Open Your Heart to the Rhythm of the Seasons
By Lorri Amsden
How did we come to this place in time where each of us spend our day rushing from one point to another? How did we become so wrapped up in schedules that allow no time for self, no time for parents to spend with their children, no time for sisterly conversations or a light hearted discussion among friends as we rush through our routine with strained, tense expressions longing desperately for more?
Are you living a tender, ecstatic, gorgeous life? Do you enjoy your work environment? What do you do to make your life richer when you return home? Do you plunge headfirst to chores? Are you happy? Why is it so hard to be joyful? Why are we sometimes blind to the sacred, unable to connect with the divine?
Don’t let the hurry and worry of life take the wonder out of your existence. It is time to rediscover the joy of simply living. Awaken to the natural world and make your life sacred. Take time to mindfully experiencing your day. Open your eyes to the people who cross your path. Listen to their message and treat them with love. Open you heart to the natural world. See the trees as you walk in their shadows, notice the flowers at your feet and hear the voice of the birds as they call overhead. It is time to align yourself with the rhythms of the earth and reconnecting with the seasons as you celebrate your life.
Seasonal awareness, awareness of the solstices and equinoxes and reflecting seasonal changes in our own personal practices, allows us to calibrate our energy to the energies of the natural world. Celebrating these ancient rituals is a way to attune ourselves with the magical tides, to recognize the rhythms of life, death and rebirth. Living in tune with the seasons is a way of living and working with nature to harmonize with the world and to recognize that we are a part of it.
This fall take time to celebrate the harvest. Let your spirit lift with joy and thankfulness for the bounty of this season being mindful that the nights are growing longer; the darkness growing colder as the dying year gives way to winter. Give thanks for the abundance in your life. Be appreciative for each small pleasure: the amazing flavor of your morning coffee, the peace and comfort of your kitchen, the fact that there is food in your fridge. Each and every day we take for granted so many wondrous things. Let joy fill your heart as you quiet your mind. You can not find peace until you create it within yourself. Take time to greet the morning and open your heart to the sacred. A simple way to begin is to practice daily meditation. Another is to incorporate small rituals into your daily routine. Inviting ritual into your life with even a small gesture will work to help you ground and center before you journey out into the world. Keeping an alter, lighting a morning candle, whispering a morning prayer of gratitude, silently focusing only on your breathing as you visualize what you want to accomplish during the day, all are examples of simple morning rituals and all of these work to pull your awareness from the mundane and shift it to the sacred. Through daily rituals we are able to recalibrate our energy and connect with the divine.
Spirituality is not to be found only in a sacred space but in our everyday lives. Life is a sacred journey. Strive to see the signs of the divine: feel its power in the wind at the approach of the thunderstorm, in the brilliance of the setting sun. See the divine outside your window as the leaves change colors, as the seasons turn, as the tiny bird weaves grass into an intricate nest and as the spider spins her amazing web. It is time to rediscover that each and every one of us is a crucial part of the global journey towards a Higher Consciousness. Most of humanity has experienced their most moving spiritual experience in nature. How inspiring is a thunderstorm or the sight of a brilliant sunset? What emotions were elicited last time you caught the scent of a summer rainstorm or felt the first cold nip in the morning as the seasons changed?
We need to practice love first toward ourselves and then to each person we meet on our daily path. To feel empathy for living things is an essential part of the human existence and that when we love and help one another, we mend our lives and heal ourselves.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”
Indeed we are all Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here on this plane of existence, on a human journey, all of us caught all in different cycles of our lives as we work through life lessons until the lesson is learned and a new cycle begins. And we are all connected.
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