It's Winter Solstice this week, at 5: 44 am Wednesday, December 21st, when the Sun reaches the point furthest below the celestial equator and there is a deep inner pause in the yearly breathing process.
By tradition, the striving of human beings at Winter Solstice is toward greatest inner stillness, and this is a striving that is supported by the Earth's orientation to its celestial environment, specifically in this season.
If we look in the direction of the Sun at Winter Solstice, it appears to be moving in front of the thickest part of the Milky Way galaxy of stars, where the center of our galaxy is.
If we look away from the Sun at Winter Solstice, in the opposite direction, we are looking away from the center of our galaxy, out beyond its spiraling arms. The star field seems less densely populated in this direction, and there stands the celestial giant Orion, master of the still stars and guardian of midnight encounters in this season.
Behind us, the Sun crosses the "dark rift" in the thickest part of the Milky Way, as though cradled, just for a moment, in a cave of the starlight, and at that moment, we must find our own way through the world, by the strength of our own, inner light.
To meet such a moment with success requires a specific mood of soul, which is beautifully captured by early 20th century Austrian mystic poet Rainer Maria Rilke:
I feel it now:
There's a power in me
To grasp and give shape
To my world.
I know nothing has ever been real
Without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me,
My looking ripens things
And they come toward me,
To meet and be met...