The Creature Beckons: are you listening?

The shifting of the seasons always seems to be such a ripe time for insight into the intimate intricacy with which we are entwined with nature. Even though I am acutely aware of the dropping temperatures and the whipping wind—both signs of fall and vata season, during which time those with vata proclivities (a predominance of air in their constitution) can become easily imbalanced—I still cling to the patterns that were wrought in summer. I gravitate toward the same foods, the same routine, and demand the same energy levels from my mind and my body.

The last few days I’ve begun to feel the consequences of that obstinacy and my resistance to change. It continues to amaze me how entrenched we can become in the ideas we have about what is best and the sense of morality which can become entangled with these ideals. Today I was finally able to allow my mind to be still (made more difficult by the wind whipping up vata all around) and drop into what I am beginning to think of as “the creature”—my body, and its storehouse of intelligent built up not only over my lifetime but infused in my DNA from countless generations of ancestors who also had to build acclimate to their environment—I know immediately what must be done, and I see the way the fixation of ideas in my mind made me completely numb to the larger context with which I am embedded.

There is no purpose served by anyone trying to move against nature. Even the enjoyment that was derived from certain lifestyle factors in summer won’t be found as enjoyable in fall and winter. The creature needs different things in order to feel comfortable and harmonized in different times and seasons. Attempting to enforce a strange pattern which is out of alignment with the cloth of the season only divorces us further from the health we are attempting to create (both internally and externally).

I know these things. And still there is that resistance, born (I believe) from the innate human aversion to change. I wonder at what age it finally dawns on us that resistance is truly futile. it seems the lesson must be learned countless times before the message is finally delivered.

I see this in terms of planetary movements as well, which are constantly in flux and delivering different aspects of our karmas to our doorstep. There is the desire to always want things to be nice, to resist the difficult transits and planetary time periods and wait expectantly for the positive ones. I think this causes us to skim over and miss out on some of the lessons that can be extracted from challenging experiences. We just try to ‘get through’ instead of really hunkering down and getting our hands dirty. It’s in that moist, rich soil that life is actually happening, and if we attempt to remain unsullied we never might never quite take root inside our own lives.

What if the approach was shifted? What if instead of moving always toward comfort and ease and potentially missing the depth of experience we all subconsciously desire we decided to instead actively move toward depth and consider any comfort that comes a fringe benefit, not required but of course appreciated when it arrives. And what if instead of resisting change we sought it out—not in a compulsive way, but by listening always to what nature might be asking us to let go of, to add on, to attend to and to consider Her lighthouse to guide our movement. I think our species is capable of this approach to life, because I think at one time this was how our ancestors moved. They had their eyes on a different prize than the iPhone and the mansion in Beverly Hills. They understood that their life was a gift and that their lives must be continually calibrated to the will of Nature, who required continual feeding in order for life to continue to live. Their ears were attuned to sounds and cues now hidden beneath the roar of highways and the blasting of what can I think almost unanimously be considered absolutely terrible popular music.

Those ancestors are still alive in us in the ‘creature’ I mentioned earlier. We all have this sense of knowing embedded in us, it is just a matter of slowing down and becoming quiet enough to listen. I think it is essential to do so now. You might just hear nature’s roar inside you and suddenly understand where your effort and attention needs to be directed.