Image by Daniel Taylor
Modern life has alienated us from nature and that has cost us a disconnection from our own inmost nature. The seasonal cycles are life-sustaining and attending to them can enrich us and resource us for meeting life’s demands. The cyclical rhythms of the seasons reflect the movements of change, transition, loss, death, grief and regeneration, the universal and most ubiquitous challenges of life. Living a life informed by the cyclical wisdom of nature’s movements is to live mindfully in connection with the world around us, weaving the threads between inner and outer, finding reflections of us outward and outward reflections in us. We are, after all, made of nature and its rhythms and wisdom reside deeply within us.
Autumn is a season between seasons, a transitioning space between what was before and what’s ahead, between summer and winter. On one end autumn is the season of the last harvest and on the other end it is the season of letting go and dying. It is the dance between gratitude and grief, life and death. It holds the tension between light and darkness, as the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting longer, crossing the threshold of holding the two in perfect balance during the equinox. It is this tension we are called to attend to in our lives during autumn, by finding ways to harness the nourishing dimensions of life, as well as death. By honoring and embracing both for their fertile powers.
On one end of its spectrum autumn is a reflective season. It is the time when earth gives us the last harvest that will sustain us during the dark winter months. In our lives, this is the harvest from the seeds we planted and the dreams we built throughout the year. This is the time to reflect and consolidate on what we have achieved so far and assess what fruits of life have matured enough to nourish us in exchange for our efforts. It is the time for channeling contemplation and gratitude into creative inspiration for the months ahead.
On the other end of its spectrum autumn is the season that begins the great letting go. Earth releases what has completed its cycle, to become the fertile soil for life to come. For us, this is a time to relinquish what we might carry that no longer serves us, or holds us back. To create space for new growth, for attitudes, projects, people, relationships that will nurture and support us in our life ahead. What we let go of, becomes the compost of things ahead. We let go in service of life.
If we attend to the cycles of life, death and rebirth in nature its important lessons about these edges of life can infuse in us through our senses. In autumn nature speaks to us through the rustling of leaves, the cool dry air, the golden colored trees, the woody smell of earth. It tells us that death is part of life and the path of regeneration. It supports us in surrendering to our own shedding. This shedding is a process of separation and autumn is the season of grief and a time that can evoke our own grief and calls on us to attend to it. This might be grief that has accumulated throughout the year or in some cases throughout a lifetime.
Grief is not to be done with and disposed of. Grief is to be allowed to move in us, through us, with us until it is ready to give way for new life to grow around it. Grief is to be felt and lived, until it too becomes compost for our personal growth. Because as long as we live, life will call on us and it is on us to listen. As the seasons well know, there is a time for life and there is a time for death, there is a time to bloom and a time to wither. Nature can teach us how we can open our hearts to shedding our leaves, in trust that when the time is right, new ones will come to take their place.
Find some space in this season, within yourself, to acknowledge the growth and death that has moved through you from the beginning of the year. To harvest the last ripe crops of the year and to create space and rituals to let go of what no longer serves. And like the plant world, to put the energy in your roots, your foundations, while you prepare to go deep into the dark months ahead.
