As the wind becomes softer, more gently lifts my hair, brushes my cheek sweetly sending perfumed flora through my nostrils and into my being; I feel elated, light, spring-like. That heavy grey of winter, shrouded in harsh wind that incessantly slapped my skin, whipped my hair, battered my hope, has vanished. Its pervading darkness has gently slid away in servitude to the sun, the light, and I feel all my might returning.
At times, as I stroll down the lane canopied in foliage and blossom, I hear the wind whispering. She speaks of the beauty that surrounds. She speaks of breath and life and new beginnings. And I am renewed. My heart overflows, spilling out my eyes at all this beauty of the earth, from the earth, as the earth. From profoundly inward, gratitude for this mother earth radiates outward, upward, flowing unannounced, unplanned, spontaneously soaring through the sky. And the wind, the breath of the sky, surrounding. And I am akin to it all, the everything that is. I realize that life is a gift, and this miracle is springing up all around me: goslings, ducklings, lambs, frogs, butterflies. I wonder how I could have been so hopeless, sad, and ungrateful during the cold darkness of winter.
It is a constant practice for me to accept the cycles of life. I often find that I slip into resistance, and thus create stiffness, stagnation, depression, and anger inside myself. With the cycle of darkness, I, too, turn dark, and I wonder if accepting this cycle as my cycle of life, aligning with the natural rhythm of being, that I might find ease, contentment, and gratitude in all the phases of our earth, our life, our existence? Relish the lightness of spring, the boldness of summer, the flourish of autumn, the death of winter. Perhaps the turning inward to shadow and darkness and the chilly stillness of winter is a necessary part of springing into beauty and sweetness and light. Might then I cease the fighting of it, the wanting of something other in those times of darkness and death, perhaps silence the yearning for light, and go gratefully into the darkness for the symphony of life it brings.
Inside this shadow, this cave of winter, I can curl inward, conduct an introspective examination and cleansing of all those habits, ideas, conditioned thoughts that do not serve the idea of life as a gift, and sow seeds of rebirth and renewal inside my heart; so that, come springtime, their leaves of levity and light unfurl into being, and Iam free.