A Moment of Stillness

It is a bit dizzying to contemplate (and feel) the contrast between nature’s rhythm and the collective cultural rhythms which we can’t help but be influenced by.

Today may mark a moment of stillness and the deepest dark of the year, but you wouldn’t know it from taking a look around (at least in most parts of the Western world). Despite the activity which is ramping up with the coming holidays, there is some part of us that feels the gravity of this day and this season, when external light and energy are at a minimum. Something very ancient and creaturely in us remembers this special recipe of earth’s tilt and sun’s angle, and the ancestor’s in us probably still crave the ceremony’s and practices that would have traditionally accompanied this day.

it is a little daunting to look down the dark hall of ancestral history and realize we know so very little about what preceded us, particularly when it comes to spiritual practices. Many of those practices that remain have been diluted, and even had they not been many of us are so remote from ourselves that we would not be able to connect to the deeper sentiment inside the ceremony.

Despite this lack of connection to the culture’s and practices that would have formerly embedded us in the cycles of nature, we are, after all, nature. Our bodies are made of the minerals and elements of earth. So somewhere in the inherited intelligence of our bodies we still have access to a memory of connectedness, however faint it might be.

And we can make space for this, by incorporating the stillness and silence required to connect to the subtlety where these memories live. Today is an excellent day to begin such a practice, however small that practice may be. If you are still and quiet for even a few moments you may feel the pleasant weight of the stillness pulling you inward; a slowness in your bones that would like to be respected. Even if you have to go about your day and keep up with the incessant rush of life, just having connected with the body’s natural rhythm for a moment keeps you not completely unhinged from nature.