Yesterday I guided an Autumn Equinox ceremony for Saged, a wellness app and spiritual community that I’ve been writing for since Winter Solstice 2018. (Premium Members, you can watch the replay on the app.) The message that came through is REST.
Autumn Equinox occurs at 11:50am PT on September 22, 2023 when the Sun enters Libra and the day and night are of equal length…then slowly, slowly we’ll notice night coming sooner and lasting longer.
As the light wanes, there is less energy available for “doing” in the outer world. By no means do we stop altogether…the wheel keeps turning and our gifts are needed…and the darkening days invite us to intentionally cultivate quieter spaces…to heal, to rejuvenate, to simply be…
But, how many of us will continue to exhaust ourselves by giving from an empty cup or pushing too hard in a relentless drive for “success” or approval? Maybe you see it in people around you? Maybe you feel it in your bones, too?
What if you could loosen your grip like the trees in autumn…trusting in the cycles of life where one season moves into another, each with their challenges and blessings…releasing the summer leaves, fruits and seeds go…letting die what is dying, so you can let live what is living. It takes trust and courage to truly make space for rest and make grace for growth.
In David Whyte’s essay, REST, he outlines five states of rest and perhaps these words will comfort your mind and heart:
1. In the first state of rest is the sense of stopping, or giving up on what we have been doing or how we have been being.
2. In the second, is the sense of slowly coming home, the physical journey into the body’s un-coerced and un-bullied self, as if trying to remember the way or even the destination itself.
3. In the third state is a sense of healing and self-forgiveness and of arrival.
4. In the fourth state, deep in the primal exchange of the breath is the give and the take, the blessing and the being blessed and the ability to delight in both.
5. The fifth state of deep rest is a sense of absolute readiness and presence, a delight in an anticipation of the world and all its forms; a sense of being the meeting itself between inner and outer, and that receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.
Bless your heart this Autumn season, wherever you may be in this cycle of REST.
