Equinox
This week has seen the Earth in a brief balance with the sun as the sun glides over Earth’s equator to bring the autumnal equinox where the night equals length to the day. This sets off the season when we allow the yang energy of summer to pass and we head towards the dark, yin energy of the winter. Or, as some see it, the summer is a time of extroverted, social, picnic and party activity lit up by the long bright days of masculine sun energy. For them, the sun now leads us towards the introspective, hearth-centered gathering time of feminine spiritual activities lit up by the fires and candles that sparkle during the long nights. In yet another perspective, Jung may have seen summer as outward, social, ego manifestation that now moves down towards a more unconscious, mysterious, deep soul time of autumn and winter. However one looks at it, the seasons bring change and this week we rest briefly in a balanced wholeness between two ends of different experience and ways of being.
Can you tune your senses into the shifting energy and seasons in the world and in your self? Can you experience and then hold the ephemeral balance in yourself? What would an internal equinox be to you?
I tried to experience this myself on my recent Labor Day kayaking trip. I launched at sunset on the day of a full moon. On full moon days, the moon rises in the sky directly opposite of where the sun sets within minutes of the sun slipping under the horizon. I pointed my kayak north, extended my paddles west to the sun and east to the moon and tried to viscerally feel the world being in balance, knowing that this brief transient moment would soon tip towards the descent into autumn and winter in the world and in myself.
