Autumn and Letting Go

Imagine this:  you've spent vast amounts of time making a tree.  The leaves are beautiful, perfectly shaped and a lovely shade of green.  Every time that you look at your creation, you feel a surge of pride and accomplishment, and it's one of your favorite things in the world.  Then someone comes up to you and tells you that you have to make your tree lose all of its leaves, and you have to put the trunk through an ordeal of cold and severe weather that will last several months, and the tree may not make it through.  How would you feel?  Would you be able to let go of your creation easily, exposing it to the elements and the threat of time?

That's what happens in our world every year.  Nature knows that in order to maintain its vitality, it must go through austere periods, periods when it gets by with a bare minimum of everything, when its normal riches aren't on display for the world to see.  Every autumn, it must "lose" the beauty that it has put so much effort into creating and becoming, and it must spend time lying dormant, waiting for the time to come when it can once more burst forth in its splendor.

Autumn reminds me of my own life, and my own need to simplify that I feel very strongly from time to time.  If I heed those times when they come to me, I find that eventually, I end up much richer, if not in a financial sense, then in a personal sense, a spiritual sense.

Sometimes, autumn isn't a choice.  Broken relationships, job layoffs, the death of loved ones, and many other things can push us into a period in which it seems as if we're losing everything.  But we aren't losing anything, for nothing on this planet really is ours.  Instead, we're being pushed into a winter in which we need to lay low for a while, fulfilling our responsibilities and obligations, but realizing all the time that spring is right around the corner, just waiting for us to be ready for it.

Winters can last a very long time, and we often get tired of the cold weather if it extends itself too far into what's supposed to be the spring.  But spring always does come.

When life tells the glorious maple tree that it's time to shed its leaves, the maple tree does so, and as a result of the winter for which it's preparing itself, it's able to give forth the sap that gives us maple syrup.  It doesn't spend time arguing that it needs the leaves for the photosynthesis that keeps it alive.  It trusts that even though it's letting go of a very important part of itself, that part will return and be even stronger and more beautiful when spring returns.

When life tells us that it's time for change, that we lost the job that we just lost for a reason, then it's time to shed that part of ourselves that we identified with the job and move on.  When a relationship ends, it's time for us to shed the part of ourselves that we identified with that relationship and move on so that we can find the rebirth of spring--with new leaves and new flowers--somewhere in our future.  Most importantly, we need to be ready for that spring when it appears, and we cannot ready ourselves by holding on to parts of our past that we need to let go of.

Our lives are full of cycles, possibly even more than those of nature.  We go through chapters in our emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and other types of development.  But we have to let chapters end if we're to move on to the next chapter, and we have to let seasons run their course if the next season is to come on time.  Spring can't make its way into our worlds if we're still trying desperately to hold on to the previous summer.

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Can we be uncomprehending, looking at the world like a young child, curious, with a freshness, free of accumulated notions? Can we look at everything anew every moment, free from conditioning by notions, by received instruction and the past? Can we allow the impressions in our mind to evaporate so that we see every situation and person afresh, without the barrier of the past? Can we be completely free of the screen of conditioning? Can we be childlike again? Can we be enriched by the wisdom of incomprehension?

Actually, we know too much. What we know are our own accumulated notions, memories, fears and experiences. This makes us unable to see reality, as it is, from moment to moment: an ever-changing, dynamic flux, creation forever in the making. We have labels of good and bad, we have labels of right and wrong, we have labels of great and small. We have labels for everything. We see through the lens of our own experience, of our own likes and dislikes, our pride and prejudice, our egoism and vanity, our fears and hopes. Through this distorting medium, we see and observe. This distortion is called our world and ourselves.. It is fragmented, polarized and in conflict. Is the conflict in the world merely an unfortunate state of affairs or is it directly the reflection of the conflict within ourselves, within our own minds?

To me, it seems that the fear, the conflict, the hatred, the violence and the misery in the world is a direct reflection of that within our own minds, in our own consciousness. Our experience of life is one of separateness, alienation, loneliness and despair because it is based on fragmentation and fear. This in turn is a vision of ourselves and the world as seen through the distorting lens of our own past, our memories and notions, our ideas and ideologies, our faiths and dogmas. Seen through this lens, the world represents mind boggling multiplicity that is a potent cause for fear.

Obviously then, we will live unburdened and free only if we can see directly both ourselves and the society we live in, free from the burden of our own knowledge. We need, in these times, more than ever, the wisdom of incomprehension. We need now, more than ever, a return to a childlike simplicity and joy.

Can we remain uncomprehending of notions of rich and poor, of high and low, of beautiful and ugly, of great and small, of intelligent and unintelligent? Can we remain free of separative notions that divide man against man? Can we be free from ideas and knowledge that create division and conflict? Can we be free from the entire structure of thought based on dichotomy, teacher and taught, leader and follower, idea and reality? Can we see beyond the divisions and differences between human and human? Can we embrace the whole of humanity as one? Can we embrace our oneness with nature? Can we see with the simplicity and insight of unitive understanding?

An awareness of our uniqueness is different from a divisive and separative outlook. In the latter, there is judgment, there is superior and inferior, there is looking up and looking down. Superficially, we are different. Some of us are thin, some fat, some black, some white, some rich, some poor, some famous, some infamous--whatever be our particular circumstances, our image, our appearance, whatever be the name and form of our bodies, whatever be the quality and content of our minds and intellects, we are all, simply human. We are human beings who walk on this planet for a brief while and then die. In this brief journey, what is of the ultimate significance, for each of us, is to recognize our own essential oneness, our oneness with each other and with mother earth and nature.

Our bodies one day will become fertilizer for plants and maybe food for animals. Every one of us, the greatest and the smallest will face the inevitable fact of death. Should we not, then, celebrate our oneness? Should we not rejoice at the essential oneness of creation? Should we not celebrate the glory and grandeur, the wonder, the majesty and splendour of creation? Should we not marvel and acknowledge the vast forces that act on this planet, keeping us all alive? Should we not attempt to discover the infinite intelligence that animates the whole of creation?

To wonder at all these, to rediscover our imprisoned splendour as that infinite intelligence and unbounded awareness animating the whole creation, we will have to unlearn our mountain of misconceptions, our accumulated notions, our labels and tags, our categories of low and high, great and small, rich and poor. In discovering our own hidden potential, in reaching the wisdom of comprehension, we shall become childlike again, living in simplicity, spontaneity, joy, contentment, unconditional love and an infinite oneness with the whole of creation.

© Ashok Gollerkeri

Hi, I'm Ashok Gollerkeri.  As I see it, every human being on this planet is a wave in a vast ocean of humanity, creatures and creation.  I write to celebrate our essential oneness and share my joy. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SharingForSelfEnquiry

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The process of resolving an inner or interpersonal conflict or handling an emotion that we have struggled with for many years or decades, such as anger or fear, in a healthy manner is one that frequently entails making progress and suffering setbacks.  We usually feel excited and pleased with ourselves when we make some surprising progress and discouraged and disappointed when we regress or backslide.

When we do suffer a discouraging setback, it tends to feel like we are back at square one, but that is almost always not the case.  The progress we have made prior to the setback is real; it is not to be discounted or negated, though our feelings of disappointment, shame, or remorse and our subsequent loss of perspective may try to convince us otherwise.  One key indicator that we have made and are continuing to make progress is that the setback will not keep us down for very long, not nearly as long as it may have in the past.  Progress is evident after a setback or moment of regression or failure when:

For instance, if we have recently lost our composure (which happened to me just the other day when I was discussing religion with someone), we usually feel disappointed with or even ashamed of ourselves (Why did I let that happen?  I should have recognized that our conversation was going nowhere and either agreed to disagree with this person or changed the subject!).  Our inner critical voice may be champing at the bit, as mine always is, to put in his or her two cents worth.

But as is often the case, a setback or regression of some type precedes or paves the way for even greater progress.  For some unknown reason, a setback almost always seems to be necessary at times in order for our next growth spurt to occur.  Perhaps we have another significant lesson to learn.  Or maybe we need to be reminded that whenever we react in familiar counterproductive ways, such as yelling, the silent treatment, blaming, retaliation, and the like, we are setting ourselves up to suffer inevitable feelings of remorse or shame.  A setback, though often painful, is not without potential redeeming value, for it frequently paves the way for a comeback and gives us the momentum to grow more than we would have had we not suffered the setback.  Go figure!  Personally, I would prefer to make significant progress without having to suffer setbacks, but life doesn't usually seem to work that way.

Mission statements represent your belief system—the priorities, values and principles that measure your decisions. It provides overall direction and clarifies your purpose and meaning. When you clearly know what you want to be and to do in your life, you feel strong in your sense of mission. You’re no longer driven by everything that happens to you. Rather, you feel a deep and complete commitment to following your innermost values.

Dawn Angier

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse.  Some years muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a person aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some people become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we were meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen:  may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh