On Being Autumn

The leaves have turned and that beautiful golden glow of fall is all around. Every year it's like magic! Autumn is an amazing time of life - for the leaves and for me.
The brightest flowers that bloom in the spring and summer eventually fade away when their time is over, and their energy goes into the new life and growth that comes up in the next cycle of life. In the fall, the dying leaves put on a show that is a final celebration of life before they give themselves back to Mother Earth. Growing up on the tropical island of Sri Lanka, where leaves stay green all year, I was deprived of the magic of autumn and this reminder of the transience of life. Each year I am in such awe of the beauty of the fall that to see a tree at the height of its colorful splendor brings tears to my eyes and joy to my heart.

I believe that everything that creates any kind of charge in me indicates that I am resonating with whatever it is that is bringing on the charge in me. I ask myself as I watch the leaves turn: What does this time of year, this beauty before me,reflect of myself. I am 58 years old – in the autumn of my life. At a time when my peers are becoming grandparents, I am passionately researching the effects of “conscious wholeness.” At this stage of my life, I am able to understand my experiences and learning with much greater depth than I did in my younger days. Since menopause, I have discovered aspects and colors within me that I would have never guessed existed in the greening years of my youth. Maybe this is a sign that I am now officially a Crone.

There is some relationship between spring and fall - the transitional periods in the annual journey of Earth around the sun that is connected to the relationship between elders and teens - the transitional period in the journey through life. According to MAria Montessori, adolescence is the sensitive period for spiritual development. Recent findings through brain imaging confirms major activity in the neocortex - the part of the brain that is involved in spirituality. It is interesting that the other time in our lives when we tend to focus on things spiritual in a more conscious way is when we are heading toward the exit door.

As a teenager in the 60’s there were a few older people in my life I found fascinating. I looked at them and thought, “That's what I'd like to be when I get old.” I think it was a sort of passionate wisdom, an agelessness that attracted me and still attracts me to older people. It was their fall color that resonated with me and mirrored back to me who I could become some day. That day has come, and there are times when I look in the mirror and see a gray-haired woman looking back at me and think, "I am who I wished I would become!" For this I am grateful. And when I encounter a young one who resonates with my fall colors, and opens to the seeds of consciousness and wholeness that I sow, I am doubly grateful to be given the opportunity to pay forward to the future what I received from the past.

Photo: Suchinta