Awakening from our Soul’s Cocoon

August! Wow, it’s August already? With the summer season ending just around the corner it would appear that so many things would be in the minds of the average Americans. Most of those things that come to mind have to deal with school and money! For some of us who live in the rural parts of the country, it means hard work. And for those of us who don’t ranch or farm for a living anymore, it means long hot summer days that may or may not impact your day to day life.

I would like to touch first on the school age children, their parents and teachers. Children are dreading the fact their long vacation they’ve been enjoying and playing through will soon come to an end. Parents are having mixed feelings of relief because the kids are leaving the house for 5 days a week and a normal routine will fall back into place and feelings of stress because of the strain that new clothes and school supplies put on the family budget. Teachers, on the other hand, know that their vacation is about over and that it’s “back to the coal mines” for another year! Knowing a few teachers myself, I know that this time of year is an odd mix (much like it is for the children) of dread and excitement. The excitement comes from the planning, the preparing and the expectations that the next school year will be awesome and they will make a difference in a child’s life.

If you farm for a living, you know that the bulk of the years’ work lays ahead of you, but, so does the pay off at the end. Anymore, it isn’t the knowledge that there’s enough food to last the winter that we find at the end of the harvest, it’s the knowledge that there’s enough money in the bank to last the winter! Wait! Hmmm…same thing!

For so many of us, August seems to be a time to contemplate, not only endings, but beginnings as well. The Sabbat in August is Lammas or Lughnasadh which is the harvest of the first fruits. It designates the beginning of the harvest season which culminates with Samhain. This was a time of handfastings in the old traditions in the British Isles. The sun God is beginning to age and weaken and, as the days become shorter, it becomes obvious that summer is almost over. We see both beginnings and endings all around us in our society and in nature.

August, in essence, brings to mind the tenth card of the major arcana in the Rider/Waite tarot deck: the wheel of fortune. Life, as I see it, is nothing more than a series of beginnings and endings and that is what the wheel of fortune teaches us. When you are down there is only one way to go and that is up and vise a versa. Unless, that is, you find a way to get to the center of that wheel and stay there. The center doesn’t move, it is the hub and everything moves around it. If you place yourself, spiritually, at a central point in any given situation, you will find that, although everyone and everything is moving around you, you are not perturbed by either the good or the bad. You will see the beginnings and the endings as a part of the natural cycle of the situation and be able to, emotionally, let them go on their natural course rather than interfering and causing havoc for you and everyone else involved.

Getting to the center is a choice. Stay in the center is the difficult thing. The choice that you must make to get to the center involves looking at any given situation from all sides and points of view and not passing judgments about it. Does this mean that you stop caring? Absolutely not! You can be concerned and care and feel joy and feel pain without ever making a single judgment call. This is where the ‘staying in the center’ part becomes difficult. You must maintain your spiritual balance to remain in the center of the wheel. As we all know, in today’s society, this isn’t an easy trick to pull off. There are so many distractions all around us every day that tend to pull us off center and want us to become entrenched emotionally in the drama of life. The best way that I’ve found to stay centered is charity work and deep meditation. Charity work because it takes me outside of my own self concerned space and meditation because it takes me deep into myself to help me understand both my flaws and my assets. Once I can take a good look at who I am, from both outside and in, I can stay balanced or change those things within myself that are keeping out of balance.

Once I achieve balance, I can look at any given situation with the same detachment that most of us look upon the beginnings and endings of the seasons and from that perspective, it is much easier to do the right thing in any given situation.

author: Morgan Ginther