"Blessed Fall Equinox.
May you journey to the depths of your own shadows
and discover a beautiful darkness,
the likes of which you have never known." ~laurie frazier
If you are a spiritual seeker—a new initiate perhaps, and heading out on that psychonautic journey of self-discovery, just like we prepare for winter in the fall or before going on a long hike, there are preparations that deserve to be made for spiritual advancement on the path. And if that journey corresponded with the seasons, which I believe it does, that journey would begin with the Autumn Equinox. I could quote things like Joseph Campbell who said, “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature” or the Hermetic Law, as above, so below; as within, so without, to better convince you, but that’s better left for my book BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS. For the sake of brevity, Fall has a few main themes: the harvest, darkness and purification. Which all distill down to one thing: clearing our space.
Applying these themes to our lives would look something like this:
Harvest: In order to clear our space, we get to take an honest accounting of it. It’s a time of recapitulation. What do I have to show for myself? Who have I been being? What actions, thoughts, beliefs, and awarenesses have I been swimming in? What’s been fruitful and what has not? Where am I making progress and where have I come up short? Where has my harvest become unacceptable and no longer a reflection of my current consciousness?
Darkness: Just as the Fall Equinox in the northern hemisphere, begins the descent towards the shortest day and the longest night at the winter solstice, before we can ascend into the Light of consciousness, we must first descend into the depths of our own sub-consciousness/darkness. It’s time to shine the light on all of our dark places, to acknowledge, be accountable for and either integrate, transmute or purge what we find there. All in preparation of clearing our space.
Purification: One need look no further than the falling leaves to asses that letting go, is a major theme of fall—and why is it even called ‘fall’ in the first place, huh? Once you take that accounting and see your own darkness, now the question begs, what are you ready to let go of? Of all that shit— toxic emotions, unhealthy relationships and habits, addictions, limiting beliefs, your past, what is no longer serving you? What can you see that would be a hinderance to your spiritual evolution? Yuh…that. An integral piece of this purification process is forgiveness. You can’t really move forward without it. Forgiveness of yourSelf for all the shitty things you’ve done, not only to others but yourSelf. And forgiveness of everything you deem unforgivable that you mistakenly perceive has happened to you and not for you.
A tall order…not gonna lie. However, essential to your progression, growth and evolution. No magic wand of love and light, holding rose quartz, or smudging yourself with sage will ever take the place of your own accountability and actually doing this work for yourSelf. It’s like that. You are in the process of giving birth to the glorious Soul you came here to be. Like I said to my purging friend in the middle of a plant ceremony, “Giving birth is never pretty…but it is always worth it.” There are beautiful gems of wisdom and self-awareness to be mined in the darkness of your own be-ing. Don’t miss the show.
If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this, I’ll be doing an on-line work-shop on FB on this very topic. DM me for details at https://www.facebook.com/laurfrazier . I have other resources available as well as one-on-one coaching. My book BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS— A Journey through the Shadows to Emotional Freedom, will be out in the Fall of 2020.
