Autumn Mysteries

It's a gray and darkish day here in the Seattle environs, the sort we are known for, the sort I look forward to every year. Splotches of lemon, pumpkin and cinnamon color the trees to brighten our mood as we draw ever closer into the dark afternoons and long nights. A feeling of mystery and magic permeates the crisp, woodsmoke smelling air......can you feel it too?

These are the dying weeks, the cycle of letting go, surrendering to the void, making room for a period of rest in which new growth germenates underground, unseen. It's an energetic dynamic at odd contradiction to the ritual beginnings that we have artificially designed by making autumn the start of a new year of school. Yet, I'm reminded that some cultures begin at the end, with an honoring of things passing away as the first step in things being born / re-born. We must create the void so that new life can enter.

Admittedly, this isn't the usual way of thinking in American society, or much of the Western so-called civilized world. But it is more common in indigenous societies, people who live closer to nature and the land it her cycles, whose wisdom comes to great extent from observing the natural laws played out in the life of trees and the changes of the motherearth as she persistantly renews through the eons.

Spring cleaning was a phrase I grew up with in the Midwest, but here, now, I'm called into autumn divestment, giveaways as my native ancestors would know it. Having no choice but to enter into the autumn mysteries, knowing not what challenges and opportunities await me in the void, unable to see clearly what is passing away unnoticed in front of my eyes, I must create the void into which new wonders can take root in my life. What a blessed period of being in the life mystery.

Dr Deah's Musings

Copyright 2005-2006 by Liminal Realities

a personal growth education venture

Deah Curry PhD, publisher

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED