Ostara Shadow Work

It’s almost that time of year again, springtime.  Yay?  I honestly have very mixed feelings about spring.  On the one hand I love not freezing my ass off at the bus stop, on the other hand I’m not especially enamored of being soaking wet either.  Spring in Seattle is a rather soppy affair, with rather absurd amounts of rain, but less of the biting chill that accompanies it’s winter rains.  I love the occasionally dry (ok, less wet) Saturday for getting to early season hikes and getting back out into nature after the cold dark of winter.  I love witnessing the turn of the seasons and the Wheel of the Year.  But you know what I really don’t love?  Pastels.  I don’t like wearing them and I definitely don’t want them in my rituals.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Ostara.  The Vernal Equinox is full of potent energy for growth and new beginnings.  It’s a very hopeful time and shadow workers often need a good dose of hope more than most.  However, I’d rather gouge out my own eyes than attend a sparkly, shiny, “love and light” ritual.  So, naturally, I do things a little differently.  

This Ostara my ritual is going to be about balance and wholeness.  You can’t have light without dark and at the Vernal Equinox the day and night are of equal length - thus light and dark are symbolically of equal strength.  Instead of celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, I’m going to spend my Ostara recognizing both the parts of me that are light and the parts that are dark and what those things give me.  Shadow work is all about recognizing the less pleasant parts of yourself and integrating them, rather than cutting them off or hiding them away - about finding strength in wholeness.  Despite it’s occasionally sinister image, shadow work is actually a very hopeful practice.

My main working is going to involve meditating on some of my less pleasant features.  I’ll write down a list of things I don’t like about myself and try to narrow it down to one specific trait that I think is being the most trouble right now.  Once I’ve selected the one trait to focus on, I’ll burn the list of negative traits - it doesn’t do to dwell on them and there’s always going to be too much to tackle everything at once.  Then I’ll create a sigil to represent that one negative trait.  I’ll use a crayon to draw that symbol on a raw egg and then I’ll hard boil it.  (If I’m feeling like I really need to go the extra mile I might dye the shell black)  Then I’ll eat the egg to symbolize my recognition that my negative trait is a part of me and that I’m willing to work with it, rather than just blacklist it or try to remove it.  

There’s no banishing at Ostara, just gentle acceptance and willingness to grow.  Negative traits can be a problem, but they can also be teachers.  My avoiding a particular project might teach me that I need to solve an interpersonal problem with a teammate, or that I’m afraid of what will happen when the project is finished.  My shocking inability to get off my ass and go running (even though I really want to) teaches me that I’m still clinging to the image I had of myself a year ago (when I ran four times a week) and don’t want to be smacked in the face with how far I’ve fallen off the wagon.  It’s hard to look beyond what we don’t like about ourselves to really figure out why those things bother us so much.  Ostara is the time to be a bit more gentle with yourself and take baby steps.  We’ll save the more drastic measures for the waning half of the year.

Happy Imbolc

Ah Imbolc, that strange time of year when winter is half over and yet the worst of it is often yet to come.  This has been an odd winter for me.  Normally I spend most of my winter in quiet introspection, fully appreciating the season.  This year I started running in the winter and so I've been unusually active.  On the one hand this is great because running gives me a solid hour or two of meditative time several times a week.  On the other hand, all this activity has thrown off my natural seasonal rhythm.  Without the depth of my normal introspective time I feel like I just haven't connected with the divine in anything but a surface way.

I have a very strong connection to my deity and normally take time to really commune with her.  It's in that communion time that I get messages and direction for what I need to do over the next several months.  That gives me a great sense of purpose and fulfillment.  Somehow, those times just got lost in the shuffle these past few months. My mind has been so overworked with thinking about my health, exercise, and all the other mundania that I'm surrounded with that I just plain forgot to carve out time that was solely sacred and nothing else.  Meditation and mindfulness are great, but they're no substitute for direct communion with deity.  I feel a bit like a shmuck. 

Well, this evening I'm going to go home, run, and then take some time to do *gasp* an actual ritual!  I'm going to turn off my phone, get kitted up, and actually do a full formal ritual.  I need meaningful connection in a big way.  Somehow, in the midst of learning new techniques and strengthening my understanding of metaphysics I lost track of the point.  It all boils down to this: all that matters is that which puts you in the sight of your god.

The Spiritual and the Physical

Over the last few months I've taken up running again.  Now, I feel the need to point out that I am not exactly what most people would consider an athlete. I'm not slim.  I don't have boundless energy.  I don't glow, rather I sweat like a hog. I'm a short, pudgy, diabetic with pretensions of athleticism.  I've taken up running again (I ran when I was a kid) for two main reasons: to improve my health and, more importantly, to find a better way to incorporate meditation into my life. 

Like most modern Americans, I need to exercise more and stress less.  Exercise is all well and good as a healthy habit but I really don't pick up new habits unless they support my spirituality and magickal practices.  I figured that the only way I was going to be able to really hold on to any form of exercise as a regular part of my life would be to make it part and parcel to my spiritual practice.  It's easy to make hiking in the mountains a spiritual practice because dear gods the mountains are glorious - the interurban trail is less so.  So how do I go about making my thrice weekly pounds around the neighborhood, past the quick-e-mart and the pub, spiritual?

I started off by focusing on my running technique.  I picked up the kindle version of Barefoot Running Step by Step because the idea of running in a more evolutionarily appropriate way than pounding on your heels sounded a lot less painful than what I had been doing.  I've found that running barefoot style is a lot easier and more natural than conventional running and it has an odd way of increasing mindfulness.  Mindfulness, that buzzword of the meditation scene, basically refers to the condition of paying attention to the moment rather than letting your thoughts drift about.  When you're whole mind is enrapt with the thousand natural sensations and bodily observations that running produces it's pretty hard not to be mindful.  After a few weeks of running this way I found myself finally achieving a runner's high - something I had previously thought was just a myth.

Since I seemed to be achieving mindfulness to easily just by paying attention to my feet and knees as I ran along I decided to see what other folks had to say about running meditations.  I picked up Zen and the Art of Running and was happy to find that I was not alone in feeling like running could really support my spiritual practice.  That book talks about the basics of mindfulness and attention and how to allow running or other intense physical activity to focus your attention and make mindfulness more natural. 

I find that shifting meditation time from sitting quietly and focusing on something (which I really do all day anyways) to deliberate movement (i.e. exercise) has really improved my relationship with the depths of my brain.  I've always been crap at traditional zen meditation. My mind is like a rabid hamster that runs on its wheel until it passes out from exhaustion.  Sitting and emptying my mind has really never worked for me.  Doing something intensely physical, like hiking up a mountain or running a long distance, has a way of pulling me out of my head and into my body that makes it impossible for that hamster to keep going and makes a meditative state seem natural.

Now that I'm engaging a meditative practice on a regular basis I'm beginning to appreciate what people have been saying about it for so long.  It helps me to clear my head, de-stress, and refocus my mind from everyday trivialities to more weighty things.  Anything that lets me stop worrying about groceries and my next oil change and lets my mind contemplate the complexities of the soul has got to be a good thing.  If you've been having trouble just sitting and meditating I highly recommend engaging the body with the mind instead. 

And for those of you with smartphones, I highly recommend the Buddhify app.  It's basically a guide to meditation for the busy young professional.  It's quite fantastic.

Winter Solstice

It’s finally here! The Winter Solstice is this week and I am so glad.  This year the Solstice is happening on the 21^st at 9:30pm pst.  This works out beautifully for me.  So often the actual moment of the solstice it at a far less convenient time (like the middle of the night or while I’m at work), it’s nice to have it at a time when I’m normally awake and not busy.  Now I just have to decide how I’m going to mark the occasion.

Over time my practice has evolved away from formal rituals and towards more simple, intuitive practices.  While in the past I have done formal rituals (calling quarters, formal workings, offerings, etc.) to celebrate the Solstice, it just doesn’t seem quite right anymore.  I think I’ll spend this solstice in meditation – I’ve got some internal quibbles I need to look at and I can’t think of a better time. Oh yes, this will be a shadow worker's solstice.

The Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year, which makes it an ideal time to work on themes of self-examination, exploration of blocks and negative emotions, banishing, and old wounds.  I think I’ll spend this Solstice thinking about all the things that have held me back over the last year, things that have kept me from achieving my goals, and things that have left me unsatisfied.  So many metaphysical practices focus on always looking at the light, being thankful for what you have, examining the steps to making things better that they forget that it’s impossible to move forward until you’ve fully addressed the hurts of the present. 

I’m going to take the longest night and honour my wounds - my shadows.  Yes, I’ve had some amazing triumphs this year and I’ve given my thanks for them, but I’ve also had to deal with an astonishing amount of pain and stupidity.  The bad times are as much a part of our lives and are as necessary, if not more necessary, for our growth as the good times.  I’m going to think about and honour the challenges I’ve faced.  I’m going to look at the lingering hurts and self-doubts that they’ve created.  I’m going to acknowledge them, figure out what put them there, and honour them.  Those dumb insecurities are there for a reason and if I don’t accept that reason then I’m never going to get rid of them.  If I don’t look at why things hurt me I’ll never learn how to address them (as opposed to just avoiding them).  I’m going to look at my own weaknesses and appreciate what they can teach me about myself.

I’ll do all this sitting in the dark before the moment of the Solstice and then, just after the moment has passed (when the sun is as farthest from us) I will light a candle and appreciate what sitting alone in the dark has taught me.  And then I’ll get up, turn on the lights and figure out how to move forward.  Not the world’s most exciting Solstice, but a meaningful one.