In the chute

Tick tick tick. Only a few days now until 2013. At the end of almost every solar cycle, whether it's my birthday, the High Holy Days, or secular winter solstice, i.e. New Year's Eve, it feels to me as if the Higgs Boson field narrows and thickens. At the ends of these cycles I'm in a tunnel, speeding up even while meeting thickened resistance to the forward motion. The ends of solar cycles tend to be very dramatic.

I wonder if this makes sense to anyone but me. Remember I decided to break the habit of embarrassment about being a shaman.

At summer solstice, the timespace of the solar years feels like a large, round room, which is why I don't think of it as an end and beginning, even though, literally, it is. The equinoxes have some of that feeling of tightening and thickening yet speeding up, but those benchmarks in the solar year are far more gentle in nature, at least for me.

This year the chute out of 2012 seems somewhat treacherous. It feels icy, sharp and potentially dangerous. The sleet storm we had yesterday in DC mirrored what I've been sensing, as does today's sharp, metallic high winds.

We're moving along at a rapid clip through the Higgs Boson tunnel into the new year. Some years it's a water slide or a smooth gliding feeling in spite of added intensity, but this year it feels to me that we need to be alert, we need to be our best, most balanced selves. We need to be graceful, like dancers or martial artists, and honest, too, to make it through unscathed. Some will be sliced en route. It's inevitable in this kind of energetic terrain. Those of us who can stay relaxed, yet alert, will be better able to help those who come bleeding and limping into the new year.

Please do not ask me to explain how I know this or to prove it's true. I can't.

Shalom.