How do we welcome the dark and cold over warmth and abundant light?
Autumn is the season that ushers us down into the underworld of winter. It is the invitation to descend.
To appreciate Autumn’s gifts is to understand the way of all things. That there isn’t eternal growth: down turns and decay are part of the cycle that feeds the incubating and emerging new. That the dark holds mysteries which profoundly confront us but can comfort us in equal measure. That letting go is the only sure way to feel freedom.
Letting go is perhaps less easy than it may sound. It is the final breath, the release of expectation, the allowing for difference, the permission for diversity, the blessing of farewell. It involves loss.
It is closely aligned with the process of grieving. In order to grieve effectively we need to fully appreciate the value of the loss incurred and not valiantly pretend it doesn’t affect us.
Sadly, the stiff upper lip of the cultural paradigm that many of us live in has prevented the allowance for grief.
And when grief isn’t allowed, we become sick with holding on.
Trees are fine examples for us. The deciduous varieties let go in full glory, in a blaze of colour, fully understanding in their arboreal intelligence that this is necessary: to follow the patterning of light and dark, of warmth and cold, of giving-receiving and then going inward to incubate the future. Our ancestors knew that as the light fades outside with the turning of the year at the Autumn Equinox, we do well to draw the light inside where it can grow and hold us through the dark months.
May the autumn bless you with insight into your own ways of falling gracefully and with ease.