Navigating Loss, Death, and Renewal

The final moments of any cycle often include their signature force at its most observable, like summer’s last harvest, a woman in the last days of pregnancy, or a fruit or flower ready to fall. Autumn itself is what lies on the other side of fullness, the depth and clarifying purity of grief's vulnerable tide, and winter, the space beyond that where, once carved back and summarized, we can consolidate, rest and renew.

Throughout all of time, it has been death, loss and tragedy that has revealed us.

Taoism, Mythology, and the Dissolving Self

These ideas extend back into the roots of Taoism and are woven into timeless mythology where stories of the dissolving ‘I’ and the entry points for the rebuild of our inner nature. We live through endless Autumns over endless lifetimes, as each one carves us closer to our original image.

Solitude and Inner Growth

In these final days of Autumn, we come to a kind of seasonal and evolutionary critical mass, one in which we both acknowledge the endings, and feel our own exhaustion at having kept them at bay for so long. The harvest now sorted and refined, the wood pile stacked, and the larder full, the work of the growing season can no longer keep us occupied, where we were community we become solitary, and with that comes rushing the dam of feelings behind our busyness, and a deep weariness for all we have held up these last years.

As we enter the vacuum at the end of the Autumn cycle of things we, like Water, are drawn to the lowest point, to rest, to restore, to reconnect with our essential nature in the only way we can - alone. We contact an emptiness in the final phase of the season that is essential for our imagination and spiritual growth, and is only to be found in the inner realm of our being.

The Gift of Grief and Loss

The radical change and great uncertainty of loss, divorce and death are the exact conditions needed for revelations of the deep Self to arise. Instinctively the Soul knows that when all else is lost the only way out is a deeper way in, and the only way through is a greater revelation of what and who we are at the core of ourselves.

In fact, the pilgrimage of life is aimed at the centre of the Soul and the deep Self that carries our guiding patterns. To discover what has been seeded, and trust in the presence of that, is the work of Autumn. This is how our natural sense of meaning and purpose gathers itself as our faith, and without this inner unifying factor, even small changes are met with fear and anxiety.

To move in coherence and harmony with the natural world, as is our work here among these pages, honours this period of depletion and loss after the abundance of Summers Fire as a necessary thing. The late Autumn asks us to recognize and accept the limitations of our resources and energy in the phase of grief and loss, as a means to connect with our deeper, unadorned nature.

Embracing Autumn’s Rest and Renewal

To pause and allow quiet rest and rejuvenation now is to become fallow, to recognise the need for self-care and replenishment is an essential part of the medicine, allowing the swell of next year's fertility to replenish here in the non-doing.

The inner guide, our deeper sense of Self is always nearby, waiting for us to stop long enough to allow it to enter our lives more fully. When that happens we find our centre inside which persists and can grow greater, even as our centre in the world outside might disappear. The deep Self is the field that reveals an individually appointed wholeness growing within. Spiritual ideas, creative instincts and greater capacities for love that all seek to be embraced on the other side of grief.

Autumn asks us to let go of the distance between here and there, and awaken to the possibilities alive within us still. It’s like finding the antidote in the venom, where everything that kept you separate from peace is the key to what will unify you with it.

Autumn reminds us, here in its final days, to trust the voice of loss, death and divorce as the champion of your Soul. When we move into Winters emptiness embracing trust in its processes, we can truly let go of the root of our attachments, and so make ourselves available for Springs new growth.

Aligning with Nature’s Cycles

Every Autumn is dying.
Every Winter is its death.
And every Spring is its inevitable outcome.

Our work is to align with nature and flow openly with the deep lessons, and to move between fullness and emptiness with as much grace as we can summon. Accept what we cannot change, and know everything we need blossoms from our acquiescence, revealing an inner strength, independent of external circumstances, that is ours to keep forever.

Yolande x