2025 Winter Solstice Greeting
From Cie Simurro
Our Neighbors
Advent, and the Winter Solstice is a time of reflection and waiting for a rebirth. This Advent/Solstice especially, in order to overcome a lack of hope, let us give up any anger or hatred, violent acts, and also give up judging others. As Amma says, “The spirit behind Christmas is that of loving each other, giving and sharing. The holiday urges us to relinquish our hatred and enmity, and to forgive and forget. Love thy neighbor as thyself, as Christ said. Our neighbors are those we encounter in our day-to-day life.”
May we take the opportunity to visualize a world of hope, peace, and love between us and our neighbors. This Solstice, let us include in the definition of neighbor – Mama Earth, the plants and trees, and all the animal species with whom we share so much more consciousness than most of us realize. Let us decide this Solstice, to rejuvenate our relationship with these our neighbors.
Spend time with Nature every day. Let the birds, animals and insects teach you their Medicine. Observe carefully. Begin with simple things like being in the woods, and absorbing the sights, the sounds, and feel of the trees, plants and flowers, the birds, insects, and 4-leggeds; those who swim and fly, climb and run; those who crawl. Maybe you’ll connect while gardening, or after a snowstorm; walking through a park, or sitting by a pond.
In the plant kingdom, trees communicate with each other using pheromones and other scent signals. Through an underground network of mycelium (fungi) with tree roots, they send complex chemical/electrical warning signals about pests, drought or disease, thereby creating a connected forest community. In turn, the fungi consume about 30% of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar fuels the fungi, which scavenges the soil for nitrogen, phosphorus, and other minerals, which are, in turn, absorbed and consumed by the trees – a perfect example of how reciprocal all of nature is!
Let us open ourselves to the truth that each species has so much more consciousness than we currently realize. Besides being capable of a wide range of emotions including happiness, empathy, grief, embarrassment, and compassion – animals like elephants often live in families and protect one another. Trained dogs are able to sniff out some diseases like cancer, diabetes, and impending heart attacks. Elephants and whales are just two of species who use low-frequency sounds to communicate over long distances. Bats, dolphins, frogs, and various rodents use high-frequency sounds to find food, communicate with others, and navigate.
Animals who need rescuing often know when a human is trying to help them. I can attest to having been shown trust and affection after saving the life of a Great Blue heron who let me walk into a pond and jimmy off a Fisher-Price stacking ring from the top of its beak. In North Carolina, I rescued a yellow Swallowtail butterfly that had been blown into traffic racing by. It then stayed on my crown chakra all night long until enough trauma fell away so I could place it gently on a bush in the morning. I was so happy when I saw it could fly away and resume its life. On a journey to attend a sweat lodge with Grandfather Limping Snow Wolf, a couple of my former students and I survived a rainstorm with torrents of water flooding the road. Later, at Grandfather’s, I rescued a male Luna moth out of the fire pit burning wood for the lodge. I gave it a healing and then left it on the roof of the lodge while we were in ceremony. Four hours later, he was still there, barely hanging on. I cupped him to my heart and poured more healing into him. He stayed there for the next 28 hours. After that he was ready to fly to the hillside behind the visitor’s center where we had pulled in to sleep for a few hours. I thanked him for his Medicine and moved on.
Those were only some of the experiences I’ve had while being glad to be of service to the animal kingdom. I’ve felt a kinship with animals all my life. Even at five years of age, a black kitten came in through the window to our brownstone apartment on the parlor floor in Brooklyn. I named him Black Chief (where did that come from!), and then a few months later, my parakeet Tyke flew in and decided to live with us.
A universe of interaction is possible if we are open to giving and receiving love and care to the natural world. When we lived in tribes and took care of each other and our animal and plant neighbors, we had all we needed. We did not need to think ourselves superior to them. All beings have been created with a purpose, and even in this time of catalytic climate change we can begin again as individuals to persuade our lawmakers to create policies and laws which protect the natural world. It is not separate from us. What we do – either for them, or to them – we do to ourselves as well. Let us care for our home – the Earth upon which we live. Let us open our hearts in gratitude to all the natural world, becoming a force for good by protecting them; a force for love.
There are two ways to live in this world. One is believing the appearance of things, and being governed by them. Usually, the wounds of the world bounce off our personal wounds and confirm “reality” for us. The second way, which I am urging you to adopt as your own is to let the pain and suffering you’ve experienced lead you into a more conscious way of living – making decisions about how you want your life to be, and clinging only to that. If you’re having a hard time with that, ask the angels for help in pivoting back to what you want, not what you don’t want. At this time, angels are available to help us transform ourselves and our environment as never before. Ultimately, everything we decide about our lives, and say that our life is, or will be – is true. As creators, we keep creating more of what we believe in our deepest selves.
It’s no accident that we chose to be born in this difficult, changing time. The key is how to make it work for us, and the first way to do that is to live our purpose in life. Our purpose includes that which most interests and excites us. If we follow where that leads, we will strengthen our designated work here on Earth, which will promote health and happiness for all, which includes ourselves, and all the species which are our neighbors.
A few weeks ago, my daughter sent me some very special videos of a French singer-songwriter named Plumes. In his videos, he is singing and playing guitar for myriad animals and showing their reaction to him, and their interaction with him. Many of them even sang with him. The videos are a visual example of the kind of relationship it’s possible for humans, in this current time, to have with animals. You’re going to love this – a little gift for you. Happy Solstice and have a beautiful Holiday season. If you can, give a donation to your favorite Animal Rescue organization, or Environmental Advocacy group.
The Winter Solstice begins December 21st at 10:03 a.m. EST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTu2L-mZUtg
https://www.tiktok.com/@plumesofficiel/video/7575611811974647062?_r=1&_t=ZT-92FoDlUwhrS
Sorry for the commercials in the first one, but you can skip them real quick.
Merry Christmas
In kinship,
Cie