It’s fall in the Northern Hemisphere, my favorite time of year. The veils get thinner, the leaves get brighter, the air is oftenvery still and the sky, a cloudless and stunning royal blue.
It’s fitting that autumn is the season of grief in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s a time of decay that naturally follows the sprouting and newness of spring and the unfettered growth of summer. In autumn, organic matter begins to moulder, baby animals have grown and flown and the leaves set to work with enthusiasm, releasing the light that they gathered in earlier months. For a time the world is aglow, but endings are all around us.
There’s a stillness I notice in fall as we tuck in and spend more time at home. For my family it’s time to build a fire and pull out puzzles and cards, to knit or draw or spend more time reading. For you extroverts it may look very different, but all of our routines change with the changing of the light.
This year, what’s on my mind is personal but also collective grief. There’s a stillness “out there” that I’ve noticed since COVID began, but now it’s more entrenched. I notice it in public spaces; they are quieter, with an obvious dearth of workers that makes things seem eerily deserted. Driving into Boulder I wonder if I’m mistaken; I see the usual stream of cars moving to and fro and visiting outdoor spaces, it’s eternally hard to find parking. Restaurants are often as packed as they were before COVID, but all of it feels newly unreliable, as if any day the streets and public spaces will be deserted again like they were in the winter of 2020.
There’s grief that our old lives are disappearing, as if in slow-motion. COVID changed our lives overnight, AI is replacing some of our public connections, almost every industry is experiencing game-changing challenges, we can’t seem to agree about anything and climate disasters are no longer unusual. And that’s just what I came up with in five minutes! Add to it, most will agree that life seems to be speeding up.
I have a Scorpio moon, so I’m a person who’s fairly comfortable with decay, with endings. But I have a Leo sun, so I’m also wired for optimism, amusement and joy. I walk around with the awareness of my elderly parents’ present-time decay and confusion, the personal losses some of my friends and family are experiencing and the awareness that we are in an unprecedented collective transition, but I’m also excited, often, for the brighter, lighter future I know is coming, though it may be a few years away.
Autumn’s vibration naturally supports endings, letting go. Of things that we have outgrown, things like relationships, cities, jobs or habits. But one also could argue that autumn supports change, new growth and transformation! The glass can be half empty and half full all at once, for endings are always followed by openings, by the new. We never exist in blankness; the Universe steps in to fill the hole with potentials from which we begin to choose. There can be a pause though, as the old comes to an end and before seeds of the new can be planted. That’s what we’re facing as a species; the decay is in full swing and it will come to an end as these things do, but we’re not yet aware of the options to come. Come they will, but in the meantime it’s an uncomfortable moment for many.
There’s comfort, at least for me, in the knowledge that each and every one of us is in this time of transformation together. Humans prove, time and time again, that we come together in adversity. Maybe the adversity exists to remind us to do just that: that we need each other, that we thrive together, that we are meant to be in community.
We’ve held space for community since Mary Bell Nyman opened Psychic Horizons Center 29 years ago. We strive to be a heart-based Center, offering support to a growing group of characters from around the world who are in touch with the awareness that we are more than just bodies in a third dimensional experience. To that end we offer classes for students interested in their spiritual growth from beginners through multiple years of graduate healing programs. But we specialize in what Mary Bell calls “babies”–the ones that know there’s something besides the body, the ones that are sensitive or overwhelmed in the world, the ones who have energy tools from other lifetimes but they don’t remember those tools or don’t know where to begin to reclaim them. I was one of them, I didn’t remember! The first time I blew a rose was an epiphany; I found it astonishing but I recall clearly thinking, of course you put a problem in a rose, blow it up and it goes away! It was a completely familiar concept and I knew that I’d carried it around for years without knowing.
Come and see us, we can help you let go. Whether in our classes, free offerings or professional readings, we’re here to remind you who you are. We’re here to provide community and help hold space for us all in this remarkable time.
Many blessings to you and Happy Autumn!
Katie
Rt. Rev. Katie Heldman is the Co-Director of Psychic Horizons Center, and wrote this article for the October 5th, 2022 eNews.
