Living in the Southern Hemisphere

Dear Friends in the Southern Hemisphere,

With Inner Christmas and The Inner Year I am always thinking about you. I know your natural world meets the Sun in the reverse of my Northern Temperate experience. I wonder about your experience and how my thoughts meet your feelings.

The individuals who determined the dating of the Christian festivals lived in the Northern Hemisphere long before there was awareness that the Earth was a globe. They made their dating decisions based on the Gospels and the seasonal Pagan Festivals (which in so many ways reflected the unfolding of the events of the three years of Jesus).

Your intuition and the strength of your soul's connection to the seasons of Nature or to the Christian traditions will guide how you work with the thoughts on the Inner Year.

I encourage you to explore your inner experience. Develop your own way of following your Inner Year. Try reversing the festivals and see if it feels "right." Remember in the Spiritual World there are no calendars.

All things are relative in your imagination and in your heart. If you work with Inner Easter and the mood of the vernal equinox (when light overcomes darkness) when your days begin to darken, you may find that in six months your soul will awaken in some new and meaningful way. Perhaps it is your destiny to find spiritual growth in dealing with paradox and reversal.

Please post your experience as I know so many of my friends in the Southern Hemisphere wonder and even struggle with this question.

Inner Easter

Saying Goodbye to Winter

We have moved into another Spring. Winter has ended. You have lived 13 weeks or 91 days. Your soul has thought, felt and willed a season of life.

Spend a few moments reviewing your Winter. What thoughts stand out from the ordinary and the forgotten? What feelings colored your soul with shades of light and dark and warmth and cold? What deeds moved from thought to loving action? What did you learn about yourself? About those you love? work with? admire? resent? What happened in this season that you need to grieve or need to celebrate?

Easter, Nature and Your Soul

Easter is the time of Balance. We find the balance of life and death in the soul and the balance of light and dark in nature.

Wikipedia has a beautiful description and some great images of equinox. I urge you to spend a few minutes reading the article.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

After reading this article on the Equinox, reflect on how much the experience of the Equinox is dependent on your place of observation.Where in the world are you? Which hemisphere do you live in? Between the equator and the pole - where is your latitude?

How you experience your life depends on where you are in your life. How you experience the light and dark of your inner life is so relative and so mysterious. Bringing your Inner Sun, the spiritual experience of "I am," to the equator of your soul and dwelling in the eternal moment of self-enlightenment is the goal of spiritual practice.

Nature's equinox occurs for a moment twice a year. Solstice occurs twice a year giving opposing experiences at the poles. Equinox is the perfect moment of "in between." Have you known the perfect between" in your soul? Or are you always seeking a polar moment? Where in your soul life do you find seemingly endless soul light? What do you find there? What about seemingly endless soul darkness?

In the seasonal mood of the Vernal Equinox, can you feel the natural fit of the Easter imagination? Out of the "dead" earth, new "life" sprouts in spring. With Easter we are drawn to the mysteries of death and of resurrection.

Death and Resurrection

How does your soul experience death? Is it the disappearance of a living thought of truth, a living feeling for beauty, a living intention for goodness? Is it the death of a loving and responsible relationship to the world, to the past, to the future, to another, to yourself? And is the death such a profound loss that you are willing to walk through hell, a deep personal hell, to find a greater inner sense of self that will resurrect or restore the dead to new life, meaning, purpose, significance?

One image illuminating Inner Easter is unselfishness. The Resurrection of the Christ is not selfish. It is a deed of cosmic devotion and cosmic destiny.

Resurrect only what lives in your soul to serve others and the future. Resurrect the thoughts, feelings, intentions, relationships that bear your "I am," not those that merely provide the pleasure of "me, my, and mine." Resurrection for selfish and egotistical reasons is cloning and not resurrection. Cloning of the soul stops inner evolution and personal growth.

Celebrating Inner Resurrection

In the course of every year, we make choices that crucify our higher self and true destiny. We crucify our higher self and our life's noble destiny with inner attachment to the superficial, the transient, the habitual, the easy, and the selfish.

Easter is a time to reflect on those choices, not to recrucify ourselves, but to resurrect ourselves. We can resurrect our devotion to the profound, the lasting, the creative, the challenging and the loving.


How long would it take to deepen your awareness of the superficial, the transient, the habitual, the easy and the selfish attachments in our daily lives? Perhaps we could make lists of the aspects of our lives that deaden our spirit. Consider how these attachments kill the True, the Beautiful and the Good in our souls? Write journal entries or poems about the crucifying and the resurrecting choices of your life.


As I work with the possibilities of the Inner Year, I am amazed at the graceful connectedness between the esoteric meanings of the Christian Festivals and the moods and questions supporting a rich and healthy unfolding soul life. What other time of year would nurture the soul's reflections on death and resurrection?

Bring the dawning of new life to your soul. Live into the mood of Easter.

One Woman's Death and Resurrection - An Easter Inspiration

Jill Bolte Taylor shares the story of her death and resurrection in an 18 minute video - http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229. Inspired by her brother's affliction with the brain disorder, schizophrenia, Jill devoted her career to neuroanatomy and ways to understand and heal the brain. She was highly respected brain researcher at Harvard when she suffered a major stroke at age 37.

In this inspiring video, Jill shares how she lived her "death" and her "resurrection." Whether you are more of a scientist or a spiritualist, you will find her talk amazing. It is truly an Inner Easter story.

Comments, please!

Inner Easter awakens many complex and personal thoughts and feelings. Please share your experience, your imaginations and your hopes. I will offer another posting in time for Whitsun or Pentecost, 50 days after Easter.