What Are You Leaving Behind?
Grateful for The Spring Equinox
Q: What Are You Leaving Behind?
A: Today marks the spring equinox. This day is a living paradox of mystery and science, that which is enigmatic and yet clearly makes sense when studied through measure. The very practical notion of the sun crossing the celestial equator, as well as the vibrant metaphor of an expressive rebirth following a long internal winter season. The flowers bloom through the snow and our animal nature is stirred towards procreative efforts. While the energy is that of moving forward and rising up, we are simultaneously shedding layers of dead weight of what no longer serves us. What are you leaving behind?
In Tibetan Buddhism, it is said that our current body is a reflection of yesterday's mind and that tomorrow’s body, a reflection of today’s mind. The vernal equinox is a day in equal length to the night, the yang to the yin mirror to the autumnal equinox portal. Spring is a stretch into expansion as opposed to the contraction of fall into winter. These are the cycles of life and for today, we shall rebirth ourselves towards the light of the sun. Our hearts open and our minds reorient towards the transformative nature of possibility.
Shedding the Winter
Tomorrow’s body is of today’s mind. Again, I ask myself...what am I leaving behind? It has been a long winter and it is obvious to me I am a completely different person than 6 months ago when the deep chrysalis of the winter solstice was being formed at the edges by the autumnal equinox inception. These cycles reflect our mind and our body, we are a living metaphor, we are ourselves the paradox of nature, there is no separation--simply a woven dance of being and existence, the fluid and metamorphic embodiment of life itself.
To look at myself in the mirror now, I can see that I no longer carry the same mind. Many of the thoughts that were spinning through the last quarter of 2020 are dissolved. Some relationships, partnerships, and emotions belonging to them--also now part of a historic soup. And I haven’t only dissolved; I have rebuilt, restructured my mind from the inside. I have gone into dark caverns, crawled down into mental crevasses with a headlamp of inner sight, and started some heavy lifting to reconfigure my reality.
This is Spring
I am leaving behind the avoidance of what has scared me for ages. Elements of self that seemed far away or easier for others in my life to live out or accomplish are now emerging through the ashes of internal flames. The inner work continues, the drumbeats of my heart awakening to a new rhythm as I can see the light at the end of a long-trodden tunnel. This is not only the end of a chapter of such vital effort but also the old mind that got me here. I am grateful for it and ready for the new. Time to shed resistance and self-imposed restrain. A celebration of lightness as the aching rigidity of mistrust sloughs off into mud. Death equals Birth. Night equals Day. A new dawn arises exactly due East. This is also the beginning of even more focused and refined super endeavors of the best kind.
Life is to be embodied, to gracefully own and become that which is inside of me as opposed to turning my gaze away in fear or distraction. In order to transform myself, I must see my errors clearly, observe my weakness, and own my shortcomings. I must penetrate the understanding of what brought me here, to this moment, as well as what the next invitation is boldly calling forth. And to this, I raise my proverbial glass and denounce these fears, the false, and the stifled expression of my destiny. From here I continue to rise into the truth that I am from within the heart of my heart. And pray for each of us to do the same.
Here comes the sun of a new mind...
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