We are just passed the autumn equinox, the moment in the year when night and day are of equal length. This of course also marks the beginning of the season of autumn, a time where the light and dark carry out their beautiful dance, before the darkness takes charge until the winter solstice. Autumn is such a beautiful season so vibrant, nostalgic and cosy. We are witness to a changing landscape, the last show of colour before nature enters her period of sleep.
This years autumn equinox circle was a wonderful gathering, marking this pause in the year together was a beautiful moment in time and space. We met in the light and finished in the dark, a significant metaphor to mark the movement on the wheel from summer to autumn. We meditated on balance, worked with seasonal cards and engaged in nourishing conversation, exploring together, what autumn can teach us about surrender and balance in our lives.
You can feel the sense of surrender that happens in nature at this point in the year, the way she gently lets go of all she has manifested over the spring and summer months, dropping the bounty, shedding and lightening, taking her energy inwards to prepare and nurture for the colder months ahead.
As humans we find it more challenging to let go, to surrender. We often hold tightly to our perceptions, belief systems, material lives and even emotions. This tightness, the need to be in control can cause us many problems. We can find it hard to be flexible; to go with the flow, which is really a sense of fear, and as we touched on in the equinox circle, a fear we hold onto to keep us safe. Years worth of conditioning and trauma built up and playing out over and over again.
The need to stay safe is important and has a role to play, which is why surrender can't be forced, it can only come when we start to work with feeling safe. For me, this safety means learning to trust in the wisdom we hold in our own bodies, unravelling the stories and beliefs that have shaped us, and building relationship with the natural world.
We also recognised the importance of surrendering to our emotions, feeling them and then letting them pass through us. It is a great irony that spending a lot of time and energy trying not to feel certain emotions only strengthens them, whereas acknowledging them and accepting them, allows them to move and release.
I read recently that each emotion vibrates at a different level, for example the vibrational frequency of joy is high and expansive, where as the vibrational frequency of anger is low and considered to be contraction. This allows us to consider further the importance of surrendering and accepting what we have inside, to then let it move through. If we deny anger it strengthens, is this why we don't feel joy as frequently, because we do accept that emotion (as it feels nice), and so it passes through? Are all emotions supposed to be fleeting? Such an interesting point of reflection.
The dictionary defines surrender as, to stop fighting and admit defeat or to give something that is yours to someone else because you have been forced to do so or it is necessary to do so. These definitions don't sit too comfortably, which explains why the word surrender can make us feel like we are being weak, making us hold on even more tightly. However, I also read that 'sur' means 'to melt' and 'render' means 'highest', so we could say surrender means giving in to a higher force or your higher self. This feels very different to the dictionary definition and gives me a different, more empowering feeling around the word surrender.
The idea that perhaps we as humans have surrendered to things that we don’t necessarily agree with or want in our lives, was another important area that came up in the equinox circle. Reflecting on the dictionary definition 'to give something that is yours to someone else' where might we have given our power away and where could we have placed trust in something external to ourselves? Our society is built on many systems and often, without question we accept these systems, looking to them to fix things and keep us safe. But what if in doing so, we have put ourselves in certain boxes, only seeing the world from inside that box? If we changed our perception and looked at things from a different perspective, would we find our own sovereignty? Would we find that we have everything we need internally and that these systems and structures have actually been the cause of our disconnection from self all along? Have we surrendered what it really means to be human?
This is such an interesting topic, especially in these divisive times, where it can feel safe to put ourselves in a certain box, it can give us an identity. But what if being human is far more than a belief system and an identity that was given to us by the system we were born into? What if being human means surrendering to the highest, most evolved version of ourselves, which in reality can’t ever be put in a box!
How might allowing a little bit of surrender support you right now?
What would it feel like to allow and accept the whole range of emotions?
Where might you have surrendered to something or someone outside of yourself?
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