Hello and welcome.
This practice marks the full moon,
A time when energy is high and the night sky is awash with light.
The lunar cycle is one of constant change,
Light to dark,
Growth to waning,
Beginnings and endings and renewal.
The full moon is a time for release,
For taking stock of where you are,
What you have nurtured and tended,
And letting go of what no longer serves.
Perhaps two weeks ago,
Or somewhere near it,
You sat in the dark of the new moon and planted something.
A seed of intention,
A hope,
A direction,
A quality you wanted to grow.
Tonight the light is full and it's time to see what has taken root.
This is not a practice of judgment.
The moon illuminates everything equally,
The beautiful and the difficult,
The expected and the surprising.
We are here to look honestly,
With open eyes and a kind heart.
Come as you are and as you find yourself now.
Find a comfortable position,
Maybe seated,
Maybe lying down,
And settle in.
Let your eyes close gently.
Take a deep breath in and let it go.
And again,
Inhale,
Then exhale,
Feeling your body release downwards.
Once more,
Inhale,
And on the exhale,
Let the business of the day fall away entirely.
Take a few more natural breaths,
And with each one,
Allow the room around you to relax.
Allow the world around you to become just a little less present.
The world behind your closed eyes,
A little more vivid.
You're moving from ordinary time into the time of the full moon.
Allow an image to form in your mind now.
You're climbing a path,
And that path leads upwards across the Scottish headland.
Short grass and pale stone beneath your feet,
The smell of salt sharp in the air.
It is late at night.
The sky is immense.
The full moon hangs enormous and silver above the sea.
And the light falls across everything with such clarity that the world appears to have been remade.
Every stone has a shadow.
Every blade of grass is silver green.
You climb steadily,
And as you do,
You feel the land rising beneath you,
Opening out.
The sea appears to your left,
Vast and dark and alive,
Sparkling with the moonlight.
Far below,
The waves are white,
Where they meet the rocks.
You reach the top now.
The headland is wide and flat here,
And the view in every direction is extraordinary.
Behind you,
The moor stretches away into the dark interior of the land.
And before you,
And to either side,
The sea.
Above you,
The great silver face of the full moon.
Stand here for a moment in the enormity of this.
A breeze moves across the headland.
It feels cool and clean.
It's come from a long way away,
From somewhere out over the open Atlantic,
Carrying the cold of deep water.
It moves through your hair,
Across your face.
And as it does,
You feel something anew opening,
The way a window opens to let stale air out and clean air in.
Near the cliff edge,
You notice something on the ground.
A branch,
Small enough to hold in one hand,
And hung with tiny silver bells that chime softly in the wind.
A silver bough.
In the old stories,
This was the branch that granted clear sight.
The one who held it could see things as they truly were,
Without the distortions of hope or fear,
Without the noise of what should have been.
You pick it up now.
It's lighter than you expected.
Hold the silver bough in both your hands and turn your gaze inwards.
Cast your mind back to the new moon two weeks ago.
Perhaps then you planted an intention.
You pressed something into the dark earth and said,
I am willing for this to grow.
Now,
In this full,
Clear light,
Ask yourself,
What has happened since then?
Not what should have happened,
Not what you hoped would happen,
But what actually happened.
Perhaps something shifted,
Visibly and clearly.
A door opened,
A step was taken,
A conversation occurred.
Perhaps the growth was subtler,
The change in how you approached something,
A thought that arrived differently,
A moment of unexpected ease.
Perhaps you encountered resistance and learned something from that resistance.
Let the images and memories come without any judgment.
You're not here to grade yourself.
You're here to witness.
Look at what the moon is showing you now.
This is the truth of the last two weeks.
It may be more than you expected.
It may be less.
It may be something you didn't expect at all.
All of it counts.
All of it is real.
A silver bow chimes softly in your hands.
And now you ask the second question.
What is ready to be released?
Every cycle is things that no longer serve us.
A doubt that kept circling,
A habit that held you back,
A way of seeing yourself that was smaller than necessary,
A story you've been telling that isn't quite true anymore.
What,
In this clear,
Clear light,
Can you see that you no longer need to carry?
You do not have to force an answer here.
Sometimes the full moon shows us what we expected.
Sometimes it shows us something we weren't ready to see until now.
Whatever it is,
Hold it gently.
From where you stand,
You can see the sea below.
The white of the sea.
The waves meeting the dark rock.
The great spread of moonlit water.
In the old times,
The full moon and the incoming tides are the time for release.
We're setting things down at the water's edge and trusting the sea to carry them out.
You cannot hold on to everything and still move forward.
The tide has always known this.
So take a thing that you're ready to release.
Be a doubt,
A story,
Some weight inside you and hold it for a moment in your awareness.
You're not abandoning it.
You're not pretending that it was nothing.
You're simply acknowledging that it has done what it could do.
And that now it is time for it to go.
Imagine it leaving you.
Not suddenly.
But as a breath leaves the body on an exhale.
Naturally.
Completely.
Let it go out over that headland.
Let that breeze take it.
Feel the space that opens in its absence.
Those waves far below are steady and unhurried.
The moon hangs in the sky,
Indifferent and magnificent.
And you are lighter than you were.
The silver bough chimes once,
Softly.
As if in recognition.
Stand for a moment longer on the headland.
Look out at the sea.
At the silver path the moon makes across the water.
That shimmering road that seems to lead somewhere beyond the horizon.
Then turn back to the land.
Moonlight illuminating everything.
Your small seed planted in the dark of the moon.
Being tended as the moonlight around it grew and grew.
Until now.
Take a breath in.
Full and deep.
Salt air and the cold and the vast openness of this place.
And a long,
Long,
Slow breath out.
You have done what the full moon asks.
You have looked clearly.
You have witnessed truly.
You have released what was ready to go.
The cycle continues.
In two weeks the dark of the moon will come again.
And with it,
Another chance to plant.
What you tend this lunar cycle will carry the clarity of tonight's seeing.
Place the silver bough back on the ground at the cliff's edge.
You don't need to carry it away.
The bough is always here.
For whenever you return.
Turn now and begin to walk back along the path.
The moon will light your way home.
With each step,
Feel yourself gently returning to your body.
To the room around you.
To the warmth of where you are.
Back to your now.
The headland is still there.
Somewhere beneath the surface of your everyday world.
The moon is still full outside.
The sea is still moving.
Begin to become aware of your physical body now.
Your fingers,
Your toes,
Your hands,
Your feet.
Your breath.
Ground beneath you.
Take a slow breath in.
And let it go.
Take another.
And as you exhale,
Bring a gentle awareness to the room around you.
It's sounds,
It's temperatures.
It's light or it's dark.
Take one final inhale.
And exhale.
And when you are ready,
Let your eyes open softly.
You have been seen.
Clearly and kindly.
In the light of the moon.
Carry that clarity gently with you into the days that follow.
Let that full moon bright,
Illuminating the sky.
Thank you for sharing this practice.
