Winter invites us to keep pace with nature’s stillness. It signals a time for dropping into the body for deep reflection and repose and reacquaints us with our own perennial essence. We have the opportunity to recognize the patterns at play in our lives and to assimilate those experiences. We listen and remember, and thus strengthen the ground from which we live.

In winter we are plunged into darkness and mystery and reminded of the invisible but potent web that holds us together. We come to recognize the numinous components of the universe, the world, and ourselves. We understand how we are intrinsically bound to all things, including those who came before us and those who imminently draw near. We learn to feel into the greater flow of life, which is at once ancient, ever-present, and not yet born. 

In our quiet we can experience the subtle terrain that connect us to the ancestors and all beings in spirit. Our goal is to connect to the bright ones and to call on the lineages and luminous ones to receive the ancestors who are called home; to ease them on their way as they assist us in our own turns and cycles of life.

Like us, the ancestors continue to expand and grow. We connect with those who support us in life-affirming ways. We take care not to focus solely on getting our own needs met or halt progress by hanging on tightly with the hope they will manage our lives for us. Rather, we continue to live alongside them sharing our love and goodness.

We bolster them further by engaging with inner work and living from our own creative force. As we heal ourselves, they heal with us. Just as our grief signals deeper truths about our capacity for love, the starkness of a personal winter draws out what is most essential in us. The best thing we can do for ourselves, the ancestors, and our world is to become more compassionate, more loving, more present; and to listen to the ways life flows through us. These gentle pulls are one way Spirit guides and supports us. 

The dark seasons are a time of letting go and relative dormancy, and by settling into our own inner sanctum we find our facility for creative visioning. Winter is also a time for holding new intentions in the stillness. Our impetus toward evolution is a blessing of grace, and it is in the quiet of winter that our next becoming is nourished to be later sown. Here, we reconcile our heartbeat with the omnipresent pulse of Mother Earth and find ourselves woven into the age-old tapestry of our existence.

We explore our own vastness not to recycle our old pain and problems, but to give them over to the alchemical fires. In the darkness we begin to discern the unaltered tenderness and radiance contained therein. We find the courage to face our depths and transform our limiting qualities, many of them long carried and passed among human lines far before we became their current emissaries. In doing so, we can tap deeper resources and give them as offerings like golden requiems from the soul; salve for ourselves and a planet in need.

Together, with the invisible beings we can dream a new earth into being. Winter’s enchantment inspires the kind of presence required to refine that same magic in ourselves. We reaffirm our intentions for the coming seasons and year, and let fall away that which impedes the next expansion and flourishing. It is a time to remember there are greater forces at play than any individual life and thus more to consider than just ourselves. 

May the elegance of the seasons glow in us, vibrating in our cells to reflect our cosmic nature. May we drop into those sacred spaces where time and space melt into the infinite and intuition declares itself. May we be of service to our world, contained by the tranquil lull found in the watery depths of our longings and the celestial sun and sky-lined vaults of our imaginings.

Whether you are in wintering or summering, may you behold the wonder and magnificence of nature and life. In doing so, may you be exalted in realizing your own preciousness in return.

Wishing you a joyful, blessed New Year. 

~Laura Christine O’Donnell 

And the Society for Ancestral Wisdom and Healing Team