Looking out the window of my room this morning I see the first
real snowfall of the season. Autumn here in Minneapolis has been amazingly beautiful and mild this year, but something that always seems to draw my attention away from this season of falling leaves, crisp air and subtle beauty, is the demon I have carried in me named ‘dread-of-winter’. My children in late October start praying for it to snow, and I groan in response, saying ‘not until December, please!’ Yet every year the same thing happens. When it does begin to snow, I am completely delighted! It is the most enchanting and transformational thing that can happen to my surroundings. Crystals falling from the sky - an instant fairy-land right in my yard.
This year I am noticing more deeply other aspects of what snow reflects
to us, and one word keeps coming up, and it is STILLNESS.
In pondering on the stillness of a snowy land, I feel both completely exposed, and also completely supported.
Why am I exposed?
If I choose to allow the appearance and conditions of the world around me make me feel better or worse, this reveals the illusion I have fallen into. How can our surroundings dictate how we feel when we consider the truth that we are magnificent beings of Love? To feel and live the truth of our inner-beauty depletes neediness, including the need for the outer world to provide this beauty for us. I have lived in and traveled to some of the most strikingly beautiful places on the planet and I now understand that this can be yet another distraction from discovering the great beauty within. We admire grand beauty that is outside of us while falsely believing that it is more than that which lies inside us. Through love of self and humanity I know that, even in the most horrible and depressingly ugly (from the outside) slums on Earth, there is still the greatest beauty, in the people.
real snowfall of the season. Autumn here in Minneapolis has been amazingly beautiful and mild this year, but something that always seems to draw my attention away from this season of falling leaves, crisp air and subtle beauty, is the demon I have carried in me named ‘dread-of-winter’. My children in late October start praying for it to snow, and I groan in response, saying ‘not until December, please!’ Yet every year the same thing happens. When it does begin to snow, I am completely delighted! It is the most enchanting and transformational thing that can happen to my surroundings. Crystals falling from the sky - an instant fairy-land right in my yard.
This year I am noticing more deeply other aspects of what snow reflects
to us, and one word keeps coming up, and it is STILLNESS.
In pondering on the stillness of a snowy land, I feel both completely exposed, and also completely supported.
Why am I exposed?
If I choose to allow the appearance and conditions of the world around me make me feel better or worse, this reveals the illusion I have fallen into. How can our surroundings dictate how we feel when we consider the truth that we are magnificent beings of Love? To feel and live the truth of our inner-beauty depletes neediness, including the need for the outer world to provide this beauty for us. I have lived in and traveled to some of the most strikingly beautiful places on the planet and I now understand that this can be yet another distraction from discovering the great beauty within. We admire grand beauty that is outside of us while falsely believing that it is more than that which lies inside us. Through love of self and humanity I know that, even in the most horrible and depressingly ugly (from the outside) slums on Earth, there is still the greatest beauty, in the people.
Why am I supported?
I am supported as I affirm a new meaning of what winter’s stillness can
represent. Rather than dreading this season with old ideas of it as a harsh, bleak time of year, I now sense how the beautiful, silent light of snow can become a reminder to return to the living stillness in our body ~ to re-connect to the inner hub, our center, rather than be caught up in the spokes of the spinning wheel of an outward seeking form of existence. At the hub we can remember who we are.
Photo credit: Nita Jatar Kulkarni - http://www.stockpicturesforeveryone.com/
I am supported as I affirm a new meaning of what winter’s stillness can
represent. Rather than dreading this season with old ideas of it as a harsh, bleak time of year, I now sense how the beautiful, silent light of snow can become a reminder to return to the living stillness in our body ~ to re-connect to the inner hub, our center, rather than be caught up in the spokes of the spinning wheel of an outward seeking form of existence. At the hub we can remember who we are.
Photo credit: Nita Jatar Kulkarni - http://www.stockpicturesforeveryone.com/
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