Solstice Message: The Day of the Longest Light

The day of the longest light is upon us. We know on some level that the occasion is meaningful. And that our rituals and ceremonies and observances add unique layers of meaning for us one turn of the wheel of the year at a time.

I’ve always been of the mind that if people like something, there’s something to be learned from it. Good or bad. Or scary. If a tradition develops, there’s something to be explored. If everyone has the same questions, there is something to be answered.

Why are so many of our world monuments aligned to the summer solstice? It’s easy to make assumptions about it. To look at a hammer and nail and conclude the building of something, when it’s just as likely the taking of something apart. We should be wildly circumspect about drawing conclusions on behalf of cultures and societies earlier than ours. We prove ourselves wrong so often we might have learned something from that by now. We are too hasty with our conclusions. In the process we miss the parts which are truly magnificent. Our face in the map, we miss the road.

There’s a show on the History Channel called Ancient Aliens that’s a perfect example of this. It’s one of my favorite shows, by the way. Not because I agree with everything they say, but because of the monuments they show and the questions about them they raise. But the problem is, they only see human history as a straight line. Steady progression. ‘We are more advanced than our ancestors, therefore all advanced architecture from the past must have been built by aliens’ Well, maybe it was. I don’t have enough data to form a conclusion. And neither do they. They see things they don’t understand and conclude aliens. I have no reason to disbelieve in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, nor their possible involvement in human affairs. I never got a memo about it either way. But humans may very well have been more advanced in the past than we give them credit.

I’m more inclined to believe that we are not the first developed human civilization here. There’s so much geological evidence of world catastrophes during the known existence of humanoids on this planet that it’s not impossible to imagine those catastrophes might have periodically set back the growth of humanity like a hard reboot on a computer. Forcing us to virtually start over from scratch with only a few stories that make it through. How quickly do we forget our knowledge once the library burns down, and the hammers to rebuild it are lost, and the architects who remember how to use them are gone? Even our DNA suggests we come from very small groups of people with much older DNA behind them.

Ancient eastern Indian texts, the Vedas, describe events which look like atomic wars. And there’s actually geological evidence to support that. But we stand there blinking our eyes like a deer in headlights because it just does not compute with our previously held conclusions about the steady progress of humanity. We think all humans before us were stupid. Events like ice ages and super-volcanoes disrupt the food chain and render exceptionally vulnerable whole societies of people at once. We take for granted how stable our world is today by comparison. May it remain so.

Much like our DNA, many of the ancient monuments we see around the world today are known to be built on the foundations of structures even older. Or in the case of Mayan temples, just building a new one around and over the old one, like Russian dolls. Sometimes there appears to be evidence of many previous structures underneath an already ancient temple. And there’s no way to know anything about any of it really. Not really. Not that we shouldn’t look or explore. We should do it even more, in fact. But our arrogance and hubris and egos compel us to make premature declarations of so-called fact. And then we use all our energy defending our outdated correctness until we wear ourselves out. Instead of continuing to explore.

We should be at greater peace with our ignorance. Anxiety prevents us from learning. It slows it all down. We will never have enough evidence to truly understand the minds and hearts of ancient cultures. We barely understand how our neighbor thinks and from the second floor we can see them standing in their backyard in their underwear. Humility is the spiritual path. Explore and ask and poke and prod. Expand your mind and your sense of wonder. Use your imagination to fill in the gaps, of course. But don’t be tied to what you imagine. Don’t expect to be correct forever. If ever.

Humility allows us to give meaning to what’s right before us. For this time. As it is. As we’ve been left with it. Our ego relaxes just enough to let go of the illusion of control over knowledge and history. Let me tell you now: History is never known. Yesterday is gone and all we have is editorial, no journalism. There is no unbiased human observer recording or reporting the true story of humanity. We are a self-reporting society who utilizes the honor system and only the victors have pen and paper. Have fun with that.

Be curious about history without attachment. Don’t maintain expectations of what history is trying to tell us today. No one from history is telling you anything. They don’t even know who they’re talking to any more than we know who will be reading our words a thousand years from now. We have no idea how to even speak to a person of the 31st century. We have no idea how they will interpret our ideas so we do not really know what language to speak. The Rosetta Stone can translate Egyptian hieroglyphics into ancient Greek. But it doesn’t tell you how to read between the lines. That kind of hindsight is not 20/20.

So what we have in our monuments is exactly what we have in our spiritual and sacred texts: We have what we have. We have what is before us. We do not know the future and we do not understand the past. We have today. This moment. This edition. This translation. This archeological dig. This day. Give us this day... We have what we have. Which includes our present mind, our present ways of thinking, our own colored glasses that will leave this world with us. We have only the collective energies of those around us. This is what defines a moment. This is what gives monuments and books meaning. What we think of them right now.

So what are the facts? We have monuments which we know align with the sun on the longest day of the year. We know that we have long-standing traditions which huddle us together at the opposite end of the year when the day is shortest six months from now and reminds us of the light that will come six months from then. Those are the limit of what we concretely know.

And, here it is now. The light. The most of it you’ll ever get in one day. And for some reason we all find meaning it that. Meaning enough to build huge structures at great cost and effort and loss of life just to ensure we never forget that when nothing but darkness seems to be around us, the light is what counts. The light is what never goes away. Not really. Place your faith in the light. Even if you don’t understand. Take heart in the fact that the solstice is a flower’s favorite day. The day in which it grows the most.

If you’re walking down a path and you see an arrow what do you do? If you trust the path and those who maintain it, you might assume that’s where you are intended to go. And you thank them in your heart for pointing the way. What if you see a hundred arrows? Even on a path you may not trust, a hundred arrows is pretty persuasive. What if there were literally thousands upon millions of arrows from different times and places in the world all pointing at the same keyhole? Would you look? Or would you check to see how old the paint is on one of the arrow signs nearest to you?

Don’t wonder so much that you miss out on the spectacle. Your soul already knows what to do. Breathe in this longest day, this glorious source of life. Turn your face to it as we know all humanity has done for as long as we have noticed the sun itself. Let go. Let it in. Allow the light to make you whole, to make you holy. To remind you, not teach you. To awaken what is already there. Never fear. The truth is the truth no matter what you believe. And there will never be a word in any language for it.