Seasonal Message from my teacher Master Peng
On Sunday, December 6th, the twenty-first phase of the Chinese seasonal calendar begins. This phase, Major Snow (Daxue), starts at 11:09 AM EST as the sun crosses 255° Longitude (15° Sagittarius).
Major Snow is the third of the six phases of winter and as we course through the “midpoint” of winter a unique aspect of the season manifests more fully in nature. Over the next fifteen days, the rising tide of darkness will increasingly blanket the Northern Hemisphere as we approach the winter solstice—the point where daylight sun is the shortest time of the year and nighttime darkness is the longest.
Accordingly, the theme of this seasonal phase is darkness and the meaning of Major Snow resonates with the qualities evoked by the absence of light. In the summertime there is an abundance and light and during this season it is appropriate to be confident and to take bold action in the face of the unknown. Summertime and risk share the same nature. But the unknown brooding inside winter darkness beckons caution. In the grip of winter with a limited food supply, bounded by cold, threatened by harsh life conditions, and surrounded by darkness, one emotion emerged organically above all others in the historical past—fear.
Fear, like all other emotions, can manifest both in a healthy and in an unhealthy way. Wedded to awareness, fear guides us to wisdom by inspiring strategic thinking and calculated timing. Fear informed by wisdom thinks twice and consults with intuition before taking appropriate action. It stacks the odds in its favor before enacting a plan of action. But without wisdom to guide fear, that same emotion can freeze action and paralyze growth. The function of fear is to caution action and to help us time events carefully and to not negate activity. And if wisdom informs you to refrain from taking action right now, then fear transforms into the virtue of patience.
Caution and patience are the wise expressions of winter darkness.
Now is the time of the year to leverage darkness by cautiously engaging those aspects of life that usually fill you with dread or fear. By moving in resonance with this principle you come into harmony with the quality of the season, befriend darkness, and make an ally out of fear.
The vertebra associated with this Major Snow is Cervical 1 (C1). It is connected with the blood supply to the head, the pituitary gland, scalp, bones of the face, brain, the inner and middle ears, and the sympathetic nervous system. Massaging and meditating on C1 can help to prevent you from having headaches (including migraines), nervousness, insomnia, amnesia, head colds, high blood pressure, dizziness, and chronic fatigue.
