June Solstice 2025
Greetings of the Solstice, wherever you are, where we celebrate the light with the longest day or sit with the dark on the longest night. The Solstice represents the highest pendulum swing to one side of day or night, dark or light. As we shift through the Solstice, we begin to welcome its counterpart, its partner—I almost say its opposite, but I do not believe they exist in active opposition, but in balance with one another. We cannot have one without the other.
How are you doing at this time of transition? It feels as if the human world in struggling with its own transition into something more sustaining for us and the planet. One week there is news that things are shifting in a positive direction, when the next week it seems, as if in reaction, things are shifting in an equally negative direction.
Some days it feels as if the force of destructive control and the force of resilient resistance are in an opposition energy that’s fueling each of them, only bringing in more and more division. And other days it feels as if this opposition energy is waking up more and more people—people who don’t have direct power to change things, but whose power and action contribute every day to a shift in consciousness about what is true and good in the world.
Besides remembering these things, the joy and empathy in our daily lives, we also need to remember not to disown our own darkness. Living our lives in opposition (sad/happy, dark/light, bad/good) only creates more division in our outer world. But the more we accept, heal, and integrate our own darkness, our own “bad” thoughts, the more we create balance—for our personal selves and for our outer world.
Many scholars, teachers, leaders (for example, Carl Jung) have told us that the more we deny our own negative aspects, our shadow, the more we push that negativity out into the world. That darkness has to live somewhere, and, if it’s denied or disowned within our own hearts, it will expand itself in any way that it can. Loving ourselves despite that darkness, especially if we can show love and compassion directly to the darker parts of ourselves, can help us to reclaim our responsibility for helping to balance these forces.
Opening ourselves to our shadow aspects and being willing to accept them can take time, patience, and healing. If you feel called to take a deeper step into this work in your own heart, and you need a guide, please reach out for a session. As many of you know, traversing the darkest parts of ourselves and our world is a central part of the work that I’ve been called to do.
New Posts
I hope you’re enjoying my short posts on stillorigin.blog. My early June post, “Superiority as Separation” was writing that I struggled with for some time. The issue of superiority touches on so many other areas of life, and separation is created by so many other actions, that it took time to distill any of what I was exploring into a coherent, concise post. What I realized is that these posts will all interweave—one will relate to another and another, as if they all together tell the full story.
I also wrote something a little different in June, “Meditation with Swallow,” while sitting outside and taking a moment to simply be with the natural world around me. I call it a meditation because it’s about noticing what I notice,* and listening for/following the message or truth that the moment is offering. I expect that I will be posting more of these meditations, and I hope that they will act as respites for us from the bigger issues of our times.
A Meditation Practice
This present moment awareness is a practice that all of us can do on our own with nature. It starts with quieting the mind enough to notice what we notice, rather than trying to notice something. Then, we connect with our intuitive listening in order to hear its message, which is often in the form of metaphor. The flower growing out of a crack in the pavement is a common one, but also one that we won’t always notice. Sometimes the message is in the caress of the cool breeze or the incessant caw of the neighborhood crows.
Just noticing what we notice is a beginning. We can even do this on a walk with a scrap of paper and a pen, noting what we’re noticing and where our attention goes as we move through space. Many poets, artists, creators have been inspired by this kind of noticing. Maybe you will be inspired, too.
Sending you the blessings of the dark and the light, the unseen and the seen, and the quiet messages of the season ✨
Warmly,
Kathryn
*Gratitude to my Reiki teacher, Eileen Dey, for tuning me into “noticing what I notice."
