....unbending. The Law of Karma tied into the Law of Attraction served perfectly to bring me those who were just as unresolved in their lives as I was in mine. In being unable to approve of myself for myself, I sought to find that approval in others.  By doing this, I took their power for safe keeping and they took mine.  We never owned our own power.  When we do this, the universe has a way of catching up to you. It isn't that we do not care or love others.  We just can no longer love through such weaker means. It is like a house built on an inexact assumption about how the universe works.  When you do that, the house will fall.  And by rights, it SHOULD fall so that you can built it on the right foundation and in the right way from the start.  It was when I chose to begin doing things the fair and right way that all hell broke loose. But that is okay, because I know had the shoe been on the other foot no one would have expected me to have behaved as they did.   By taking another's power, I set myself up for failure, you see.  The truth is, no soul can care for the soul of another in this way.  We like to think we do, but in all truth, we are here as companions along the way, inspiring and offering alternate ways to see the world, but we never do the work of anothers' soul.  When someone expects us to do that, to bear them joy, it means they themselves do not know how to feel joy within themselves on their own and will be pointing fingers at every person they feel has failed them when in truth, they were responsible for their happiness all along.  This is the authentic path, the one of heart and the one that is perennially true.  We must take responsibility for that for ourselves.  The knight in shining armor has been slayed and all the dragons he would have killed have been allowed another day of safety.  For it is the maiden who learns to slay her own dragons.  It is she alone who must find her own truth.  If the Knight comes to save her, he also saves her from her own great discovery of herself. We steal another's power and tell ourselves we are doing them a great favor. I give you my power, you give me yours and we think its all perfectly fine.  Its doomed to fail.

When we allow the broken birdies to heal themselves, we allow the Law of the Divine to work perfectly.  They wont go willingly and will continue their chirping for another to come along to save them most likely, but for those who seek the path of the enlightened, you have to leave those birds, blessing them and wishing them well.  This is because a new day has dawned.  It isn't that you do not have compassion for the world, it is that the divine in each of us is Never fostered when we carry anothers' weight.  I know what the Christians have to say, maybe we will get to that issue on another day.....But when we do this, when we take responsibility for ourselves emotionally and spiritually, We invite personal spiritual responsibility to grow.  We each live our lives for ourselves as we heal and touch the divine each on our own. We cannot simultaneously reach the divine while holding someone else's story in our hands.  We must find it for ourselves.  And in finding it, and owning it, we reach a place where we ask the universe to align to that vibration rather than the old vibration of possession of another's power. Possessing another's power means they are effectively powerless.

When I first met you, I read your field perfectly.  In that moment I had the choice to question how deep a scar I saw in you.  In your home, alone, I felt the ghosts of all your questions, hurts, frustrations, anger, and hopelessness.  I felt so positive, so hopeful.  I thought I could instill this in you, to give your life meaning.  What I did not realize was I would seek to give you meaning through my generosity so that you would approve of me. I showered you with great gifts, gifts no other person had ever given. I told myself I was a kind and generous person.  Surely I was a great man.  I took your power in this exchange as you entrusted it in me.  But because I was not perfect, because I had not been aligned in the right way, I was doomed to fail. And you were doomed to be dissatisfied because of how willing you were to hand your dragon slaying power over to someone who had no business holding it.  This made you weak, and it made me weak. We leaned upon one another's weakness and here a long cycle of dysfunction turned for years and finally unravelled like a big knotted ball of string. We made a fine mess of it.  I told myself I was victim to every arrow you sought to slay me with, all the while I was holding your power.  How could you ever be strong and true to your spirit as long as I enabled you in this way? You and I were like oil and water, held together only through karma and hopefulness.  That is a poor yoke with which to hold souls together.

So I ask the universe for forgiveness for all that I have unknowingly done.  I did not understand.  I am sorry. Please forgive me, I ask the universe. I go back to that house where I first met you and I lay down your power, all responsibility for it, and lay it back at the start of that first thread that began between us and ask the universe to please accept this plea for forgiveness.  I give you back yourself.  I should have never thought I was responsible for it. I now entrust you to you. I do not fear what may become of you, for you are like me; immortal. We each must learn our lessons on our own merits and not through the merits of others.  We can share in our paths, but not by taking the power of another.

I have seen how this lack has attracted others who all exhibited the same characteristics. In their own ways, they sought to hide from their own ultimate responsibility, giving me an in to their own wound, their karma. In some measure I tried to set the world right, but the only world I set right is the world within.  It has always been our task to do this. When we don't, we enter into an unholy alliance that is doomed to fall. Every one has been a perfect mirror until I have learned that I must first know who I am deeper down. Not through another, not because of another but because of me.  Not to be alone, not to be hardened against the world, but to simply let this incredibly unusual self that I am to shine in the world without fear of any one else not approving. Only I approve of me, only I can love myself. Only I can feel the love that is the universe shining in me to finally reach the light of day.  Not because of another, but because on an individual basis, we much each find the god and goddess within us.  If we seek to have another do that work for us, we invite whatever shadow that rests in us to grow stronger and we forget the greater truth shining in us. instead of carrying the power of another, we inspire others to carry their own. You can do it.  Its in you to do this. And once this is done, then we look at the world and consider perhaps for the first time the view through clear eyes and ask what is in our highest to mirror. We have spent lifetimes mirroring in the shadow land, not I are free to mirror in a world of light.

To me, Solstice is bringing the greatest illumination into the world.  It is reaching a place of illumination within.  Being able to see our own foibles within the bright light of the world. For me, it is a chance to stand back, to be honest and clear-eyed.  How does the turning of seasons help to remind you of your own inner seasons and changes?  Your body, springing from nature, is connected to nature.  Listening to that nature is for me a far more honest and integral truth than any dogma or system could ever hope to offer me. For me, right now, its about reaching that place of zero point, which is our "primal self" which has nothing to do with being unrefined.  Coming back to center, and in coming back to center, a marvelous opportunity to begin asking what I am beneath all the blankets of hurt from the past in order to know what my inner truth is.  Well....don't I know this already? Can't I feel this world within surging up with such bliss and wonder?  Haven't I felt this my whole life long?  Casting them off and focusing on our most essential selves, our own true essence without fear of how we might look or seem, is important.  It is to me.  I finally realized that I had to accept myself and no longer try to run under the radar.  Perhaps the world would not understand, perhaps the world would reject it.  Perhaps. But I alone have to remain true, and the truer I am, the magic in all of this is that I am led to a place where I can mirror something new. I am free to mirror my own divine truth in my world. Not through another, not because of another.  And once I get right in myself, then who knows what can happen. Who knows who else will be inspired to do the same.

~Nemasté~
 - Parker