As I work through and around the Inner Year of my soul, I find the Inner Solstices bring comfort and joy to the soul (Christmas and St John’s Tide) and the Inner Equinoxes (Easter and Michaelmas) bring challenge and suffering to the soul.
How is this so?
What comes to my heart is an imagination that light and dark by themselves are comforting and offer a joy in their enveloping presence. White reflects all things and black absorbs all things. No struggle there to confront and manage. The Inner Solstices give us a clear gesture of attention and embrace. The soft darkness of Inner Christmas asks us to enter into a new sense of ourselves as spiritual beings of innocence and wisdom. And the light energy of Inner St John’s Tide asks us to experience a new sense of ourselves as earthly creatures engaging in earthly relationships and earthly deeds.
But the Inner Equinoxes are another imagination all together. Nature and spirit do not offer a simple experience. Light and dark are equal and the soul struggles in a tension between to the two inner poles. The balance is precarious and confusing. It is in the midst of this tense opposition that the soul is asked to meet death at Inner Easter and evil at Inner Michaelmas. Although the sense perceptible world is filled with beauty at both equinoxes, inwardly, we are challenged and we suffer. Appropriately so! Death and evil are not easy on the soul. It takes a maturity of self and courage of heart to do the inner work of the equinoxes and feel a sensitive conscious awareness to embrace our inner deaths and conquer our inner evil.
And our modern lives and modern culture so filled with superficial distractions and thoughtless anxieties make it all the more difficult to attend to our Inner Year with it’s comforts and joys and its challenges and suffering.
In is just another week in our daily lives, but in our soul, in our inner life, it is Holy Week. As the temperate realm of the Northern Hemisphere of our amazing planet Earth, is bursting with new life, we find our souls needing to evolve our inner relationship to death. Not death as a final ending, but death as a dramatic transformation that ends all attachment to the past and opens up to a mysterious and new future. And our souls must realize that this Inner Easter may seem an insignificant and timid, even foolish, reflection of the Easter Story of 2000 years ago
It is not that we must come to experience the Christ Mystery in all its fierce outer significance every Easter. Rather with the yearly experience of Inner Easter we find our intimate grasp of our personal and very real last suppers, agonies in the garden, cross-bearing journeys, crucifixions, descents in to hells and, ultimately, to our own inner resurrections. And every spring Equinox, as we bring our inner attention to our soul life, we take small steps in our moral development.
This inner work deserves and requires depth of thought and penetration, not easy in these days of superficiality. We don’t want these experiences to melt quickly like a jelly bean or a milk chocolate Easter egg. We want an Inner Easter with profound and lasting meaning.
Inner Easter is less about time and more about attention. So if you seek an Inner Easter, don’t feel you must devote the whole week to this work, (although wouldn’t the world be different if we could have a week of rest to attend to our inner development). Just a few minutes of devoted inner exploration and meditation will offer a deep experience. Our soul’s need for attention and nourishment around the Easter mysteries is intense. Give your Easter personal meaning beyond any religious meaning.
How is this so?
What comes to my heart is an imagination that light and dark by themselves are comforting and offer a joy in their enveloping presence. White reflects all things and black absorbs all things. No struggle there to confront and manage. The Inner Solstices give us a clear gesture of attention and embrace. The soft darkness of Inner Christmas asks us to enter into a new sense of ourselves as spiritual beings of innocence and wisdom. And the light energy of Inner St John’s Tide asks us to experience a new sense of ourselves as earthly creatures engaging in earthly relationships and earthly deeds.
But the Inner Equinoxes are another imagination all together. Nature and spirit do not offer a simple experience. Light and dark are equal and the soul struggles in a tension between to the two inner poles. The balance is precarious and confusing. It is in the midst of this tense opposition that the soul is asked to meet death at Inner Easter and evil at Inner Michaelmas. Although the sense perceptible world is filled with beauty at both equinoxes, inwardly, we are challenged and we suffer. Appropriately so! Death and evil are not easy on the soul. It takes a maturity of self and courage of heart to do the inner work of the equinoxes and feel a sensitive conscious awareness to embrace our inner deaths and conquer our inner evil.
And our modern lives and modern culture so filled with superficial distractions and thoughtless anxieties make it all the more difficult to attend to our Inner Year with it’s comforts and joys and its challenges and suffering.
Inner Easter
In is just another week in our daily lives, but in our soul, in our inner life, it is Holy Week. As the temperate realm of the Northern Hemisphere of our amazing planet Earth, is bursting with new life, we find our souls needing to evolve our inner relationship to death. Not death as a final ending, but death as a dramatic transformation that ends all attachment to the past and opens up to a mysterious and new future. And our souls must realize that this Inner Easter may seem an insignificant and timid, even foolish, reflection of the Easter Story of 2000 years ago
It is not that we must come to experience the Christ Mystery in all its fierce outer significance every Easter. Rather with the yearly experience of Inner Easter we find our intimate grasp of our personal and very real last suppers, agonies in the garden, cross-bearing journeys, crucifixions, descents in to hells and, ultimately, to our own inner resurrections. And every spring Equinox, as we bring our inner attention to our soul life, we take small steps in our moral development.
This inner work deserves and requires depth of thought and penetration, not easy in these days of superficiality. We don’t want these experiences to melt quickly like a jelly bean or a milk chocolate Easter egg. We want an Inner Easter with profound and lasting meaning.
Inner Easter is less about time and more about attention. So if you seek an Inner Easter, don’t feel you must devote the whole week to this work, (although wouldn’t the world be different if we could have a week of rest to attend to our inner development). Just a few minutes of devoted inner exploration and meditation will offer a deep experience. Our soul’s need for attention and nourishment around the Easter mysteries is intense. Give your Easter personal meaning beyond any religious meaning.
A Gift of Inner Year Guidance
I will be sending out to you a four-part series of written and spoken thoughts and suggestions for your inner experience of the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. The audios will each be about 10-20 minutes. Like the Inner Christmas messages, Inner Easter is a gift from my soul to yours. I hope you find spiritual resonance with these inspirations. (If you would like to make a donation expressing your gratitude, you can do that on the Inner Year blog). Thank you.
Please share your Inner Easter questions and experiences with others here on the blog.
Easter blessings,
Lynn
Lynn, Your insights are rich and helpful. Thank you for your powerful words. -Margaret
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