The month of May is called Bealtaine in Ireland, after the ancient Celtic feast that was celebrated on May 1st. It marks the midpoint in the progress of the sun between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, and announced the beginning of Summer. Hard to believe this year. Here in France it is the custom today to give as a gift the traditional flower for the first of May – the muguet, or lily of the valley. This flower is a symbol of springtime and of beauty, used frequently in bridal bouquets, and has traditionally been associated with the return of happiness after a period of darkness. And yet this is despite the fact that its stalk, flowers, and berries are all extremely poisonous. A strange mix, but one that we find elsewhere in our lives. Often the places of greatest growth and energy, the places we learn most and reflect most upon, are the places where we have been most hurt. And frequently we find most freedom when we move from the places where we have been stuck, or the things that we feared most, without them being able to poison us any more.
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened…..if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. . . .
Rilke
Photo: Lily-of-the-valley, Gordon E. Robertson
Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy. We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. We may think that if we ignore our fears, they’ll go away. But if we bury worries and anxieties in our consciousness, they continue to affect us and bring us more sorrow. We are very afraid of being powerless. But we have the power to look deeply at our fears, and then fear cannot control us. We can transform our fear. Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. The first part of looking at our fear is just inviting it into our awareness without judgment. We just acknowledge gently that it is there. 
There is some interest in some circles about ancient calendars and texts and the end of the world happening these days. Now I do not wish to comment on the accuracy of such predictions but simply to see what such an interest can reveal in some people. There is a lot of uncertainty and instability in the world today, stemming from human tragedies, economic problems, the difficulties between different views of culture and values, tension between religions and within religions, and from storms and natural disasters. And there are always uncertainties in our personal lives. Things change. People close to us get ill or move away. This can make us feel very insecure. One way of dealing with not-knowing and with the fundamental unease that is at the basis of our existence is to seek something outside, or someone stronger than us, to steady us on this uncertain ground. So we provide an explanation for things we cannot understand and that explanation, even if it means the end of the world, seems preferable to not knowing why some things happen. It is a radical way of dealing with the fact that, at a fundamental level, there is a groundlessness inherent in our existence. It is also an extreme variant of our common, everyday way of working with the unsatisfactory nature of individual moments – we “lean towards” something in the future, and this distracts us from this moment and how it actually is. What we are trying in our practice is not to focus on any future, “better” or “more secure” moment, but on this one, even if it is not as we would want it. The best way to prepare for the future – or the “end of the world” if you like – is to care for this moment and then the next moment. There are enough distractions in the world today, including these spiritual or mythical ones, pulling us away from noticing where our life is, now.
Mindfulbalance 