The Wisdom of the Trees

Come Autumn, the pigment of the leaves dramatically changes from green to fiery reds, yellows, and oranges. The Phoenix burns. Leaf by leaf, the trees loosen their grip. And as the leaves scatter to the forest floor, so do they become the fertile soil which will bring new life come spring. Again the Phoenix will rise, as it ceaselessly does, year and year again. 

There is perhaps no greater teacher than the trees to impart the lesson of autumn: they demonstrate the beauty in surrender, the act of letting go.

It can be more difficult to find the beauty in the loss that occurs in our own lives. Unlike the trees, we are not so easy to trust that in the wake of death, or any type of ending, life will bloom again.

Yet our own cycles are as natural as the trees’. Even after devastating loss, the human capacity for resilience is stunning. We are capable of transmuting some of the greatest hardships into the inspiration for innovation. We are capable of enduring intense pressure, and often at the very last moment or most desperate hour, channeling that into epiphanies about ourselves and the world.

On a fundamental level, energy is just energy, and all it does is change form. Why then are we always convinced that death, literal or symbolic, is final? It is only through death that life is facilitated to be reborn, and vice versa. Life and death are inseparably intertwined, and each inevitably gives rise to the other.

But death isn’t easy if we offer resistance to it. When change happens, or we know change is coming, we can do our best to hold it back (usually with disastrous consequences) or we can move with it. The latter is always gentler. And we can again turn to the trees and the beauty in their willingness to surrender.

This autumn, even amidst the high intensity of the season, my experience of surrendering to loss has been greatly aided by conscious acts of self-love. For me, this has involved a shift away from overexerting myself and pushing myself very hard, and toward a practice of patience and understanding as I move through life’s challenges.

We are so often cruel to ourselves when we struggle. We judge how we feel, what we think, and how we are responding to life. I’ve begun to approach myself with compassion instead, which has often involved taking moments or even days to breathe, rest, feel, and release on my own timetable. These may seem like luxuries to people who have little flexibility in their schedules, yet every soul has a few moments of time a day to attune to their needs and hold space for whatever is happening internally. We don’t have to, but it is worth reminding that even giving ourselves the smallest bit of love and affection can lighten our burdens immensely.

To all those reading, I hope you find peace this autumn season in witnessing the poetry in the falling leaves. May you rejoice in the splendor of your own spirit’s journey.

Into Autumn

Into Autumn’s well
I dip my chalice
and I drink deep.

Leaves crumble in my mouth.
I taste ancient blood
a cold, wet, bitter tang
& a sense of foreboding.
What did I dare
come here
to do?

Spores pour from my nostrils
Thorns tear my bare skin
as my breathing matches the cadence
of winds whipping the leaves
into frenzy.

And
sonorously,
the forest’s lungs
reverberate the balance
between the dead and dying,
the alive and living.

In the space between
She appears before me
in her blood-red garb
Summoning
the spirits
from the deep hollows
where they keep
their counsel
casting the bones
for signs, signals,
and to summon
that which lies
beyond their realms.

It is time.
She has come for me.
She has come to take me
To show me.

I beg her mercy
but she does not allow.

Yet she lovingly takes me
into Her arms
and together,
we open the door
of the path toward Becoming.

I yield before me:
The stargate to my own
Soul’s
Opening— 

As a fiery sun
relentlessly,
inexorably drawn
into the abyss of the mightiest
black hole.

All that energy vanishing
beyond present perception.

Where does it go?
In the now,
I witness a death.
But beyond
the black hole,
there is another Self,
witnessing
the translation, a newly birthed Form
unseen & inconceivable
to the present Self.

I am that blood-red One
Cloaked in the finery of my Future Self
Reflecting and refracting
the infinite mirrored Selves
which spiral through the abyss
of the unknowable unfolding
the incarnate visage
into which we peer
losing ourselves
in the ecstasy of awareness,
oblivion,
awareness,
oblivion,
endlessly entwined
each yawning open wide
to receive the other.

Naked and unashamed,
in radiant bliss
I cross
the Gate of Souls
forged anew
in the grasp
of surrender
to my own
undoing.

{All
is made whole
in the heart of the Beloved.
Such is its ineffable grace.}

(c) Summer Blake 2021