St. John’s Tide comes three days after the Summer Solstice. It is the day that the light begins it’s diminishing. When did you reach the point in your life when the natural course of things turns and instead of life increasing, it begins to decrease?
Tonight you may want to journal on what is beginning to diminish in your soul that has always been present and growing. To do this you will need to reflect on yourself, on who you naturally are. It is as simple as making a list. What did you always think about that you are starting to think about less? What identities have you clung to with a fierce grip that you are slowly releasing? This is a powerful Inner Summer process.
Now reverse the question. What is new in your inner life? What has knocked on the door of your consciousness an asked you to meet your destiny, asked you to make something of yourself out of yourself? This is the St. John’s Tide question.
Solstice is about the Sun standing still. St John’s Tide is a celebration of the birth of St John the Baptist who is known for leaping with joy in his mother’s womb.
The Summer Solstice is moment of celebration of fullness, of completion of all that is. St John’s Tide is the moment of celebration of all that will come, all that is just beginning.
Only the human soul makes meaning of this kind of polarity, this kind of paradox. Imagine we can sit still and leap for joy at the same time and not feel insane but feel blessed with profound sanity. As beings of Nature, our senses want us to be still and perceive all there is to delight us in the summery moment. As beings of spirit, our supersensible consciousness wants us to move, even dance, toward something more, to joyfully prepare (rather than contentedly delight) because we perceive the Divine Possibility.
I think the gods must feel amazement and success at the human soul’s ability to do both at the same time.
How do you do both?
How do you sit still and perceive nature and all that is natural in you?
How do you move forward in recognition of your own incarnating spirit?
Over the next twelve weeks I will be sending out thoughts on the soul’s Twelve Senses that allow your soul to perceive and recognize yourself, the world, and other souls. One sense each week. I hope these messages will enrich your Inner Summer.
But today, I will write about the natural and the unnatural. The “natural” is what we are born with - talents, tendencies, constitutions and all our inherited strengths and weaknesses. The “unnatural” is what we make of ourselves as we strive toward self-development, actually self-birth.
What we make of ourselves also awakens a paradox as what we consciously choose to make of ourselves usually feels more natural than the inborn natural. Could it be that what we (often painfully and with tears) give birth to in ourselves is our true nature?
There is something in each of us, in the fullness of the inborn self, that leaps for joy when it recognizes, meets, discovers the possibility of the Self-born self.
John the Baptist is called the precursor, the individual who came before. All your natural inborn qualities, quirks, inclinations and idiosyncrasies are the precursor that comes before the New You. Early this year I wrote a blog about names. Our names are given to us and most of us never consider what name we would choose for ourselves. Likewise, most of us just think we are only the result of who and what we are when we are born of our mother’s womb.
But for some of us there is a visitation of some divine spark that enlivens all possibility. We sense that who we are is less important than who we become. We get a kiss that opens us up, energizes us, crystalizes our power of self-birth.
The other day I heard Aretha Franklin singing “Natural Woman.
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Of course, like everyone else, I have always heard this as a song of a woman who finds her lover. Something in me said “Listen deeper, Lynn.” Listening deeper requires an openness to new questions. Who is my Lover? Is my Lover the one who is outside of me and just sees the inborn Lynn? Or is my Lover, my self-born Self. Do I leap for joy at the kiss of the one who frees me from my natural self to become my true self? Is that one, the part of my soul that sings me into freedom?
Here are the lyrics and, of course, in the context of the Inner Year and St John’s Tide, we might want to replace woman with human:
Looking out on the morning rain
I used to feel uninspired
And when I knew I had to face another day
Lord, it made me feel so tired
Before the day I met you, life was so unkind
But your love was the key to peace my mind
Cause you make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like
A natural woman
When my soul was in the lost-and-found
You came along to claim it
I didn't know just what was wrong with me
Till your kiss helped me name it
Now I'm no longer doubtful of what I'm living for
Cause if I make you happy I don't need no more
Cause you make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like
A natural woman
Oh, baby, what you've done to me
You make me feel so good inside
And I just want to be close to you
You make me fell so alive
Cause you make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like
A natural woman
Today be still for a bit and journal about your inborn natural soul and about the fulness of the soul’s season of summer. Then, leaping for joy, journal about the unborn, soon-to-be-born, new you. Shine a bright, warm, inner summer light into your soul.
The Rest of the Inner Summer
Do remember the soul never goes on vacation even during the lazy, hazy days of July and August. Besides the messages on the Twelve Senses, I will be offering two Teleseminar Intensives (4 - 90 minute teleseminars, structured work with a partner, and a private session with me) on Intimacy, the role of relationship in your life, and Balance, how you stay relaxed, upright and creative in your busy lifes. I will be sending out descriptions of these courses soon.
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