Feeling Stressed and Down?

Many people get “down” at this time of year.  An ex-boss of mine said that she hated autumn because all she saw all around her was the living world dying.  But that dying was only in her mind.  Nature never dies.

What it does is sleep.  The upper layers of grass fall away, and the roots remain, waiting for the return of the light in spring.  Trees lose their leaves so they can effectively hunker down and take their own hibernation time.  Roses drop their last blooms in December, just before the Solstice.  The Great Sleep overtakes nature, a time when the summer’s focus on growing, growing, growing can turn into the winter’s focus on restoration.

If you have the blues because you think you see Death all around you, be of good cheer.  The world is only sleeping.  And tonight, at 8PM PST, the nadir will be reached and the Light will begin to return to the Northern Hemisphere again.  We will all receive the promise that life is eternal and the Great Sleep will end in another cycle of furious growth and resplendent colors.

When nature goes inward, it is an invitation for the human animal to rest as well.  If you’ve been on frantic overdrive, realize that you are creating the definitions of Success and Failure that are driving you crazy.  Perhaps this year you can realize it and next year you can stop it?  At least consider that option.  If you don’t rest enough– thinking rest = laziness because that’s what corporate culture tells you, for their own greedy reasons – consider resetting your beliefs.  You do need 7+ hours of actual sleep and at least another half-hour of meditation, yoga or Reiki each and every day, if you want to live a long and healthy life.  The laws of biology apply to everyone, regardless of their income and Great Importance in The World.  The reason I get so much done in my working time is because I regenerate my energy through exercise and through rest.   You can’t keep dipping into your reserve tank forever.  Eventually, the well runs dry.  Consider this for the next 24 hours.

Most of our “downs” are, like the belief that we are observing Death all around us, or the belief that we’re not allowed to rest, thus self-created, which means that they will fall away in the moment when we stop believing lies.  [Not all “downs” are products of our thoughts.  If you get down every winter, you may have a biochemical form of temporary depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Get my book Journey Out of SAD and take your life back.]

The biggest source of self-inflicted pain at this time of year is the self-diagnosed Failure.  If you are down to your last dime, you are absolutely kin-less and friendless, and the food bank is out of food, then, yes, you have a real problem.  For most of us, it seems like Armageddon but if we get a solid 9 hours of sleep, and take a couple of naps, we’ll awake to the realization that what we are really facing is a mismatch between what we wanted and what we got.  This is a situation where the believers in a benevolent spiritual presence or benevolent spiritual laws have a real leg up.  They take a deep breath and sink into the comfort of knowing that whatever is in front of them is an opportunity to gain wisdom, and get on with living a kind and benevolent life themselves.  Maybe there’s a food bank in another town.  Maybe the local church has a warm place to spend the night.  Those of us who don’t have that philosophy need a world-view that encompasses the truth that we’re not supposed to go from pleasure to pleasure with nary a discomfort to be had.  That ain’t – and never has been – the human equation.  Into every life, some rain must fall, especially if you live in the Seattle metro area.

It seems obvious, but millions of people make themselves literally sick from fighting against this reality.  

If my first book hadn’t been botched by Prentice-Hall, I’d have been a millionaire in the 1980s.  I wouldn’t be working so hard for my daily tofu in 2015.  So what?  The road that “failure” sent me on lead me to the love of my life, a new career in comprehensive mental and physical healing and a completely different vision of why I was born.  

Why couldn’t I have a million AND the world’s best husband?  Why did my mother have to die in the grips of awful Alzheimer's?  Only children ask that question, grasshopper.   Adults let all the emotions generated by expectations of everlasting happiness fall by the wayside or slough off their backs like rain off an anorak.  Adults look around them and find the beauty in what IS, without comparing it with any imagined reality. 

It is Solstice Night.  In a matter of hours, the cosmic hourglass is turned over and the light begins to return to my half of the world.  Light is good.  It banishes SAD, and it makes it easier to step over, not into, the furball your cat coughed up overnight.  But the deeper Light – the Light of wisdom –is even better.  May we all awake tomorrow morning to welcome not only more light, but more Light. 



Visit my website www.soaringdragon.biz and explore all my programs for transformation - blasting you through barriers that are keeping you from the life you were born for!  The Facebook group Healing Minds, Healing Bodies also gets my announcements of new Webinars series.  Friday mornings Pacific and on YouTube humanbio4everyone after that.  Another webinar series on Wed mornings in 2016 on Creativity and it's link to health, wealth, and blasting through barriers