Spring is unfolding quickly in North Carolina right now. We are watching the world wake up around us as plants that have cocooned in the dark rich fertile earth are coming to life again. I have always found peace and comfort in nature and the Earth’s seasonal cycles. It is beyond amazing to me to witness again and again how the earth keeps showing us we can blossom after allowing ourselves to rest and dream in the dark, quiet, stillness of winter.
The pictures I have included here are lotus seeds that my son collected in the months after Andres died and one of the flowers that produced them. My son carefully collected the seeds, picking each of the multiple individual seeds from the pods of our lotus flowers that had bloomed. I was truly surprised that I finally had success growing lotus flowers last year after other failed attempts. Each individual flower seemed to bloom at the exact moment I needed inspiration, encouragement, comfort in the weeks following Andres’ death. My son and I decided to see if we could get the seeds to germinate. And after months of daily attention, changing the water, and giving them space to soak up the warmth of the sun and water so many of them sprouted. Each one seemed like a little miracle to me. Each sprout also seemed to come at the exact and much needed moment, just as the blossoms.
In these past 8.5 months since Andres died, I have come to realize how very much I love the dark. As I grieve losing Andres, I realize how much I need the dark, the quiet, the stillness, the time for quiet still time to grieve and to allow the healing to unfold in its own time. The still quiet dark tender time is also when everything – the pain, the fear, the longing, the grief, the insecurities, the shame, and doubts – can rise up and demand attention.
Each and every one of us has inner light and radiance. One of the reasons I created Inner Radiance Institute is that when we are exploring and navigating the dark tender inner parts of ourselves it can help to have a roadmap and light to guide the journey to help us understand what we might encounter on the way. In Chinese medicine these inner lights are the five organ systems or your shen zhi or heart mind. These are thought of us our five inner lights or our virtue. I think of them as the essence of who we are at our core. They are our sense of Divine order and Divinity and Big Love, our truth and trust in our own inner guidance, our courage to express this inner truth with integrity, our ability to walk into the unknown and find wisdom, and our ability to have loving kindness toward ourselves for waking our path. This is who you are and it lights your way and anchors you as you explore the darkness.
These light can become dimmer and clouded as we navigate the challenging and hard moments of life. It is a daily practice to acknowledge, nurture, and cultivate those parts of our inner world. The lotus has always been one of the inspirations in nature for me because it grows from the rich fertile dark depths of the earth and reaches toward the heavens. In Chinese medicine, we humans are the children of Heaven and Earth that reflect the marriage of both spirit and matter. The lotus is a tangible organic reflection of that truth. These months of deep grief have shown me over and over again that, like the lotus, in the midst of the messy, dark, moments we are germinating and transforming. And that I, that we, each have our own inner light and essence that shines even in what feels like the darkest night.
You can sign up for my free course, What is Your Inner Infrastructure, to learn more about these parts of yourself and how you carry within you the light for your own path. Check out the home page to sign up for the free course.
