I hate the winter! Every year, as the rich colors of fall fade into the stark deadness of winter I grow depressed, lethargic and unmotivated (even about spiritual pursuits). Despite attempts to be more energetic and upbeat (which usually involves lots of caffeine, sugar and socializing), nothing seems to help. With each passing year, my experience grows worse. What can I do to get through this increasingly dreary time?
The design of the Universe is not random. Its cycles and rhythms embody tremendous Wisdom, Power and Love. As such, each season provides something entirely unique and necessary, not only for the plants, animals and minerals of this world in terms of their growth and transformation, but also for mankind.
The winter season in particular offers great esoteric gifts that should not be wasted or resisted. Without such gifts, the shift of consciousness that allows new life to bud on a tree or humanity to burst forth into higher levels of awareness would never occur. It supports the necessary process for such explosive growth and deep transformation. Hence, the more you can settle into the rhythms of winter and open up to its hidden riches, the more bounty (spiritually and otherwise) you will receive going forward.
To come into perfect attunement with winter, simply look to nature for cues. For example, animals burrow and hibernate, trees shed their leaves and draw sap inward, the earth allows itself to be covered with blankets of protective snow as well as be nourished by great inflows of rain. Regardless of where you live, the basic rhythms of life slow down (become more muted in color, sound and feel) in order for deeper work to take place.
Translated to your life, winter attunement could involve spending more time in prayer and meditation, slowing down the general pace of daily living, nourishing yourself with food that is calming and grounding vs. stimulating and heady as well as nestling more into the warmth of your closest relationships rather than spreading your wings and flitting about socially (which is decidedly more spring-like in nature).
Like the protective cocoon surrounding a still-forming butterfly, winter's soft cover of darkness provides the perfect environment for deep and profound transformation within the innermost layers of your being. Still, the degree and the ease of such changes depend entirely on your willingness to trust the process and align with God's cycles and rhythms.
Attunement with this year's winter season is especially beneficial in that it offers gifts of transformation never available to mankind before. Hence, do everything possible to soak up its remaining treasures as you transition into the coming spring. In fact, the next several days between now and the Spring Equinox (the True Easter) is perhaps the most pivotal time of the year for you in terms of future growth and happiness. Hence, your greatest efforts should be focused here.
Although it may feel like winter's dark has lasted forever, the dawn of spring will arrive (both literally in terms of the changing season ahead and metaphorically via an enlightened shift of consciousness increasingly available to all of mankind). That is the deeper message of hope and promise such divine cycles and rhythms offer - that no matter how long and dreary the "winter" of your life may seem, the glorious rebirth of spring always comes!
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