For the last several weeks I've been making my way through a wonderful book called Pronoia by Rob Brezsny. Its title is taken to mean the opposite of paranoia; the premise is that the Universe is actually conspiring to bless us. Now, I understand that this could all sound ridiculously "Sweetness-and-Light," but take my word for it: Brezsny is rigorous in his exploration of truth, beauty, joy, and compassion. He advocates building optimism not through a repression of difficulty, but by a vigorous engagement with it.

 

It has been a long and volatile winter, and, for a little while, it was tough to see the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel." A lot of us felt as though we were stumbling around in the darkness and stagnation of this period. Perhaps you spent of good bit of time these last several months psychologically/emotionally "snowed in," and were more or less forced to wander around in a shadowy, internal landscape.

 

Here is an apt metaphor. According to Brezsny, the "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." However, here, darkness does not connote doom and evil. Rather, it is about "the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination." It may help to reframe the nature of the recent period; perhaps you were dwelling in kumulipo....which eventually begets creation!

 

So here we are, finally on the cusp of Spring, and it feels like a particularly auspicious time. May we collectively harness this "pronoiac" energy and gleam ourselves awake!