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“As above, so below”
― Hermes Trismegistus
Everything is connected.
Don’t let our civilized world convenience you otherwise.
In Nature, there are ever-evolving seasons, each one only hanging around as long as it needs.
In the soul, the same is true. You ebb & flow, you change, you shift, and you come back again.
It’s a cycle that’s always running in the background, but very few of us ever take the time to actually sync up with these natural tendencies.
Instead, we act as if something may be wrong with us when we’re slower and less motivated in the winter months.
Or in the warm months, when we’re restless, FOMO peaks, sleep dwindles, and we can’t get no satisfaction.
Our new artificial default is more force than flow. Against rather than with.
It’s time that we get with it, tune into our greater surroundings, and flow with the natural current of the seasons.
In the modernized world, we plan out our lives in a robotic vacuum. One that lacks the details of the weather and the seasons.
For example, if you’re young, you probably don’t check the weather very much. This is because so much of your planning, routine, and social life exists mostly independent of Nature.
Sure, it may rain here and there unexpectedly, but you make minor adjustments and you still continue on, just as you had planned.
That will work for a while. It may even work your whole life.
But if you want your life to feel a little more effortless while still achieving your aims, you need to harmonize with the seasons.
If you zoomed out from our planet, you would consider the Earth to be one thing. It’s all nature.
It’s only our egos that separate us from it all - for good reason, otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to make decisions for ourselves & survive.
The entire Earth is moving at over 66k mph, slowly wobbling and tilting, in a change. To think that it won’t have an effect on our little lives is hilarious.
People can barely resist doughnuts, much less the overwhelming laws of nature.
Going against nature is a waste of energy in most cases. It’s far better to allocate your resources in a way that aligns with the path of least resistance.
Recently, on a morning walk, a creek’s waterfall caught my attention. You could see how over hundreds and hundreds of years, the water had been flowing over a part of the top rock in the path of least resistance. As time went on, and it kept flowing this way, it wore the rock down little by little. Over time, flow led to an even better flow for the water.
As this continues on into the future, the water will only find its way more and more. Lessening the resistance every second and using the least amount of energy to do so.
There’s a lesson there.
Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.
Think of a tree.
In the spring and summer, all of its energy is up above the soil, in the open air, mingling with the world.
But in the fall and winter, its energy goes down into its roots, below the surface.
Like the tree, I find that introspection comes far more natural in the colder months of the year - and it makes sense.
It’s typically when all things around you are slower, the sun isn’t motivating you as much, and it’s the perfect opportunity to reflect on how things have gone & how to do better.
In the colder months, as things have slowed down, that’s the time that you go inward. We lick our wounds, learn from our mistakes.
We plan, we strategize, and we introspect.
When spring comes, we get organized and we put the plans into action. We bring forth what’s been inside us. What’s been hibernating.
We blossom.
We expect to be consistent, static, and like a rock, unphased by the greater environment.
This is small thinking. This is being too zoomed in to your daily affairs.
You wouldn’t listen to music if it was only one note on repeat. You naturally crave rhythm. You like the music that has texture, surprises, melodies, and emotion.
Let your life be more like music.
It’s advantageous to be adaptable as these seasonal changes happen.
The key is to not be surprised when your own nature follows a similar pattern.
By flowing with Nature’s seasons, you will get to use your effort & energy in the most efficient way, you will be supple & flexible, and you will be continuously refreshing yourself.
Otherwise, you’re going against Earth’s greatest force.
Good luck with that. :)
