This season means different things for different people. For some, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. For others, the most terrible. We may experience profound gratitude for the blessing of our lives, the lives of our loved ones, and for life itself, in all of its highly ordered messiness, its beaming beauty, its abundance, and its intricate interconnectivity…
We may also experience a feeling of deep sorrow and empty abundance amidst the holidays. This feeling can arrive on the tail of torn gift wrap, when we’re drowning in a pile of scrap, tangled ribbons, and misshapen bows. It can come amidst the memories of the holidays past. It can come when we’re anxiously sipping away overly sweetened cocktails and struggling to find something to talk about with our friends or relatives. It can come when we’re reminded once more that, although we may be surrounded by others, our capacity to relate with them is limited.
Those who experience more darkness this time of year may be suffering, in part, from a lack of meaning for the rituals surrounding the holidays.
We humans have a long lineage of ceremonial behaviors designed to enact during this time of year. Traditionally, this is a time to dramatize our essential understandings of life, its origins, and its perpetual recreation, in an act involving the people who matter most to us, at a place that gets us closer to our hearts, their hearts, and the heart of the world.
At Yoga Union, our greatest holiday wish is for each of you, whether reading this message or not, whether involved in our community or not, to have a place where you belong. A place of beauty, where you are encouraged by people you relate with and have respect for, to take up the adventure of rediscovery, wherein every day you may grow a little more, find yourself and put your life together in a more integrated and cohesive way. Where each day sparks your interest in being alive and reminds you of your truest heart connection to everyone and every thing around you. Where you are continually pointed to your unique gifts and reminded of the value you have in sharing them with others who appreciate you for it. Where you can contribute something of substance to your community and feel good about doing so. Where your actions have profound meaning and purpose driving them forward and up.
We believe that each of us is in a position to place a star on the highest branch: to posit an ideal and pursue it; that in doing so, we can restore the good meaning of our existence.
What aspects of this season have meaning for you? Are there some traditions that you understand and resonate with? Do you want to recreate some traditions for yourself and your people. How can you center on the particular aspects of the holiday that you do connect with? How can you draw them out? How can you shine a light on them? How can you design a holiday ritual that restores meaning to and revitalizes your existence during this dark time of year?
Holiday Blessings.
