Happy Winter Solstice!

[Netti-Netti]

Today is the day, which explains why the cats have been running around like mad and bugging you for attention. Not sure why it's celebrated on Christmas.

Today is the first day of Winter, a Yin season. It's a time of hibernation, a going inward, and consolidation of spiritual energies that will wait till springtime. To use the language of the I Ching, there is a withdrawal "from the confusion of external things" combined with a return to "one's inner light." It's a time to restore energies, a time for healing.

If you like, take a few minutes for an extended Solstice meditation to clear out the pathways. The nice people at the Healing Tao Institute had some suggestions for you:

Stand outside facing the north, which is the direction of the Water element, whose ascendancy begins in winter. Now imagine the power of the north in the form of blue light Qi is gathered into your body through your breathing, your pores, and through the crown of your head.

As your body fills with blue light Qi, visualize that your body becomes transformed into translucent pure blue jade. Feel that you have absorbed the essence of the Water elment and that you are recharged and renewed.


Winter Solstice Self Renewal Ceremony

Take a sheet of paper and write down in your own handwriting nine habits or problems that you wish to release and be rid of. Then burn the piece of paper. Take the ashes outside and scatter them to the four directions. Ask for the support of your higher power to let these habits or problems to be gone for good, and for your full healing to be real.

Go back inside. On a fresh small sheet of paper, write down five specific ways that you will bring more happiness into the world and relieve suffering in others. Keep this piece of paper in a special spot where you will see it daily. Resolve to take these steps as soon as you can.

[juantoo3]

Happy Winter Solstice!

[wil]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

...Not sure why it's celebrated on Christmas.

Today is the first day of Winter, a Yin season.

hehee...nice one.

Perhaps because the days are getting longer and the Son is getting stronger?

[Pathless]

Happy Solstice everyone.

It amazes me how backwards our cultural traditions are during this season. Rather than it being a meditative time of introversion and introspection, this is the most stressful of holiday seasons. Rather than turning inwards and drawing on the strength of local communities, many people are caught up traveling across the country in the worst kind of weather to be with family. We are all compelled to get caught up in the commercial racket of racing around town buying stacks of gifts.



Once again it strikes home to me how dissociated from natural rhythms our shared social structures compel us to be. It's hard to be human when we are ruled by machines, corporations, rigid schedules, and globalized markets.

[lunamoth]

Blessed Winter Solstice All!

[beckysoup61]

Happy Winter Solstice!!

[Thomas]

Summer's a comin'!

[wil]

Originally Posted by Pathless

Once again it strikes home to me how dissociated from natural rhythms our shared social structures compel us to be. It's hard to be human when we are ruled by machines, corporations, rigid schedules, and globalized markets.

Yes a hundred years ago we'd be bunkered down for the winter...of course we'd have a cache of dried and smoked food to last us... Now we've 'conditioned' our houses 'conditioned' our air, 'conditioned' our methods of travel to keep the seasons at bay..

Of course should we have some sort of economic calamity...are any of us prepared for a long winter??