Relax – Reflect – Renew
Over the past few weeks I’ve been pondering the turning of seasons that take place repeatedly in Nature. Sitting on my desk are some stones; minerals from various part of the world that took many hundreds of thousands of years to create. I’m listening to music that’s coming through the airwaves into a ‘smart phone’ that also took millions of years to create and for the most part, I take it all for granted and think nothing of it. On the other hand, I was amazed at seeing the first ever televisions sixty five years ago.
I now remember phone booths, having ‘party lines’ where operators asked for a three digit number to connect phone calls. I remember the first televisions having three channels, eight track tapes, cassettes and boom boxes. I remember when soft drinks and candy bars were five cents and gasoline was twenty cents a gallon. I even remember when there were no advertisements on the internet and listening to my grandmother tell stories that were equally amazing and unbelievable.
In these past seven decades or seven hundred, seven thousand, seven million or seven billion decades and beyond, I’m giving thanks for the turning of seasons that have brought us all here within this unlikely story. I continue to be fascinated by our ignorance and intelligence, by the ongoing decay and renewal, the growing forgetfulness and remembrance of our part to play in the ongoing evolution of this extraordinary journey. The more I identify with this story, the more I discover the soulful message of renewal.
As we again experience another season in our lives, we’re called to reflect on our parts to play in this drama. Each of us is a link in the Great Chain of Being: Each has a significant part to play if we choose to play it. The recognition here is that everything we think, feel, say and do has an impact on the whole. Further, the more intention we’re inspired to make in a way only we can, the more significant our participation becomes. We’ve come to a place in history where our True Selves are being called forth to act.
Some will ask: What’s this True Self?. I answer that it’s the deep inner Self that moves beneath the egocentric personal self that’s so prevalent and conditioned. It sees through the persona’s illusions of me, me, me, me. It’s called soul, life principle, entelechy, vital force, activating cause, immaterial essence, breath, pneuma, invisible something, spirit and so on. What we call it is irrelevant. The point is that IT IS, and the awareness and activation of this human potency within us is now being called forth.
We humans are an integral part of every season’s enduring message of renewal and have been even before we discovered fire. It’s the perennial call to consciously take our place in the Great Chain of Being as we come and go, ebb and flow, know and not know. It’s part of our personal and collective development, our evolutionary process and principle of Being. It’s always a mixture of birth, life, death and new life in some mysterious form and substance. We are each individualized ‘acorns‘ from the One metaphorical Tree of Life who give care to the outer shell while ignoring the inner seed.
As we unknowingly polish the shell, we forget the interconnected nature of Being in relation to all other sentient and non sentient beings. We forget that we are only one thread within the great web of life and that what we do to the web we do to ourselves. We become lost in our own forgetfulness that all things are connected, all things are bound together as Chief Seattle and so many others have reminded us. So, as we enter the fourth season of change, Autumn, may we again awaken to the enduring message of renewal, to the soul’s code of transcendent vitality and follow the call to New Life.
- As you walk through the next days, weeks and months of autumn, relax and reflect on the leaves changing within you and what needs to be released for your renewal. . . .
- Notice the winds of change blowing around you and the spiritual quality of renewal that’s inviting your receptivity. Breathe it in, find a grin and begin to smile again. . . .
- Open some quiet time daily to reconnect with your soul, your essence. Simply be still, trust, open and practice presence. Listen to the leaves of the trees rustling in the breeze, the sounds behind the sounds, the quiet behind the noise. Give your Self the many gifts of this season in ways that will sooth your soul; everything to renew.
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