Today is Samhain which oddly enough has become one of my favorite Shabbats or Holy Days of the year.  In the Celtic tradition, Samhain is a 24 hour period, roughly from October 31st at sundown to November 1st at sundown.  It marks the halfway point between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice.

Samhain is also the gateway that lead us through the dark half of the year.

You may be asking, “What’s so good about the dark half of the year”? Personally,  I have come to appreciate the darkness. It has become an intimate friend and valued mentor. It has helped me overcome the damaging affects of two huge cultural biases we live in: The Bias of the Light and The Bias of the Harvest.

Bias of the Light

One example of this bias towards the light is the preference for being happy all of the time or that things should be going smoothly or well – and if they are not then there is something wrong or something wrong with us.  Maybe it is that we are not thinking positive the “right way” or enough.  Often I find myself keeping my own company because I am the only one I know that can truly handle the weight of my thoughts and the grief in my heart as traverse this wild experience of being incarnate.

The modern world has developed a phobia of the darkness. 

This is not altogether new as even the foundations of our modern religions personify darkness as evil.  However, modernity has exiled the darkness even further since the advent of the lightbulb.  Now artificial light creeps through my shades and under my door in the middle of the night like a prowler – stealing my darkness!

I have found that it is in the silence and the darkness that my life begins to make sense.  Questions get formulated and answers begin to appear; and patterns begin to form out of what previously looked like mere chaos.

Bias of the Harvest

For over a decade the collective consciousness has moved from the idea of productivity to manifestation as a way to address the basic needs of survival.  The focus on productivity was exhausting. Work, work, work.  Output. Output. Output. The problem is the mindset that created productivity is still being used.  By productivity I mean having the focus on widgets coming off the assembly line or another way to put it, focusing on the part of the manifestation cycle when something gets produced. The fact is, this part of the cycle is merely 25% of the manifestation process.

Without the planting of the seeds, gestation, and the growing season there is no harvest.  

Have we really gotten to the point that we are so disconnected from nature that we expect to pick fruit all of the time?  This is such a disservice to ourselves.  It opens the doors for such self criticism and not enoughness simply because we have adopted some idea that we can be chickens laying golden eggs around the clock.

Samhain is a celebration that comes after the harvest. 

It is a time to look back at what fruits were harvested and what good was made from those fruits.  Some of the later fruits, the ones that were part of the later harvest may still be waiting for canning or maybe you will make a pie.  Either way, this time of short and darker days offers time to reflect on our year – our harvest and what we will be planting come Spring.

So, this Samhain, I invite you to come and enjoy the darkness.  I will be there waiting for you! I am grateful for this day as I too still need the reminder to be still.

With all my love,

Alison