It’s almost a new year, the darkest time of the year. Even though the lights are on, there always seem to be more shadow than light. At my home, like so many other homes, Christmas lights are turned on for the evening and the early morning, when we are awake. We turn them off when going to bed, leaving the house in complete darkness, except for the blinking blue and green lights of various electronics.
It’s the season of post-Christmas blues when the bits of light in the darkness can’t seem to cut through the shadows that slip in to our lives once the hoped for magic of the holidays has proven as elusive as trying to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus. We are left deflated in spirits and inflated with too much eaten, especially those sweet things that tempt when we are most vulnerable which then leave us even more depressed because of sugar-induced lows.
In the past, at those bleaker moments, I used to turn to my guitar, usually played quietly the shadows, like Joy illustrates above. The music becomes a meditative prayer that washes over the soul, as long as it is soft and gently rhythmical – no harsh volume or racing tempos. And then, with the spirit within stilled, I would breathe.
This morning I opened up Pema Chodron’s book, When Things Fall Apart to find some wisdom that I felt was needed after seeing a cartoon that ridiculed pre-Christmas shoppers with the fact that all the presents they had bought were now 60% off. Such a cartoon – I can’t find it now, so I chose the image above to better illustrate that post-Christmas “let-down” which highlights the dark side of our “crazy mixed-up minds.” Chodron talks about meditation:
“it’s such a help in working with our crazy mixed-up minds to remember that what we’re doing is unlocking a softness that is in us and letting it spread. We’re letting it blur the sharp-corners of self-criticism and complaint.”Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, p. 140.