Yesterday, February 4th, marked the beginning of autumn in the southern hemisphere. “What?” I hear you protest, “yesterday was practically the hottest day of summer!” Indeed, it was 39 degrees celsius in Adelaide. So how do we explain the difference between the start of the season and its apparent arrival?
The calendar of the seasons is a mathematical division of the year where the four seasons/Elements straddle the two solstices and the two equinoxes, with the fifth Earth season divided into four and sandwiched between them. Why does autumn start so early when it is still so hot? Well, the first energy of the new season comes early, before it is manifest in nature. It is like a wave forming in the ocean, a swell that slowly builds before it seen as a breaking wave.
If we look at the way the length of daylight changes, we can get a sense of this early manifestation of the season. On the summer solstice, December 22, the daylight was 14 hours and 30 minutes (data for Adelaide). Yesterday, February 4th, it was 13 hours and 44 minutes. It took 6 weeks for the day to shorten by 46 minutes. If we look forward 6 weeks to the autumn equinox on March 21st, the daylight will be 12 hours and 5 minutes. In that time the daylight will shrink by 99 minutes. From the beginning of autumn on February 4th, there is a gathering acceleration, similar to the building of the wave. This acceleration continues to the beginning of winter on May 6, when it slows on its way to winter solstice on June 21st. And so the years go, ever contracting and expanding. It is as if the Earth is breathing. Slow contraction at first, then more rapid, then slower, before slowly expanding, then more quickly, then slower again. The start of each season is the point where this this momentum changes.
As I think of this pattern in nature, I can feel the rhythm of it in my body and soul. How many years have you lived? That is how many “breaths” you have taken with the annual rhythm of our planet around the sun. I find this kind of cosmic meditation allows me to see my life in the context of something far greater and grander. It reminds me that my small ego-self is set within the infinity of True Nature. As when a camera zooms out from a scene, revealing more and more, and the original point of focus becomes smaller and smaller, so too a zooming out from our ego-self shows it to shrink in size and significance.
With this wider view and understanding, we can go back to the seasonal rhythm of day-to-day life, holding each precious moment within the framework of the vastness of the universe and the infinity of our True Nature.
For readers in the northern hemisphere, simply reverse the seasons from summer to winter, autumn to spring etc.
