Autumn, Fog, Freedom, and Fierce Authenticity
Lately the coming of autumn has been unmistakable – all the senses are catching it. My eyes scan the yard and continue to mostly take in shades of green. But late summer green is different…an older green, somehow. Is that a Crayola color: “Old Green?” It should be. Audibly, the coming change is most noticeable in the way I’m more likely to hear the thrum of the ocean in the distance from wherever I happen to be around the house. As regards taste, I can tell you this: a September tomato has an entirely different flavor than an August tomato. And of course the touch of the air is cooler and drier as the breeze brushes against my skin.
But the clincher – the thing that seals the deal and tells me there is no turning back – is the smell. In fact, if you were to pair seasons with senses, it is unquestionable to my mind that fall corresponds to the olfactory sense. (Spring is touch; summer is visual; I guess I’m ambivalent about whether hearing or taste gets saddled with winter.). But autumn, autumn is all about breathing it in. It is sharp, pungent…the culmination of all that Nature has offered up. And there’s an unmistakable muskiness that states as clearly as words on a page: change is upon us.
It is a poignant time of year, and certainly more so this year. Covid Spring at least held the promise of summer, which made the uncertainty a bit more bearable. Covid Fall, along with everything else going on, just feels like being draped with a heavy cloak woven with sadness and fear. Not really something you want to curl up with. And yet. Somehow there’s this little something that feels like a silky milkweed seed as it floats free from the plant and drifts on the breeze. That’s a fancy way of saying there’re these odd threads of freedom, of lightness, that are also a part of the above-mentioned cloak.
Freedom comes when we recognize and fully accept the presence of the negative – when we stop trying to cover it over, ignore it, or wish it away. I know that we are not close to out of the woods with this pandemic, that there will be plenty of times in the coming months that I will be scared or sad or angry. But I recognize it, sit with it, and try to be okay with it. In that way, negativity loses its power to smother us. It reminds me of the fog rolling off the water; it is thick and dense and even scary. But ultimately, it is transient.
All of this is making me think of a chapter in Tias Little’s new book, The Practice is the Path, where he talks about what he calls the “Om Shanti Experience” and yoga students mistakenly thinking that “to embody the true state of yoga, you must feel sanctity, delight, and harmony.” I think many people use yoga exactly as a tool to paper over their feelings and experiences…to bury their heads in the sand, deny change, and hope for bliss. Fog? What fog? I had a student earlier this spring upset that I had used the word “virus” in my teaching; she felt that yoga class should be a place to “forget about the real world.” And I just need to say: that is not what yoga is for. If that is all you are using your practice for, you’re selling yourself – and your practice – short.
I mean, it’s great if you do feel blissed out after practice, but the point of yoga is to cultivate the tools that allow us to recognize and honor and work with all of our emotions in a skillful way. As Tias writes in his book, “To live openly with fierce authenticity requires a willingness to sense and feel not only the sweet and the shanti, but the mucky, distasteful, and terrifying.”
That’s the thing about change; it brings up emotion, especially because we often don’t have much (any?) control over it. New green becomes old green, and then eventually something else altogether. The key is recognizing and honoring both the light and the dark and seeking to walk the middle way. Balance and equanimity cannot exist without both sides.
