Musings on the parallels of winter and emotional transmutation

As I’ve been contemplating winter, and working through my training with Dr Gabor Mate at the same time, I’m seeing some parallels in our (my) resistance to winter and to healing.

I say ‘my’ but most people I know like ‘sunny’ weather over grey (although I know for some folk winter is their favourite season).

Anyway, there are many like me that have hidden from winter, lived a life that is an eternal summer. Interestingly many of these people I know always are pulled or come back to winter climates in one twist of fate or another - it’s like we can’t hide from it forever, we need balance in our life and wintering often asks us to sit with ourselves in a profound way that when we don’t resist it can be so healing..

And so based on my own experiences and what I know about some of these other people I wondered if there is a parallel between resisting really being with certain emotions as that is what generally happens when we “winter”. 

When the endless partying and outward energy of the sun is over and we enter a more internal period, where we’re left to sit with ourselves with generally fewer interactions in the outer world THIS is the environment for our emotions to surface.

I’m realising through my current training with Dr Gabor Mate, just how much stuff I’ve repressed and then felt really ok spiritually bypassing - not wanting to go ‘there’. 

It’s like a 2 or 3 year old playing hide and seek and thinking that they if they close their eyes no one else can see them. We can also ‘pretend’ that we don’t have anything to work through if we distract ourselves enough.

When we ‘choose’ not to look at our stuff, it doesn’t make it any less real. It’s still vibrating in our field underlying and affecting EVERYTHING we do.

So maybe this is why I have hated winter. I’ve missed the distractions of not wanting to sit with my stuff. Skipping over this season could mean skipping over an opportunity to just BE with what is. Rather than always TRYING to live in an eternal summer. 

To really sit and be with something is where the transmutation happens. To be there in full loving presence, rather than just tolerating it for a moment, touching an uncomfortable feeling and running back up for air. 

Dr Gabor talks about the different between noble suffering from regular suffering - suffering for a transmutations to talk place, allowing a shift. Healing is the purest alchemical work. There is nothing to DO, it’s about deeply being with what is, being with something that is uncomfortable knowing that this very thing you are resisting is what will change and transform you.

I feel the season of winter is so aligned for this. That we retreat, we sit with whatever needs to come up and then we feel reborn and new for spring…

If you’re interested in winter support through Spiritual Mentoring let me know as we’re never meant to do this work all alone.