The light and the shadow on Lammas
It is Lammas, the seed harvest, where we might pause and take stock of all the abundance in our lives.
Sometimes, it is very easy to focus on what we don’t have, rather than what we do, but here on Guernsey, certainly, we have a plentiful supply of food available to us, we don’t need to know hunger, and for that alone, we might count our blessings.
But it’s more than that, it is about taking responsibility and acknowledging our sovereignty. The sun, the moon, the stars, the planets are asking us to remember that we are the exclusive ‘controller’ of our own body and life. This idea brings with it the awareness of bodily integrity and freedom to make decisions about our own person without external influence.
Somewhere along the lines, many of us gave this power away, always thinking others know best, not least in terms of how we live our life and the decisions we make, but also in terms of our body too.
We need to remember that every tension, every pain, every injury brings with it a metaphysical reason - a mental and emotional underpinning, spiritual too - a guide perhaps to changes we might need to make, not least to our mental attitude and belief system, but to the choices we are making and the way we are living our life.
Are we sleeping well? Are we eating well? Are we relating to ourself well? Is our environment conducive to our wellbeing?
We don’t mend the sail in the middle of the storm. So taking stock at these festivals is helpful.
Change is most definitely in the air. The major lunar standstill may now have passed, but the effects are only now beginning to filter through into many of our lives.
Many are experiencing a change of heart, of wanting things to be different, of having enough of the old, of no longer ignoring the signs and the bodily tension which indicates that the status quo is no longer serving our best interests.
In my own life, I am reminded time and time again that we only have one precious life and that we need to make the most of it, not put off today for tomorrow, because tomorrow may never come, to acknowledge the magic and the blessings in each moment, be grateful for the people that bring love and joy into our life, and to let go of whatever is getting in our way of us living a life of aliveness, love and freedom.
As I was discussing with a client this week, if you don’t love yourself now, then unless you do something about it now, you’re still not going to be loving yourself on your death bed, and what a shame, to spend a whole life time at war with yourself, just because of some crappy conditioning or belief that you’re not good enough.
And it is true, our education system, our society, religion, even friends and family, might well support us staying small, keeping us in our box, but this doesn’t mean to say we have to live our whole life making it so.
Every moment we have the opportunity to say ‘no’ and make the changes which need to be made to take our power back and live our life our own way, making the most of every precious moment, and putting two fingers up to those saying it cannot be so.
Of letting go of the shame and the guilt, the two yuckiest vibrations, just because of our error in self-judgement or our caring far toon much what others think - and what a waste of our life this too, who cares! Truly! One day that person with all their ever changing thoughts and opinions is going to die too, and what a shame to dampen our vibration just because of their perspective on things.
There are many different ways to look at the same situation, maybe different perspectives, we have ours, they have theirs and that’s OK. If we could all just let go of our belief systems there may be greater peace on this planet.
Remember, anything is possible - well, mostly everything is possible - we just have to believe in ourselves and recognise the support that is all around us and the love which is inherent in ALL life.
Because this is the other thing coming up, this idea that life, that love, can be made certain. It can’t. You can’t box or grasp love, despite people’s efforts to do so, and it is my experience that every time we try to make love certain and known, we fall out of alignment with its flow.
This is a time for truly owning our flow, for knowing that while we cannot truly control our life, we can act with honesty, integrity, love and compassion, and that coming from a place of negative ego (which is sadly conditioned in us) is not helpful.
The moon is waxing and her light increasing, while the sun is waning, his light decreasing. This is a perfect reminder that life is full of light and dark, of brightness and shadows, of contraction and expansion, and that is OK. There is flow and there is cycle and there is change - we contract and expand - peace comes with allowing all things.
Love Emma
