By Katrina Rasbold
Noooo, this site has not been abandoned; simply left to ferment like a fine wine for a while. As we esoteric types say, “It just wasn’t time yet.” At that point, we toss our magical hair and look mysterious. It’s a third level question, don’tcha know…
In reality, wow! What a busy year out there in those fields! I am still trying to process all that happened to me personally and to people I know during the active time of this year. I think most people who are of a tuned in nature are feeling that we are gearing up for some transformative energy in the coming year and beyond. Most of us needed some clearing out done and some perspective changing engaged. I am fully grateful for mine and feel that my life will be greatly benefited from what I have learned in 2011.
For the first time in many years, Eric and I were blatantly pulled back into group work again and it has been quite a joy. When we moved to our remote, mountain community almost 8 years ago (eight years??? wha’???), we tried for a year or so to continue with group work, but it became clear it was not where we were supposed to be. We retreated into solitary practice and worked on important things like our own individual spiritual paths, raising our kids, polishing up our relationship and that sort of thing. I did not honestly expect to return to group work again and figured I was fully retired from service. We had a couple of gatherings here at the house in the meantime, but never did anything on a regular basis. This year, out of the blue, I had some really magical things happen. For one thing, in the course of 3 days, no less than 6 people from our previous groups contacted me. This would not be a big deal except for the fact that we had not had contact with any of them for years. Most were from my past before I met Eric, but some were also from our conjoined history.
Several other formative events happened that boosted our individual spiritual energy and before long, we were hosting a Summer Solstice celebration. This was after we attended our first public Beltane in many years and led into a Lammas celebration and a Samhain celebration. (We were out of town and Delena was relocating for Mabon). We began visiting a sister circle and the result is that we have been more active in the community this year than in the past 8 years combined.
I spent the year immersed in college study, doing telephone and email life coach consultations, writing my usual columns and working the spiral of the year with Eric. This year, we planted stability in our home situation, that our children (all 6) find their joy and purpose and we also planted the rather lofty and arrogant goal of “self-actualization.” We interpreted that to mean finding and working on our life’s purpose and becoming more self-aware, plugged in and focused.
Not long after Spring Equinox, we realized our foolishness and dug up the self-actualization because it immediately began kicking our butts. Instead, we pampered ourselves by planting, “ease the burden.” We have both felt for years as though what we are being asked to do and experiences is more than we can handle. Things have just felt harder than they needed to be to the point that there were times when we wondered if we’d stumbled upon a curse or something. We entertained the idea of “life is just HARD” and I understand that this is true, but it shouldn’t be this continuously hard if you are working with the flow. This led us to in depth analysis of where we are now, how we got here, where we want to go and yadda yadda yadda. That, in turn, led to consideration of what inconveniences and burdens we impose upon ourselves unnecessarily. I wrote about this to some degree on katrinarasbold.com in the column about “The Glass Ceiling: Break It, Don’t Windex It.” As the year progressed, our oppression, self-imposed and otherwise, did begin to lift, thankfully.
Five of my six children did find their joy and place in life and are quite happy. My oldest son and I are not in contact right now, so I don’t really know how it worked out for him, but I hope it brought him wonderful things. The issue of stability in our home situation (meaning, “Where will we live?”) did not work out as we expected, but it worked out in a way that best fed the “ease the burden” planting, so we are quite happy. I expected that I had gone through my last winter on the mountain and that we would move to a lower elevation, but life took us in a different direction and we appear to be here for the duration. I’m at peace with that and so is Eric, although he does still complain about how small the house is in relation to our needs. I would love a larger house out of the snow, but the stress and expense of moving is a significant counter balance.
The self-actualization planting may have been dug up for later planting (like potatoes sitting in a dark cellar to sprout for later planting), but the effects continued to a more minor degree, thus proving the CUSP theory out yet again. I don’t think we have ever had a year when CUSP did not bring itself into fulfillment in the most positive way, even if we did not see that at the time. Eric and I both went through a lot of self-evaluation and refining and each of us ended up in a new and better place as a result.
Of course, to make any significant progress in personal development, you have to walk through some pretty dark places. I have always been amused by those around us who frolic in the light and shun the darkness. To fully experience life, we have to know both, just as the yin and yang show us the balance. In perfect reflection of life, it also shows us that within the absolute dark and absolute light, there is a spot of the other. Nothing is absolute.
We go through phases of this as we mature. As children, if we have a somewhat normal upbringing, most of us are given to positivity and easily triggered joy. Because the whole world is a magical experience for us, we are constantly delighted and because we have so much to achieve and a number of older folks around us to teach and encourage us, we get to feel an ongoing rush of pride in what we learn. Anyone who spends time with babies and children knows that they laugh and giggle a lot more than do adults. With any luck, kids don’t know much about dark places and if they do run into a few, they have adults there to smooth over the bad feelings. For babies and young children, it takes a long time before they lose the egocentric life model that processes experiences only through the filter of how it affects them.
At some point in our adolescence, we usually hit a dark phase. I tend to think of it as that loss of innocence that occurs when we realize that our parents can’t fix everything and there are some tough experiences out there in life that we have to navigate on our own. For some of us who had, well, challenged parents, that realization comes earlier and hits harder. I believe we all go through a grieving process for the safe world we had that we come to think of as an illusion. We have experiences that make us feel alone and unsure, convinced that we are incapable of managing life on our own. At this point, young people still have not fully escaped that egocentric perspective and because of the peer relationships they go through socially, everything feels personal and intense, especially the loss of safety and stability. They are on the verge of having to create their own life away from the protection of parents and rarely will we ever again encounter anything so simultaneously exciting and terrifying. (Childbirth, perhaps? Love? Reality TV?)
Some of us go into drugs and alcohol to create a new world of illusion. Some succumb to depression. Most emerge on the other side a little wiser and a little more balanced. From there, we go through our recurring personal crises as life progresses and we either learn from those experiences or we continue to repeat the same cycle over and over again.
The desired outcome is that we will marry up our darkness and our light into perfect balance. We are taught to fear and reject the dark. The bad guys in movies always have black hats and the good guys have white. In Christianity, God is portrayed why light and white and the Devil is represented by darkness. Even in Craft, we are often encouraged to “walk in the light.” Evil magick is called “Black magick.” All of this creates a conditioning in us to be afraid to confront our own shadows and find out what is in the darkness. What’s sad is that our dark areas contain the answers to the mysteries in our lives. What is the kingpin to our addictions? What makes us afraid to love? What makes us afraid of our own success? Our limitations and realities hide in the shadows and if we are too afraid to go in there and talk to them and discover truths about ourselves, we will forever be enslaved to our handicaps and obstacles and will be unable to live a sacred and fully actualized life.
Encoded into our DNA from centuries of living as agricultural people, we have a natural relationship to the changing of seasons and the cycles of the year. On all levels (mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and sexually), we have needs that work in tandem with the natural cycles. Even though many of us have not worked as farmers in our lifetime or in the lifetime of our parents or grandparents, the imprint remains and will for some time to come, woven into the fabric of time by the constant repetition of our ancestors.
In our modern daily life, we are required to remain on full output, total production, all year round. Most of us do not have the luxury of stopping what we do in the winter to go inside and close the door to the world. Some careers are more in tune with that schedule and those are the ones dependent on weather (logging, construction, farming when it still happens, gardening, landscaping, etc). It’s not that there is nothing to do during the dark of the year, but more than we do things differently. If we work in a cubicle or a retail store, we probably work as hard in the winter as we do in the summer. Because of our society’s demands that we be productive, active people all year long, we have an incongruency with what our spirits tell us we need to do. This manifests in the form of greater illness and depression in the dark of the year, as well as disorder such as SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder – Obviously, the gentleman at the top of this page has severe SAD).
Each year, Nature tells us that it is time to stop harvesting and go inside. The weather outside normally turns more inhospitable and harsh. We have holidays that are built around being together and celebrating our connectedness. Our desires turn more toward quiet nights by the fire with hot cocoa than being out in the world. When using the CUSP spiritual path, we incorporate this natural rhythm into the progression of the year by closing down the active part of the year with Samhain and opening up the introspective time of the year. At Yule, we will begin to explore what we want to change in our lives and what we think should be different by the time next year’s harvest finalizes.
At Samhain, we go through an annual rite of passage where we release our attachment to outcomes and let the harvest that is still out in the fields ungathered return to to the earth. We have worked aggressively since Spring Equinox, planting, nurturing, fertilizing, grooming, protecting and then harvesting our metaphorical crops. Throughout twelve weeks of harvest from Lammas through Samhain, we have reaped the produce of our efforts and welcomed the bounty and boon The Universe provides to us in addition to our planted rewards. By October 31st, we should be done. The release that follows Samhain teaches us that not only is there a suspense date to our efforts, but that we cannot control everything and have to reach a point where we stop and let go of our expectations. We have to “Let go and let God.” The lesson to this is a powerful confrontation with the ego-driven mentality that was so necessary to us as children. We do not have to always be the center of everything. We do not have to always get exactly what we want the way that we want it. We do not always have to control everything. It’s not always about us. It’s not always time. What we think we need is not always what we actually need, no matter how hard we try to push it. Sometimes, like an artist who keeps tweaking and over-painting a masterpiece, we just have to know when we are done, step back and let it go.
After Samhain, the tremendous work of harvesting is done. The last ear of corn is stored and the barn door is closed. It is time to rest. The six weeks until Yule is a time of tremendous stillness as everything stops for a time and we quiet our world for the coming winter months. I have found that because of our conditioning, very few people are comfortable with true stillness. They need to be active and doing and surrounded by sound and people and stimulation. How many people do you know who keep a TV on for background noise or “company” when they are home alone? How many do you know who need noise to sleep and have a fan running or a TV or radio playing as they sleep? How many people do you know who are uncomfortable going to a movie or out to dinner alone? How about driving in the car with no music playing? It is rare that people enjoy their own company and their own thoughts sufficiently to allow total stillness to enfold them or to enjoy time without the input of others in some form. Often, people become so wrapped up in the thoughts of others that they no longer have their own original thoughts or form their own judgments exclusive of approval or criticism from the people in their orbit. This time of year, this stillness, is about connecting with our own thoughts, opinions and judgments as 
we reflect on the lessons of the Harvest and process all that has happened to us in the year we just closed down.
At Yule, it will be time to look forward once again as we begin the process of planning the next year’s harvest. For now, however, our goal is to find the quiet, stillness inside and go into it. We are to get to know ourselves exclusive of the people around us and to find our individual place in collective spirit. The dark of the year, which begins on November 1st, is a time of introspection and reflection. It is appropriate that now, we are in a time of Mercury retrograde when things are sort of backwards anyway.
Since it is nearly impossible for most of us in modern society to take a break from life for six weeks while we explore or inner, shadowy spirit sanctum, we have to honor the dark of the year in an adaptive way. This means changing our non-work related activities so that we have time, even a few minutes a day, to sit in the stillness and reflect on our past year, our inner thoughts and the obstacles that hold us back on a regular basis. This is when we clear away the doubts and shames from the past and replace them with positive, affirmative responses instead. This is when we love ourselves enough to forgive ourselves first and then work on the problems in our interpersonal relationships from that place of healing rather than a position of accusation and blame.
At Yule, light will subtly prevail and the days will gradually become longer until the light part of the year begins at Spring Equinox. Until then, we use this time for introspection, for healing, for internal processing and for courting the shadowy places inside us. Between now and Spring, engage the stillness whenever possible. Write your thoughts in a personal journal that no one sees. Reflect on goals from the past that were put aside, possibly against your will. Consider where you are now and how you got here. This is not yet the time to consider where you want to go. That comes at Yule. The Now is about your progress thus far and how it matches or is different from what you intended. Limit your stimuli as much as you can and learn to enjoy the quiet, even if you find yourself resisting at first. Take a few minutes and lie down in the darkness, supported by pillows, and see what images come to you. Whatever shows up, chase it and see where it goes. Pay close attention to your dreams and write them down when you wake for later reflection. Take note of interesting coincidences and hunches that come to you. All of this is part of the message system The Universe uses to get you to know what you need in your life and how to best feed your hungers.
When we make friends with the dark of the year instead of treating it the same as we treat the light of the year, our spirits flourish. When we confidently engage the darkness inside ourselves and accept the messages and challenges that come from the shadows, we will live a more plugged in and balanced life.
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