We Are the Light

Happy Solstice Everyone.

This time of year is all about light. We put lights on our homes and trees. We light candles. Here in the northern hemisphere, the days get longer minute by minute as the Earth tilts us toward the sun.

We need the light to buoy us through the cold weather and the crazy sense of uncertainty as our collective consciousness shifts, causing what seems to be chaos in the world at large.

We could say that our light comes from the sun, or from the candles we burn, or from the festive holiday lights we string up. All of those sources of light are temporary. Day fades into dark night. The holidays pass and we put our candles and strings of lights away til next year.

We can find a more eternal source of light within ourselves.

The HeartMath Institute tells us that our hearts emit a strong electrical field. Our heart fields are bigger and stronger than the electrical fields emitted by our brains. And our heart fields become larger when we turn our attention to the heart-centered feelings of gratitude, appreciation, love, joy, and peace.

Our hearts are a source of light that is not contingent on the spin of the Earth or the availability of fire or electrical wiring. We turn on our light when we seek and find those heart-centered feelings inside. And our light burns brighter the more we focus our attention on those feelings.

Holiday times are difficult for many people. Sad memories or feelings of not belonging to the festive social scene can make it hard to find our heart-centered emotions. Sometimes we cannot do this for ourselves. This doesn’t mean that our heart-centered emotions don’t exist within us. It’s just that we sometimes can’t find them. Our thoughts, or our memories, or our fatigue get in the way.

We can, however, help each other find our hearts. This is best done simply and quietly. A gentle smile. A mindful pause. An acknowledgment of someone else’s experience and feelings.

It’s easy to get lost in holiday rushing around. But when you pause to say thank you, when you make eye contact with the person serving you, when you hold a door open for the next person, you are shining the light of your heart, increasing the light circulating around the world. Acts of kindness increase our collective light. Mindfulness increases the light we all feel.

Light does not do battle with darkness; that simply is not the nature of light. But darkness cannot withstand the presence of light. When we find and activate the emotions of our hearts, we shine into corners we may never know about. Every pinprick of light we can find within ourselves adds to the whole.

As we close out this calendar year, as the days get longer, let’s remember to try our best to find and activate the sources of inner light: gratitude, appreciation, love, joy, and peace. Let’s remember that we are the light.