The Light, the Seed, Oil, and a Wintery Ground

Dear Pearls,

The natural state of winter, as we see it out on the frozen lakes, in the leafless trees, or on the frost-bitten grasses, as well as in the early darkness and the shortened days, can inspire a sense of wonder in many Pearls. Yet it may or may not bring a sense of self-enlivening or the strength to meet dark feelings and overcome doubts about oneself, others, or the world itself.

While some boisterous-bodied Pearls can get super-excited for a turn in the snow or a  game on the ice, and some simply get busy preparing for some kind of winter light-darkness holiday celebration or another, depending on their faith or sense of winter traditions, others often slowly lose the desire to engage or launch into social impulses, wealth generating activities, or any kind of dream-building activities. With all of the challenges today of climate issues, resource restrictions in some places due to Covid and a myriad of other world problems, it can feel like a depressing time, especially when others are very busy planning family gatherings and the Pearl, once again, doesn't feel very connected to family in the ways that others do. Winter may have rarely meant loving warmth between parents, siblings, extended family members, or others. They may only want to retreat alone and find superficial, easy comfort in sleep or some substance, food or entertainment. Of course, it's rarely what they really want and only after, though the restful sleep can be very helpful, do they often realize how meaningless it felt once again. It's not their fault because there have been some big gaps in their childhood development that has led to these decompensating experiences.

A Pearl who gets anxious or into a kind of rational soul-panic in the winter may consciously or unconsciously plan for how to get some closeness with someone through the cold days without any sense of really noticing what the other person's feelings or needs might be as another, winter-vulnerable being. Much that is "sentient", or alive and feeling on the earth, goes into a kind of survival mode in the winter and the Pearl can also be in "survival personality" without really having the help to know how to do self-care in a way that brings connection well with others.

One thing that some Pearls know is that they don't want to get into some entangled emotional journey with someone that could end up as a divisive and rejecting experience similar to what they experienced too much in their parent divorce scenarios. They know they've had too much of that coldness and they're more or less hyper-tuned to a sense of self-protection. They can easily go "small" at this time of the year when many others are working to go a little bigger among family, friends, or the people they work with. These Pearls  have a deep inner knowing, even unconsciously, that their inner balance is tighter and can slip into psychological decompensation if they're not careful, which means a sense of significant and even dangerous psychic or energetic depletion. They may have been in that sense of emptiness too much before.

These Pearls are not necessarily afraid, just blocked. They may not have the soulful foundational people in their family or friend circle to be unconditionally themselves with. They don't really know what it means to be seen, heard, and respected enough for their vulnerabililty to get through it creatively and resourced with the forces of loving and honoring, give-and-take between people and good, creative, willful activity that might mean enduring the right kind of human suffering for the right cause and reasons. 

While some Pearls are often able to rise in such times to emboldened actions to secure a greater sense of outer or inner security through hard work despite the more bodily-restricting coldness, pushing caution aside and using a magnanimous personality to get through the cold times, others sink. They can be managing exhaustion on levels that parents, employers, and others can't see the source of rightly at all. 

For all people, the inspirational and imaginative life can be dimmed in the dark days of the year, while we rigorously but almost mindlessly obey our known regimens in the day to keep our bodies moving and healthy, keeping fed decently to get our tasks done, and staying active enough to stimulate our blood and a sense of being tuned up in our strength and our thinking to endure the challenges of life right now. Many people turn more to escapist activities in these times, such as excess food and drink (which is different from increasing winter food intake naturally), turning to alcohol, drugs, weed, overly exercising, or cramming-out on on-line anything, or tv sports, movies, or entertainments.

Or some may start to turn on the caution-to-the wind, joi-de-vivre, sexual magnetism energy, imagining that the oxytocin hit of closeness with any array of persons for a while will resolve the alienating challenges of winter and if they don't, well who cares anyway! Or they unconsciously believe that the pursuit of a sexy image might draw people to them enough to excite their energy to be able to ignore the greyness of their winter's discontent. Yet, the sense of hollowness often creeps in and gives way frequently to tears, anger, or a rattly anxiety that something's not really bringing a sense of wholeness and peace to the Pearl inwardly.  A Pearl in the winter can long for a steady and welcome sense of self that can endure being in the presence of everything that is not their "self", even if their time is spent more alone than some others. 

This is the moment of our most important decision to not retreat on ourselves in the sense of giving in or up, but rather, to be the kindest person that we can be to our own selves and to open the door to our own sanctuary "hut".  This place is the seed place of our own loving, self-accepting, humanness. A real humanness in a person sees the greatest struggles of life as the truly painful experiences that they really are, and also as the doorway to finding the expression of an authentic and loving higher "Self", or "I Am", that can be warmed into action in a whole way to achieve what needs to be done for ourselves and others.  But what exactly does that mean?

Deeply human Self-ness or "I"-ness, allows us to find wells of capacity inside of ourselves that we didn't know we had because we didn't have it reflected to us in our upbringing. Parent divorce battles can mean child inner perceptions of walls, barriers, hard lines, hateful projections, restricting criticisms, and a lot of cool posturing. It's a brittle inner construction that layers upon the soul, often inflamed by suppressed angers all around. The child is far more oriented toward shattering, tinderbox emotions than wells of support, encouragement, loving connection, and deeply human acceptance. They haven't had the warm soil to grow the loving truth of themselves that reaches beyond the material world but also lives entirely in and around it. 

So, as an adult in the west, whether we're oriented in the darkest times to Divali lights, Menorah candles, fireside chats and sing-alongs outdoors in deep-nature, sound-healing gatherings, or hearing the stories of the starry nights and the wealth of Magi kings, while seeing hard-plastic, white or coloured lights, grey concrete, or endless backed-up cars in rush hour with rain or snow sludge all around, the innocent, heart-longing peasant part of us may be looking to fill empty places inside. We need something well beyond Santa Claus, but rather generous to our inner soul-psyche nature, and something sanctified and true.

That's the time to think of building the inner "hut" with the eternal wisdom of our own truly human-cosmic-earthly sustenance and love that was there before human time, is here now, and will be carried inside of us for an eternity. But what does this mean and how do we do it? Where do we start? 

​Well, five things are essential to begin - a quiet place for half an hour to forty-five minutes, a seed, a lit candle, a red crayon or marker, a white piece of paper, and some oil in a glass or closed container. The rest is all up to individual insights.

​Tomorrow, I'll elaborate.