What Does Your Heart Long For?

A Solstice Invitation

Heart Nebula, permission from astrophysicist W. Ostling, The Astronomy Enthusiast

What Does Your Heart Long For?

All around us, it is dark. And for many of us, darkness also prevails within. It is hard to be who we are in these times and in this world. We are sad, angry, and frightened.

We are desperate for healing – as individuals, as families and communities, as a nation riven by mistrust and hatred, and as a planet reeling from our mindless destruction of our only home. We are overwhelmed by all we know now of ignorance, greed, and violence. And post-2020 we have had the plague, the Corona virus settling into every corner of human societies. We are swamped by fear, and rightly so.

To begin to extricate ourselves from this profound mess of our own making, we must begin by healing ourselves. We each must stop and listen within for the voices of fear and longing, and begin there. Our destination is the deep layers within, where old fears lie and fester. Even though they may be quite invisible, long forgotten and long denied, they shape every aspect of our lives: who we are, how we relate, and how we even see the world around us. Those hidden fears, buried in the Shadows of the unconscious, create what we believe is “the real world.”  It isn’t, of course, for it is a world fashioned by illusions and projections. It is not a world where we might flourish.

P. Gill, The Radiant Heart of the Cosmos (2022)

Take a few moments to sit quietly and join me in asking yourself a simple question: What is my heart’s deepest longing? Let your mind be open, curious, and perhaps, surprised. Let your question follow you around all day. What is my heart’s deepest longing? I have learned, over and over, my own healing begins in utter darkness. We mark the winter Solstice because it reminds us that the darkness gives birth to light. May you too know this deeply. All blessings of this season of darkness and light!

And many thanks to astrophysicist Wiliam Ostling for his kind permission to include his remarkable photograph of the Heart Nebula.