Meditation Articles Series

Here in Auckland, New Zealand, it’s a warm balmy summer.  The cicadas sing throughout the day, and people stroll down to the beach for a cooling swim.  This morning the air felt cooler as I ran up the path on my way to the city.  It comes almost as a surprise that the season is changing.  And yet our body's knowing is already  attuning to a new season.  For those of you living in the Northern Hemisphere, you will probably be feeling that ‘spring is just around the corner.’ 

Yesterday I threw out ten years’ of journal writing.  It took a few hours to tear out and burn pages of all my deepest, and often darkest thoughts.  Now and again I would stop and read a line or two.  I found myself laughing at how seriously I had taken my thoughts.  But then I discovered some lines of verse I had written in a spiritual development group and I thought I’d like to share them with you.

The verse is called, “The Seasons.”

“Spring, gentle rain, tiny flowers that open,

and fall in a cascade of pink outside my window.

Glorious wind tugging at my ears,

Young goslings paddling in mud puddles, and mother goose freed once more from nesting to pull the tender grass shoots.

Summer greenery, refined in your splendour,

Draped as leaves over the flame tree, shelter for birds,

and shade for us as we picnic under your embrace.

Autumn lady, naked now, your burnished leaves can no longer hide you.

You are sculpted in starkness, defining a time for reflection and inner journeying.

Winter comes, the sun low on the horizon, quickening to darkness.

Cold, starry nights, the aura of the moon filling the domed heavens,

Love snuggled under quilts, and gaiety dancing in the fire’s embers.

Jump out now on the morning’s crisp frosty grass, pink toes tingling, cries of, “Ouch! Ouch!”

And you Winter, spiralling mist over the bay, cast like a soft sheen of silk, waiting for the tender call of spring to ripen and soften into the fullness of summer once more.”

And we too being part of nature are like the seasons with our thoughts which are rising, and falling, and passing away.  And in meditation we can take the opportunity to observe change, to open to change, in stillness and silence.