Slipping Into Darkness

I just had to borrow that great title from a song by the 80’s band War, because it’s been going through my head for the last few days. It’s a reflection of the powerful deepening that this time of year always brings to me. Today is my birthday, and tomorrow is Samhain, Hallowmas, Hallowe’en… and I’m inspired to write another blog right on the heels of the yesterday’s, in tribute to an older way of approaching this time of year.

Last night, I felt the call of the night, the thinness of the veil between the worlds, and the results of the heart healing and opening I’ve been working with. As I sat outside in the hot tub in the dark, I cried for those lost in the past year and those lost decades ago. I remembered those who are long gone from this life but not from existence or from my heart. I spoke out loud to Adrianna Grace, beloved friend lost to cancer this year, and to my Grandmothers and Grandfathers, thanking them all for being part of my life and part of my eternity. I felt as though I had truly celebrated Samhain with an appropriate ceremony of honoring.

As we slip into the dark half of the wheel of the year, so many will be starting to think about the holidays. Gearing up, making lists, making plans for parties, family dinners, and general revelry. I’m going in the opposite direction, as my ancestors did once the final harvest was in and the food preserved for another winter. In nature, as the weather turns colder in the northern hemisphere, many animals are fattening up on autumn’s bounty for hibernation and sleeping through the winter. While I don’t plan to fatten up, I do align with the bears and the other animals who crawl into caves and holes and dens and burrows and slow way down.

Though I live in the tropics and it doesn’t get that cold in the winter, I’ve attuned myself to the turning of the seasons and the shortening of the days that speak of winter to come. I also live at a high enough elevation to need warmer clothes and fuzzy slippers at times. It’s really a more subtle attunement to the earth’s rhythms, and a conscious choice to move to a different song, a slower and more gentle song which slows my heartbeat.

I used to think I had to swim upstream, but now I realize that I need only slip into the stream and let it carry me where it goes. In keeping with the powerful, magical time of year that we are in, I take time to be with my internal landscape, to find calm in what is sure to be an escalating holiday frenzy. This year I will even dance the balance of participating in family holiday gatherings on the mainland and maintaining my equilibrium instead of hiding out on Maui during the Christmas season.

For now, however, I will honor myself by listening deeply and acting from my inner promptings. And on this day of my birth, I celebrate a year gone past where I had cancer and then I didn’t in practically the blink of an eye. I am blessed, I am blessed, I am blessed!

Love, Amrita