June 2022

As we are breathing on the lightest day of the year, here are surfacing pieces of an ongoing contemplation of mine. Unlike most my contemplative themes, which grow like cultured roses in an attempt to transform awe to praise, this thorny thistle has spawned from a sense of urgency. Blackened leaves shade the garden, silvery spikes warn of hostility. By its pure presence it demands a deepening. To “get real, before real gets you” as my teacher Uma so brilliantly puts it.

In previous newsletters I have written about the pertinent need to understand and align with the rhythms of nature, which in essence are cyclical. Our “linear” approach to life is having dramatic consequences. For our beloved planet, but also for our alienated souls who stand bereft of a mode of thinking where its gifts can flourish. Although “the cyclical” as a concept is having a revival these days, it seems rather hard to pin down what exactly is creating the “rounding effect”. What is the “hinge” that changes the course to bring a linear endeavour back towards its point of origin?

Today is such a hinge. The great cycle of the year makes its most fateful decision - to wane the light. Since winter solstice the growing days has transformed a silent ground to a bewildering jungle, accompanied by birdsong cacophonies that makes any thicket appear alive. Fresh leaves have sprung from novel twigs, basking with busy bees in the intoxicating sunshine festivities. Everything has been about growth, and the path has been linear - towards the light. Maybe this is why we love spring? Because for once, the illusion of “infinite growth” seems justified?

But from today, things change. The outgoing energy of the period between winter and summer solstice turns on its unadorned heel and begins the subtle, but steady movement back towards the core again. And on its way, it passes by all of that which its outward movement created. The attentive eye can sense this unacknowledged face of summer. Darkness encroaching amidst trunks of oak, and fields of nettle. Adorable summer flowers dropping their wilting petals to the black earth, and in the womb of wild deer, soft lumps vibrating from the pulse of tiny hearts.

Expansive growth is completed, for now. It is time for a different tactic. Maturing of the fruit.

And here we arrive at the heart of my contemplation: As a culture we loose our way at summer solstice because we are deaf to the call of the turning sun to integrate the growth process. And as such, we just keep adding to what is already more than enough. Spring is naturally extrovert and explorative. Like the fluorescent shootlings of a pine tree, we move our being into previously uninhabited territory. The expansive growth energy allows for creativity and play. It invites temporarily assuming a kind of innocent invincibility, sampling ones strength and pushing ones boundaries. It is the curious cultivating of the rose garden.

Maturity, is what happens to the gardener as looks up to behold the wilderness encroaching the slender garden fence. Or when he one day is stunned to discover a black thistle in the bed of roses. It’s presence brings a chill down the spine. And then - a dawning remeberence of a dim agreement made long ago. The karmic responsibility to see to it that what we allow to grow into form be integrated as a part of a whole bigger individual ambition.

Maturity is all about refinement with natural law as reference. It is the process of integration, which involves a devoted examination of what has been growing, and subsequent transformation of what does not fit. It is an alchemical practice, and as such: work for the soul. I am not suggesting it is easy, or pleasant. Growing in enveloping darkness has its psychotic connotations. But, let's be open the idea that beckoning to the inward movement of maturity is a necessary responsibility for anyone who wields manifestation power. And if we don’t do it, we can be sure nature will do it for us, which often ends with a “great flood” scenario. So let’s listen before we get wet. Listen to the call of summer solstice for a ritual uprooting of straight-lined modes of thinking. To make space in the rose beds, so a few good hearted weeds can regenerate the soil of the mind.

So here comes the encouragement for the day. Be the rebel who marks this lightest day with a praise of darkness. Swing with the double door of Summer Solstice to loosen the grip on your ambition for something “out there”, and rather start fanning the embers of “who am I?”. What has this growth brought about that is superfluous to your essence? And if the question feels scary - which it should, given that the one who is scared at the end of the day is superfluous, then trust your souls plan. Or perhaps said in another way: cultivate faith that you are an intrinsic part of something vaster, under who’s omnipresent intelligence you are being refined.

The ones who spends summer heedlessly partying like it’s still May will show up empty handed when the fruits of the year are to be weighed for sacrificial worthiness during autumn harvest. A new year will dawn, and the same old lessons will be served. And most likely - the same ignorant hands will again be frantically weeding for thistle in the rose beds. But, for the ones who bow their heads at summer solstice and allow the border of wilderness and garden to fade a little, the introvering energy will bring ripe fruit, full of mature flavour.

And under luminous eyes, in the pitch darkness of winter solstice, they will enter a new cycle - one octave higher on the evolutionary spiral.