The "Winter"

As I sit home-bound during the third significant snowstorm this winter, the stillness has provided me with a wonderful opportunity to reflect upon the gifts of the season.  For many of us, the doldrums of winter are a trying time. Daylight is limited and we are generally less active. Our energy is lackluster and we very often experience the uncomfortable feelings that we avoid in our busyness. Animals cope with this season by hibernating, but the human animal resists the cyclical nature of life and growth. The medical profession even has a diagnosis for extreme symptoms, Seasonal Affective Disorder. We may try to overcome it but in the end, we cannot help but experience these ebbs and flows.


In the quest for spiritual growth and understanding, we all must reach a point at which instead of resisting, we embrace the appearance of leanness. In Truth, the “winter season” is a critical component of the cycles of growth and evolution. So often we fill our time with doing: shopping, driving, exercising, playing, etc, etc. The stillness of winter provides us with the ideal opportunity to sit still for a moment and just be. Somehow the quiet makes space for clarity that busyness cannot.

When all is well with our world, there is often no need to separate the “dead” from the “not dead” in our lives. Under the pressure of crisis when we need all available vitality, we are apt to discover that much in us is of no account, valueless. When our tree is rocked by mighty winds, all the limbs that do not have free and easy access to what sustains the trunk are torn away; there is nothing to hold them fast. 
Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

Our financial lives have the same cycles.  The current economic challenges we are facing are a “winter,” not to be avoided or lamented but to be embraced. The barren season in our financial lives is a wonderful time in which to reassess what things are really important to us and which things just consume our resources (time, energy and money) but provide us with little in return.  It is interesting that most people, when they are forced to cut back on expenses, discover that much of what they believed were critical expenditures are hardly missed at all, and add very little that is meaningful to their lives.

At the end of the day we all want to experience joy, peace of mind, and purpose in our lives. Another pair of shoes or a fancy car has little to contribute to that quest. For most of us the more things we have, the less peace of mind we experience.

We must never forget that behind the appearance of barrenness of winter is the preparation for the appearance of spring.  Without the period of rest and renewal, new growth is lackluster. The winter season is potent with potential (pun intended).  The space for creativity and possibility is just as important as the phases of development, growth and harvest. As we sit in our “winter” experience, can we take the opportunity to look inward for where can we release old ideas, emotions and activities that are no longer serving us? At the same time, can we also look for what new is trying to bubble to the surface and to explore possibilities? The exploration does not mean to “make it happen,” but just to allow the mind to travel in whatever directions seem to be calling. I invite you to embrace your unique winter experience and see what is waiting for your attention.

And so it is!