The snow arrived tonight. It came in graceful, dancing flurries this afternoon, and then abated, becoming a light rain, and disappeared. Later, while we sat eating dinner, the dog whined outside the glass back door. It was dark behind his smiling face and waving tail, and he had a coating of frosty fluff on his back and head. Opening the door to receive him into the warmth of the house, I saw there was a layer of white everywhere.

Winter doesn't really begin until the first snow falls. The chill air and stark light, skeletal trees and penumbral skies, are preparation. Snow marks the beginning and commences the shift into the season that is yin, internal. The omnipresent glaze seems to seal the earth, and if I am attuned, seals my being like an underground seed. The abbreviated, mostly dark, cold days invite building a psychic fire.

According to Vedantic teaching, in the unmanifest universe, energy has three qualities, known as Gunas, that exist together in equilibrium: Sattva (purity, dynamic balance); Rajas (activity, passion, the process of change); and Tamas (darkness, inertia). Once energy takes form, one quality of the three predominates, though an element of each of the other two will always be present as well. Winter is the time of year that is most tamasic, but it contains within it the seeds of impending sattva, and rajas—spring and summertime—when life will burgeon again. But "to every season there is a thing" and the condition of winter invites us to find the warmth and light that is hidden.

Despite the seduction of looking optimistically toward the next spring and summer for comfort like the mullah allegedly deriving warmth from a distant candle*, there is a process that invites submission. It is a secret, sub-dermal work; of growing a new skin so that the old one can be shed.

Of course there are times in our personal lives and in the life of a people, humanity, the planet, all of which exist cyclically, when cold and darkness reign. It would appear that on the grand scale we are living in such a psychic ice age, when darkness is mistaken for the bright, stupidity for meaning, deathly cold for warmth. This is an epoch that invites seeking a light that is brighter than all the lights of Times Square and Broadway, HBO and VH1, "stars" of Hollywood and Wall Street, ivory tower pundits and Washington luminaries, who have proved out that the highest attainments in our glacial world lead to bizarre self-involvement, emptiness, and misery—for there is such a light.

Let's take some time this winter, as the earth is covered in snow, to light a fire in the heart; first a glowing ember and then, a small delicate flame. A heart with such a light perceives what is truly bright.

—Jason Stern