Sensing the season

Rhythm and vibration – those are the messages I’m getting at the moment. About how we need to align with the rhythms of the earth, and learn how to receive the vibrations of other beings with wise discernment.

As I’ve allowed my practice to become more nature-based and imaginative, I find it better supports me as a sensitive being in our culture of ‘modernity’. (I thank Vanessa Andreotti for that framing, aswell as for the term ‘sense-fullness’).

Recently, I went to our neighbourhood orchard with my son. Usually, I wait until the calendar tells me it’s autumn, and remember to visit the orchard too late – when we have missed the fullness of harvest season and there are only one or two apples left.

But this year, I was guided by the change in season itself. During August I had begun to feel into the mellowing of late summer in a more embodied way. I had one particular experience (sitting in my garden, and then walking around the local streets) where I could feel that shift in energy, almost from the perspective of the land itself. I felt a deep sense of non-separation from the elements, the plants and the trees, as if seen by them and belonging to their wholeness.

My younger self would have been closed off to this experience, just as she would have rejected the word ‘spiritual’ as religious or new-agey. But my future self invites me to entertain the possibility that by reconnecting with spirit, we humans can be more fully alive.

Words don’t really do any of this justice, so I’ll let these images (all taken by my son, and the inspiration for this post) express it better.

But in closing – yes, we got to the orchard ‘in time’ this year, because I had listened to the season with more of myself, and so we visited early enough to catch the trees heavy with apples. A beautiful reminder of the fruits of practice.

Links & things:

I’ve shared a couple of new poems over on my pen-name site Dawn Siofra North

I loved this fascinating discussion between Monica Gagliano and Michael Pollan about consciousness.

In this review of my novella The Girl Who Survived, Judy Darley brilliantly captures its essence (much better than I’ve been able to articulate!) I’m looking forward to reading some of her stories, and I’ll add some links to them on my Creative Writing or Flash Fiction page.