Born in Winter

On Embracing The Dark and Moving Through Cycles

I - Introduction

Before all things reborn again

You learn the painful breath of time

Cold morning stretches out your arms

To the mighty warmth of one golden sun

These are the opening lines to a song by French metal band Gojira titled Born in Winter. It’s a beautiful song, nothing like their usual aggressive riffs and growling vocals. It’s somber, pensive. The vocals are low and warm (at least for the most part). I like Gojira, but can only take so much of their sound. This song has always stood out to me for how comforting it is amongst a barrage of death metal fanaticism.

Winter is my least favorite season. It hasn’t always been, but as I’ve become more conscious of myself and have learned to intentionally heal, winter has always felt like a wrench in my growth. Life slows down, it nearly stops. The days become ridiculously short, and if you miss the small window of sunlight, you just have to live in the dark. Without access to steady sunlight, vitamin D levels drop, sadness creeps in. Everything becomes cold and pale. The snow can be beautiful, but it is also a grim reminder that you are now trapped against total outdoor freedom. Limited to the indoors, winter feels more like a cage than a natural season.

I always feel like what moves so effortlessly the rest of the year is now held in stasis during winter. The best we can do is hunker down and wait until spring. That’s what most of the animals have in mind at least, and who’s to say we are anything special?

Of course, reading this, you may think that I can just go somewhere warmer during winter and avoid the headache of the cold. You’re right. But that wouldn’t make for an insightful article in the slightest.

Life is about experience, and winter is as fundamental as any of the other seasons.

While I do intend to migrate towards warmer climates in the next big chapter of my life, my time in the northern regions of the country isn’t over yet. And while I’m here I feel that learning the lesson of winter is high on the to do list.

The lesson of winter. What does winter teach us? More importantly, how does winter enrich us, enliven us, and live on through our patterns and experiences of life.

In this article I will be discussing the nature of embracing winter as an alchemical process, understanding nature’s never ending cycles as felt experiences that live on within us, not just without. It will discuss death and rebirth, and the cyclical patterns that underlie all of nature, including ourselves.

Grab something cozy and let us begin.

II - Learning to Love the Dark

Winter is characterized by many changes in the environment. Leaves have fallen from their trees, leaving them wiry and ghostly. The air shifts to a crisp, biting lucidity, cutting through skin and layers of clothing. Weather patterns shift, bringing snow (or just more rain). But one of the most evident shifts is the shortening of sunlight hours.

The earth literally turns away from the sun. Left to meagerly skirt the horizon, the sun feels like a distant friend or past lover, embarrassed that we may accidently run into each other while it’s out.

In this weird non-talking phase of the earth and sun’s situationship, the earth gets to become well acquainted with darkness. Abandoned by the warmth of the sun, everything quiets externally and turns inwards, and this is exactly where our potential reward lies.

Slow down, pause, reflect. There is no rush here, only long, cold nights, and endless material to reflect on. If the height of summer is about exploring and expanding, winter is about contracting and reflecting, taking what was experienced and internalizing it, learning from it, using it to grow in wisdom and understanding.

What’s learned in the quiet space of winter can yield powerful new sprouts in spring, and erupt into even more life enriching and expanding experiences in summer. Without this reflecting phase, summer’s lesson would not be internalized, leading to more restless expansion without direction, without depth.

Inner depth can only be reached by slowing down and turning inwards. By halting the stream of excitement long enough to sit with what’s floating to the surface. This is difficult. Like facing winter, it requires facing potentially demoralizing and depressing feelings; feelings as heavy and cold as ice and snow.

It is this avoidance which drives one towards seeking endless summer. Towards endlessly searching for something that will make them happier without reflection on what that could possibly be.

Collectively, there’s a massive tendency towards this endless summer. The internet is flooded with people promoting being healthier and happier. There’s a deep urge to feel good, and to want to feel good all the time. This doesn’t have to be denied, my entire page here is dedicated to helping you liberate yourself from these negative patterns and…feel really good. There is a difference though, in endlessly chasing the sun, and realizing you are the sun.

The issue stems from an incapability to sit with a wide range of feeling states, to let go of the need to feel good and instead aim to feel whole, to have patience with yourself as you explore the roots of your experience, not just the fruits.

It could even be said that the entire root cause of addiction is an inability to sit with feeling states without acting upon them, for fear that the self will experience such negative states that it will literally cease to exist—opting instead to chase an artificial high to avoid this.

By facing our own inner winter, we make a conscious choice to face the pain, the turmoil, the ugliness of depression and misery that may be lurking in our shadow. By making this choice we are entering a pact to be open to feeling—all of feeling. And this is exactly where the boon lies. By making this conscious choice, we open up to these denser states, liberating ourselves from their hold. In an equal and opposite way, we are opening ourselves to even greater heights of joy and bliss.

When we expand in one direction, we expand in the other as well. This is why endlessly chasing a high creates a powerful pit that lulls us down into despair. What goes up must come down, but what goes down must also rise again.

Even if the earth’s weather patterns shift dramatically in the coming decades, winter will continue to hold a seat at the table of our lives. And if we carry enough bravery to face the cold unafraid, it can offer us a profound period of confronting our inner depths.

III - Embracing Death

For the past two and half years I’ve worked at a memory care home. I plan to devote more time and attention to writing about my experience there, as it has indeed been a profound experience. I never anticipated getting to work with the elderly, especially with dementia. I have been more exposed to end of life and the process of death than I had ever anticipated I would, and have felt more loss of connection with people that I have befriended and lost there than I ever thought I would at my age.

(Had to take a break there as I was quite overwhelmed with tears while writing about this. I’ve been listening to Gojira as I write this article as well, and something about the timing of this section while The Art of Dying plays was painfully beautiful.)

I’ll never forget the first time I witnessed someone after they had passed. There’s a strange element to corporate end of life communities where there’s little talk or acknowledgment when someone passes away. Their body is often taken out quickly and stealthily, and there is no room for grieving.

One of the families had opted to leave the person’s body in the room for the day, with the option to go and say goodbye. I didn’t really know this resident that well but I still wanted to be able to say goodbye, and I’ll admit there was a part of me that had a morbid fascination with wanting to see a dead body in person.

It had somehow worked out that when I went into the room there was no one else there. Just me and her. I entered the room, my head filled with weird expectations. I had tried to empty my mind, and just allow myself to feel what I would feel. There was a divider up in the room between the door and the bed. I’ll never forget turning the corner and the feeling of shock that racked my body upon seeing her.

No inner visual has prepared me for that experience. My mind was empty, I just stared as my body felt so frozen, so silenced. The room itself felt frozen, eerily petrified, and I kept thinking that something was going to happen, that she would blink or cough or just breathe. But there was no movement. The longer I experienced the lack of movement the more I felt something rise inside me, some deep ancient panic, an urge to run away and not look, to move as far away from the experience of death as I could lest I fall to the same fate.

I feel a deep reverence for the person who allowed me to see her like that. There’s a level of intimacy in witnessing someone’s dead body. There’s nothing to hide anymore. There’s almost nothing even there anymore. In all the ways we feel so ashamed to be seen when we’re alive, there’s nothing there anymore to control that. We’re left to decay, to dissolve back into the primal ocean of nature.

I don’t think if I had listened to that urge to flee in the face of death, that I would be here writing this. And this extends well beyond this experience. Somewhere inside myself I have acknowledged that embracing death is necessary, that embracing the ending of things is important for movement towards a happier and healthier life.

Holding onto what has chosen to pass is holding onto a decaying form, a form that has already crossed the threshold of maintaining its vitality. No amount of wishing will reinvigorate the lifeless body. The chapter is finished, the book is closed.

And though it may appear to be gone forever, this is only a mere illusion. The experiences we had, the feelings that were invoked within us live on, perhaps eternally. Feelings that can be shared, passed on themselves, move from form to form, forever.

Working in this home, I have gotten to meet many people who I formed an enduring bond with. And I’ve gotten to experience losing them, sometimes without any warning.

I could choose to stuff my grief, to deny my attachment, or I can witness the death of the parts of me that were attached to them. This can be feared, or it can be seen as a celebration—space clearing for new life to emerge. I get to experience death alongside my friends, and embrace the timeless lesson of letting go, that no matter how hard we try, we’ll all return to the void from which we came.

Nobody can escape the haunting call of death.

IV - Everything Moves in Cycles

I finished writing that section while listening to Gojira’s The Way of All Flesh. At the end of the song there’s about five minutes of silence. I finished writing it right as an undulating guitar riff started back up again from the silence. (Yes I listened to the full 5 minutes of silence).

If there’s one thing for certain about winter, it’s that it is always followed by spring. No matter how dark and dreary the world may feel during winter, the promise of spring stands strong and eternal on the horizon.

Everywhere in nature you look, cycles are present. The sun rises and sets on a cycle. As does the moon. The seasons churn through their temperaments on a cycle, and even humans follow our own inner cycles. Often the moon is associated with feminine principles because it follows a similar cycle to women’s menstruation. In a similar way, testosterone in men tends to cycle once per day, being at its highest levels at the beginning of the day and waning in the evening, much like the rise and fall of sun. This is why, in many classical myths and literature, the sun has been associated with masculine principles.

But on a deeper level too, we are governed by cycles. We live out internal patterns that form a matrix within us, ebbing and flowing through consciousness and unconsciousness. This is largely why attuning oneself to the natural rhythms found in nature can aid so much in establishing an inner feeling of security and groundedness.

History itself follows cycles. Certain ideas and political climates seem to grip the world in cyclical periods of time. Each time something cycles around however, there is a difference in other cycles within orbit, leading to a world that looks radically different than before.

We are no different. Our inner patterns play out while we move through a web of contexts-within-contexts playing out around us, invoking certain states, influencing us to repress others. When I speak about “collective trends,” I’m merely pointing to these larger influential cycles. These merely offer a sounding board for what we get to experience within ourselves.

When we track these cycles, just like learning about history, we can begin to notice the deeper underlying patterns both within us and without. Doing so shifts the holding pattern away from the control of the unconscious, and moves it into the light of consciousness. Here we can see it for what it is. Here we can watch as it peaks and falls, and how we move with it. When we familiarize ourselves with an inner cycle, we can begin to see where it’s wanting to be transformed.

As it returns to its origin, we can choose to shift the cycle, to elevate or expand its palette. Instead of unconsciously living out these endless patterns, we can begin to experience something more, something transformed.

This is alchemy. This is transmutation. This is allowing the cycle to die, so that it can be reborn as something else.

This is also the power that our consciousness has when we embrace the totality of felt experience. When we stop running from our feelings, we are welcomed into their secrets. We are welcomed into the intimate space of witnessing their decaying body, of supporting them as they begin to cross beyond the veil. We get to be a part of the true experience of death—a rebirth into new life.

If everywhere you look in nature follows a cyclical pattern, why wouldn’t the experience of death be the same? After all, the atoms that compose our body return to the earth from which they came, being reabsorbed and transformed into something else. Why wouldn’t our consciousness do the same?

Regardless, utilizing our consciousness to help facilitate this death and rebirth process is one of the most powerful things we could possibly do. This goes well beyond changing ourselves on a deep enough level to start living happier and healthier. This stretches into the collective matrix of interwoven contexts, of which these inner feelings play an integral role.

As Gojira is now appropriately singing in my ear, “When you change yourself you change the world.”

V - Rebirth

I was originally inspired to write this article after a friend of mine recently gifted me a Lego set for Christmas. It was a botanical set that modeled a plum flower plant. The set was based on an artistic theme present in classical Chinese art. Four plants that flourish during the four seasons, known as “the Four Gentlemen,” or “the Four Noble Ones.” Each one represents a different virtue.

The plum blossom is the plant that blooms during winter. It represents strength through adversity, of flourishing despite unfavorable conditions.

As I was reading about this, I felt quite overwhelmed at the symbolism in this plant. I identified so heavily with it. After all, my entire blog is dedicated to healing and becoming the best version of yourself. You don’t need to heal if you weren’t wounded, and I’ve been fairly wounded in my life.

But more importantly, like the plum blossom, I’ve learned to bloom in the depths of my suffering. I made the conscious choice to dig into the depths of my soul and transmute all this pain into eternal gold. I chose to allow my selves to die so they could be reborn stronger than before. A metaphor that I’ve been continuously coming back to is that of a golden flower blooming in the depths of a murky swamp. I feel as though my soul is pushing against the muck and shit that it’s been suffocated under, to blossom and bloom despite the adversity.

As you move through the different layers of experiencing yourself, you feel this death most painful as the structures of your ego begin to fall away. Dilapidated and restricting, these ego structures are archaic patterns formed to serve you at a time when you likely couldn’t make sense of the world. They worked at one point, but life demands expansion, and these only serve to hold you back.

When they do break, it’s usually not by choice. Most people who find themselves on an inner or healing journey, or any kind of spiritual journey really, didn’t do so because they were content with what life had offered them. There was likely some heavy pain and sadness that was experienced, where life had proven to only be a bitter and hostile place.

I know that when I experienced my first real inner winter, a dark night of the soul if you will, it was from the culmination of many experiences that had all broken down at the same time. There was nothing left to hold me, my ego was strewn about like the last leaves of fall.

I remember a particularly pivotal moment, after something truly soul-seering had happened, where I was frantically trying to articulate what I was experiencing to a friend of mine outside one evening. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure which path I was going to walk down, because it seemed that either path would utterly destroy me. What I did know though, was that I was going to sit with the feelings that arose no matter what. I wouldn’t escape the bomb that wanted to detonate inside me.

As I said this, a massive comet skipped across the sky. I’ve never quite seen a shooting star like this one before, as it literally spanned the entire sky. It was a powerful confirmation, one that I’ve never forgotten. One that has paved the road for where I’ve gone since.

That no matter what happens, I will not run from the feeling of it. I will move towards feeling —which has turned out to be towards life itself.

Life changed rather quickly and dramatically after that. People were removed from my life, I started working with someone to help me step into a more conscious version of myself, I made huge shifts in my health and habits. And I embraced feeling as a basis for reality, not as some extra fluff I sometimes engaged with.

With the complete eradication of who I was, I was left adrift on a sea of consciousness and potential. What was a shoddily constructed structure that stood as a placeholder for my identity became instead a warping in the fabric of my experience of consciousness. In its stead now stands a center of life-force and vitality, a source of gravity that has anchored my experience into something real.

This is the gift of embracing death. Fully allowing the experience to die, we are greeted with an improved version, something truly eternal and enduring. This new structure couldn’t be taken away, as it has moved beyond the limitation of death itself. Free to exist as it will, fearless.

As we near the end of this post, I leave you with the final lyrics to Born in Winter. And may you go forward with a new appreciation for winter and the courage it may spark in you.

One day you’ll walk the world and keep in mind

The heart you’ve been given in winter time

And through the bitter cold, with opened eyes

You’ll find the strength to fight and stand upright

Interested in 1-1 Coaching? I offer an integrative and holistic coaching service that will help you spot and work with your inner patterns and beliefs, allowing you become the most healthy and aligned version of yourself. Click here to learn more.

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