by Gary Zukav
When I lived in the city, I never knew what an
equinox was. It is an astronomical term for the time when the sun crosses the
equator, making night and day of equal length in all parts of the world. In
December, the sun is lowest in the sky and the nights are longest. This is the
winter solstice. In June, the opposite happens, the sun is highest in the sky
and the days are longest. This is the summer solstice. All of this has to do
with the equinoxes, but I didn't learn any of it by studying astronomy.
I was forty-five when I moved onto a remote ranch in the pine and fir of
northern California.
I lived alone. The nearest town was fifteen miles away. I had no electricity or
phone. When I returned from infrequent trips, I would get out of my car and
stand still for several minutes, listening to the sounds of the evening, and of
the stream behind the house. When I walked toward the house, the noise of my
boots on the cinder seemed so loud that it startled me.
Winter came, then spring, summer, and fall
again. I lived a complete cycle with nature, for the first time. I saw how the
sun moved from north to south and back again, and from low in the sky to high,
and then down again. I saw the grass in the meadows turn from green to brown,
and then disappear under the snow. I saw the stream freeze, thaw, and run freely
again with butterflies playing over it.
More important, I felt the seasons come and go
inside me. That is how I learned about the equinoxes. They are midway between
the times when the sun is highest (in the summer) and
when it is lowest (in the winter). The days are not overly long or overly short.
We call the equinoxes spring and fall.
In the United States, the spring equinox,
also called the vernal equinox, comes in the month of March. Farmers and
gardeners plant crops and all of us relax into the warming weather. Everywhere
south of the equator, it is the fall equinox. Farmers and gardeners are
harvesting and everyone is preparing for winter.
Do you see the perfect balance? Day and night,
spring and fall, hot and cold, planting and harvesting everything is balanced at
the equinoxes. This balance could not exist without the extremes. Midway between
the heat of summer and the ice of winter, between sowing and reaping, between
darkness and light, life goes on. That is now.
When you strive for balance, be gentle with
yourself. How can you recognize balance without recognizing imbalance? When you
rejoice at the good that you discover in yourself, or despair at the evil, do
you move past the balance point between them without noticing it? If you strive
only to avoid the darkness or to cling to the light, you cannot live in balance.
Instead, try striving to be conscious of all that you are, and to choose
responsibly at each
moment.
That is balance
SPRING TRUST
In the northern hemisphere, where I live, it is
spring. Blossoms are blooming on the fruit trees and leaves are budding.
Everyone is relieved that the winter is over at last. Why speak of trust when
everything is becoming fresh anew, vibrant, and wondrous?
It is not only things going wrong that frighten
us. It is also our lives going profoundly right. It is clarity piercing the
armor of encrusted prejudices about others and ourselves. It is new vitality
sweeping away the stagnation of lethargy. It is deep roots, long buried beneath
the surface, sending up sprouts to at last burst uncontrolled into sunlight.
That sunlight is your consciousness. The birth
of new life is as challenging as it is exhilarating, as frightening as it is
liberating. Are you prepared to leave old fears, angers, and judgments behind?
Are you willing to see yourself as endlessly creative, and responsible
for what you create?
Spiritual growth is not an easy escape from the
painful circumstances of your life. It begins with an eyes-open exploration of
them and their cause. You are the cause. Every insight that brings you to this
realization is a springtime's a new beginning. Every impulse to follow your
heart is a springtime, too. As you move away from the familiar orientation of
being a victim of circumstance to the new, accurate understanding of yourself as
a powerful creator, you leave behind the familiar props upon which you once
depended. These are your righteous judgments, unchallenged beliefs, and feelings
of superiority or inferiority. You are in new territory. The old is gone and
everything that is emerging is new.
That is what is happening now, in the spring.
No one doubts that new grass growing in the spring is a miracle. Everyone can
see that flowers blooming in the spring are miracles. Can you see yourself that
way when new insights cause you to question old values? Can you see yourself as
blooming when old goals fall away and new, surprising aspirations require you to
change your life?
You cannot grow spiritually and remain the
same. Understanding that is knowledge. Seeing it is wisdom.
Knowing it is trust.
THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
One special day in June the sun is higher in
the sky than it is at any other time of the year. That day is also the longest
day of the year. It is the summer solstice. Maximal potential and maximal growth
are happening together. The spring gives way to the full force of summer, but
the harvest is still months away.
When I lived on my ranch I felt most at ease
during the summer. I had no fires to build, no pipes to thaw, no snow to shovel,
and I knew that I had months until the fall to lay away the firewood that would
keep me warm in the winter. A friend down the road had a black Arabian stallion
named Darshan. Each summer I let him graze in my meadow. The split cedar fence,
laid into place decades before my arrival and enclosing three acres of grass and
wildflowers, seemed to me the perfect place for this magnificent animal, and
apparently he felt that way, too. As the summer stretched before me, I lost
track of the winter behind me and the winter ahead. I walked the stream in the
hot afternoons and jogged old logging roads in the cool of the morning. I
repaired the generator, cleaned the wooden water tank in the old barn, and wrote
my book. Surrounded by thousands of acres of timberland, I soaked in the heat
and the vitality of the summer and immersed myself in them undisturbed
The fall approached almost imperceptibly. The
heat of September days gave way to the coolness of September nights and I began
to appreciate again the warm clothing I had put away and forgotten so long ago,
at the beginning of the summer. Perhaps because I gave myself to the summer I
was ready for the fall, and because I gave myself to the fall, I was ready for
the winter when it arrived again, too. As the year completed itself and another
began, the summer became more to me than the beautiful season of warmth and
light that I love so much. It became part of a larger picture that I began to
love even more than its many parts. I didn't realize it at the time, but my
awareness was expanding beyond my limited perception of the summer to a larger
perspective of the cycle that contains and produces summers, and beyond my
limited perception of my life to the larger perspective of the soul that
generates and utilizes lifetimes.
Honor the insights that appear in you the same
way. As the seasons of your life come and go, acknowledge the shifts that happen
in you and allow them to mature in their own time. Don't think of yourself as
hypocritical because you aren't living the fullness of your vision immediately.
The limitations of your perception are already giving way to a larger
perspective in which your struggles are a part of the goal you are striving for
and inseparable from it. The fullness of your most noble and healthy aspirations
will come, just like the fall harvest always comes. The harvest and the sprouts
do not occur together. First come the sprouts, then growth and maturation, and
then the harvest.
Let wisdom and love sprout and grow in you the
same way.
And enjoy the solstice.
THE WINTER
SOLSTICE
In the hemisphere where I live, the deepest
moment of the winter comes not in January or February, but in December, when the
night is longest and the day is shortest. This day and night is, as we have
said, called the winter solstice. It is the mirror image of the summer solstice
in June when the day is longest and the night is shortest.
The winter solstice is a very powerful time in
the cycle of life and death, death and rebirth, disintegration and renewal that
controls all Life on the Earth, including you. It is the time when motion ceases
and at the same moment, Life begins to stir again. Animals in hibernation and
seeds in sleep beneath the snow will not move until the spring, but deep within
them a process has completed itself. The contraction of energy that the long
nights and cold days reflect reaches its limit and a cycle reverses itself. From
that moment forward, even though the winter remains to unfold as it must, the
spring has been born, and the summer, and the harvests of the summer will follow
with it.
This dark and trying season is repeated in your
life again and again. Each tragedy, loss, failure, and humiliation reaches its
inmost movement, spends its energy, and from that long journey another
begins a journey to warmth, light, and expansion. The season of celebration,
of growth, of Life, and of movement is repeated again in the same way. One
season follows the other. The arrival of one signals the coming of the other.
They do not exist apart.
These seasons of the year, and seasons of your
life, come and go, complete themselves, and give way to each other whether you
are aware of the dynamic that controls them or not. If you are not, the seasons
appear to have lives of their own and you forget they are each part of a
cycle that you have encountered many times before and will encounter
many times again Your life is built on this cycle of seasons on the continual
repetition of them. The arrival of winter, the coming of darkness and death,
initiates the coming of light and life. This cycle controls the unfolding of
your life and all within it.
When you are aware of this cycle, you can
participate with it. You cannot stop the death that comes in the winter nor the
life that comes with the summer, but you can determine in the winter what will
be born in the summer. You can contribute your intelligence and will to the
intelligence and movement of a dynamic larger than you. You can plant the seed
that will sprout in the spring. You can lay the foundation for a different
winter to come after the summer that has yet to arrive. You can only do this for
yourself.
When you are in deep winter, the nights are
long and the days are short. The Earth grows cold and life retreats. Now is the
time for you to awaken to your place in this cycle, and to use it consciously.
What is darkest in your life? What loss or disappointment, fear or terror moves
through you? What powerlessness haunts you? These are given to you for your
benefit. They are brought to your awareness so that you can change them. They
are your avenues to the clarity and love that you are waiting for. You cannot
become fearless at your command, but you can determine how you will respond to
your fear. You cannot become kind with one intention, but you can determine how
you will respond to your own brutality, righteousness, and fear.
This is the power of the deep winter. It
challenges you, confronts you, and shows you what you must change in yourself.
It is a holy and precious season. It illuminates your holy and precious life. It
is your potential beckoning to you, disguised as an adversary, a tragedy, or a
disaster. Will the adversary, tragedy, or disaster shape your experience, or
will you shape your experience of it? Will your fears overwhelm you, or will
they show you new and different ways to respond to them?
What new life is stirring in you this Deep
Winter?
Excerpted from Soul
to Soul by Gary Zukav Copyright © 2007 by Gary Zukav.
Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Soul to Soul is profoundly simple, wise, and poetic,
a book to treasure and return to again and again for guidance and inspiration.
It is now available for pre-purchase by simply going to www.seatofthesoul.com
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