Autumn - A Time to Release and Realign

Autumn has arrived with all its beauty and bounty and for me, it’s a welcome shift. The rains, shorter days and falling leaves feel like a full body exhale. It’s harvest season and is a bumper crop for apples this year. As I sort the fruit for cider, canning and drying, I’m learning some big life lessons that speak to our monthly theme of Satya or truthfulness. So often this teaching can be interpreted as ‘not lying’, but it’s so much more. Satya demands integrity to life and to our self. When we live rooted in this teaching, harmony and vitality are inevitable.

So what does this have to do with apples? For years my life has been so busy that I did not have time to tend to our fruit trees and year after year the fruit would fall and rot on the ground. I would avoid that part of my yard as it got stinky and my uneducated hope was that somehow this would become compost that would nourish the tree. Recently I learned this actually attracts diseases that can affect the fruit for years to come. The rotting fruit does create wonderful compost but it needs to be taken to the compost pile. In the past few years I’ve started gathering all the fallen fruit as well as the fruit from the trees and piled them into containers for later processing. Probably in an overcompensation for the years of wasting so many apples, I have been determined to save every piece of fruit. Unfortunately, I have seen the phrase “one bad apple can spoil the bunch” come true over and over again. Those bruised old apples need to go in the compost pile or they will create havoc and so much more work in sorting and cleaning up the mess.

Nature is so wise and we have so much we can learn from observing and honoring this wisdom. Over the years my overdoing tendencies prevented me from seeing my essence and the real fruit that I have to offer. Turning away from this and ignoring tending to myself has not led to vitality nor to me living in integrity. Over the years I’ve continually added new endeavors to my life and I’ve resisted letting go of what was ready to be composted. This has kept me from bringing my full self to what is unfolding for me in the present. This year as I see the leaves release from their mother tree and the fruit transform back into rich compost I am learning to sort and to release. It feels nothing short of transformative.

Much love,
Sue