Samhain, the Celtic New Year, begins at this time. I tend to celebrate this rather than the more culturally popular Halloween, though like all celebrations that occur at similar times they have similar roots and often share a lot of the symbolism of the time. The Celts considered cycles to begin at dusk, and so it is that Samhain is the dusk of the year, as we make the transistion from Summer to Winter. Like Halloween, emphasis is on the energies of this time of year creating a threshold between our manifest world and the Otherworld, a place which has rules more like dreams than waking reality. As such, spirit communication is far easier, hence all the ghouls and ghosties that are about (be they in costume or otherwise). One main use of this time is for contacting one’s Ancestors, those that have been before, and in some traditions setting a place for them at the dinner table is customary.

Our roots are an important part of us, whether we realize it or not, and if we look at it metaphorically, we are unlikely to maintain any degree of stability without a strong root system. Without our ancestors, we would not be here. They survived, they gained wisdoms of their own, and some of that passed on the generations, through mother and daughter, father and son, until it reached your parents and then you. As times change wisdoms get lost, but they can be regained, and making contact with our ancestors is one way of doing that.

How you do this is up to you. Perhaps you would like to simply say a prayer to honour the fact that the people in your family history survived well enough to give birth to the next generation, making your life possible. Perhaps you’d like to learn more about your family tree through family records, hearing old stories from elder relatives, and weaving stories of your own from photographs and letters further back. Maybe you fancy getting in touch directly, through dreaming or trancework or seances. The important thing is to state your intent to work with and regain your connection to your ancestors, be they of your family line, or human line, or beyond, your spiritual family (Mother Earth, Father Sky, anyone?). From there, trust whatever process unfolds. Great power can come from this knowledge that your whole family line support you (even if they don’t always agree with you!).

This, like any other of the Celtic Festivals, is all about connection, and marking the changing seasons and the changing cycles. I am still surprised by the depth of connection I feel when I engage in these celebrations, just closing your eyes and feeling the change take place as life flows on can be a joyous and powerfully life-affirming affair. And if these special times can be that way, shaped by our own intention and focus, what would life be like if we brought that intention and purpose to every day, or every moment?

To know where you’re going you must know where you’ve been.

That’s right, I’m 25 years old today! Quarter of a century. And I don’t care what you say, another year older is another year wiser, and it’s definitely something to celebrate. Like a fine wine, the Quality of my life is only improving with time. Leaping over the bars I had considered “as good as it gets” and going up and up and up and up.

As my dear friend Andy said to me, “Onwards and upwards my friend”. Allow me to offer the same feeling to you.

To Life! * clinks glass *

We want everything to be perfect, right? Everything to be better than it is. Our feelings to be always positive, our health always excellent. I know that I often do.

And yet, I’m now coming to learn of the difficulties that kind of thinking and believing creates. Most obviously, if we look around even for a moment we’ll see that this kind of perfection (one borne of good and bad, better and worse) doesn’t exist anywhere else in nature. Some trees are healthy and some are not, some young, some old, some dying, some waiting to be born. Leaves come and go, some times there is strong growth and at others there is little growth.

That’s all very well for things that are part of nature, that cannot really be anything other than what they are being, but what of us humans with our minds and thoughts and passing emotions? The advice is actually the same, but it seems that it shouldn’t be, with all these processes going on that we should be able to control.

Our thoughts come and go, and while it is true we can choose what to focus on, there may be thoughts that seem to appear from nowhere, and disappear just as quickly. Is it wise to expect all thoughts to be positive? Is it wise to stress out about such things, clamping down hard on our thoughts to try to make them all “perfect”? Is it wise to judge ourselves by the quality of our thoughts, or to identify so strongly with them that we say “I am my thoughts”?

Likewise, our feelings come and go. What are you feeling right now? Just one thing, or are your feelings in flux, changing one moment to the next? Things are not as solid or constant as they appear, so is it wise to expect all feelings to be positive, especially if they too seem to come and go of themselves at times? Is it wise to judge ourselves by the quality of our emotions, or to identify so strongly with them that we say “I am what I am feeling”?

Hypothetical questions aside, even if we look at a broader journey of illness to health, many will be familiar with the saying “things get worse before they get better”. Relying on whatever stage we are at in that moment to judge ourselves good or bad or doing well or not isn’t a path to peace and well-being, because how are we to know what’s really happening? Something taken on its own as a snapshot might not give us the best view of the whole process, like taking a sentence of speech out of context. If we have a cold, all snotty-nosed and stuffy head, it could just as easily be something deep inside our body reaching the surface to be cleared out rather than us becoming worse in health. If we’re feeling angry and irritable, it could just as easily be us finally getting in touch with our emotions after bottling them up for years, acknowledging long-held resentments and repressed feelings.

Looked upon this way, we must ask the questions, “what is health?” and look for a new way of analysis that doesn’t cut things into neat slices, a way that doesn’t rely on the judgement of good or bad or strict comparison between this moment and that. We must take a broader view, trusting in the process of moving towards greater and greater fulfillment and health of our spirit, and see that actually, like the trees and other things in nature, we too move through life as a cycle and a circle, through seasons and years and stages, from nowhere to birth to growth to dying and death and nowhere once more.