Category: autumn

The Inner Journey Begins – Day 247 of 365 Days to a Better You

Today those of us residing in Earth’s northern hemisphere crossed the threshold from Summer to Autumn. While Spring into Summer and Autumn into Winter are certainly transitions, they’re really just expansions of a trend already underway. Winter into Spring and Summer into Autumn represent transitional moments that result in profound shifts.

There’s little doubt that human psychology is hugely affected by the seasons. While the season change goes almost unnoticed in our modern culture, the ancients took note of, celebrated, and revered these rites of passage.

If you think about it, Spring and Summer with their growing warmth, expanding light, and blooming of life represent the outer world and our external life. The six months that began today, comprised of a gathering darkness, a pronounced chill, and the symbolic death in the natural world around us, are a metaphor for the inner journey.

In mythology, darkness often represents the night of the soul where the traveler dies to his old self and finds rebirth as a hero, ready to emerge back into the sunlight of the outside world. It is from darkness that light emerges. It is from the depths that the greatest heights are reached. It is in “the belly of the beast” that our true mettle is tested,

I’ve always found it important to connect with these cycles and metaphors. In the darkness, there is opportunity. It’s hard to argue that human life, culture, and psychology can be divorced from the natural forces that shape us.

So, let us embrace the darkness. Let us use this metaphor as a reason to go deep within, touch what’s real, and come back stronger for the experience.

We all walk this inner journey. It’s a journey we must travel alone. There it’s just you and the universe, you and your emotions, you and your thoughts. Not even the closest people in your life can walk that road with you.

We can walk it consciously or unconsciously. That is our choice. This time of the year, nature is leading you in the direction of walking it consciously. Let’s do ourselves a favor and answer that call.

Thanks for spending a few more minutes with me. If you’re taking something away, please share it with s friend.

Ray

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Poem: Psychology of Seasons – The Affirmation Spot for Friday October 7, 2011

Today’s Affirmation:

The Universe provides for me in direct proportion to my gratitude! Today I am rich!

My dog Mia and I just went for an amazing walk on this beautiful early Autumn afternoon. We still have Indian Summer going here right now with temperatures in the 80s, but the shift in season is still clear. Everywhere you look leaves, walnuts, hedge apples are strewn across the ground. With every gust of wind, you can hear more of summer’s fruit and life falling to the ground in death. The squirrels are hyperactive right now gathering the ground’s bounty for the winter they instinctively know is ahead. Seasonal changes represent more than climatic transition. They also alter our psychology.

Our ancestors truly recognized and appreciated the meaning of the seasons. They celebrated and revered the cycles of the seasons.

The life that comes to be in the Spring and flourishes in Summer begins to dwindle in the Fall. Today’s post is a poem I wrote in 1993. I hope it captures the magic and meaning of the transition to Fall.

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Psychology of Seasons

A sun-drenched sky
on windy autumn day;
out across open fields
passing clouds make shadow play.

Silent beauty in multi-hues,
but ominous in a sense;
for though today be delightful
darkness soon gains precedence.

Shortly days will end too soon
as the leaves of autumn blow.
The gods withhold their aid
to the lifeforms down below.

A chill permeates the air
and death is all around.
Evidenced by dying trees:
their leaves spread on the ground.

Depression need not be our course;
all things must come to pass.
Death is an integral part of life;
perennial as fields of grass.

For very soon rebirth takes place
and all springs back to life.
To our hearts the glow returns,
bringing end to stress and strife.

Given time we come to find
and perhaps appreciate
the coming of darkness and death
who’s end gives cause to celebrate.

Copyright Ray Davis 1993, 1997

Follow your bliss. Experience your bliss. Become your bliss.

Ray

Ray Davis is the founder of The Affirmation Spot. He’s spent more than 25 years studying personal development and especially writing, recording, and using affirmations to achieve his goals. His eBook – The Power to Be You – offers 416 life-changing and original quotes, ideas, and affirmations to take you to new levels of achievement and reflection.

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