How does your soul relate to all things February? I have never explored my inner life in a monthly design. Let’s do it this year! A year of meaningful months! What are the soul qualities we find in each month?
Your Seasonal Soul
For years, I have thought about and created for the seasonal soul and found it very enlivening. I know my favorite season is Autumn. Autumn feels exhilarating with the chill and growing darkness. I am so full of fire and bright light. Autumn balances me. Autumn moves me to think about facing challenges, to contemplate shadows. It takes me into the experience that dying away allows new elements of self to emerge.
What about you? What is your favorite season? Can you write down five reasons, inner reasons for your preference? And five outer reasons?
Your Monthly Soul
But now I am drawn to celebrating my monthly soul. Yes, you can expect me to send out a short post of reflections on the monthly soul at the beginning of each month.
Seasons are about Nature. Months are about culture, shaped by religious and national holidays, family birthdays, death days, and anniversaries.
Your February Soul
February brings these thoughts and feelings to my soul.
February is different. Just 28 days most years! And it adds a day every four years. I love differences so February is one of my favorite months. It stands out. I love that for three years it is just four weeks with no extra days. Then it leaps! When do you allow yourself to be different? To take a leap? A February soul has a perfect rhythm and no extras.
February is about indulgences and denials. Valentine’s Day and chocolate. Ash Wednesday, Lent and fasting.
February wakes up the heart. It turns us on to each other and celebrating relationships. All the pinks and reds warm us up. I just wish we spent more of our inner life thinking about love, devotion, and compassion rather than romance, desire, and loneliness. Valentine’s Day is the midpoint and a time to be grateful. If we turn this inner holiday inside out, it is a day for self-love and sacred solitude. Maybe we need the 14th to be about loving the other and the 15th to be loving the self. (Later this week I will be sharing some thoughts on how we each imagine intimacy.)
Ashes and Denial…In our consumerist, more-is-everything world how does your soul relate to choosing less or doing without? I don’t want this to be a yearly ritual of not watching a screen or not shopping on Amazon (no books!). I want this to be a practice of thinking about and evaluating all the things in your life, the things that fill up your space, the things that fill up your time and the things that fill up your consciousness…leaving no emptiness for your spirit to dwell. Give yourself a couple of hours this month to wonder, name, become more aware of your addictions, your anxieties, your biases. ( I have a self-study online course on this soul labor. You can read about Inner Lent here.) What about emptiness and fasting feels good to you? What feels threatening or uncomfortable?
February is the month I became a grandmother 10 years ago. Has it been ten years! I will spend some time on February 18th reflecting on all that grandmotherhood has brought to me… both burdens and blessings and so much joy.
Your turn. What does February bring to your soul? Groundhog’s Day, Candlemas, Imbolc…how does your soul experience these February days? How do you find Abraham Lincoln or George Washington in your soul? (If you’re not American, who are your national birthdays?) And your personal days? What relationship changes happened in February?
