The Celestial Sphere & You
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. Most cultures used the celestial sphere (in astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth) to make sense of their space in the cosmos, largely due to how the it interacted with agricultural practices. Astrological occurrences of the sun’s place in the celestial sphere and how that equates to seasons and day/night, were also coupled with varying mythologies.
The mythologies have differing characters and settings, if you will, but have central themes, that all support the concept of how connected the human condition is the earthy and celestial sphere. Common themes and topics related to the Summer Solstice are: fire, sun, power, sexuality, fertility, rage, creativity, life giving properties, abundance, intentional focus on hopes for growth of crops—whatever we are literally or metaphorical planting, the solar plexus, fire sun signs: Leo, Aries, Sagittarius.
Solstices and equinoxes mark the seasons, winter spring summer and fall. The extreme points of the sun, represent the extreme points of the seasons. In these times, humans have more extreme connections to the changes. These are some of the ideas we worked with in the Summer Solstice Workshop on June 21st!
Using Seasonal and Celestial Changes in our Practice
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 multiple experiences at once.
“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 are 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 whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”
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 inspired by the seasonal and celestial changes 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 inspired by the changes in the celestial sphere during 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? 🌞
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.
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. Spend time getting to know these guests, their stories and needs.
Be good,
Amanda
