The sun is always there ☀️
Sometimes the reminders we need to hear are the simplest ones. I recently went to my favourite sacred spot on Mount Tamalpais. It overlooks Stinson Beach and the mighty Pacific Ocean. This place features natural rock formations that I call my personal Stonehenge. There’s something very special about the energy there.
On that late afternoon, I was searching for an answer. For months I’d been harbouring heartache. And, while my stint at Vipassana helped my heart’s healing process, it still carried much grief, anger and sadness. I didn’t know what else to do anymore.
My heart felt closed - closed to connection, to joy, and to life itself in many ways. While there are times where we must close our hearts for protection, there comes a point when the pain of keeping our hearts closed is greater than the potential pain of opening them again.
The trouble is, opening our heart isn’t always easy or instant - especially not after going through great heartbreak and keeping it closed for so long.
So as I sat on a rock overlooking the view, I turned inwards. It didn’t take long before anger and sadness came roaring to the surface. With nothing but a few birds and a large cloud bank floating above the horizon to witness my upset, I wept. It felt as though I was touching the deepest wells of human sorrow.
The overlook where I sat. The weather seemed to match my mood.
The weather seemed to match my mood. The large dense wall of clouds floated over the horizon, darkening the landscape and making it feel very chilly. The colours around me were muted. I shivered as I cried, feeling miserable and wished I’d brought another layer.
Suddenly, a sliver of bright light began to peek out from under the thick cloud bank. There was a break in the clouds that I hadn't noticed before. The sun was setting, and as it neared the horizon, its full round radiance came fully into view. Suddenly everything around me was bathed in the most exquisite and sublime golden hour light I’d ever seen.
My tears of sadness turned into tears of joy as the message came to me: the sun is always there!
The moment when the sun popped out from behind the clouds to engulf the world in golden hour radiance!
Even in the moments where things look hopeless, dark, cold, closed and miserable, or the clouds hide the sun’s brilliance, it shines regardless of what happens below it. In the same way, our ability to love and live with an open heart as loving awareness itself is always there, even when we feel hopeless, despondent or disconnected.
If it sounds absurdly simple, it’s because it is. This is no grandiose “download” from the universe, but simply a loving reminder to anyone tending to an aching and/or closed heart (and I gather that many of us are doing so at this moment). Though you may not feel it right now, your heart’s warmth and brilliance is always there, always shining, always ready to radiate and connect. Trust that. After all, the sun always returns even after the darkest night.
Sending you much love out there ♡
