Play Like a Tree

Let's play like a tree! 

Ok?!

Right now, if you can, get up, stand up.  Stand behind your chair and rest your hands lightly on the back of it...relaxing your breathing, relaxing your arms and allowing your weight to sink down to your feet and on down through your imaginary roots, down to the earth, on down, deep.....

Your leaves have fallen or are almost gone, and you stand bare in gray misty wet air as light diminishes all around. This cycle is winding down. Is there anything else you want to let go of? 

Let it go with the out breath and take refuge in the roots, in the warm earth. Everything is food to someone, and the Earth can compost and reuse all that you release now. 

     (from the Be Like a Tree Book, late fall portion of the tree dancing meditation)

Now is the season to hunker down in the warm dark of sheltering structures and to be nourished on the harvest of the work of the past. It is the time of being intimate with the creatures you live with, and at peace with oneself. A natural impulse now is to take space and time resting, cocooning, recharging. 

"darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding"

-(http://mattpaul.org/ from a translation of the Tao te Ching)

"Be with those who help your being."-Rumi

Is this a fearful thought, being quiet or alone curled up by the hearth of the fire within?  Do you catch the urge to run out shopping now like everyone else just so you can be too busy to be alone in the dark of the year? It's no wonder we hang up lights and sparkles to shoo away our fear of the dark days. It's ok. Hold hands with someone. But sometimes we find buried treasures in the dark boxes of the year, in the roots. Just being in the present with ourselves and each other. A gift.