I awoke Solstice morning to an artful sunrise. The sky was radiant and the colors diffusing through Gaia’s atmosphere were angelic.

I have been working with the angelic energies that are present during this season. Let me backtrack a bit. My spiritual teacher Norma Tringali taught that during the season we call the holidays, the Great Angels – the Seraphim and the Cherubim – are present. This means that they are closer to humanity during this time of year and their influence is somewhat accessible to us. Their historic seasonal presence is why angels have always been a part of the holiday iconography that we grew up with and mostly take for granted.

Here is my take, and please note that I have an affinity to the dark goddesses and gods, and feel most at home during the season of Samhain, but I have been guided to shed some of that darkness and to work on opening my heart because apparently this is the most important spiritual evolutionary task.

So, what to make of this particular force that graces us with its presence on the planet at holiday time? How do we access angelic energy at this most auspicious season, and for what purpose? Well, it makes sense to go back to the ancestral stories in which this earth mystery has been both hidden and revealed. The seasonal traditions call for us to be in “good spirits;” to cultivate a heart that is capable of compassion, of experiencing joy, and to nurture feelings of goodwill toward humanity.

With the presence of the Great Angels during this season, we are being reminded of the incredible energy of the open heart. We are being stimulated by nature’s cycles of light and dark that include the presence of the entities we have called angels, to make a quantum leap of forgiveness — which  means to let go of judgement —  and to cultivate merry-making, or joy states, that renew us at the end of the year. That sounds all “Hallmark,” but really it is a reminder of the teachings of the Christed one, who is in Christian mythology, born on the Solstice and who blazed the way of opening one’s heart to the point where enlightenment is possible.

What Norma Tringali taught about the Christ is profound, and I am just now getting my mind around it in this holy-day season. She taught that his sacrifice was a gift to humanity that allowed for an erasure of karma and the opening of a quantum window of opportunity that allows us to jump out of linear time. That means we have, in this season, a moment of grace in which we are able to reset our consciousness and align it with the highest energies of creation.

That is if we can open our hearts and forgive our trespassers, and forgive ourselves for all the times we kept our heart closed — those times when we chose to shut down and were not kind to ourselves and others. I know this reaction. I am guilty of it. Judgement is a part of that psychological and psychic mechanism that is a culturally-sanctioned response to being hurt, of feeling betrayed, of feeling disconnected to what feels like home. It is a response to trauma.

I watched a Christmas Carol again this season, which is the great Charles Dicken’s story that reminds us that to open our hearts we must accept our human legacy of being able to be in deep relationship with the rest humanity and to nature. This is what makes us great and what reminds us that we are connected to the angelic realm. We are family and their seasonal presence functions to remind us of our connection to creation. The Christmas Carol story reminds us that we have yet another chance during this season to take advantage of the window that the Christed one opened for us, and that the angelic presence of the season portends. It’s time to leap!

This is a picture of a pod of Orca we encountered during our cruise in Alaska. Being  in the presence of their life path opened my heart like Scrooge’s heart opens in the story. I literally felt my heart unclench, not unlike the Grinch —  another seasonal motif, and I gasped in joy at what I was capable of feeling! Release, relation, and remembrance! Being present in the company of migrating whales helped me to open my heart to this mystery. This is akin to the celestial power of the angels and the their seasonal gift of reminding us of our ability to open our hearts and to remember our connection with the rest of creation. I hope to invoke this expansive feeling this coming year and strive to keep my heart open despite the darkness. Namaste!