All Rainbows Lead Back To Earth And Other New Year's Thoughts

On New Year's Eve day, late afternoon, I caught this rainbow. Full and sweeping as it took off and then landed again on Earth.

At first It looked like this:

Because, from where I stood, on the deck outside my home, I could only see this one part. Vibrant, with that rainbow range of colors that we learn about when we are little and that I often forget the order of when making rainbows of my own.

So this is how I saw it first, in it's half formed form. But I could tell, by the height that it held as the curve ran up into the sky, that there was more to this rainbow than first met my eye (sorry, that rhyme just slipped out!)

And so I stood a bit further out, away from my house and nearer to the railing of the deck, and there it was, the fullness of a complete rainbow, shining down upon the land in all it's New Year's Eve day glory.

I love that this rainbow, showing up on my New Year's Eve day, landed back on the ground for me to see. I love this because it celebrates the earthliness of me. 

This past year has been one of great shifting and changing for me. A stripping away of patterns that no longer serve and a stepping into myself honestly.

I nurtured both younger and older memories of me from when I was small and some from now, too. These memories are smart. They camoflaged themselves and held me tight in a way that felt safe, But they held me down also, stuck in a belief system that did not let me grow. And so, after thanking them for keeping me feeling nurtured in that familiar way when that is what I needed, I let them go. 

I examined habits - physical, mental, and emotional, too - and reached out to practitioners to support me as I create new practices to serve this wiser me. 

I stopped drinking alcohol - that not so often but when I indulged I really indulged vice - as a way to explore how that would feel. What did alcohol do to my body? To my mind? To my abilty to connect in to my spirit and to that great Spirit above.

And I woke up.

And through it all, I walked. Each day. Taking in the warm and sweet air when I was in Ojai, and bundled up against the coolness of the New England fall when I was back east. I walked, my dog and I, and as I walked I felt the earth, and smelled the dirt, and touched the leaves and took in deep air breaths so that I would not forget that I am part of this, too. 

So that, while soaring high in my soul's journey, I  also deeply settled into my earthbound body. Still part of this thing we call life. Still part of the human experience. 

There is this idea that we can only soar as high in our spirit as we are grounded in our bodies - in the being of being human. This belief is symbolized in the image of the balance tree.

That our roots, nestled deeply in the earth, allow our souls to grow full and free. And that we need this. This balance. The grounding into who we are in body while we nurture our souls awake. I think sometimes we forget this. That the being human of it all is why we are here. And so, as we travel down our roads of tranformation, searching for peace and understanding, for wisdom and enlightmenment - for the love that we forget we already are -  we often give ourselves a really hard time when the earthly bound stuff comes up still. When the humanness of being alive on this sweet earth manifests as those very emotions and physical ailments and struggles and challenges that we think we will overcome in our quest to reach the pure state of spirit oneness. 

We need both. Spirit and Earth. Our soul's work and the honoring of our human selves.

And so the rainbow. We don't often see a full arch, taking off and landing back on earth. Because where we are standing does not allow us to see. We see the colors extend out and up into the sky rather than land back down where we are. But if we take a step, move a bit, shift our gaze, the possibilty of seeing more is there. Seeing that the magical colors of sunlight on raindrops is landing back on the now wet soil. Landing back on earth.

​ Just like us.