image, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828)

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Here’s a question to ponder, no right, no wrong.  Just right now and what comes up organically when you trust yourself, and listen to your own inner voice.

What happened over the weekend?  What was the theme?  Who were you with?  How did you show up to you, your needs?  What was most meaningful?

To what, whom, how, did you arrive?

On the earth path, we consider where the tide of nature is in its seasonal energies, and where the moon and sun are in their cycles, too.

This past weekend was the dark moon–the last dark moon phase–of the winter, or season of the dark.  The dark or reflective energy of life orients us to awareness that is hidden, shadowed, or that we are not conscious of, as much as it also is associated with rest, renewal, rejuvenation, restoration, nutritive descent, and disintegration of one form in order to emerge with one anew.  It connects us in rich ways to process as the whole.

Dark as metaphor for winter is North on the medicine wheel, the phase of death and dying, the element of earth, and time spent underground.  Over the weekend, with the alignment of the dark moon, it was a rich and wholesome time to embody this medicine in ways that were natural and complete, as we were simultaneously at the end of a natural cycle of nature.

The earth continues on in the completeness of this process of eternal regeneration.  Yesterday, the last day of winter, I heard my first osprey!  A seasonal, coastal bird of prey, Osprey has long been an organic sign for me of the earth changing seasons. As well, the week prior I found a fresh and tender patch of chickweed in the muck of swamp tidelands.  Such sweet green, this little weed is a spring cleanse–I just LOVE that I happened on her in the decomp and decay of the swampy bogs!

And so it is that the tension of dark catalyzes new growth.  The Vernal or Spring Equinox, today in the northern hemisphere, occurs when the center of the sun and the center of the earth pass.

This is a transition time, when we are literally in-between! Because of these orbits, we experience equal amounts of day and night on an equinox, or of light and dark.  So we are in between equal dark and equal light right now as I write this at twilight.  Literally the center line of the yin/yang.

Holding both.  The light and the dark.

This is a powerful space right now to deepen this metaphor.  No judgement, no shame:  what do you consider is your light side, what do you consider your dark?  How do the two overlap, how are you at allowing one side to inform the other?  How are you at holding your own balance, relating to each? The yin inside the yang, the yang inside the yin.

Spring medicine turns us eastward on the medicine wheel.  It is the element of air, and aligned with the seed breaking out of its casing to send roots downward, and to send first green shoots upward, again the medicine of both, and…! Instead of one or the other.  It is time for birth on a continuum, specifically as birth is connected to the death of one form during winter and how that motivates growth and motion now.

From today onward, sunlight gains in minutes every day until we peak at the longest day on the summer solstice. We enter the season of light when energy is activating, in motion, and most apparent above the ground.

We gradually move into the time of year for engaging growth and change outwardly in your day to day!

I say gradually so that again, we do not miss the potency of in-between, of holding both, which is what the Equinox is all about!

Be well, friends!  Be true to you.  Begin within, then go on, get out there!  Have fun.

Don’t let them tame you~