June Meditation
June heralds the summer solstice and the longest period of daylight for the year. The binary of day to night will be shifted, in this way, towards the light. What does it mean to meditate on something? Where meditation encourages stillness and silence, to meditate on illuminates aspects of our consciousness through deep, careful consideration. I view the practice of meditating on something as cultivating sacred thoughts, ideas which deserve respect and can be made holy. This month, with these extra moments of light to illuminate, I want us to focus our consciousness on the paradox of holding grief and joy simultaneously.
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June, at a glance
* Monthly Meditation__Holding the Paradox of Grief & Joy
* Literary Guide__“The Guest House” Rumi
* Wellness Rituals__released June 8th
* Vino, Verse, & Vinyl__wine focus: Gamay; book focus: Interpreter of Maladiesby Jhumpa Lahiri (one or more of the stories in the collection; & record focus:“Mood Revision”; guide released June 223rd
* Offerings at Literary Gastronomy__
Thriving in Grief, free mini-course June 11th & June 18th, register here
30 min free Wellness Consults, register here
Limited Enrollment Group Courses: Writing to Heal and The Divinity of Food, read more and register through website
* June Reflections__released June 30th
Since March of 2020, I have been meditating on collective grief and the wisdom to be found in understanding the stages of the grieving process. Through the extreme losses of the pandemic and compounded tragedies, there are still moments of vitality, connection, joy. The tension of these binaries, grief and joy, existing side by side can be overwhelming. The poem for this month’s meditation is by the great 13th century Sufi mystic poet, Rumi. Often noted as one of the most translated poets in the world, Rumi’s spiritual poetry transcends culture and time.
In the poem “The Guest House”, Rumi claims that every morning, the sun brings a new emotion and experience to our life and that we should learn to welcome all temporal experiences with radical love. Similarly echoed in Friedrich Nietzche’s, the great German philosopher, “amor fati”: the love of one’s fate, regardless of circumstance.
Here rests our mediation for this month, within the paradox of the longest period of sunlight, all experiences, emotions, and thoughts of our life have the potentail to be illuminated. What will come to light for us in June? Better yet, what needs to welcomed out of the shadows and into the warmth of the sun? What aspects of ourselves need to not only seen, but lovingly integrated and passionately healed?
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NASA so eloquently summarizes how the sun produces light:
“An elegant interaction powers the sun, producing the light and energy that makes life possible. That interaction is called fusion, and it naturally occurs when two atoms are heated and compressed so intensely that their nuclei merge into a new element. This process often leads to the creation of a photon, the particles of light that are released from the sun."
There is a disolving a binary, a compression in fire of two atoms, to create a new element that eventually becomes light. From destruction comes beauty, illumination. It is not about the shadows or the light, but about what the two can come togeter to create. Winter and summer always hint at a kind of melancholy for me, due to their binary extremes. But how can something like summer, so full of light and flowers, induce a sadness?
There is grief in joy because of the temporal nature of the experience of joy. There is joy in grief because the storm will eventually pass. Just as shadows and light need the other to exist, the ability to lovingly hold this paradox of joy and grief exisiting together is not only reserved for saints, bodhisattvas, or well-trained relational psychiatrists. Each of us has the ability, with awareness and the right tools, to illuminate what may rest in the shadows, like grief, and fuse it to joy, for something new, for something healed. Welcome this potential with Amor Fati.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi
Narrative and Biblio Therapeutic Practice:
This month, write out the current arrivals to your guest house. Are they grief, rage, joy, curiosity? Push past the first few you can easily name, who else is there? What brings these arrivals to your guest house: news, job stress, future goals? Identify them without judgement then begin to welcome them, one by one. Let’s spend a week getting to know these guests, their stories and needs. In a week, we will explore Wellness Rituals for our guests and the paradox of grief and joy.
Read “The Guest House” every morning this week, observe if your heart can become, bit by bit, more open to some of these arrivals, especially the ones you instinctively want to slam the door on. Allow them to honorably stand in the light of day next to you and warm themselves with you by the evening fire.
None of us have escaped the stages of grief since March of 2020 and I would argue we are collectively grieving again due to mass shootings. The two mini-courses, Thriving in Grief: Illuminating the Shadows, are free, as my way to offer tools for the collective. I believe deeply in this works' healing power. You can attend one or both weekends, June 11th and June 18th. We will explore literature on grief, how grief impacts physical and mental health, nervines and food ally’s to grieving process, somatic and breathing techniques for healing, the research of Kubler-Ross and Esther Perel, and much more.
Until the Ritual for Wellness next week (make sure to subscribe for content), enjoy getting to know all the arrivals to your guest house in a new, bright light.
Be good,
Amanda
