When snow covers the ground, as it has done here in the past week, we are forced to go at a slower pace of life. This is not a bad thing, as modern conveniences can insulate us from the natural rhythms of day and night and of the seasons. For nature, winter is a time of slowing down and resting, sometimes of harshness, and of bareness. For us too, the outside season can remind us to return to basics, to see what is truly important. We can also pass through period of interior winters, moments of darkness and feelings of isolation. Growth and warmth can seem far away and we can be tempted to despair. However, we may find growth even in these moments or as David Whyte says here, such times can be reminders to let go of the activities that bring us to the superficial margins of our lives and return to the conversation that gives us real life:
When we feel bereft of one form of support we can easily forget that it is because we might be meant to put that particular form of comfort aside and look to a fiercer more internally grounded stage of our maturity, one that might emanate from a simpler but surer ground than the outer sky of mirrors and monetary instruments we might have constructed for ourselves in the so-called real world. It also might be surprising to think that there are just as many forms of courage and creativity associated with disappearance and doing without; just as many satisfying elements of aliveness associated with a winter as with spring. This central, core conversation to which we return in each succeeding winter is both nourishing and deeply disturbing, it seems heedless of any flimsy structures we may have erected, it seems fiery in that it burns familiar things away and yet provides another form of warmth emanating from a more nested, interior hearth. In my experience the first necessity of an individual in finding this fiery, core conversation is a radical form of simplification. To get to the core conversation we have to withdraw from the edges. Whatever expenses we have been making at the margins of our lives in terms of emotions, finances or time-based commitment must be brought back to the central conversation that makes the most sense.
David Whyte.
The thoughts we have are all just random and yet we take them as me and mine. And either we are fascinated by them and we create a whole story, or we get fed up with them and want to get rid of them. So we’re always in a struggle. But it’s the reaching out with “me” and “mine” which creates the basis for the sticky quality of experience. If it is just seen as another ephemeral mind moment, as a thought arising and passing away, the mind is left unshaken and clear. It doesn’t have that sense of “me” and “mine.” One is not taking it as “me” and “mine”, making that identification. This brings one to a place of letting go, of relinquishment. This is where our place of peace is and the place where our practice
We have the impression that the busier we are, the faster we should go and so we rush about. But if we look closely at “speeding to achieve more,” often we achieve less and sometimes things fall by the wayside or apart. We are limited by our physical, mental and emotional energy and there can be space and time constraints. Do we think that we are above these limits and constraints and can run around, accumulating projects and activities regardless? Or do we recognize and appreciate these limits and constraints and instead of fighting or hoping to transcend them, creatively engage with them? The basis for this creative engagement could be this phrase “the busier I am, the slower I should go.”
In the deepest moments of insight we see that things change so quickly that we can’t hold onto anything, and eventually the mind lets go of clinging. 
