This is the Autumn Equinox when the year starts its exhale. The circle turns finally towards darkness after today. Just now, light and dark are balanced in a still point before we settle decidedly into the declining season and the gradual dying of the year. Balance is pleasingly appropriate for the season of the Earth element. Settling and centring is the direction of Earth. Touchable and yielding, Earth contains, stabilizes and nourishes. Like the archetypal mother that supports you in safety while allowing space for you to be. Our Earth, the ground beneath us, rich with minerals and nutrients and perfectly moist, has the miraculous ability to break everything down and rebirth it, as plant and animal-life cycles through growth, death and decay. There is ordered re-distribution of resources in this act that speaks of equity between all life. I find the beauty of this service performed by Earth very moving. It’s simple but profound to provide the ‘ground’ for life, and Earth doesn’t make a big song and dance about it.
That’s why Earth season reminds me to honour the everyday, routine – maybe mundane – acts. Taking out the bins must be done, as must sweeping the kitchen floor, so I could choose to do them with care and recognition of how these acts support me as a humble lifeform like any other. Down to earth.
Along with this reality check, at this time of year there is a turning toward recollecting what’s past, gathering-in of the harvest in the physical sense and the metaphysical. Checks and balances of the year so far. I find it a welcome time to slow down, turn around and take stock so that I can take next steps with understanding, gratitude and grounding. As it corresponds to the cycle of a whole life, this time of turning to Earth speaks of turning to what grounds you. What is stable? Stable close relationships, reliable and nourishing work. Giving ourselves what we desire and deserve. That which we build for the long haul, and in which we invest our time and care. It’s a loving time – what do you love?
It’s appropriate that this festival of Mabon, and this season incline us to turn a little more to introspection and inwardly digesting what we have taken in during the year, it being a time of gathering the abundance of apples, squashes and other edibles ripened in the summer sun. Digestion is the function associated with Earth in the Five Element theory of Shiatsu. The energy of the Stomach reminding us that we hunger and the energy of the Spleen which upholds and maintains our fleshy body. Because we are living bodies we must take in nourishment from outside and integrate what we eat so that it can become part of us. This can apply to what we choose to take into our attention and our thoughts. These things become part of us, and thereby we have the power to choose what we become. The things we want are close enough to our heart, that they define us. Can we be brave enough to love what we love, ask for what we truly want, and really seek our satisfaction?