For many people, autumn marks the start of a glorious season filled with spectacular displays of foliage, and harvest celebrations. For others, though, autumn is a sad reminder of summer's end as the days get shorter and colder.
Personally, I love this time of year: the magnificent displays of colour; swishing through piles of leaves and the smell of bonfires in the air. Even the grey, wet days bring a sense of everything coming to rest. For me, this is a time of reconnection, a time to reflect, to offer gratitude for the abundance of the earth and a time to reclaim inner balance. And a time to get out my winter jumpers and snuggle up with a good book.
Recently, I saw this message on a picture of a flaming orange tree, ‘the trees show us just how beautiful it can be to let things go’. It was a wonderful reminder of the beauty of ‘letting go’. This is something that we practise continually in our meditation practice but perhaps, with the change of season and the energy of the autumn equinox, we could look beyond and reflect on other ways that we could ‘let go’ and as a consequence be freer, lighter and happier.
To quote the Buddha, ‘in the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you’.