Picture: View of Himalayas from Dahl Cheena
Each year the earth’s rotation around the sun brings the northern hemisphere to its furthest distance from the solar center, the Winter Solstice. It is the darkest time of year and symbolically it is the death of the calendar year. Since ancient times there has been a connection with the change of seasons, the movement of the stars and changes in consciousness.
When I first became aware of awakening to higher consciousness I did not need an astrologer to tell me that the Winter Solstice had powerful influences, for I was fully cognizant that each year it would take me into a deep experience. The annual buildup to the solstice was always a powerful and difficult time for me. There are many people who talk of having holiday blues, and while there are many human reasons for this there are also many who are consciously or unconsciously experiencing the influence of the Winter Solstice.
A great feeling of psychic pressure and isolation would descend on me weeks before the solstice. Since my late teens I was aware through pre-natal memories and Grace that there was something more to life than simple human existence. I did not have a name for this something more, it might be God, but if it was it was different than a vague or philosophical notion of God, it had to do with something deeply personal, yet beyond my personhood; I had an incredibly strong drive and need to know what that something was. Each year the build-up to Christmas, and more explicitly to the solstice, was like entering into the threshing floor where the wheat is beaten in order to release the grain of realization from the shaft of ignorance.
There is an important difference between a crisis that involves the ego only and a spiritual crisis. The ego looks exclusively to itself in such a crisis, becoming more self-involved by feeling sorry for itself and looking to blame others or feeling shame at its own existence. In a spiritual crisis the self looks beyond the ego to find answers; it expands rather than contracts. My spiritual crisis of the solstice would, just as predictably and mysteriously, lift with the apex of the solstice; then I would feel its uplifting power.
The chick that is still surrounded by the shell of the egg begins to peck at the shell, knowing somehow that the answer to a larger world lies outside of the shell. With increasing vigor it pecks and pecks at the limiting shell to find release. If some outside force were to break the shell apart prematurely the chick would not develop properly and it would be prone to sickness and death. Likewise, there is something in the struggle to know God by pecking apart the shell of ignorance that is necessary for the development of the individual; otherwise the realized Self would not fully develop.
Realization brings a new way of looking at life-experiences. The pain and difficulties of the past are still remembered, however there is now a known purpose behind every blow taken in life, and this makes all the difference. When we come to know there is an exact and ennobling reason for everything that happens then spiritual suffering is resolved, which is the largest portion of suffering in the world. I now see how each painful build-up to the solstice down through the years was awakening a greater inner resolve to know God.
During this past year the build-up to the solstice “crisis” has been of a physical nature. This body went through three hospitalizations culminating in the removal of three tumors and the removal of three sections of the small intestine. This morning as this solstice arrives I have felt a definite inward release from the body’s crisis. It began this a.m. with an experience with Mother and Father Hamilton, replaying many scenes of their early spiritual life together through my inner vision. Then came an infusion of spiritual power flowing into this body; this was followed by an inspiration to write to you about the nature of the winter solstice. Now a surge of bubbling blissful joy is flooding my being and radiating out. Without pre-awareness on my part the body and spirit continues to replicate the pattern of the Winter Solstice cycle with the precision of a cosmic clock. Do we not live in a marvelous and wonder-filled universe?
I have often thought we missed the timing of the birth of Christ by a few days; what should have been the winter solstice. There is a definite uplifting spiritual current that comes at this time. I am reminded of my stay at a small Ashram established by Anandamayi Ma in the Himalayas at Dahl Cheena. Watching from the porch of the small dharmashala at the Ashram, that was perched on a plateau hundreds of feet above a valley floor below, giant eagles would launch themselves from nearby tree branches with barely a flap of their wings and then soar upon the updrafts. Six foot wings made them soar without effort.
Taking full advantage of this change at the Winter Solstice, stretch your wings and feel the solstice’s uplifting currents and fly with “wings as Eagles” (Isaiah 40:31).