Light

And God said, "Let there be light."

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."  This is my favorite scripture.  I say it whenever I light a candle.

When I was beginning my spiritual awakening I had a dream that I was in my very dark house, and could not see anything, but a 'flickering' of light in the living room.  I made my way through the house toward that light.

It was a difficult time.  I was growing, and also letting go of all the things of my life - my children as they were heading to college, my 25-year marriage, my house I'd worked so hard to make beautiful, my parents as they made their transitions, my employment, my spiritual understandings. 

I also let go of unresolved grief from losses in the past.  I realized that all that crying had opened a place within me.  I could breathe; I could actually stand up straight and take a deep breath!  I had had asthma since I was five years old - asthma, according to Louise Hay, the result of unresolved grief.

Over the last few days the word 'light' has caught my attention - lighten up, light on my feet, this little light of mine, can you give me a light?  trip the light fantastic, traffic lights, into the light, light as day, light-hearted, alight, lighter than air, the light at the end of the tunnel, speed of light, light as a feather,etc. 

I have commented around zaadz that I have felt like a hermit.  My astrological sign is Cancer, the crab - perhaps a hermit crab, who, as it grows, has to find a new home for itself.  I can relate to that!  And then there's the Hermit Tarot card - the Hermit carrying its own light to light the path.  The Hermit is a card of introspection. 

About the Hermit:  After a long and busy lifetime, building, creating, loving, hating, fighting, compromising, failing, succeeding, the Fool feels a profound need to retreat. In a small, rustic home deep in the woods, he hides, reading, cleaning, organizing, resting or just thinking. But every night at dusk he heads out, traveling across the bare, autumnal landscape. He carries only a staff and a lantern.

It is during these restless walks from dusk till dawn, peering at and examining whatever takes his fancy, that he sees and realizes things he's missed, about himself and the world. It is as if the secret corners in his head were being slowly illuminated, corners he never knew existed. In a way, he has become the Fool again; as in the beginning, he goes wherever inspiration leads him.  The Hermit is like the lantern, illuminated from within by all he is.

One of my zaadz friends has been interested in shamanism.  As I took some training in shamanism with Sandra Ingerman, I went to her website where I found some of her current work.  There I found her article on 'Creating a Web of Human Light.'  She says,

"We are light and we came here to shine. But most of us have forgotten our true nature as well as why we came here. We were created from love and light and we are love and light. It is our birthright to shine as fully in the world as we can.

Many of us have been taught at an early age not to shine too bright. If we shine too bright no one will love us. There can only be a few “stars” and it is not you. Does this sound familiar? Why can there only be a few stars here on earth? I have never heard anyone say when looking up at the stars in the sky, “I wish that star wouldn’t shine so brightly, it is outshining other stars”. Why do we have that belief here?

It is time for all of us to shine our light, which will reflect back the beauty of the night sky above us. We need to find our shine again so that we can light up the dark places of the world."

Tonight is the new moon, when the moon is dark, and the sun is being reflected back to itself.  At the new moon, the sun and moon travel together as partners - together at sunrise and sunset.   When the Wolf Clan elders gave me my 'Indian' name I was disappointed at first.  'Dark Moon'.  Then, as I began to know that Spirit had given them this name for me, I realized that it was my correct name.  I was born on a new moon.  I have studied astrology and know my own chart very intimately.  Moon in the twelfth house, the place of hidden, and dark things, and secrets.  The place of the shadow.  It all fits together...

My ego had wanted a 'glamorous' name.  The new moon doesn't shine out, where everyone can see it!  'See me, see me!'  But as I reflected (!) I realized that my moon does shine in.  So I have come to understand that my light, however it may appear to others, is supposed to shine into myself, so that I may see myself, and light up the dark places within myself.  And perhaps that is all that is necessary - that I see myself, know myself.  I don't think it is a 'coincidence' that at the age of two, in the photo I previously posted as my icon, I was looking through the binoculars from the 'wrong' end!

And I don't think it's a coincidence that over the past two weeks I have been visited by an owl outside my trailer, and been gifted several owl feathers.  In addition a zaadz friend, whom I've never seen face-to-face, sent me a print of a woman with an owl, entitled "Wisdom".   The owl can see in the dark, and it has symbolized wisdom over the centuries.  If I put together the 'clues' I think I discern a pattern here!!!  For me it is a time to reflect, and to allow the pieces of my changing life fall into place.