I LOVE summer and I miss its warm days and soft evenings.
At this time of year, when the ground is frozen, I often feel very shut off from nature and yearn for my chosen season, where the world seems so alive with growth and plenty. And yet, just like all of Mother Nature, there is a certain magic to this time of year as well.
February is typically the month of Imbolc or Quickening and it is a stage the leaves me in complete awe, to know that under what looks and feels to be cold and death, there is in fact the beginnings of new life just waiting for it’s time to arrive.
The term Quickening is most often related to pregnancy and it is a stage that is 100% owned by a woman, her body, and her new baby. The quickening is when a woman first feels her child move within her. It is a feeling of great knowing and power and it is a wonderful loving secret that the universe shares with her. Therein lies the magic of Imbolc, while we face a season of snow and ice, Mother Nature is secretly brewing new life under the surface.
I used to suffer a great deal through January and February, I often found that everything felt heavier, harder to deal with, and more debilitating through the slow dark days of winter. As a society of Busy! Busy! Busy! Go!Go!Go! we do a disservice both to Mother Nature and to ourselves by not allowing the pace of our lives to match the natural rhythms of our environment.
While I still struggle with the short, dark cold days of winter, what I have found is that if I give myself permission to slow down and adjust my pace to match the season, life becomes less heavy. If I refuse to slow my pace and try to somehow come up with extra hours in the day, then the struggle just persists.
Our current culture has become so disengaged from Nature, that we have lost our wild wisdom. Mother Nature has an awful lot to teach us if we could only observe and listen to her. As we stubbornly refuse to listen to her, Mother Nature’s lessons have become louder and louder.
What if, all our weather changes and our onslaught of natural disasters, are simply a very angry, very determined Mother at her wit’s end trying to make her rebellious teenagers listen to her Wisdom? There is so much magic in nature and as we move farther and farther away from it, we lose so much of wisdom.
And so I challenge us to begin to acknowledge and live by Nature’s magic, which will become easier to do as March eases the darkness of Winter into the rebirth of Spring. Let’s consciously embrace the reemergence of life in Us and in our World. Also, keep in mind that these natural rhythms can be applied to any portion of our lives, change is constant, and death is inevitable, quickening is alive in every little seed we plant and nurture into being. Nature’s cycles and seasons are her promises to us that nothing is forever and even in our darkest times the magic is happening.
Let’s actively live in appreciation of new life, keeping in mind that not every bud blossoms, that Mother Nature is both beautiful and brutal by her very nature. This is where the real challenge comes in because we will all have to let go of our attachment to the outcome. We must have faith that even if we don’t get what we want, we will get what we need. And frankly, if it feels like all we are getting is painful lessons, then we need to commit to figuring out what we need to learn so those lessons can change and possibly become less fierce. Free will allows us to choose to suffer through our challenges or learn from them. This is not to say we should deny our feelings or numb our feelings and power through. We need to feel our way through our challenges, we need to name our emotions so we can release them and move forward.
If today’s challenges seem too heavy to bear, then let’s all commit to remembering that with each new day we get to start again. And truly commit to starting again, have enough self-compassion to forgive yesterday’s stumbles and yet move forward more knowledgeable and more prepared to face any lessons sent our way. Let us allow the moons many faces guide us through a constant rhythm of setting new intentions with each new moon and then letting go of anything that has not served us through our journey on each full moon.
And I do mean We, as in each and every one of us. And We need to do it for all of us. I say this because as a recovering Martyr I know how easy it is to do for others and ignore ourselves. I know how routine it can be to put ourselves last and try and heal the world first, but the thing is that we are the world. We are the Universal Consciousness and if we don’t commit to actively healing and taking care of ourselves then we are dooming our world to be stuck in this numb chaotic rhythm of extreme exhaustion and scattered spirit. Frankly, I don’t want to live here in this disengaged fractured world anymore, do you? Are you content here, or do you want more? I want more and the only way I can see for all of us to get there is to challenge ourselves to honor who we are, honor Mother Nature in all of her brutal glory and actively be the change we want to see.
The patterns we have created in order to protect ourselves throughout the trauma and chaos around us are only perpetuating more trauma and chaos. I am so very guilty of this, as so many of us are. I am ready to commit to healing though, not overnight and not all at once. But certainly, one small conscious choice at a time. Let’s plant this seed and watch it Quicken into being, shall we? Are you in? Will you take my challenge? You are so very welcome, so very very welcome and so loved.
~Namaste – Michicko @SweetSerenityYoga