Marked by the longest nights of the year, the solstice season has always been defined by a profound pause. In Latin, the word “Solstice” translates as “sun stays still.” If you watch the sunrise on the days around the Solstice, it appears as if the sun is halted in one place on the horizon. For the ancients, this time of cosmic pause was one of depth and descent, a moment of potent inner ritual within the larger cycle of rebirth. During this year of pandemic many of us have been in a perpetual solstice. Paused on the horizon line of the futures we once saw before us, we have been relegated to an extended dreamtime, a stillness that has left us with nothing to do but stir the embers within and see what coals are glowing in the depths.
This year, perhaps more than ever in our lives, we are getting a chance to steep in the deepest magics of solstice— slowing down so we can reconnect with our dreams, feed the seers within and embrace an inner reset of truly cosmic proportions. As we walk into the darkest nights of the year, and the last days of 2020, we are all collectively entering a profound experience of what the solstice really means, and the revolutionary healing it can bring. Because these are the last days of darkness before the return of the light.
I repeated a mantra every day: “Nothing happens to me, everything happens for me.” This year has demanded that I adopt this mantra once again.
As we move into the final season of being gripped by the pandemic, we have an opportunity to pierce the last veil, to gather the gifts that were uncovered by this tough experience so we are ready for the new era to come. In the next weeks, as the sun slows down to its lowest arc, and the daylight wanes to a standstill, we enter a kind of final twilight— a shaman’s in-between, an interstitial, intercoastal, liminal place of knowledge and metamorphosis. We are in the cave of dreams, and on the brink of a rebirth. |