I am writing this as the Solstice draws near, and the night seems to swallow up the day in inky star-filled blackness.
This Solstice I am reflecting deeply, more deeply than I ever have in the past. It seems this is true for so many as we contemplate the multitude of challenging realities coming into our awareness. California cities are going up in flames, the ice at the poles is quickly melting, the oceans are filled with plastic waste, intense winds and storms are ravaging tropical coasts, mass shootings are a regular thing, and our elected leaders seem to have a very narrow agenda that is leading us in a direction that does no one but a few any good at all.
On the surface this looks bad. It looks like our social structure is disintegrating, our precious planet slowly becoming inhospitable to life. What is happening here?
As I contemplate the waxing of the year, I feel the darkness as never before. It is heavy, thick, almost as if it has a life of its own. It is like a smooth, velvety blanket of blackness. It has its own texture and substance, and it wraps around me like a second skin.
When I think about this time of year in connection with what is happening in the world, it seems as if humanity is descending into darkness more than ever before. When I think of how this looks in my own life, I see more clearly my own unconsciousness, my own shadow, in an intricate, interconnected, unified field of the darkness inherent in human nature. It is not a lovely poetic analogy, but I cannot help but use the image of a long festering blackhead popping all the gunk coming to the surface. I cannot help but feel, as an intuitive and one who sees patterns and cycles and interweavings in everything, that a great cleansing is happening within the consciousness of our species and of the earth from which our bodies come and from which we receive our life force.
We are part of the Great Mystery. We do not know how we came to be. We do not know what our purpose is. We do not know where we are going. But our brave and true hearts are awakening and our imaginations are blooming in the deep, rich, fertile soil of what we stand to lose.
I recently had a profound healing session in which I did some very intense work around my relationship with my father who has never been emotionally available. I was able to see as I went deep into my broken heart that where I thought he was withholding his love from me, the truth was in fact that it was me who was withholding my love from him. The bigger truth was that, because of this pattern, I was withholding my love from myself and from the whole world. I also saw in this healing how, as a woman, I was afraid to be in my power because I might be killed for it. Many women on a healing path can relate to this fear, as we know we are living a legacy of fear from all the violence done to women to keep us from being powerful. What I saw then was that I was killing myself by not allowing my own life-force power to rise in my body and have full expression in the world.
What if what we think is light is not light at all? What if it is just a faint echo, a reflection of light? What if we need the darkness, deep and rich and fertile, in order to birth the real light in our consciousness and in our reality? What is it we see around us, in the news and on social media, but a reflection of our darkness, our savage untamed animal truth? What if the light that emerged within our consciousness to create civilization were only a faint smudge of light on the horizon, and we were able to create so much with that seed of dawn. What can we create if we crack wide open to bring the real light through? What if a greater sun is rising in our consciousness? They say it is always darkest before the dawn…
How are you withholding your love from the world? What walls have you built, and what do they protect you from? How does the world reflect your own darkness?
I saw in that healing that there is nothing to be afraid of. I saw that bringing the light through my being fully is more vital than life itself. So, what if what we call life is not life at all? What if it is but a shadow of life? What if it is only through our fearless, heart-forward power-fullness that we can bring a more potent, more vital, more true life into being?
I was in a class recently in which we were working with Shakti energy. Shakti energy is raw life-force power. It is the undiluted power of the universe when transmitted through our bodies. We activate it within our wombs as women, and it manifests as pure creative, procreative, life- awakening power. In that moment on the table, during the healing in which I saw there is nothing to fear, I felt the Shakti that is life. We think we are living, but there is always more. When we live in fear of anything, we are only killing our own life-force, our own creative potential. When we actively engage, heart-forward, with life, we crack it open to truer, more vibrant life. This is the new earth. It is not somewhere else. It is right here. The earth we see is an echo of it, and we need to shed our fear, our own shields and walls and stories, to birth the truer earth. We will rise the greater sun up from the horizon to shine more brightly than any light we have yet imagined. What I see when I look with my inner sight, is that there is always more. More life, more light, more creative potential. We are birthing life with every full, fearless breath.
There is no monster worthy of life-killing fear. Fear is the monster, and it lives inside us. When the fires burn and the waters rise and the bullets fly and the children go hungry, there is the potential for breaking open to see into our own hearts and to be better, kinder, braver and more loving. We are cleansing. Darkness can only be found in our own shadow. Let’s join our minds and hearts and rise that giant sun up into the sky, and, in fearlessly facing our own darkness, birth the light that has never been seen before.
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Devon Love, owner of OneHeart Intuitive Healing, is a spiritual mentor, intuitive healer and nurturing bodyworker practicing at Arcata Healing Arts Center, arcatahealingartscenter.com. She is currently focusing her work primarily on supporting women who are ready to learn to love their authentic and amazing selves and who want to expand their self-care skills. Though this is her main focus, everyone who is diving deep into their own healing journey is welcome! You can reach Devon at 707-825-1153, or on FB at oneheartintuitive/facebook.com.
