Right before the Fourth of July, I am writing this entry.  I felt I needed to update posts past the last one, it having mentioned the end of spring.

This year for myself, towards the middle of the summer, it will be ten years of having dedicated my life to more consciously incorporating deeper ways of understanding, doing the practices and setting aside the time to nourish that part of my life.

Wherever you are in your path in life, whether this be for achieving basic or manageable wellness, or for doing that, along with moving deeper into your own precious and unique path of experiencing, for who you are as a person, I am hoping for you more freedom, more ease, more enjoyment, for the enjoyment of your life, and for moments of seeing past your habituated routines, to a truer sense of freedom, where you are not bound by limitations, whether inside or out, past or present, or even those you might be projecting into the future.

I believe in this path, and continue to dedicate myself to walking in it.

May I meet your reaching out, if you wish to walk this path, and what I am offering speaks to you.

I am truly so happy helping in such a way, seeing and watching this path unfold for others.

Everything is so green.  That's what I remember thinking about a month ago now, how the winter that did not seem to let go gave way to what perhaps has been a brief spring--summer seemingly here now, although not officially yet.

If you think of experience and the personal perspective of reality to be based on a quality of awareness or consciousness, then seeing the transition from the quietness, perhaps even message of death, of winter, seeing that transition into life again, with almost a vibrancy of lush greenness in the world, from trees and plants of all kinds, this experiencing of reality can be seen to have different flavors, spring and summer being an opening, an inviting, to an understanding of expression, and giving, and a sense of the freedom of experiencing life.

Underneath what may be of concern, what may be psychologically apparent, or seemingly permanent, we all get glimpses of this consciousness, the flavors and different forms of beauty of it, whether that be the inward understandings more readily apparent in winter, or the more connective and expansive natural tendencies we might have as life returns in all its vibrant greenness to the earth during the months where the seasons are warming up.

Grateful for this time of year, may it unlock and allow us to see an expansive consciousness or awareness, opening us to the possibilities of spring, and the all but present experiencing of summer now.

Spring has come and gone, as has summer, and without further hesitation, I feel compelled to catch a bit of fall in my writing.  Not only that, I wish to let go of what perhaps needs to be let go of, the imperfections that can imperfectly snag and nag one to the point of preventing the presence of the present from being here.

Why the date as the blog post title, you might be wondering?  Well, after having set aside a novel on my shelf, actually my two copies of the one novel, one being a giant-sized special edition of it, I have picked it up again after about a year, this time being the time of year when people most read this author's works.  So, perhaps you can see this coming, but within the first two pages of picking up the novel again where I last left off from the previous fall, a novel which I've read numerous times now--the day the novel resumes on is, you guessed it, September 28th: 

"That year the first day of fall (real fall as opposed to calendar fall) was September 28 ..."

This happened to be in the mid- to late-seventies when the novel's story takes place, but it seems strikingly dead on for fall this year, in 2017.  It is also rather spooky, or synchronistic, that I pick up the novel on the exact day that I read about in the novel.  Maybe I've read it so much, I knew that date was coming.  Perhaps, but the sentence I quoted above is not one I'm likely to lodge in my memory, except now after blogging about it.

So I thought September 28 an apropos title for this post, and something to write about after months of hiatus.

Why the hiatus?

I think I always try and write when I have something perhaps exceptional, extraordinary, or something illuminating to share, and I am not saying I do not this time, but this is my entire point.  Imperfection is a given and a reality and only needs to be said because I think we try and hang our coats on perfection, when the darn hook keeps being dragged down to the floor, not being able to take the weight of our attempts at it, what will always only be imperfection.

I have not blogged since April, until this time now this year, because I was fooled by my own interpretations of others' comments or actions.  Maybe I can assess them in a way that casts the shadow on them, when it really has to do with my own self-absorbed interpretations.

This time of year, perhaps it's natural to reflect on our own shadows, seeing them mirrored and shimmying down the lane, through tunnels of trees, in the curves of leaves blowing our way.  I can throw out this word, daemon, at perhaps the risk of what some others may think, but I will use the word anyway, it being a Greek idea of an intermediary between the divine and us humans, or perhaps the messenger within ourselves to spur us on to go deeper, to relinquish our cloud covering of light, to let the shadows appear to take a closer look at them, to not flinch, but to see where we might have obscured our own path.  

It's not the depth and death of winter yet, but it is time to reflect, to prepare, to let go of the previous suppositions and assumptions of the year thus far.

Be gone!  Whatever truths hanging there as falsities, still lingering, be gone!

A leaf here, a leaf there, just let them blow away and realize them as the phantasms that they are, back to the nothingness from whence they come.

Be gone!

No self-absorbed false truths to exist anymore.

September 28.

A good day to let the shadows dance and come, to freely swing them, and let them fade away, releasing them back into the nothingness from whence they come.

Be gone!

enjoying the warmer
weather

but missing
the full feel

of winter

almost
over.

Feeling spirited today, with spring coming, and could not help but enjoy this today--

"Do you know that there's still a chance for you, 'cause there's a spark in you? You just gotta ignite the light, and let it shine. Just own the night, like the Fourth of July."

"It's always been inside of you, and now it's time to let it through."

Music video by Katy Perry performing Firework (quoted above).
​(c) 2010 Capitol Records, LLC

As winter approaches, it may feel good to stretch into this time of year, lean into it, feel its quietness, solitude, and peacefulness, such peace.

I encourage you to find solace in the silence, make that happen for yourself this time of year.

I am including many inspirational quotations about silence below.

Peace, mj

--

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
~William Penn

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.
~Confucius

An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
~Walter Bagehot

Silence is a source of great strength.
~Lao Tzu

Silence is the universal refuge....
~Henry David Thoreau

Accustomed to the veneer of noise ... society is suspicious of those who value silence.
~John Lahr

I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes.
~Richard Steele

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
~Mahatma Gandhi

Silence is a fence around wisdom.
~German Proverb

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time.
~Thomas Carlyle

Silence is medication for sorrow.
~Arab Proverb

Silence was never written down.
~Italian Proverb

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.
~Edward Hoagland

Nature and silence go better together.
~Astrid Alauda

You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.
~Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
~Peter Minard

Silence is more musical than any song.
~Christina Rossetti

Nothing is more useful than silence.
~Menander of Athens

Silence is a sounding thing, to one who listens hungrily.
~Gwendolyn Bennett

Silence is the mother of truth.
~Benjamin Disraeli

Her hearing was keener than his, and she heard silences he was unaware of.
~D.M. Thomas

We must have reasons for speech but we need none for silence.
~Proverb

Silence is the secret to sanity.
~Astrid Alauda

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.
~Leroy Brownlow

Silences make the real conversations between friends.  Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Into a quieter time of year, the potential is there, where you will not have to do what you think you need to do, where you can simply be, and that is enough.

To this time of year I add and am inspired by the words of author Ursula K. Le Guin, speaking of a feminine way of being, spoken as part of a commencement address she gave over thirty years ago.

See how it shines now:

(Full speech here: A Left-Handed Commencement Address)

"In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean — the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can’t play doctor, only nurse, can’t be warriors, only civilians, can’t be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers’ tales about it, we haven’t got there yet. We’re never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.

So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do your work there, whatever you’re good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it’s second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they’re going, to give you equal pay for equal time. I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls."

With summer approaching soon, I feel an ability to be more at ease, natural and energized as a person this time of year. Obstacles, whether they be of people or situations, can be a challenge and a drain on energy during this otherwise rewarding time. Here are some words of wisdom which speak to my heart, which perhaps can be a source of inspiration for you to live your life past and around any "tigers" this coming summer.

From spiritual teacher Shambhavi Sarasvati:

"Resistance for me has most often meant going around rather than fighting the tigers head on.

I’ve tried not to struggle with other people’s fears, projections or demands that I take up a leading role in their karmic patterns. And I respect that people have the right to be however they are. I sometimes want to fight—to prove something or make people I’ve cared about understand me—but this rarely works. It most often gets me more entangled.

Going around and continuing on my way, or engaging in a softer mode, have worked better. These strategies have been my teachers. They have taught me a lot about aggression and have required developing some serious patience and fortitude. I’m definitely still working on it.

But I’ve learned, through sometimes painful trial and error, that the use of more forceful means is only rarely necessary. In fact, I’ve found that in simply continuing on my path and letting other people be, the intelligent and compassionate patterns of nature are revealed. Nature is generally playing a longer game than us impatient humans."

http://jayakula.org/millennial-movement-heart/