There's something about a moonless night that asks more of us than a full one does. On a full moon night, the moon is impossible to miss. Everyone looks up. But on New moon / Amavasya the sky just sits there, dark, with nothing to point to. And the saints have never called that loss. They call it return.

In Vedic thought, the moon is the mind, our thoughts, moods, the wanting and the fearing. Amavasya is the one day the mind goes quiet enough to show us what coming home would even look like.

Make that a Monday, the day of the Moon and you get Somvati Amavasya, which already carries weight on its own. But this year it falls inside Adhik Maas and that changes the texture of the whole thing.

Adhik Maas gets called the extra month but the saints have never spoken about it that way. They've treated it as a month the Lord set aside on purpose, a whole chapter added in just so we'd have more room to turn toward Him.

So we've got a month that says make space for God, landing on a day that says empty yourself, landing on the day of the mind. Three things pointing at one thing. Stillness.

And here's where most of us get stuck, because we know stillness is the goal and still can't get there. You sit down to pray and within thirty seconds you're somewhere else, replaying an old conversation or worrying about something that hasn't happened yet. The mind doesn't care that it's a sacred day.

This is exactly why the Satguru isn't optional. He is not just a nice addition to spiritual life, but Satguru is the actual mechanism by which any of this becomes possible.

We tend to think spiritual growth means becoming more. More knowledge, more discipline, more certainty about who we are. But what happens under a Satguru's guidance is closer to the opposite. He doesn't add things for us. He removes what was never really us to begin with. The pride dressed up as confidence. The attachment dressed up as love. The fear dressed up as being careful. Layer by layer, those costumes come off, and there's a part of us that experiences that as loss. The ground feels like it's disappearing.

But that's the ego talking. The soul recognizes it immediately, the way you'd recognize the smell of your own home after years away. It's not loss. It's relief.
That's the real symbolism of the moon disappearing into the sun. It is discovering it was never separate from the sun to begin with. That's the devotee's path too. The "I" that knows, that wants, that fears, that needs to control, slowly stops needing to assert itself, because it's found something steadier to rest in.

People will mark this Somvati Amavasya in the usual beautiful ways. Charity, remembering ancestors, japa, worship of Lord Shiva and Sriman Narayan. All of it softens the heart and makes it more receptive to what's being offered.
But if you want to go to the heart of it, sit quietly for a few minutes and ask yourself honestly: what am I still holding onto? What part of me is refusing to let go, even now? You don't need an answer right away. Just the asking does something.

When the moon disappears, it isn't lost. It's simply gone back to where it always belonged.

And so can we.

Blessed Somvati Amavasya!!

- Amrita Dasi