Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you...
Every seed destroys its container
or else there would be no fruition.
~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

 

The above quote is one that I have worked with for years, it inspires me and reminds me that life, at it's fullest, most vibrant and raw is intense and electrifying.

 

I grew up with the idea that perfect union with Source energy would feel peaceful and calm. I was confused as a child when I would hear whirring in my ears and feel as though I were spinning in bed after saying my prayers, as I grew older and began to meditate I would have to end my meditations just as the 'click' was about to occur because it felt as if I were about to seize. During my training in energy work and Medical Qi Gong I began to grasp the concept that what I was and had been experiencing for years, was pure life force energy, qi, coursing through me at a high velocity. I was blessed that I could tap into it so intensely, and also challenged by my lack of grounding. I learnt techniques to ground myself, to breathe and circulate the energy and to really begin to harness this vitality that was willing and ready to course through my chakra system.

 

That is the energy that the above quote reminds me of, and it is the energy that I associate with Imbolc.

 

Imbolc is one of the minor cross-quarter celebrations on the Wheel of the Year. The Wheel of the Year is an ancient tool utilized to honour Gaia and Her cycles. It is separated into four major cross-quarters, Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox and four minor cross-quarters, Imbolc, Beltaine, Lammas, Samhain. Following and celebrating the Wheel of the Year is a potent way to honour the cycles of Gaia and to learn and grow in tune with the rhythms of the seasons. 

 

 

Imbolc marks the time between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, it is known as the Quickening and celebrated as the first blush of Spring returning. In my Prietessing work I have often had clients come to me around this time of the year feeling antsy, out of sorts and itchy to get moving and manifesting, yet irritated with the lack of energy and motivation to really get into action. This complaint has become so common that I prepare every year for at least one or two people to come to me with such an experience and my response is generally the same, "you are sensing the Quickening, you are rousing with the Earth, you are in tune! This Quickening is waking you up and calling your attention, it is asking that you begin to prepare to birth your creation into the world, but, the time for that birthing, the time for that manifesting work is not quite here yet. Be patient a little longer, be still in the midst of the great awakening and begin to prepare, your Winter's slumber is almost done."

 

When we are aware of the Wheel of the Year and working with it in a conscious manner, this time of year makes sense to us. During the Autumn Equinox we took stock of all that we had grown in the previous Summer months and harvested the seeds of creation that we wanted to nourish us during the cold and dark seasons. At Samhain we communed with the ancestors and received guidance and direction about what are deepest steps to take during the dark months of introspection were. By the Winter Solstice we had begun our slumber within the cave consciousness of hibernation, we celebrated the returning light and welcomed it to nurture the great seed that had been planted to germinate at some point between the Autumn Equinox and Samhain within us. Once Imbolc arrives that seed that has been germinating begins to poke her head up and to slowly rouse deep within the Earth. The Spring Equinox is the great time of birthing and the seed that has been awakening finally pokes her head into the manifested world, ready to grow and to become a new part of life. When Beltaine comes dancing and swooning in we have a moment to stop to soak up the beauty and the lushness of life as it begins to bloom, we celebrate the awesomeness of fertility and all that it creates in the world. The Summer Solstice illuminates what it is that we have manifested as our seed is now fully grown and we are called to tend our creation to it's highest potential as a servant and blessing upon the world. Lammas is a cycle of work, we begin to gather all that our manifestation has created and expanded into, we start to harness the potential of what else can grow from the previous seasons work and when the Autumn Equinox comes back once again, we harvest all of those blessings and potentialities and release any mistakes or undesired manifestations that may have occurred along the way. Thus another turn of the Wheel occurs and a new opportunity for growth and expansion dawns.

 

I love the cyclical nature of the Wheel of the Year and I also thrive on some sort of a rhythm to how my year will look, I can rest assured during the extroverted Summer months that my time to rest is coming and I can do much less in the external realm guilt free during the introverted months. Of course the opposite comfort exists for the extroverts, they can rest assured that excitement and joviality will return and harness patience and inner resilience during the darker months. This is a system I have become accustomed to and one that I have grown into quite comfortably.

 

What I hadn't realized is that a lot of my experience with the Wheel of the Year was cerebral and esoteric by nature, though the Wheel of the Year did connect me to my body's rhythm's and connection to Gaia's rhythm's it wasn't at a deep level. As I've mentioned before, I don't ground easily into this realm. I was missing a part of the Wheel of the Year because of my inability to truly feel into it, that is, until this year.

 

It has been pregnancy that has grounded me into the Wheel of the Year in a way where I am living it, rather than just following it. Beyond feeling like a cow ready for her first milk to start flowing forth from my darkened nipples, there is a Quickening that is happening for me as I finish off my final trimester, my due date is the first day of Spring, and I am truly in sync with the animals of the Earth that are heavy and ready to birth.

 

The Quickening is different this year than it's been in the past, rather than feeling inspired and excited about what it is that I am going to create, adventure or experience in the coming months, I instead feel like the poem at the beginning of this article. I feel ready to burst, ready to be shattered, but, rather than feeling as though it is an electric energy that is going to zap me into a new state of consciousness, I feel a heaviness, a weight (figuratively and literally) that I am ready to be freed of. There's a Divine discontent that arises for a lot of women at the end of their pregnancy, the body is sore, the bones splitting, there's a constant hunger, a struggle to move freely, unencumbered, and for this Mama at least, an intense orneriness that tempts me to shut myself off to the world and just sleep and read and eat chocolate until my body is mine again. This heaviness is an assurance that I don't need to prepare, I am being prepared, I don't need to plan, there is a plan in motion and with or without me this heaviness will be lifted, it will be birthed into the world and I will be freed once again. 

 

This is where I think I have been missing a part of the puzzle when working with the Wheel of the Year, Imbolc is a very embodied moment in time, it occurs during the Winter months, which I was trained to honour as the Earth element cycle of the Wheel, and comes during the time of Aquarius, a revolutionary Air sign. The Earth is the ruling element here, supported by the Air, not the other way around. I have approached Imbolc as a charged day where I felt into the energy moving through me and went into Higher Mind to decipher what it was that was moving me and began to map out how I imagined it may look coming into the manifested portion of the year. However, this year, I am learning to utilize the Air element as a support in ensuring that I'm prepared for when my "seed is shattered", I do this in simple ways, I contemplate all of the practical necessities I will need to care for my baby, I make appointments to keep on top of my health, I spend some time in the joy of imagining what life might look like with a new soul in the house and I might take some time to write and journal as well. The rest of the work at this point is purely physical and intuitive. 

 

I woke up one day a few weeks ago, sore back, pelvic bones that feel like fire, and had the impulse to organize and clean, this phenomenon of 'nesting' is familiar to women who have been pregnant, and similar to my previous pregnancy, it just turned on like a light one day. For the past few weeks naps, shows, snacks, meetings, have all been sacrificed in the insatiable pursuit of creating a clean, organized, beautiful home. This is nothing I could have planned for! I had the foresight to know I would have to prepare a space for the baby and that it would be in everybody's best interest that the house be clean and ready for baby, but had I taken that foresight and forced myself to get into action prematurely, nothing of the caliber that I have achieved (with great, patient help from my Beloved), would have occurred. The action would have been coming from the ethers rather than from within my own body's innate impulses.

 

Impulse! That is the term that Imbolc now symbolizes for me, this is a time for impulse and intuition and following the lead of our bodies wisdom. I know now, for every Imbolc to come, there is much less work mentally to be done at this time than I had realized. I do not need to know exactly what it is that I've been growing and germinating during the hibernation season, I do not need to know what it is that will be birthed, this is still the season of mystery. I just need to be with the awakening, with the impulses, listening for messages from within my wise womb space and then waiting to see what will come. 

 

Imbolc is the moment of pause, the deep breathe before one's whole world changes, there is no way to fully know what is to come and the deeper we allow the mystery to be, the more open we are to the endless possibilities of what life can look like after we birth into the Spring season, the greater a chance for the Creator to fully express Her intention here on Earth through each one of us.

 

When Imbolc dawns early tomorrow morning, I will awaken and I will sit with the seed that has been growing within me and I will listen. I will celebrate the life that is about to burst forth from me, I will revel in the sensation of milk rushing into my breasts once more and I will give thanks for this time of rest that I've had, to grow, to rejuvenate and to prepare for a whole new world to dawn with the coming of the Spring.

 

Many deep and heartfelt blessings to all of my Sisters and Brothers, may the Quickening be invigorating and may the impulses that fire within remind us all of our latent intuitive knowing that is just waiting for us to open a way for it to shatter our existence into a whole new life experience.

 

Grace Be With You,

Priestess of Grace,

Candise Soaring Butterfly

 

 

artist unknown to me, please pm me if you know who the artist of this beautiful picture is.