monday morning motivator! 4, the long dark nights edition

pardon me if you live in the southern hemisphere

here in boston it is cold, snowy, icy, and dark. well, it’s not dark just now…and in 5 hours it will be. yesterday was winter solstice, and the sun is currently as far south as it will be for a whole ‘nother year. that makes for some long night. lots of dark. and on top of that, the moon is rapidly shrinking, and that thin crescent, which won’t even bother to come out until pert near 4am tomorrow morning, will soon be going completely new.

so it’s dark. longest nights of the year; darkest phase of the moon. dark. and what better thing to do when it’s too dark to see beyond yourself than to look within yourself. that’s right. it’s end of the year time, traditional season for looking back at the year that was, looking forward to the year that will be, and even more important looking deep inside at the being who created the one and is currently creating the other.

theme trumps to do list

so this is one of those weeks when the astrological conditions are so strong that they influence everything with a power best heeded, if you know what i mean. and it is also a week when, given that the sun is as far away from us northerners as it will be for the next year, and the moon is as dark as it will be for the next month, well…that leaves mother earth to be as close to us as she always is! and earth as mother = mater = matter means flesh and blood, skin and bone, solid physical reality. touch it. feel it. spend some time with it.

now two weeks ago i went on a bit about grounding, and that’s certainly part of this process, in honor of which i started my day with a nice apple kale smoothie and plan to bottle and brew a fresh batch of kombucha as soon as i’m done here. not to mention showering and shoveling my car out of the most recent plowing gift from the city of boston. and as foundational as the grounding activities are, the theme this week is a little deeper. dig?

you don’t see ducks lined up to catch an elevator

there’s a hilarious routine that bill hicks does where he reveals his lack of remorse for the archetypal young person high on acid who jumps out of a window ‘cos they thought that they could fly.

don’t go blaming acid on this guy. no no. if he thought he could fly why didn’t he take off from the ground up? you don’t see ducks lined up for the elevator to fly south. no. let him start from the ground; test it out.

or something like that. point being that when we look inward it is easy to get caught up on heavenly vistas and astounding visions of what is to be. and if we haven’t grounded ourselves first we can end up just like that hapless fellow who jumped out of a window to see if he could fly. so let’s start from the ground, yes. and once we are standing on firm ground let’s dig a little deeper. to get a solid foundation. some roots. or as casey kasem would say:

keep your feet on the ground; and keep reaching for the stars

although today, assuming (dangerous, i know) that you have taken care of the feet on the ground part, we are going to reach down a little bit further, to get the root and spring deep enough for the launch that we will be taking next week. just remember, christmas = tree = earth; new years = fireworks = heaven. earth today, heaven tomorrow, okay? remembering of course that in a week you could just as easily say earth yesterday, heaven today. settled? alright.

what are we doing this week?

so this week is the digging week. so that means i’ll be emphasizing the things that will help me get deep within myself to those places that the sun never shines (hey! i heard that!). deep into my physical body, my energy body, my emotional body, and my mental body (it’s a body). and how the hell am i gonna do that? well, primarily by feeling. yep. pretty simple. cheap. easy. and depending on just how much i want to get from this week, i’ll spend more or less time in that state, the state of feeling.

so the more i put into it, the more i’ll get out of it. and since this is the best damn week of the year to do it, i think i’m gonna do it a lot. i think i’m going to go full-on into feeling myself physically, energetically, emotionally, and mentally (yes, mentally). so that means pull out the tool bag and dump everything out on the floor. then arrange in a pleasing fashion, adding just enough order to the chaos to please both the male and the female aspects of myself, the anima and the animus, the god and the goddess.

which tools shall i use?

that’s not the question!

i’m using them all!

the question is: when?

well the answer is: sometime this week!

that’s right. dump out the toolbag. all those deepening, exploratory, feeling tools. and use as many as you can for the next 7 days.

• yoga
• massage
• journaling
• sitting meditation
• walking meditation
• enlightened food preparation

whatever the hell comes out of the bag that looks useful. pick it up. play around with it. have fun with yourself!

ground rules

now remember, this is a blog post, not a bloody ebook or something like that. this is just from finger to keyboard to screen. it’s a draft, a sketch. and with that in mind there are a few things worth keeping in mind.

• physical first
• energy second
• emotions third
• mental last
• alone is easier than with a partner
• groups are extremely challenging

so there we go! what a fun week! and what a fun next year it is going to bring our way (and let’s not think about that until next week!).

so that’s my week. how about yours?

wow! halfway into the first day of my week and i’ve already had my first epiphany! screw the to do list and focus on a theme. as if my little mind, which wrote the to do list in the first place, can’t come up with an equally daunting and impossible to complete list any time i ask it to!

and yours?