The changing of the seasons is once again upon us.  I love the changing seasons because it provides an awesome opportunity to step back from your life and really take stock of where you’ve been, where you are and where you are going.  The summer solstice, aka the first day of summer, occurs on Sunday, June 21^st this year.  I invite you to take time this weekend to get a little introspective about the lightness and darkness in your own life.  But first….If you read my post back in December about the winter solstice then you already know that solstice literally means ‘sun standing still.’  On both the winter and summer solstice, we respectively get the longest night and day of the year.    The Summer Solstice has been celebrated for centuries but in recent years, it is once again gaining a lot of interest. In short, it’s not just for witches anymore!  Traditionally, the summer solstice is a celebratory time.  It marks the time when you harvest what you planted in the spring.  It is also a traditionally ‘fertile’ time of the year (wink, wink).

Did you know that the term, ‘honeymoon’ is actually associated with the summer solstice?  That’s right, the “honey” moon is the traditional name for the moon that happens during the solstice.  Weddings often occurred during this time and the couple would share foods made with honey so that their lives together would be sweet.  The honeymoon provided an opportunity for the couple to be alone with each other and celebrate their union.

The moon symbolizes the cycles of a couple’s relationship as it waxes and wanes from full moon to full moon. Just like the moon, a couple’s relationship has its brighter moments and its darker ones. As a minister and coach, the past month was filled with both the light and dark moments.  One day I would be performing a wedding ceremony and the next day I would have a client sitting on my couch telling me their relationship was finished.  Both the solstice and my life experience this past month are good reminders that life is always about both aspects.  Sure, it would be nice to celebrate and feel light and free all of the time but it would not honor the great teacher that is the darkness.

On the summer solstice, I like to think of the sun shining light onto the darkest aspects of my life.  I use the light to reflect on the things that I normally keep in the shadows.  Since it’s also the season of love it is particularly important to shine this light into the relationships in your life.  Typically, we are able to learn more about ourselves from our failures than from our successes.  When you look around at the situations or relationships in your life, ask yourself, “What are my shadow aspects?”  We all have them, the key is finding out how to shine light on them.  Remember, that which we put in the shadows usually likes to remain there.  It takes true intention to really get in there and see what the heck is going on.

Looking at our shadow side in personal relationships can be challenging.  After all, we hid it in the shadows for a reason, right?  It can be difficult to recognize the things in our lives that are holding us back.  The first step to healing these things in the shadows is to shine some light into the darkness.  But, how are you going to do that?!
This is where I like to employ one of my very favorite tools- “You spot it, you got it.” 

The quickest and most effective way I have ever found to get a person to figure out what is lurking in their shadow is to employ this technique.  If you are ready to bring some light to your darkness, try this out.

Think of someone, usually a close someone, who drives you freaking bonkers.  And I don’t mean a cute, affectionate bonkers.  I mean the, “If this person does this to me one more time I may have to rip their face off” kind of bonkers.   I want you to close your eyes and bring that person to mind.  Ironically, the close someone who comes to mind can often be someone you also love very much, say your spouse.  Sure you love this person, but maybe there is one thing they do (arrives late, lies, forgets your birthday) that makes you insane.   The key here is that it is not just something that you don’t ‘like’.  You want to think of someone that does something that you completely loathe.  You will know the difference.  The loathing has a real charge to it while disliking something is more of a preference thing.  We all have likes and dislikes but that is a lot different from a feeling of intolerance. 

To illustrate, let me expose myself with my own, “I spot it, I got it.”  There was once a certain someone in my life that had a severe issue.  Let’s call this issue, “I wouldn’t know the truth if it hit me over the head with a shoe,” or “dishonesty is my middle name.”  This person’s incessant lying drove me to the brink of insanity.  I just couldn’t understand it. 

However, I had learned a long time ago that the people in our lives are here to be our mirrors.  They can only reflect back to us things in which we need to see in ourselves, and that includes the light and the dark.  The basic idea of the “You spot it, you got it” teaching is:  you can see their fault so clearly, because you have the same one.  ”Baloney!” I thought when staring into my own “You spot it, you got it” mirror.  “I am so not a liar!  I never do that.  In fact I think it is insane!” 

Unfortunately, I also knew this tool had never failed me. So I knew I needed to shine the light a little brighter into my own shadow.  This is when I learned the valuable truth -relationships don’t provide regular mirrors, they provide distorted fun-house mirrors.   I knew this reflection could not be exact.   I was not going around lying about what I had for breakfast, as this person was. I asked myself, “What about their behavior is really making me nuts?”  It was definitely, their lying.  I had to ask myself, “Where in my life am I being dishonest? Where am I liar?” 

The inquiry alone was enough to break me wide open.  I had to get honest with myself.  I realized that I too had been lying, but not to other people, to myself.   I so badly wanted to be ministering, coaching and serving.  I felt it so deep in my soul but I kept pushing it down.  I was scared of putting myself out there.  I was afraid of what people would think.  Every time I felt my spirit pushing me in that direction, I would start to lie to myself.  I would tell myself things like, “but you don’t have a church, this is not practical, you are not good enough,” fill in any interchangeable negative self-talk here.  I would constantly talk myself out of moving forward, that is, until I spotted it.  I spotted the lying that I hated so much in the other person right in my own heart.  In that moment I made a strong commitment to get honest with myself and as you can see, the rest is history.

The most amazing thing about doing this process is that it is transformative not just for you, but for the other person too.  Once I got honest with myself, the strangest thing happened.  Within a few weeks “dishonesty is my middle name” suddenly started becoming more honest.  It made me realize that the relationships we have in our lives -co-workers, friends, family, lovers, are all there to teach us valuable lessons about both our light and our shadows.   We simply have to be willing to let in the light.

This summer solstice why not use all the light present on this longest day of the year to enlighten yourself and your relationships!