Winter Belongs to You

The Heart is the
hub of all sacred places.
Go there and roam.
~ Bhagavan Nityananda

When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.-Lao Tzu

If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water. -Bulgarian proverb

What will you dream this winter? What story will you begin to tell?

In the Daoist tradition winter is the time to sit tight and gather your energy. It’s ruled by the element of water, and just like water pools and collects, winter is the time to pool and collect your life and thoughts.

Traditional Chinese Medicine texts tell us to go to bed early and sleep in late. To restrain ourselves from overextending our energy, and to cultivate what energy we have left.

We’re asked to meditate, reduce exertion, and banish the traits that drain energy from us.

As the coldest time of the year, this makes perfect sense. The world outside is dark and cold, the body has to struggle to keep itself warm, it’s losing heat anywhere it goes, and the mind, the mind misses the sun.

Vitamin D levels are low, Seasonal Affective Disorder creeps up for many of us. The sun, the very symbol of life and vitality has just undergone its rebirth in the Winter Solstice. The days are growing but the sun is still weak, like that of a child gathering strength.

This is why the Daoists advise us to gather our own strength. To sit in this space before the spring and the sprouts of what we’ll grow and to gather our energy. To prepare ourselves for the year to come.

In the ancient traditions, this goes beyond the gathering of our physical energy. Winter is linked to water, and in the old myths water comes first.

Whether it be Genesis where the waters are already existent and just need to be divided, or it be ancient Egypt with Ra born from an egg or a lotus, the Babylonian tales of Tiamat and Apsu, or the Hindu traditions of a swan laying an egg in the ancient waters, ancient traditions around the world start their creation story in water.

Even our sciences point to the oceans as the beginning of life.

Water is the beginning of the cycle. It is ancient, the parts of the story that comes before memory and just like the myths which invoke a creative magic, the winter and its water element hold space for the beginning of our own stories, the stories we will create this year.

In traditional societies all over the world, slowing down, going within, saving one’s energy meant bundling up in the home. You were closer to your kin than the rest of the year, and you were closer to yourself.

It was a time of stories. A time to pass down the wisdom of the elders. It was a time where the veils of the past were thinnest.

In the book, “When the Spirits Come Back,” Janet Dallet, a Jungian analyst shares that Native American tribes saw the winter as the time the spirits come return.

The Romans scatter the winter with festivals for the dead and the ancestors. They move between exorcisms and offerings.

They felt the touch of the ancient in the close proximity of their winter homes. The focus moved from the world outside, farming and war, to the world inside; the home and the experiences of the soul and mind.

Even Jung had his visions in winter. In his biography, he writes about a vision in December and started working on the Black Books in the dead of winter.

What came from this was the weaving of his own mythos. Discovering the roots of his story in history, exorcising the parts that no longer fit, and honoring the bits of the past that were still essential.

In traditions the world over the water element is linked to the unconscious, to our dreams and emotions, to the dead, and the spirit realm. It is the place to plant the seed of our story, to feel the way the past moves us, and to dream new dreams.

What will you take from the past? What will you drive away?

What will you dream? What story will you tell in the year to come?

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