How are you being called to embrace the slowing down?
I am sitting here writing this under the new moon, on the eve of Mabon, the Autumn Equinox. Tomorrow, a solar eclipse!? What is going on? We are living in some wild energy right now and this is only the half of it. There is so much more to explore and wonder about, but all I can do right now is lean into the present moment. Lean into what my body is telling me, listen to what my heart needs, which seems to change from moment to moment. I can feel the energy closing in around me, like a heavy blanket of the unknown. Breathe…..
The equinox is where the night and day are of equal length. The dark and the light are in balance. The year is tipping towards the darker months now, can you feel it? The call inwards? To begin your annual hibernation? Before I knew the reason why, this time of year always felt energised with a new beginning feel. I now know that the autumn was seen as a new beginning in Celtic tradition. There was a deep ancestral remembering within me that was still responding to this time of year as an opportunity. The autumn is when the new school year starts. Right when we should be slowing down and allowing a change to happen slowly and naturally, we are being woken early and taken to school to begin again. Within the first week we are told what is expected of us through that year and we begin to feel the pressure to perform. To perform to the expectations and the timelines carved out by men and not mother nature. It starts young. Too young.
For me, I am being called to embrace the slowing down. Fully embrace it, for my healing. The recovery from this surgery is a bit of question mark. The surgeons don’t really know what they are dealing with, until they are dealing with it. I have been given three possible outcomes, three possible scenarios I might wake up to. Each one has a different healing process and one of them requires a second surgery. So, while the initial planning and rescheduling of life has to happen to settle my mind into this having the least impact on my finances, my family, my business and my mental health, it has actually created a an energy level I wasn’t quite prepared for. I know, that it’s part of the process of surrendering to what is to come. The stillness, the softness, the silence.
The fear around stopping, resting, listening and gaining wisdom from within, from your own heart has grown. I think it’s in part to do with the fear of realising that we have been living in a way that is out of alignment with our basic humanity and the needs of our human bodies and divinely placed soul. We are spiritual beings, Earthed. With the mission, to have a human experience of existence. Except that when we landed, we realised that humanity has evolved into something different. Where we are conditioned to look outside of ourselves for happiness, where connection is devalued and rest is relabelled as lazy. This life, isn’t often what we signed up for. But what if it is? What if we have to live this version of humanity to then break free from it and realise a true human existence?
The thing is when you rest, this is where you can open up your awareness to your bodies needs. To your minds needs. You will realise that what it needs is rather simple. But these simplicities of life are now difficult to achieve because you have filled life up with “life stuff” that you were told you needed somewhere along the way. The big house. Cars. Designer clothes. A life partner. Children. Technology. All of this is hard to maintain and places pressure on you to keep going, keep doing, keep wanting more things, because more things equal more happiness right? Right?
My life has felt out of balance for awhile now. Our home, which we are blessed to live in, has become a financial burden that I do not wish to carry anymore. We bought this house in 2019. But the world has changed since then. Everything costs more. I am finding that I am working to live in my house, which is something I have never intended to do. I don’t want to wait to live my life. I don’t want to wait to live it, while living a life expected of me by others. So, as a family we decided to change it all. We are taking the leap and leaving our home. This change, feels horribly scary, unsettling and unsafe! Especially at a time when I am about to have surgery and need time to heal. But this act, is an act of creating balance, alignment and ultimately peace and ease.
Change is a constant; we cannot avoid it. We can try. But it will eventually be wrenched from our grip. A health crisis. A loss of income. A grief. (And this is just my experience right now). It will happen to stop you in your tracks, and to pull your gaze from the ground in front of you to the horizon ahead. It will strip away, what you thought was true, and replace them with truths you NEVER thought were true. It’s all part of the process.
My invitation for you, is to ask yourself how do you feel about change? What does alignment look like to you? What would bring you peace and ease as you enter this new part of the year?