Autumn Equinox: the Exhale

Originally published: 9/23/2015 on Weebly blog

Now we exhale. Each year is one breath, with the solstices the absolute empty (winter) and absolute full (summer). At each equinox (spring and fall) the breath is an equal mix of in and out, of summer and winter. We are now in the year’s exhale. Take a moment to feel your exhale. This is the “releasing” half of every breathing meditation. We are in the time of releasing.

We live in a culture that does not train us in releasing, that fears releasing in every way. All intimacy is about releasing our hold. All spiritual practice is about trust, which is a release. I’ve found in my healing work, that every healing ceremony begins with a release. (Like this one.)

The Spanish poet Antonio Machado (circa 1900) penned a mysterious little poem:

Between living and dreaming
There is a third thing.
Guess it.

Certainly there are 1,000 answers to that little riddle, and they are all correct. Spend some time today answering the riddle for yourself. Ask someone near you what their answer is. Get ready for a real human conversation.

Machado’s little poem is a perfect autumn equinox meditation. Right now, you and I, along with everything in our landscape, are moving from the living to the dreaming: The luscious, erotic energy of summer wanes. The sun sinks into the west. The land quiets after its harvest. The geese begin their journey to the other world, singing their harsh song of grieving and yearning – and of such great trust in the voice from afar calling them onward.


In the Celtic world, the wild goose is an image of the Holy Spirit, something I find unendingly lovely. (Read more about that here.)

When you hear the geese honking overhead, and see them flying away, try thinking to yourself: The goose does not “believe,” it trusts. Belief is cerebral and often forced – we believe the story we are told, we believe what’s “right,” what we are supposed to believe. Trust comes from the belly. The voice comes to us telling us to follow it. Fear is located in the belly too, and so trust and fear sing in the belly together.

My answer to Machado’s riddle: Between living and dreaming, there is the threshold at which we must lay down the world we know,  the one we call “real,” the one in which belief matters most. There is that moment when we see the hand reach through from the other side of the threshold that says “come with me, I have something to show you.” How we reach out (or not) becomes our life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Spiritual Power of the Receding Hairline

Image
For father’s day I will be shaving off the nub. As a trained theologian, it is time for me to put down the books and take spiritual action. For those who need to know, the nub is that humiliating last patch of hair just above the forehead, the last scrap of youth clinging to an otherwise balding head. I'm shaving it off. Here is why. Many men have experienced the crushing realization that their hairline is receding. It makes no difference if they are young or old, if it has happened glacially or with the suddenness of a wildfire laying bare the forest. The moment when the man faces the truth is what the 18th century German theologians aptly termed Aufschrei den Verlust von Haarleukoplakie Steifigkeit, loosely translated as “the mournful gasp over the loss of hairy stiffness.” The Germans dealt with the moment of realization by drinking dark beer and moving several pews closer to the rumbling organ in church, but in our time we are peppered with hair replacement products promising
Read more
Image
Dear seekers after the Spirit, Now four people have sent me this video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, telling me how amazing it is. Finally I watched it and they were all right, it’s astonishing. Now I get to become part of the viral spread of this video by recommending it to you. It’s 18 minutes long, and it is well worth it. I’ve made some comments below as a response to the video. Taylor is a brain scientist who describes her own experience of having a stroke, and how this event opened her perception about the workings of the brain. She points out that each side of the brain essentially creates its own reality and those two different realities are only barely connected by a thin (but exceedingly wondrous) membrane. The left brain’s world relies on the sense of “I” and therefore a sense of being separate from everything else. It observes everything as objects outside itself. The right brain relies on a sense of oneness with everything, a sense of expansiveness and inclusion. Each brain li
Read more
Image
Dear Solstice Drummers, If you attended my Winter Solstice Drumming/Ceremony at Wisdom Ways, thank you! I promised you a few musings on the Reindeer Runes, and here they are below. By the way, if you purchased a script of the show, the runes in the script are in an inncorrect order. My aplologies about that. The runes in your program, and below, are in correct alignment. If you would like to purchase a script that contains the text from this year's show as well as last year's "Blessing," please send me an email at jaime@drummingthesoulawake.com . There's alot more in the script than actually made it into the show, thankfully - or you would have been there for four hours. When I began working on this solstice event, I considered using the classic Scandinavian/Celtic runes. Hundreds of books have been written interpreting these runes in wildly different ways. While the runes are a powerful meditation tool, they come from a time and culture far removed from our own.
Read more