Winter Solstice

An ordinary devotion to the dark

Things come to me when I’m sitting in the dark as my child begins to fall asleep. Right there in the in-between, not sure when her body will surrender to rest, hungry for my own solitude. Last night I watched my mind wanting to be somewhere else, and then in that watching, the urge dissolved and I found myself alongside her in the slow, meandering descent down beneath the waking world. And then I’m there too, in the drift space, where there is no time, and a whole new bandwidth opens up.

I find I have the coming Solstice on my mind. I’m thinking about it as a known event in the wider conversation, but also my body can sense it. Perhaps this year more than ever because something about the listening instrument I am has sharpened in sensitivity. I can feel the tide pulling out to its very lowest point, lost to the eye, dead calm in the distance, hovering in the pause of everything-nothing before the return begins. And it feels essential not to bypass it, to stay aware of it, not because somebody else tells me it’s important or tries to instruct me how to work with it, but because I remember it in my bones. I am a body governed by the cycles of nature, when all is said and done, and so are you. When the noise dies down, when the politics lose meaning, when the problems dissolve, the earth continues to turn.

So how can I honour the Solstice in the middle of these busy days, I wonder. Solo parenting. Disturbed nights. Where’s the key to the door? The door that opens into that place in my life, where the quiet turning of the earth is sacred. How do I get there? There are many things I know I could do, but I want to find the answer to this question myself. I want to discover something in the simple pathway of my own being. From somewhere, I hear the words: Intention needs a cradle. Like there can be no baby without a mother, my intention needs a home, a frame, a matrix, so that it has somewhere to work. The body is a primary vessel, yes, but the way that my body gestures and actualises being, and the way that I spend my time, shapes the foundational potential here. For me and life to co-create.

This is a roundabout way of also saying: I keep experiencing the compulsion to ‘do something useful’ with this time. I’m halfway through a fascinating seminar series on dreams. Maybe I should sit and listen to one of those. Maybe I should write down my deepest thoughts and get in touch with some kind of vision for what comes next. And maybe, of course, I could give in to the drainpipe of distraction that lives within my phone, and all phones. Scrolling, consuming, watching…mindlessly letting my life force sink into those tiny little squares.

I know, ultimately, where the key to the door I seek lies (although I never know what I will find on the other side) and that key is Elemental Chi Kung. There will be a period of time tomorrow (your today, as you read this) when I will finally be alone in the house and can practice. And more than just practice, when I can dedicate my practice to the Solstice. Dedication requires an intention, a focal point, a shape that holds the honouring. And the most powerful intentions are humble. Teach me what the Solstice means. Show me how to stay with the dark. Support me to build a deeper relationship with the mystery.

“Give thanks for what you have been given. Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken. Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer

Did you know that in medicine the word intention also means the healing process of a wound? Perhaps primordial, repeating events that rise within our midst like the Solstice have the power to heal the original wound of separation, that lonely idea that we are above the earth and below the cosmos, rather than woven inextricably as one.

Next year, I’ll be offering my Elemental Chi Kung classes freely, as an act of devotion to a practice that has given me more than I can name — a practice that places me right back into the fold.

And then I realise that my questioning seems to have answered itself: there is an ordinary pathway right here. Now that my child is asleep, on this Solstice eve, I will write these words and name this landscape I have chanced upon. I will resist the urge to do. I will shower and slowly get ready for bed.

No unsatisfying distraction. Nothing much at all, in fact. Just the rest and slowness my body needs. In truth, early to bed feels like a kind of loss, because the pull to do, and get somewhere, is as strong in me as anyone else. And then I remember the texture of sleep and dreaming, and there is no more doubt, and no more pull to anywhere else because the Dreamfield is magic. Soon enough I’ll speak the words I always say before I sleep:

Come the dreams that will
Come the dreams that may
I am listening
I will remember
I will write them down

“Dreaming is not something we do; it is something that happens to us when the ego loosens its grip.” — James Hillman

If you’d like a way to begin prioritising your relationship with your dreams, and the unique intelligence they carry, try my free 10-day teaching called Dreams Decoded, which you can find here.

As I wend my way towards sleep, everything I ‘think’ I need will be replenished from a different kind of reservoir. The one that opens through waiting and not-knowing, and learning to trust, that when our hands are empty, we always receive.

Blessings on this particular Solstice.
All the waking up it offers us, and the deep, deep darkness, that go hand in hand.