Winter is here
Hello to all you Seasonal Surfers! It’s November 8th, 2019 and according to the ancient Chinese calendar and the 24 Solar Terms (節氣):
Winter Arrives today 立冬: November 8, 2019
Winter will reach its midpoint on December 22nd this 2019 year (the Winter Solstice) and it will end on February 4, 2020 when Spring begins. Just like every other season, Winter is a wave form. If you imagine yourself sitting on an Earthly surfboard, looking far out at the horizon, today you will see something changing. Whatever it is cannot be seen in this material world yet, but you can start to feel that the wave of Autumn is over. A new opportunity is being born on the horizon. Now is the time to begin looking at how this wave is developing. Your observations are going to allow you to point your 2020 board in the most auspicious direction so that you get to have the most enjoyable and beautiful year possible.
冬 三 月 此 為 閉 藏
水 冰 地 坼 勿 擾 乎 陽
早 臥晚 起 必 待 日 光
使 志 若 伏 若 匿 若 有 私 意 若 已 有 得
These three months of winter are about securing and storing
Water turns to ice, the Earth cracks: Do not harass the Yang!
Go to bed earlier and wake up later; linger and wait for the Sun
Tame and hide all ambition, even keeping the thoughts private
All work stops and the storage is done.
—Neijing Suwen Chapter 2
Winter and Water:
In the Five Phase picture of Chinese cosmology, the symbol of “Water” points at the Winter phase. In functional cycles, it is correlated with the night, the end of the exhale (pause) and the menstruation phase of a woman’s monthly cycle. On Earth, it correlates with the Ocean and most water as well as salty deposits and sea creatures. In the Cosmos, it corresponds to darkness, introspection, introversion, aloneness and the creative force. In the body, this energetic is mirrored in the organs of the Kidney and Bladder, which rule over the bones, bone marrow, gray matter of the brain, stem cells and sex organs. Some practitioners (including me) add the thyroid to this list.
The wave of Winter brings a time of internal reflection and work with the Shadow self. As Carl Jung wrote, “The is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.” The power to work with the Shadow-self is arriving.
I spent this last weekend in Chicago at a Tool concert. A see-through white wall of hanging cords wrapped around the front half moon of the stage. A laser show took place on these oscillating strings while various images played on the screen behind the performers. The singer, Maynard James Keenan, stood on a platform behind the guitarist and bassist. In front of the spooky moving images of expressionless gray human forms, he sang:
“Exhale, expel
Recast my tale
Forfeit all control
You poison, you spectacle
Exorcise the spectacle
Exorcise the malady
Exorcise the disparate
Poison for eternity
Purge me and evacuate
The venom and the fear that binds me”
As I watched this powerful display, I thought about this coming Winter and what it means for us in the modern day. I thought about the contrasting Summer, when we are at our most social and extroverted selves. In the Summer, we are out in the world to show-off our best selves, the fruits of our hard internal labors, the epitome of our self for the year.
It is in this season of Winter, associated with the emotion of Fear and the virtue of Wisdom, that we crawl into that internal landscape of the self. We get to create ourselves anew for the coming year. This requires taking a good look at who we are and the potential that lies within us: All of us have the capacity to be kind, caring and compassionate. We also have the capacity to be selfish, cruel and inhumane.
It’s not that we decide who we will be. Rather, we decide who we will not be and let the rest be free. And this is the task at hand. The dark night of Winter allows us to delve into all the possibilities of the self and to re-create our personal value system. It is from this that we are generated in the Spring.
With everything happening to our Earth, it’s living creatures and our very own children right now, this is more important than ever. The personal ethics that we decide to create in this wave of Winter are going to re-define more than our individual story. The choices that each of us make are going to define the story of this planet and our lives upon it.
What do you decide not to be in 2020? And what will you let free?