(Note the above recording also holds the guided meditation listen at 8:27.)
Before arriving to today’s offering I’d like to followup about our dog, Bella. We are living more harmoniously with her by accepting who she is rather than what we wanted her to be. She is most happy as the family dog rather than the farm dog we were pushing her to be. Also, it has helped us by accepting she is a young dog, remembering that young dogs are always going to add chaos into the mix.
Sometimes what we most need is a shift of perspective. A guiding light in the storm.
At the moment it feels dark outside. Every afternoon Aurora, our daughter, wakes up from her nap late in the afternoon. I try with all of my most powerful playful abilities to get us out the door and receive a bit more sun on our skin before the sun dips behind the hills, but every single day is the same. The sun has just gone into hiding right as we step out the door.
This always brings me a bit of sadness, common with this time of year when the daylight is diminished. This time, however, is part of the cycle that can support us to be strong throughout the year. Just as we have shifted our perspective with Bella and accepted who she is, the darkness may be treasured in this way as well.
For some simple reminders of how to be with the darkness, I look to the bees.
The bees grow abundantly within the darkness of their home. They preserve themselves together within the darkness as they slowly move through the cold season. The darkness protects them as they wait for the cycle of light and birth to return.
The way they move through the darkness is through sound and touch. They craft the most sufficient containers to breed and to hold the light that lives within their honey reserves.
Admiring this picture, I carry this symbolism as our medicine to get through the darkness.
A playful way to move through this time is by coming together to sing, create, and drink elixirs of the gods! By gathering in these traditional ways we carry the inner light through the darkness of winter.
Remember that it is within the darkness that life emerges. The darkness is a holy time of cleansing, dreaming, nourishing, and preparation for what is to come.
It is within the darkness that we receive dreams. I’ve always had strong dreams and the older I’ve become the more I understand them as guideposts along my journey.
The other night I had a dream about a sacred ceremony that I was asked to join. It was ancient and included ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that needed to be learned in order to understand what we would witness while we were in ceremony. We were all going to hear and see visions given to us from those who have died long ago. These messages would carry the energy of divine love onto the Earth.
As I write out this dream it makes me want to cry. I long for these sacred ceremonies and rituals that exist within cultures all throughout the world. These sacred holy acts would carry a certain energy from the spiritual realms into the physical state.
I once saw a vision of there being a wall between us in the physical realm and the unseen realm. Within the unseen is the realm of spirit, and there I saw so many energies of what wanted to come here into the physical plane. In order to create our reality into a beautiful and loving place, we must first go into the unseen realm, where in the darkness, flashes of inspirational light may emerge.
This is the same idea as something needing to be imagined before it can be created. It also must exist first in the spiritual realm before it can come into being. If it doesn’t exist there, it cannot here. For example, we envision how the gardens are going to be arranged and where seeds will be planted. There is always an idea of what we want, but while working within the gardens, intuitive visions come to us and we realize—that is exactly where the radishes need to be planted! Is it primarily us, or the greater energies of the Earth, and the spirit of the seeds working through us?
It is in the darkness when we can realign to our own North Star that is guiding us throughout our lives into the most life-honoring fulfilling ways. And this time in the darkness, while we are in between accepting the darkness and yearning for the light, we may access our most inner dreams and visions for the coming year—akin to the tradition of creating a New Year’s Resolution. I believe part of this is offering us a time to witness ourselves and what we would like to birth in the coming year, then make preparations in order to manifest what our souls most want to carry in.
Currently I’m reading a book called Song of Increase: Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World, by Jaqueline Freeman. She is a strong advocate for the bees and is also able to access a connection with them to understand the way they live here in the world. She writes from them to share how the bees know what to do. As the bees have shared with her she writes:
“When a bee is born, its antennae are attuned to the channel of the bee’s highest expression. When a young bee has had insufficient nutrition and inadequate vibration from the pollen, the bee suffers. Its channel isn’t tuned in clearly. It lives with a modicum of static that distracts and inhibits its access to full knowledge and expression.”
We, too, hold an antennae that can guide our actions throughout the world. However, so many of us have lost that connection, due to altered food, distractions, false beliefs on what is important, etc. But I believe that once we find ourselves in this situation, we can begin to shift ourselves and realign to our highest expression of being in relationship with the world.
One way to access our highest expression is by honoring our inner world as powerful, and we can work within to show us what our divine self is asking us to bring through.
Many times I have accessed this world as a way to receive guidance to prepare for what is to come.
A few years ago around this time, I did a meditation. Within this meditation I was to witness what my inner guidance would like to carry in with the returning of the light. In the meditation I saw an egg roll in my front yard. It hit my husband’s feet, and when he picked it up, he held a child in his arms. The next day after this vision, we were walking the road with our dog and Phil saw something up in the woods. He went up to get it, and it was a deflated balloon that said Happy Mother’s Day. It was an affirmation of what I had seen the night before.
That year we conceived Aurora.
The other night I dreamt that I was with friends and their mothers. In the dream one of my friends held a lineage that wasn’t as far removed from being intact with their culture and the Earthly traditions that held them together. I looked at my own lineage and complained that it had been hundreds of years perhaps since my people were connected in such a way. Then I was placed in front of a wise woman and I prayed to her asking what I could do to reconnect. She shared with me that I held a lot of anger within due to this separation. She sang a song and moved some energy and then told me that I would continue healing by acting through service.
As a gift this month to support shifting our perspective during this time of darkness and witnessing the magic of going within and deeply listening to our internal compass, I am providing a guided meditation to access what is asking to be born out of us this coming year.
You may access the meditation in the recording above. The meditation begins at 8 minutes and 27 seconds.
With love,
Louise and the Bees