Tipping the Scale
We are approaching the Equinox, the midway point between darkness and light.
The Equinox, also known pretty widely as Ostara, is one of the main festivals celebrated by the Celtic Wheel of the Year. It is one of the most important Sabbats because it marks the tipping point from the darkness dominating to the light, moving out of the winter months and embracing the warmth to come.
Most of the festivals celebrated through the summer months are associated with ‘the God’, the male aspect of the god/goddess binary, but really it is the Sun we worship. Like the moon, this celestial body controls so much of what we experience in life and it is worth paying attention to how these seasonal/spiritual cycles might be affecting you.
As the Earth (Gaia) turns her face once more to the Sun, here in the Northern Hemisphere we experience the shift from dark nights to longer, sunnier days. At Mabon, in September, we experience the Equinox moving us into the ‘hearth and home’ months of the long winter ahead. Here in Canada, winter can feel very long indeed and we look forward to the warmer months with passion and intensity.
As a gardener dream of planting seeds and plants, of harvesting, of working the earth. To me, there is nothing quite like the feeling of black muck under my fingernails, or of the sun warming my back while I work outside. To have good reason to be in the outdoors, whether it’s tending to plants or hiking the hills, we are so ready to burst out into the world and grow tall under the summer sun.
Before that, however, you may find there is some housekeeping to do.
And if you are thinking ‘oh no are you talking about house cleaning you mad baggage’, I’m afraid yes, yes I am. The Spring is the season to open our doors and windows and let out the dust and stagnation of the closed in winter months. Chucking out what no longer serves us in liberating, and makes room for what you do want to give time and energy to this season. But of course, of course, things are never quite that simple.
The most important Spring cleaning is the one that happens internally, as we look into the season of growth, life and expansion ahead. What would you like to pour your energy into this season? A hobby, a new craft? Perhaps you are shedding unwanted thoughts or limiting beliefs? Maybe your aim is to simply walk around the block without pain, all of these are goals worth having.
There is another level though, a level outside of lists and plans, that is worth contemplating.
In my experience, it isn’t just old shoes and ill fitting trousers that need to be shed, often it is the very notion of what it is we ‘should’ be doing that we need to be rid of. Because the deepest and most profound connections come when we simply interact with Nature herself; without expectations, without an agenda.
When I was 27 I suffered a very nasty Bells Palsy attack, my face never returned to its former state and I am still sometimes taken by surprise at how things never ‘went back’ the way they were. It’s been over 20 years, but sometimes my own face seems a little alien.
At the time I was very ill, unable to work for months as I couldn’t blink one eye and the medications I was on made me feel very strange. I couldn’t read (one eye), or even listen to the radio or watch a movie without the horrible feeling that all these people were ‘lying’ and trying to ‘trick’ me. While Stephen was at work all day, the hours could stretch out ahead of me in an unsettling way. As an active person with ADHD, sitting still has always been a struggle for me. So day after day without entertainment or company, felt long indeed.
For the first time in my life, though, I was forced to stop doing and just be. I learned to meditate (thank you Louise Hay) and to take life at a much, much slower pace. I sat in the garden and just…listened. I would listen to the wind, the trees, the birds. I paid attention to the thoughts that would drift through my mind, when I wasn’t tied up in the every day work of life. I couldn’t even cook for myself, so suddenly the blanket of ‘busyness’ was lifted and I was very, very cold.
Over time, though, the wind began to talk back. She told me not to worry, she told me to trust and to give myself time to heal. The bird song in the trees felt like encouraging words, the slowly blooming garden was my daily companion. I think it was then that my conversation with the gods really began.
In the silence of an unoccupied life, we must confront the bare bones that lie beneath our ambitions, our hopes, even our beliefs. This can come in times of grief, when the world stands still for you but continues for everyone else; it can happen when a child is born and your entire centre of gravity changes. Throughout our life experience we experience these strange ‘out of time’ pockets, but often that is what leads us to meaningful discoveries.
As much as I love ritual, I believe that our communion with the goddess or god (or the creator, the universe, the trees…) is something that comes naturally to us, if we can dig past all the ‘learning’ we do that is piled up on top of that intuitive part of ourselves. My most meaningful connections are when I simply open my heart and feel. I let my feelings flow out, to the trees, the ocean, a plant I am sitting next too; no words are required to explain, no brain work at all in fact. It is the opening of the soul, your centre of being; a breath can be all that is needed, a moment of turning your face to the sun. A leaf on a branch, that feels like a blessing.
The world is full of glimmers, little moments of blissful perfection that remind us that there is a whole world of being that has nothing to do with the world we are interwoven into. So take some time to notice, if you can, the flirtation Gaia is engaging in. Appreciate the soft green as a gift just to you, an unclouded sky as a sign you are being invited to experience joy.
The Equinox can be a messy time, with colliding seasons and feelings, but if you learn to find your centre, you can become the steady rock in the midst of the flowing river, allowing the water to part over and around you, cleansing and renewing for a new season’s beginning.
If you have any thoughts or questions, please pop them in the comments, in the meantime,
Bright Blessings to you all,
love, Emmalina xxxx