Allowing Things to Fall
Walking through the woods in the winter time you sometimes come across a flash of gold. As it draws you in you notice that it is a branch that has held onto four or five autumn leaves. Sheltered by the trees above it and the branches aside it has held onto these crispy, golden leaves for dear life. All it takes is a robust little robin to lightly graze a leaf and it falls thankfully to the ground.
This is the image I had when the words, don’t grip too tightly, arose for me in a morning mediation recently. You need to loosen your grip, allow your despration to dissolve and allow things to fall.
Allow things to fall - the fear that those last four words can strike in me is absurd, and I don’t think I am the only one. Allowing things to fall is like the complete opposite of my recent raison d’etre. I have been holding so much shit together that my middle name could be SuperGlue. In fact, I think I could probably win awards for my ability to keep plates spinning despite absolute exhaustion, and maybe, just maybe some weird kinda of joy and pride in my frantic holding all this shit together, regardless of the detriment to my self. (And when I say my self, I mean all the intricate aspects of me).
So, I find myself now, gripping tightly, desperately afraid to let go of the few golden leaves still attached to my branch, but it is time. It is time to let them go, to make room for what is to come, to sit bare and naked for a moment, to allow space and emptiness because…
This is where the lights gets in.
It is no coincidence that during the season of letting go, when the trees allow everything to fall away, it is also the season with the most beautiful light.
When everything falls away is when the light gets in.
And often at the most unexpected times.
At this time of year you can be doing the most menial task, you look up and take that sudden in-breath, a small gasp, “Oh look at the light” to find the garden, or your street, or the sky illuminated in an orangey, red glow that completely changes the way everything looks. What has become so familiar suddenly looks different, exciting, inviting, still and stunning.
How do I capture those golden moments in my life, in this season of allowing the fruit and the folliage to fall?
By not gripping so tightly to what has grown in me before, by allowing what was seemingly so important through the other seasons, previous seasons in my life to fall away: to look up from the menial tasks to see the light come in and change the way the world looks and how I experience that world.
Loosen your grip, let it go and trust the ever changing cycles and seasons. Avoid getting stuck in the old ways of existing; allow what once appeared to be the familiar view of your world to change, to receive that new light, to change the way you see the world around you, to challenge existing beliefs and paradigms and allow new ways of seeing.
Where are you gripping tightly and where is that beautiful light trying to get in?