Always Both-And

embodied meditations in the waning light

Last night I stood at the top of the hill near my house that overlooks a vast expanse of blueberry fields; the color of their winter-red leaves warming me in the December dusk. At my back the moon rose, clear and white and nearly full. In front of me the last of the sun slipped down through bare outlines of branches. In the twilight, we are reminded of the prayer of “both-and”.

Here in the northern hemisphere our bodies are in the last of the fading of the light. After this full moon, lunar and solar astral bodies will be yoked together in their waning, twin chariot horses galloping into the generative Dark. Now is the time for the activities of Darkness - for dreaming, for unbraiding, for quieting and nurturing and tending the space within us that is both empty and full of potential - the Space required for the quickening of life to fill it. The jet-dark all-potent Universe that holds the life-spark of billions of Suns. 

A practice I’ve been sitting with the past few days, as we approach this solstice time, is deepening into the feeling that we are always both-and. The beginning of the loss of the light heralds the start of summer. As the light shows the first faint glimmers of its return, our bodies are preparing to slip into the coldest cold. A confluence of currents, opposing movements in the same stream are, at all times, both moving us and moving within us. How do we deepen into the whole-time knowing of our always-both-and being?

An invitation:

It is in the whole of our bodies that we are able to feel these ever-present opposites, working in non-dual pairs which move us at all levels of our Being. The movements of our bones are accomplished through simultaneous contraction of both the muscle initiating the movement, and the muscle which opposes it, slowing it down, creating control and intentional grace. In the exuberance of summer there is the coming Dark that says "remember to rest". In the cold of winter there is the Light that says "remember hope".

This is true also of our emotions; Grief as Love and Love as Grief, the necessary, life-giving squeeze of the heart that empties itself before filling again. The knowing that we cannot hold onto our breath. To live we must release, in absolute faith that the next breath will come. These seeming opposites, necessary counterparts in each moment of life, all existing simultaneously in non-dual truth. At the bottom of our exhale, our bodies are still breathing - oxygen flowing and cellularly exchanging in abundance through pulsing, crimson currents. 

Our minds can be so specific, so single-pointed in their solar focus. And yet our brains are within our bodies, a part of the whole. The sun, so central to the organization of our solar system and to the movement of the universal body, also only one component of the galactic body, tethered in its integrity to the gravitational, multiaxial, relational dance of the spheres. 

How do we ease up our focus? How do we relinquish specificity, even for a moment, when we are gripped in the throes of a seemingly singular experience? How, in our grief, in the cold of winter or in the fading of the light, can we be both present for the gift of the pure moment, and in the resourcing and expansive possibility of both-and? For me, in this time, it’s in remembering to welcome the counterparts of what I am presently experiencing: the moon behind me as I long for the light to stay. The love that pours out of me as grief. Or how, as one hand holds the pen and makes the specific mark, the other holds emptiness - the open space for what wants to move through. 

As we slip into Darkness, perhaps hold the invitation to be also with the Light. As your right foot lands, feel your left foot beginning to lift. As you say No, hear where the Yes is opening. Welcome the last of the Darkness as the beginning of the Light. Welcome the No as the possibility of Yes. Welcome loss as beginning and, in every beginning, savor each moment with the full presence that remembering our mortality brings. When it gets lofty, hold your own hands, and try to discern which is touching which.

This invitation into dreaming in the Dark and remembering our Light was the theme of this month’s Yoga Nidra for Collective Care, which is a live practice I offer monthly via Zoom. Each month, the digital download of the audio practice is available by donation in my Ko-Fi shop. If you’d like to check it out, you can do so here.

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If you’d like to attend the next live Yoga Nidra for Collective Care practice, they’re offered sliding-scale on the first Friday of every month . You can also check out my digital download library of past full Nidra practices to work with any time.