Today is the day of the autumn equinox. The limbo between the light and the dark half of the year, and I am trying to decide what that means for me right now.
It is absolutely accurate that I feel myself to be in no-mans land right now. I have no idea about what the future will bring, except that there will undoubtedly be a period of scrambling around in darkness before the light returns. But that is true for all of us right now. There’s the very real threat of a big second wave of the virus, and there’s all the political instability around the american election, and then there are all the other very real issues like climate change that haven’t gone away but everyone seems to have forgotten about.
The most scary one of all to me right now is witnessing the way people react to all of this. Seeing how more and more people fall for alternative versions of reality, as long as they allow them the illusion of not having to see just how dire the situation is right now, and give them a goodish reason to try to cling to the old world we have left behind, because that is less scary than admitting it is time to let go and accept the need to forge a way forward and towards a world that faces the real issues and tries to find a new balance point.
And writing this, I realize that I am just one of them. I too, do whatever I can to avoid having to think too much about what needs to come next, and to face the fact that I have no idea whatsoever where the future will take me.
Being sick then even brings a strange kind of comfort, where at times it can almost feel like a security blanket: the future is something that I can still make excuses about because my energy levels right now do not allow me to be very active. Things like that are extremely tempting, I can assure you that.
Except that I have promised myself Truth. To be as honest as I can with myself, and acknowledge all the ways in which my mind tries to hide away and escape from reality. And that’s why I am writing this and putting it out in the open. Because I do not want to do that. I do not want to get trapped in my own comforting lies.
But at the same time, this sickness is my reality. True to my promise, I tried to figure out how much of it is still there. And so I had a test last Friday. I volunteered to help out with a math competion where they needed people to supervise and serve as jury members. My tasks were consisting of skyping with participants and correcting entries. About five hours of such activities. Something like the equivalent of the workload of a normal working day for most people, or even a bit less than that. I was completely exhausted afterwards, and it took me 24 hours to recover to a reasonable level of energy. So clearly I am not yet fit for work.
But then what? What to fill my time with while I wait and give my body to recover? I want to figure out my life calling, and exit this period having a reasonably solid and realistic kind of career plan. In normal times, people in such a situation would probably decide to make a pilgrimage or vision quest, take courses, do volunteer work, things like that. Exactly the kind of things that are now so much harder if not impossible because of this lovely virus we are having to deal with.
So then what? I am not sure right now. I am trying to go with the guidance I receive from my inner guides, and while I feel they have worthwhile input to give, it is a way of working that again raises that question of Truth. For how can I trust that input when it is being received by my own mind? No amount of cleansing can really protect me from myself. What if I mishear? What if my subconscious distorts the parts of the message that I would rather not hear? What if…
That is where I am right now. Trying to figure out that limbo. Trying to navigate my own fears.
And to complete the balance of this post, let me turn to my guides and ask them to add their perspective to my own.
This is Crow Mother.
Truth is not an easy objective to obtain. It is not something that is easy to face. So do not judge too harshly when you find that you or others around you sometimes shy away from it.
This is the moment of balance, the moment when the equilibrium shifts towards darkness over light. And that is not an easy thing to face, as it means moving from the aspects of life we have control over to the aspects of life that control us. Our fears. Our prejudices. Our hope.
It is a time when our horizon shrinks. When we are at home more often, and when the longer evenings mean there’s naturally more time spent on reflection and introspection.
Have no fear of the dark. It is the place of incubation and of rebalancing. It is the time when new ideas have an opportunity to arise and take root within. That requires us to make space, to let go of what was, to die a little bit. There is no other way. Eternal summer would be a very problematic stale situation. For there would be no renewal and ideas would still rule that have long since outlived their usefulness.
And so do not worry too much about the state of disarray the world is in. It finds itself in a similar state of limbo as your soul. It needs to shed. Figure out what it wants to keep and where it can make space for something new. Times like that always hurt, as their are always going to be parts of it that make us deeply uncomfortable, that feel like we are being asked to sacrificed some of the things that are dearest to us. But it is much better to bring this out into the open and acknowledge that we are going through a process together, rather than either pretending that nothing needs to happen, or pretend that the fight has already been won, and those who do not agree with what you think the future should look like are not worthy of being part of the discussion.
It is as you have noticed in your own soul. It is not until all pieces have had a chance to process their experience, weep their tears and find a path of renewed hope, that the process of renewal can start. It will take a long way for the world to reach that point. But that time will come eventually. It may not be in your lifetime, but a new balance will be found. Until the next summer ends, and the process starts anew. This is how life renews itself constantly. The process is not fundamentally different whether we are talking about plants, animals, a human soul, the collective soul of humanity, the planetary soul, or even the gods and the universe itself.
To be alive, to have consciousness, means to accept that life will continue to cyclically lift us up and tear us apart.
Accept that.
You are now at the place in between. You have been torn to shreds. That means the light now has space to find the seeds of the next cycle, and bring them to the surface so they can grow and blossom.
But be patient. The time of darkness is only starting. That means that it would be unwise to spend too much energy on blossoming, as frost will only kill of what you try to manifest now.
At the core levels of your soul, the next cycle is already being prepared. Trust your own strength that will bring it to the surface when the time is right.
Wandering the woods 