Seasonal Harmony
Drippy rainy green greetings to you from Salt Spring Island. Windy today with imminent rain, cold as usual for a day in late November. I look out the window with a foggy morning mind, and consider ways to enter into greater harmony with the season.
The glory of golden leaves has passed, and they’re now brown and mulching together on most of the walking paths. Light is sharp in mid-day, should the sun appear before it soon fades. People are dusting off their SAD-lamps, ready to ward off an unsettling strangeness in dull afternoons. Of course, tea at 4 is the time-honoured pattern my grannie brought to Canada from her rainy dark British Isles. I follow her system, and this year I’ll change it up a bit, make it more lovely.
Time to bring out the black iron teapot with its black iron cups on black leaf saucers. and pour out some of the brew. Late November to early December, I’ll go with Genmaicha, said by the interwebs to be rich in vitamin B, fibre, protein, calcium, and polyphenols and containing selenium, magnesium, manganese, iron, and many health-boosting nutrients. Yes, it has GABA. Join me at around 4 most days, wherever you are, and we can share a telepathic bond while sipping something good for us.
Now to make more harmony with the season. Stepping outside, not just bundled for the dog walks, but for my own seasonal attunement. Attention to the air, its light, motion, scent, density, sound.
Here’s a little video of last week’s sunshower:
So to keep opening to the harmony of my own life and the shifting of seasons, I don’t just stay indoors, poking around at the various mind-things that take me up into the fantasy ethers. I let the senses bring me back to the location where I actually am. I look for what the day brings, how the sun comes to open each day with light - bright or diffused. No matter the season, I can be heliocentric. And match myself in all activities with the shape and shade of this energetic flow.
There’s more than meets the eye in the harmony of the seasons. Knowledge systems the world over and throughout time have conjoined the human body with location, time of day and season, astronomy and physics. They produce indications of how the human being (body, mind, and soul) can access this Great Connection of which the seasons, months and days are indicators and portents. Not to manipulate but to be in harmony. No wonder the ancients gave them all names, which we retain today. I am writing this on Saturday, the day of Saturn, at noon, the time of peak influence. There must be a raga for this somewhere.
This change of temperature is a good exercise for me to learn to be in harmony with what is, not what I wish it to be. Epictetus said, “Don’t seek for what happens to happen as you wish, but wish for it to happen as it happens.” I’m not advocating shivering in the cold like a Spartan, but being aware of the cold makes the fireside so much more welcome and cozy. The sharp contrast of indoors and outdoors creates an unheard music that is appreciated inside myself. It goes something like this:
I think I am starting to get it. Seasonal harmony is something about the opposites and conditions created by the new season passing like a scanner through all our fields of being, creating waves as it moves. Our adaptations and corrections, our memories held by just such a day, with just this sort of light, and more, all come together into an instantaneous new formation. In this way, we take part in the stable creativity of the universe.
Video Overview
I’m enjoying the video AI overview of this article - yes, this is exactly what I was writing about, and they had only one spelling error, so I’ll take it as a win.
Sufi News
I’m helping make a new Substack for Sufi Circle Canada Chronicles - check it out and please subscribe (it’s free) if you’re interested in the Universal Sufi message of Love, Harmony, and Beauty brought to the West by Hazrat Inayat Khan. My dear friend, mentor and teacher, Shamcher Beorse, was one of Inayat Khan’s original pupils.
Thank you, Carol, as always.
Nice photos and captions. thanks.