Welcome to this meditation,
Season of Self-Harvest,
A reflection on being with the harvest time,
The season of reaping and gathering.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere,
Farmers are harvesting their labors of spring and summer and bringing them to market.
As we prepare for our own season of rest,
We artists can survey what we too have cultivated this year.
Since the last harvest,
We've lived through the dormant dark and silent winter months,
Through the warming of the soil and reawakened stirring of the earth,
Through the seed sowing of her creatures,
Through the budding,
Blooming,
Full flowering and radiance,
All the way to now and the withering,
The letting go,
The releasing of what has been born and nurtured.
Harvest time is when we preserve and store what we've made,
So it will sustain us while we rest.
It's an ideal time to look back over what has captured our attention,
Fed and nourished us,
Pained and troubled us,
What we created,
Participated in and endured.
It can be very fruitful to appreciate just what has been the landscape of our recent lives.
Before we settle down for the year,
Let us reap what we've sowed,
Have a look at what's happened since last autumn,
The joys and satisfactions,
Successes and fruitions,
The sadnesses and disappointments,
Difficulties and setbacks.
How have they,
In their way,
All been marvelous for what they've brought us in raw feeling and raw material for our creativity.
The earth teaches us the value of resting,
Of coming into stillness and not doing so much,
Not even thinking about doing so much.
Yet resting doesn't come naturally to many of us.
We're taught that there's no time for it,
That all our days ought to be for producing and making.
Attuning to nature and her cycles is a way to come back to our own nature.
When we take the time to groom the soil of our being for its fruits,
We see how much has actually transpired,
Planned and unplanned.
What and who has come and gone?
What and who abides?
In the self and in the world as mirror of the self.
Winter is not a dead time.
The earth's lifeblood continues to course beneath the cold,
Hard ground,
Beneath the snow,
And in the seeming blankness and flatness,
In the burrow and the nest where creatures lie sleeping.
For us as humans,
Going deep into reflection is a different kind of living.
As we quiet our mind,
Our pulse rate unwinds.
As we immerse ourselves in nature with our contemplations,
We return to her.
Streams,
Rivers,
Oceans,
Parkland,
The starry heavens.
As we visit these,
We contact nature's wisdom and our own.
In the way the Sun is moving in a more shallow arc across our world right now,
So too our consciousness moves closer to our innate wisdom.
There's so much here for us to sync up with and bring to ground.
Observe the squirrel,
Busy packing away its treasures.
All over the yard,
It's burying next year's sustenance.
It's such a beautiful metaphor.
Year in and year out,
It knows where it has buried its treasures up to a mile away and will be retrieving them as soon as hibernation is over and it feels the heat of creation begin to stir.
Then come spring,
It'll be feeding itself of itself.
For now though,
It is elegant and perfectly realized,
Just out doing its thing,
Like countless other life-forms,
Visible and invisible.
And you?
In this season of harvest,
What treasures are you burying to remember and retrieve next year?
How are you elegant and perfectly realized,
Just out doing your thing?
And come spring,
What of yourself will you be feeding to yourself?
Who is it that you've become in a year?
What qualities in your nature and in the way you express your nature each time you meet the world do you love most in yourself?
Qualities that are to your liking,
Not necessarily the world's.
How does it feel to be true to yourself,
Understood by yourself,
Even if not always understood by others?
How are you in your own company?
Self-harvest is a simple survey,
A gentle holding.
Ah,
This is how I've been,
This is what I've done.
Like a wheel,
Here's where I'm in true and here's where I can be more in true in the future.
The word autumn comes from the Old English term halfest.
The Dutch word is halfst,
The German halbst.
In Latin,
Autumn derives from carpere,
To pluck,
And the Greek karpos,
Which means fruit.
So go ahead,
Pluck the fruits of yourself.
Have a fest,
A feast,
A harvest.
Be like the fruit tree,
The apple,
The pear.
Let go your fruits to be plucked and eaten,
Or to fall to ground to nourish the soil with minerals and sugars.
What sugars,
What sweetness is there in you to release and let go,
To nourish another,
And feed the world all in your time?
Be gentle with yourself,
For you too have your seasons.
Enjoy your own fruits,
Enjoy what you enjoy,
And more will come your way.
Grow into an ever more beautiful specimen,
Giving and receiving light,
And standing upright in all kinds of weather,
Standing in your height,
In your verticality,
Soft on the inside,
Firm to the touch,
An integral part of the tapestry of life,
And complete just as you are.
I wish you a happy harvest.
