On a Misty gray Saturday morning, I found myself in my typical place of solace, on a dirt trail strolling through the woods, near water.
Surrounded by cedar, dried and falling from its tree, as it does at this time of the year, the trees lead us in knowing how to let go, to release, and to purge.
At a little before noon, I know these eclipse energies are moving and cultivating their own purging and so I follow them. Standing at the creek side, tossing dried cedar into the river, I mindfully say to myself and to the universe, what I am ready to let go of; my fear of not being enough in the eyes of the people I love, my fear of losing them, or that our relationships will be temporary because they will choose something that they think is better and more worthwhile than I am, old stories about myself that have limited my self value.
As I watch, the Cedar sprigs are swept up in the current, some moving faster, some moving slower, it brought me to a space of considering which habits of fear am I most ready to let go of? Which belief systems of inadequacies will be swept out by my Spirit? And it brought me into the flow of cleansing, that is the river.
As I watched the cedar tumble around the rocks and down the waterfalls fading from my sight, I felt a sense of relief. The weight and pressure of the expectations of myself, if only for a moment, were gone. Standing there on the side of the creek, I felt the well of gratitude fill inside me. Allowing mother nature to fill my lungs, my feet in muddy soil, where they are often happiest, and most connected to this earth in my planetary existence, I stood in a place of solitude, and serenity, of true inner peace. Then, because that is what we are created to do, I turned and I walked away. Not from the peace that I had found, but from the parts of myself I was releasing and allowing myself to leave behind.
I stepped forward. My attention and focus was taken to the blanket of dry cedar covering the woods, and I thought for a moment about what if we were all able, what if we were all willing to let go of the parts of ourselves, our deepest fears, inadequacies and insecurities.
I imagined for a moment, a world releasing what no longer serves it and then in its place, love and compassion and intention, taking up those spaces of what we no longer needed for ourselves to survive on this planet.
As I walked away, I stopped to put my cheek to mother cedar tree, and for a moment tears came and brushed my cheeks as a wave of grief mixed with happiness in my heart, made its way to the surface and tumbled down my body. As I stopped to thank her, the mother tree, she simply smiled at me and said “sweet girl you don’t need to say thank you, or goodbye. You just need to leave it behind.”
Forever the journey, Anne