September 2011

Today is Labor Day, and it is the first cool day of the season. There are a couple of leaves on the ground in my backyard, and it feels like fall is just around the corner. Autumn is my favorite season: it always has been, and it probably always will be. I love days around 65-70 degrees...warm enough for a tee-shirt or long-sleeves during the day, but chilly enough for a hoodie or light jacket in the evening. I'm really not sure if it's the temperature or the metamorphic nature of fall that I'm so in love with. There's something seductive about change, the approach of winter and within a few months, an entire new year.


Perhaps it's also that fall has always meant back-to-school. Even though I'm now done with my education, fall still means scheduling changes and a return to order and routine (things I like). Autumn is also a sign that the holidays are right around the corner. For me, the holidays mean snow days, time for family, and a few extra days off work!


All this discussion of metamorphosis reminds me of Sutra 45 in Samadhi Pada of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I:45 states that "The subtlest level of nature is consciousness. When consciousness dissolves in nature, it loses all marks and becomes pure." In layman's terms, this means that the natural order of things can help us reach our most base, unaltered mental state, a state of mind free from all the baggage and junk we carry with us from day-to-day. All our doubts, fears, resentments, presumptions, desires, and attachments ultimately disappear when reduced to a natural, unaltered state. This is ultimately what we are trying to achieve with our yoga practice: a pure and quiet mind, free from attachement and attuned with nature, or prakrti, the unaltered or natural state of things. Prakriti also means nature, quite literally, which brings me back to my love affair with fall. There's a primal intelligence that exists within the seasons. Autumn seems to have experience. After all, it's the more experienced part of a year. It has weathered many storms and basked in hundreds of sunny days to make it to September.