The sun at its lowest point continually lights a path into the human heart. This is the meaning of the winter solstice event in Newgrange in Ireland, where the sun’s rays on the shortest day of the year penetrate the narrow passageway into the chamber at the center. The path of the sun is a coming, an advent, into the center of the human being. And there are many other paths which prepare for this. The path of the angel into human consciousness, bearing a message. The path of a star across the sky. There are paths which are singular and subjective – for example, the path moonlight takes across the water to where you stand. No two people will see exactly the same path, because no two people stand in the same place. Likewise the path between you and a rainbow: a rainbow is not an optical illusion, it is a singular, subjective experience based on where you stand in relation to sun and rain. But you will never objectify it or make it the same for all people.

That the sun must light its path into your heart is the most significant thing of all. You may stand and gaze across the country, seeing its low rays catching the stubble in the fields, almost awakening a memory of the long stalks swaying in the summer sunshine. But the view is frozen: frost creates a floor for the fields which seems permanently white; sheets of ice evade the fingers of attempted thaw. There is something about the frozen world which will never change. At this point only the human heart is capable of making a wondrous birth, a new beginning. And this it does within the shrine at its center. The world lives again because of this leap in the human being, which the angel has foretold, which the path of the star has revealed in the sky.

All this may seem like anthropomorphizing, like unscientific clutching at straws. But science has lost sight of the individual path, of the singular, subjective event in human life. The path of the human being down through the stars onto earth is another such event, capturing, at the moment of birth, the exact brilliance of all the planets and constellations in a unique way. No two human beings have the same horoscope, even twins born ten minutes apart. For many people these things are just fanciful – but in their hearts, I believe, they are longing for a return to the deep truths of the subjective path. The mind can create objectivity and has to do so, but experience must be allowed. The path to the Guardian Angel is the one I would finish on. A childish notion? Let it be so. But a living being who has our unique, individual interests at heart in a way that only a child’s eye for truth can properly comprehend.

Emerald

In the light and color of my precious stones

I see the thoughts I lived in times ago -

their emerald flash, their diamond intuition -

when I knew, without knowing, that earth was home.

And now that home is here in times

that have their knowing but know least

I’d think those thoughts that time again could find

in far off ages when the sun sinks low.

Jewels

And yet my feet must tread the silent air

while everything below grows crystal clear:

the emerald green, the topaz turquoise blue,

and rubies set in solitary skies.

I’d scale it into words, which minds can wear,

this earth which is so secretly divined

that only trailing beams of winter sun

can buy me pendant eyes to see its jewels.

Path

The lowest sun of all may stop the world

and light the soul within its place of birth -

thus stubble-fields stand golden for an hour

while frost remains their permanent white floor;

furrows stay their crumbling, sheets of ice

outlast the fingers of attempted thaw.

And then a path of sunlight seeks my heart

without which earth will fall and time stand still.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

A Path of Sunlight – Newgrange