Solstice Spirit Brings the WD-40

The summer solstice is the height of the south on the medicine wheel. The long days, the heat and intense light and warmth - everything is reveling in the life force coursing through the world, bringing all creatures into their fullness. The south, and the solstice, are connected to the energy of heart: the intense love of life, the passionate song of creation, joy, and wholeness.

The human heart has four chambers. In the material world, these are the two atriums and two ventricles, and each has a job to pump oxygen throughout the body. In the spiritual world, these four chambers of the heart pump spiritual power through us.

The clear heart pumps the power of true, clear, unafraid expression through us.

The open heart pumps the power of creativity, curiosity, and tolerance through us.

The strong heart pumps determination, courage, confidence and discipline through us.

The whole heart pumps faith, passion and love for the All through us.

To be human is to have this awesome source of power implanted in each of us. And to be human is to wrestle with shutting down or constricting one of more of these chambers. When the flow from any chamber is constricted, we leak energy, we become more susceptible to psychic attacks, and we create more suffering for ourselves and others through our decisions.

When the clear heart is blocked, we put on the act for everyone, we hold ourselves to inoffensive niceties and become comfortable with little lies on our tongues and the tongues of others; we make excuses and live in constant apology.

When the open heart is blocked, we become mistrustful of the unusual, we become listless and flat, uninterested in beauty, exhausted by change; stubbornness rules us, we easily fall into blame and finger pointing.

When the strong heart is blocked, we feel victimized by everyone and everything; inner voices of worthlessness control us, we can’t get anything done and we make fear our most trusted advisor.

When the whole heart is blocked, we lose faith in creation, we lose faith in the power of love to heal; cynicism and arrogance lie on our couch all day; wry cleverness and sarcasm rule our language as a defense against intimacy with awe and wonder. .

Much of our journey through childhood is about being taught to constrict one or more heart chambers, to diminish the flow. Think through your childhood. Which chamber was closed down in you, under the guise of becoming an acceptable person? For those who, as adults, decide to walk a spiritual path, much of the work is about renovating these chambers of the heart and reopening their flow.

These times we are in are all about Spirit renovating our hearts, wrenching open the old rusty valves. That painful squeaking you hear around you and feel inside you - what if that is not all made of old trauma and new fear? What if there is third thing operating in you: Spirit, with its can of WD-40, lubricating your old four-chambered heart valves, opening, opening, opening. Cool silver water and warm golden light flowing, flowing.

We are being flooded with new information and new knowledge. We already know that more information is not the solution we need. Information needs to be cooked into wisdom, and that is done in the cauldron of the four-chambered heart. Spiritual teachings, scientific discoveries, psychology – all of it needs to be cooked in the cauldron of the heart in order to be of any real use. Opening the heart, re-opening any chamber that has been constricted, is the core to every actual wisdom path, and its where the work is.

The first bit of the work is to merely become awake to this radiant, powerful, awesome gift implanted in you by Spirit. Make the decision to spend time each day visualizing this luminous gift in your body's center. Decide – yes make the decision – to trust that it’s all true, this heart of power. That is who you truly are.

We spend a great deal of time each day imagining the opposite – how wounded, limited and insufficient we are. We make this our daily habit, our daily meditation. The shamans call this being addicted to our suffering, riding our wounds like it’s our trusted horse. So, make the decision to also spend as much time imagining your silver and gold radiant-power heart, and make that your horse.

Then, you can go on to review each of the four chambers of your heart, asking which one(s) operate with a lower flow than you want. Ask Spirit to come with that WD-40 and turn the rusty sprocket. Face east in the morning and say it out loud: “Bring it, Spirit! Bring it! Bring the WD-40. Bring it now!”

Look at the qualities I’ve outlined in each heart chamber above and decide to put one into action in some simple way. You can begin by asking which chamber scares you, which one is most daunting. Ask, "What would my life be like if that chamber were fully open?” Ask Spirit to give you strength and support in all of this.

Wahoo.