Into the night...

Sunset, Cahill's Lookout, Blue Mountains

For many years my self practice has always been a morning ritual. It is a launchpad to my day. It sets the tone and gives me more focus, awareness and ease to move through the day. 

In the last month, I have shifted my practice time from the start to the end of the day - not for any spiritual or timely auspicious reasons, but simply to work around Rod's work schedule so we can spend more of the day doing things together (e.g, he doesn't have to wait 2 hours for me to have breakfast!)

What I thought was going to be a jarring change to my practice rhythm brought about some unexpected insights.

So this is a little tribute to honour these solitary evenings on my mat, the moving backdrop of dusk into moonlight, saluting the changing of light, into the embrace of a deep dark silence - within and without.

The magic hour happens around 8pm in the summer season of the southern hemisphere. The distant sun drops into the western valleys of the Blue Mountains. On clear days where the clouds are white and fluffy, the tungsten light turns the leaves on our mulberry tree gold and copper.
On cloudy days, a seeming million shades of amber and magenta and pink colour the sky, cutting through the evening mist.

I drop into the sweet aching of the body as it stretches and rolls and flows with the ever expanding breath. Then it all melds into the dwindling light, birthing night. The sun surrenders in grace, making way for the moon to reflect its magnificence. Day submits into night as seamlessly as the inhale succumbs to the exhale, neither one regards itself more vital than the other. The sun and the moon and the dance of the inner breath..... And at the moment the last light yields, there is no regret. The night welcomes the next breath, the body remains as the moving conduit between earth and sky. Beneath the darkness lies the vastness of peace, where fears are only shadows lurking in the moonlight, where demons play hide and seek just so we can see through the humour of the game called life, where hopes for tomorrow seem to await in eternity but there is little hurry to leave the present moment.

​In the endless night sky where clouds shroud the moon, where stars speckle across infinite galaxies, I am only dust.