Farewelling Winter

The end of the cycle of Yin - For now

Yin is fast giving way to Yang as we enter the final phase of Winter and the bumpy, stop, start energies of early Spring and the Wood Element. If we could glance at Winter, now almost dissolving into the distance, we might reflect in terms of its philosophy and insight, its depth and dream-like reimaginings, its tug into the underworld, and all that lies hidden beneath the surface. The biting cold, rain and snow (depending on your altitude), and the discomfort that sends us indoors seem deliberate, here to ask us to examine ourselves beyond the physical experience, and here to guide us into deeper relationship and belonging.

As we enter the final weeks of August and the end of the Yin cycle, we acknowledge the end of a period of intense inner work and change, reflecting on where we have thawed the Heart and opened the mind to the ‘More’ that is potential within us come the Spring.

In this closing phase as Yang rises can we honour the intensity of the times; the wildfires, floods and wars, and the equal intensity of our own inner process and rapid evolution, of connection with our Spirit and the deep Waters of our Being? Open to our intuition, psychic sensitivity, emotional maturity, and our own flowing interconnectedness with all that is. Through the journey and introspection of the season, we learn to open and trust our Spiritual side, our compassion and interconnectedness in new and fresh ways, now mirrored starkly against the new Spring and young Wood.

In Winter the fluid sensitive aspects of ourselves rise on their own high tide, revealing the inner Sharman that moves us between the visible and invisible realms, and the higher consciousness of the 5th dimension. This is not light work, nor is it always easy and comfortable. The shadow side of the journey into Winter and the Water Element is the kind of Spiritual bypass that is more common than not. A mass escape from the abrasion of the work into social media addiction, denial culture, escapism and withdrawal all refuse the embodiment of Winter and the rite of evolution that it is.

This season comes, year after year to show us how to honour our sensitivity in a way that can be expressed practically come Spring as we come to service in the world. Indeed, Winter is an evolving and strengthening integration of our emotional sensitivity, our spiritual expansiveness, and our capacity to be embodied, grounded and present in the here and now. But to get there our bodies, and importantly our psyche, must survive the dark, cold isolation of winter retreat. Anyone who has endured a dark night of the Soul will know this as truth. Winter comes at us straight out of mythology and antiquity, unapologetic and with important lessons to be learned in the face of its fear and unfathomable depth.

Homer spoke with dread and reverence of the Watery cold North, a desolate land of mist and clouds at the end of the civilized world, so bitter that it ripped at the hearts of men.

”As crosswinds chop the sea where the fish swarm, the North Wind and the West Wind blasting out of Thrace in sudden, lightning attack, wave on blacker wave, cresting, heaving a tangled mass of seaweed out along the surf – so the Achaeans’ hearts were torn inside their chests.”

Homer - The Iliad. Book 9.

Homer’s crew, upon meeting the ocean of Winter turn South towards the equator and the warm land of the Lotus Eaters where they fall into a limbic world where “all memory of the journey home dissolved forever” as Winter had her way, dropping them well behind the veil, and into the realm of Neptune and the formlessness of the dream state. Not only was Winter perilous on the surface, but it was also intoxicating and capable of holding the initiate under its Watery spell forever.

Out of the same cold plains, the home of Winter, and its expanses of inhospitable ice came the barbarian hordes and the Viking armies. So feared was the North that in medieval times all evil was thought to come from there. Even Dantes's hell was Winter, not ablaze as in the Christian versions, but an eternally frozen lake where sinners lay frozen and trapped with their tears making blocks of ice over their eyes. Only the sorcerer, the Shaman, the priest or the Medicine Man would walk this land.

Yet, as with all perilous journeys that have us digging deep and wandering lost in the unknowable, this truly is the season of the vast treasure house of the interior. Wild and wide, quiet and low, in comparison, Spring rushes us forward, ready or not and Summer, while full of heart and heat, has us gasping for shade, bothered and too hot to think. Autumn has its melancholy goodbyes and a bitter-sweet tang, but only because you know the great space of Winter awaits at its end.

It is the monastic discipline of early to bed, early to rise, of thick hearty stews, good books, rest and deep introspective moments. If it were not for Winter we would be unexamined and unexplored. We would not know the great wheels of fear and death and the deep channels they carve into our Being such that we are changed forever. We would live in circles rather than cycles and our delusions would remain just that. So before Winter ends may we pause to give thanks for its dark journey, that we may be renewed in its cold, reseeded in its dark, and resurrected in our relationship with ourselves, others, our cosmos, and the Earth.

”Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bug opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges”
- John Odonohe.

May these last days of Winter guide us into mystical awareness and openness to our psychic aspects, the ones that call us to communion with the Light around us, the consciousness of the Earth, and the pulse of the Cosmos. May we heal our sense of separation and disconnection, and rebirth into belonging and interconnectedness once more.

Spring awaits.