As the world turns and the seasons change nature is showing us how to let go. Autumn leaves start to turn colors, preparing for the cyclical process of shedding that which we no longer need. The colors of the dying leaves enrich us with their brilliant display of beauty before being released back to the earth. The catalyst for this grand display of change is the journey towards darkness. As we head towards the end of our year we turn further away from the sun, the days get shorter and the nights grow longer, symbolically we are moving into the season of darkness. During this time we are reminded to take our own journey within, exploring and bravely traversing all that lies below the surface.
The myth of the ancient Sumerian Goddess Inanna holds the power of the cycles of death and rebirth. This is the heroine’s journey into the descent of darkness, the underworld. We may only enter this place in humility. Here everything we identify with is challenged, uprooted and stripped away. Our identity is obliterated and all false masks and pretenses are annihilated upon entering.
Inanna and Ereshkigal are the two faces of the wholeness, the sister halves of our own self. Together these goddess sisters are light and dark, heavenly and horrible, enticing and repulsive, acceptance and rejection. They are symbolically poised at the gateway of love and the unloved as we undergo the initiatory stages of our descent into ourselves.
Upon the death of her husband Ereshkigal, the ruling goddess of the underworld, calls her sister Inanna to join her below the surface of the earth to attend the funeral. Though Inanna is the Queen of Heaven the rules of the underworld and The Queen of Death, must be obeyed. Inanna mindfully and vulnerably enters the underworld. She enters humbly on her knees, exposed, naked, and stripped of all her clothing and adornments, stripped of all her worldly possessions and everything that she has identified with. When she reaches her sister Inanna is met with the “eye of death”, this look from Ereshkigal instantly annihilates her. Her corpse is hung on meat hooks and left to rot in the underworld.
From our friend Chani Nicholas…”The only beings that come to her aid are two magical helpers who appease Ereshkigal by witnessing her pain, acknowledging it and mirroring her struggle back to her. These beings echo Ereshkigal’s cries and wails. For the first time Ereshkigal is relieved of her pain because she is related to. Accepted. Given some compassion for her struggle. In return for this kindness she gifts them Inanna’s body and the goddess is reborn. Ascending to the Great Above, Inanna is renewed, but is never the same. Now fully awakened by coming into contact with the pain of her other half, Innana is, for the first time, a Queen truly worthy of her crown.
Ereshkigal is the deep reservoirs of power that lay within the unconscious. We cannot come into contact with our full potential until we are willing to descend into our underworlds, reckoning with the truth of what has happened to us. The struggle of marrying the unconscious and the conscious, the Queen of the Great Above, and the Queen of the Great Below, is a process of transformation so intense and painful we can only do it in the underworld. We need deep caverns, incubators, and safe places to grieve and reunite with ourselves.”
In the darkness is where all life begins. It’s where seeds sprout, it’s the fertile grounds in which to truly explore and nourish ourselves. It’s the place of death, transformation and beautifully enough, of all rebirth and growth. It’s the place where all healing and integration to wholeness takes place. When we turn within to forage through our past experiences and identities, humbly stripping ourselves bare, we find endless opportunity for release and unification. Creating time to be quiet with ourselves, to sit, to breathe, to examine, invites endless opportunity to bring all these aspects of ourselves together. Here we can move closed to the acceptance of wholeness and release that which no longer serves us.
Try This:
Find a comfortable place to sit, or lay down to find comfort. Close your eyes and breathe. Tune in to your body, sense the places where your body is rooted to the earth. Keep breathing mindfully. Now imagine all the places where your body meets the earth. Imagine that through your skin roots start to sprout. Each breath in and each breath out nurtures these roots to grow deeper and deeper, spreading out just below the surface of the earth and eventually finding their way deeper down. Imagine as you breathe in you pull energy up from the earth and as you breathe out you are releasing old stories, old pain, and old trauma. Continue this process until you feel a sense of deep ease, release and relaxation. When you are ready to come back let your roots be released. Take a moment to honor all aspects of yourself, those that are light and dark, accepted and rejected, loved and unloved.
Interested to learn more about these healing practices? Our Ritual, Healing & Sacred Waters Yoga & Self Discovery Beach Retreat in Tulum, Mexico is coming up March 30-April 3, 2019. Together we will explore healing power of Pachamama (Mother Earth) with ritual, movement, mediations, soul work and so much more. Learn more here.
Photo by Thu Tran of 2TPHOTO