Integration :: Elsah Cort's Blog

Our lives are spirals, often revisiting experiences, people, places, issues, so we can delve deeper and invite resolution.

Life's lessons come around and around again. See them set on a labyrinth path, where you can revisit "places" to uncover more truth for yourself. This does not mean staying stuck in the past, or mired in old ways of thinkng and acting.

The spiraling path goes deeper and higher at the same time. It makes us better human beings, and it enriches all life on earth.

Image Source: allthingslabyrinth.com

 

Spring blossoms depend on cold earth enveloping seed or bulb before they can sprout. What's incubating in your mind-heart?

The introspection, that comes with times of coldness in our lives, is critical for the creative blossoming that comes later. The tricky aspect of this inner work is not to become so cold in heart and mind that we freeze the process totally.

It is no accident that the earth and its yearly cycles allow for all of the natural world to come into being, die back again, and return again and again in such magnificence.

Remember, we are not aliens in this natural world. It is our birthing compost too.

[This winter referencing relates to us living in the northern hemisphere, but winter energies can show up at any time of year in human hearts...no matter which hemisphere we find our home.]

 

1884 pencil and ink drawing by Vincent Van Gogh, called "Winter Garden"
image source: vangoghgallery.com
commentary about this drawing here

Everything swirls around us, in us, settling for a moment so we can see it, know it. Then, it swirls again. Life's spiral.

In the midst of this whirlwind we attempt to rearrange its particles, sifting and sorting, arranging and rearranging. Even if we think all has been put right, life's energy momentum stirs it up all over again, giving us endless opportunities to see things in a new way. The most potent rearranging starts from the inside.

image source: scienceblogs.com

Your most potent work for the day could be found in quiet, out-of-the-way, spit and polish, simple endeavors. Be grateful.

How you do something, has more potency that what you do. Our simple, repetitve life maintenance chores offer us a daily opportunity to polish our consciousness.

The Zen saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water", wisely reminds us that maintaining our physical world is also nourishing for the spirit. Sweeping the floor can be exactly what you need to do today.

The sacred is always simple.

  

images from harmonygraceelohim.blogspot.com

 

Creating the made-up self you want to be is hard work. Follow the lead of your truel self. No great plan, just become you.

It's getting trickier, this idea that we create our future (which we do) and that we can control this creation step by step (which we can, in a way, but it doesn't really work all that well in the end).  The big question is: Do you trust yourself? Become acquainted with yourself, look in all your nooks and crannies, and make each day your birth day.

© Elsah Cort, from the Earth Series

Our duality world beautifully moves, between light and dark, he and she, you and me. Each seeks each other for one stroll.

This duality dance is often depicted as the Taoist yin/yang symbol, also called the Tai Chi symbol in feng shui. The symbol shows the "two" as static separations, with a symbolic circle of "the other" in each one, meant to show that there is no separation. Each moves toward the other, becomes the other, then moves back to itself. At any split second of this encircling is the opportunity for something never-before-seen to show up.

How to make a yin/yang symbol in Adobe Illustrator...

One more image below, just for fun...