Half moon. Half year. Half way points. The balance between a perceived beginning and end. An energetic place potent with themes of transition, cycles, time, progression, renewal, balance, mystery, intuition, illumination and shadow. It’s a natural central axis point, a rest stop and a prime time for dropping in, tuning in, and checking in.
One of our most frequent visual examples of this is the half moon, a bi-monthly reminder of the marriage between the light and darkness — equinox and equilux. Like fraternal twins, one is waxing towards fullness while the other wanes toward fertile darkness.
Are you waxing into full illumination? The seed taking root and beginning its journey up and out in a hope-full surge and commitment to growth, focus and action. Or perhaps you are waning in towards the dark, the hidden and unknown side of self, a tender time of inward reflection and rest, the post-reap rest after a full moon harvest.
Like the melting of winter’s frost giving way to the return of the buds and blooms; dormancy and hiberation turning over to a time of abundance and fertility and birth. Then the full bloom of summer to autumnal harvest and back ‘round to winter’s slumber.
What seeds have you planted?
How to you tend them?
What do you hope to harvest?
What will you leave behind? Or rather, what will you energetically compost?
We ebb and flow between these phases constantly for inconsistent lengths of time. Do you recognize a pattern in your own waxing and waning?
Living in sync with the cycles of the seasons can be a way for feeling in tune with these concepts, an innate lifestyle that our natural rhythms long to return to. Perhaps you already feel deep within your body, mind, and spirit the great shifts that occur on the solstices and equinoxes. Are you able to put it into words? Maybe you don’t have to in order to identify them. Maybe there’s another way. Establish a conversation [with or without words] with your physical and spiritual body during these times; one where you’re listening and letting your intuition lead.
The ritual of living intimately with the cycles of nature tends the garden of the self and expands our capacity for self love. It’s a self care practice that goes beyond salt baths and mindful eating and extends into the less glamorized territory of shadow work which I define as acknowledging and accepting all parts of the whole that is you. You are a record book of all your experiences and of those lived by your ancestors — the good, the inspiring, the traumatic. And, you are also an energetic recycling system with the power to transform the leftovers of the trauma into new green growth which you can nurse and tend so that your future ancestors might someday find comfort beneath its shady canopy.
Let us devote ourselves to honoring the balance and dancing joyfully in the in-between — the half moon phase, or the “equinox of life”, if you will. Let us allow ourselves to see the beauty in the light, in the dark, and in the mysticism that exists in that which is hidden and that which chooses to be seen. Let us abandon competitive negative and positive connotations attached to the “light” and “dark” sides of the self, for neither is superior over the other but rather the contrast of both phases is required for seeing the value in the other. The rain allows us to see the rainbow.
May we soak up all of the nourishment of our rains and open ourselves to the spectrum of vibrant color being reflected on the other side.