Welcome,
Welcome.
Welcome to another live event,
A live podcast.
I'm your host,
Amanda Machado.
Epidemiologist,
And teacher of conscious living.
Thank you for joining me together in community.
As we embark on this winter solstice blessing,
This connection and community.
This time together.
The winter solstice the holiday season.
Christmas.
It's really this beautiful time to feel into the blessing that is life.
It's a wonderful time to reflect.
Life can feel like it's moving slowly or it can feel like it's moving quite quickly.
And sometimes we can forget.
All of the things,
The experiences,
The encounters,
The connections that we made over the year.
And yet every single year that we have.
Every single year that we're breathing this beautiful life force energy that we're connected on this planet.
Is shaping us.
And so this is our time to come together to do that reflection in community.
To be connected.
To celebrate one another.
And to celebrate ourselves.
So as we do that,
Say hi in the chat.
Let me know where you're tuning in from.
Tatiana says,
Hello Amanda and everyone here,
Beautiful souls.
Hello Tatiana,
Hello all of you.
Thank you for saying hello.
Thank you for joining us today.
From the U.
S.
Love it.
And so those of us who are in the Northern Hemisphere together,
We'll also know that it's the darkest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
Today and tomorrow.
Will be the darkest days.
Hi everyone,
From Colorado,
Happy winter solstice.
And while it's the darkest time of the year.
It's also this time where we have this coming of light.
A coming of light,
A coming of truth,
A coming of life.
The light from our sun.
Has this undeniable truth that shines.
And when we really feel into it.
.
.
We can generate this awareness that Without our sun,
There would be no life on the planet.
None at all.
Our food chains would be completely broken.
We would not cease to exist.
And so when we have this dark period of time where we have this coming of light,
It's almost like this feeling or experience like a new seed being planted in dark soil.
Where the darkness is needed.
For the growth.
We're somehow beneath the dark soil that holds the seed of life,
New life.
The light of the sun finds the seed.
As the seed reaches for the light to grow.
And the same is true for us at this time.
And Christmas,
In the Advent traditions,
Is this coming of Christ,
Or Jesus.
And Jesus was,
Is,
The way,
The truth,
The life.
Or some may know Jesus as this Christ consciousness from within.
And so just like this seed.
What is awakening?
Something awakens from the seed.
In the darkness.
The Christ consciousness,
This awakening of a sacrificial love.
But not happening outside of us.
Happening within.
A sacrificial kind of love,
A high form of love.
And perhaps a deeper layer of consciousness,
A way of being.
And maybe this year,
Someone awoke this within you.
Maybe at some point this year,
You awoke.
Something within somebody else.
Maybe it brought chaos.
And maybe it also brought light.
Because without darkness,
We don't have light.
And so maybe at some point this year you had the opportunity to practice being in different layers or levels of consciousness.
Just like other Ascendant Masters.
Maybe this year you were given the opportunity to practice non-attachment like the Buddha.
Non-judgment like Yogananda.
Or maybe you grew your ability to be compassionate.
To be humble and kind.
Maybe you.
.
.
Started to generate this sense of humility.
That you never had before.
Because out of the darkness comes formation of the spirit.
Our spirit is like a blazing fire,
A flame on a candle,
A light.
And it is through the spirit that we grow.
And although sometimes we don't like the discomfort that comes with growth,
The discomfort that comes with being in the dark,
With being uncertain,
With being in this feeling of not knowing why or not knowing what will happen next.
Or perhaps feelings were awoken within you,
A deep form of empathy,
Empathetic love.
For yourself,
For others,
For humanity.
But maybe it was really uncomfortable.
Maybe this year you hit rock bottom.
And you had to swim to the surface?
Following the light.
With every ounce of life force?
That you had in you in order to come back to the center.
Maybe this year you were swimming at the surface and you were helping others.
Find that light.
Maybe this year wasn't as challenging as other years.
Maybe you were that light for others.
As they found their way through the dark.
And the interesting thing about light.
Is that.
Whether you are being that source of light.
Or someone else as being that source of light for you.
Or you're going through a spiritual,
Mental,
Emotional,
Physical growth period,
It's like growing pains.
When the light hits,
It hurts.
It hurts just like being born hurts.
There's this renewal.
That takes place within.
So at this time of the year.
Can you sit with the reflection of what this year held for you?
Can you sit with the renewal?
Without needing to make sense of every single piece.
Can you sit with me?
Experience within the vessel.
Of you.
As you allow transformation to take place,
Just as it does for the seed.
That grows into something else.
Flower.
A plant.
A human being with multiple layers of conscious awareness.
Because we know that light enters the atmosphere gradually.
It doesn't enter artificially.
We can't force it.
It's not like turning on a light switch artificially.
Just as the sun rises,
There's this gradual process that takes place.
And then there's this point.
Where the light of the sun becomes so strong that it shines and creates heat.
On every surface that it touches.
How does that feel from within?
The same processes take place within.
I'm reminded of this time in thinking about this type of experience that we have as human beings.
Where there were two.
.
.
Constellations in the sky coming together.
Astrologically.
I remember at the same time I was going through a period of spiritual awakening and it was almost as though I could feel the two stars coming together.
And creating this wholeness that I didn't have within me.
Or that I hadn't experienced within me.
Because it's not that we're not whole.
It's that we've attached ourselves to other experiences that take us out of the experience of our wholeness.
And yet it's like all of these things that happen in the natural world,
They also happen within us.
And they humble us,
These experiences.
These experiences of darkness and the coming of light,
They humble us,
They give us this humility.
They allow us to truly live this concept of non-attachment,
Of non-judgment,
Of compassion,
Being truly compassionate for somebody else and the suffering.
That they've experienced.
Feeling deep forms of empathy.
For another human being in just becoming aware.
They're suffering.
And yet the love that they have inside of themselves.
The desires that they have for their own life.
And then maybe through this experience of empathy,
A deeper form of compassion is born within you.
As a quality that is meant to stay within the garden within you as you live out the rest of your life.
It's that one experience.
It just takes one experience.
Whether that experience is in something that brings a sense of wonder to your life or that experience is something that brings a sense of pain and suffering.
Maybe both were experienced at the same time.
But that one experience has the potential to change the course of your life.
To grow qualities within yourself that you didn't think that you had.
And yet we're all capable of developing these qualities.
And a lot of it comes from.
.
.
Truthfulness.
There's this truthfulness that comes with this coming of light.
Sometimes with it,
Truthful confession,
Deep confession to yourself,
To others.
And maybe this is coupled with non-judgment,
A deep sense of forgiveness.
And a deep awareness for the human experience.
And perhaps throughout your journey.
This is where your voice is born into the world.
Maybe this year was tough and it brought some really uncomfortable Uncertain feelings,
But there was a truthfulness there that somehow broke your voice.
Out of the seed or the shell.
To grow in a new way.
Maybe the pain and the suffering that you experienced within this year or given year.
Maybe it allowed you to start creating your art.
Your artistry in the world,
However that looks for you.
Maybe you started getting more in touch with your own personal style.
Your own expression in the world that is connected to your essence.
Maybe you learned the power of the word.
Truthfulness.
The point is to reflect.
What is your word for this year?
What is a word that describes.
.
.
What?
You endured,
What you experienced,
How you felt.
Your expression in the world.
Maybe your word is love.
Maybe you learned a new form of love.
Maybe somebody in your world loved you so hard that you learned to love yourself.
Maybe you.
Learned to love others in new ways.
The light brings truthfulness.
And so over this next few days as we lean into.
The Darkest Days.
It's not something to be afraid of.
Darkness,
That fuels growth is different than,
You know,
Like a dark evil in the world.
Just like a baby grows in a dark womb,
A seed grows in dark soil.
We have these dark times.
In the night.
Where we quiet down our nervous system.
To be,
To experience,
To reflect.
And can we allow.
.
.
The truth of what comes to just be and to also transform us.
And so today I'm wearing black.
And.
.
.
It just felt like the right shade to wear.
Because we don't want to run from the discomfort or the uncertainty or the night.
It's a rhythm,
The day and the night is a rhythm.
And actually with color,
They say that.
.
.
The color you actually see with the naked eye.
Is everything but that color.
So if you see in your environment the color green,
It's the way that the light hits.
The shades that it is.
The way that your eye witnesses the light reflect on the surface.
Of something within our natural world.
And this is actually proven scientifically within the spectrum of light.
That it's everything but that color that you see.
So this black.
Attire that I'm wearing.
Is everything but.
And so what if the darkness was everything?
BUT What if the darkness was removing?
The illusion through the coming of light.
Could we allow.
.
.
For this lesson of truthfulness.
Because the spectrum of light What does it teach us from a spiritual perspective?
It teaches us that what we see isn't always so.
But what do you feel?
What truth,
What truthfulness do you feel in the depths of your heart,
In the depths of your soul?
And how does this relate to the absolute truths that exist for all of life,
Even if we experience them in a relative way?
And so even if we feel like we have these years that our heart was broken.
It's in this coming of light,
This coming of truth,
That maybe our heart comes back into one piece.
Enlightenment.
We become enlightened from the coming of light.
From the coming of light,
From the frequency of a spectrum.
From the fullness.
Enlightenment is not the absence of darkness.
It's because of the suffering.
And the darkness that the Buddha became enlightened.
It is through this.
Frequency of Christ Consciousness that our hearts transform and we generate the inner qualities,
We become the inner qualities.
That people like Jesus.
Were as they walked.
The earth as they interacted with one another.
And so we're gonna get into this next part.
Of our time together.
And those of you who are listening to the replay on the podcast,
You can join us in the next episode.
