Autumn Equinox, Saturday the 22nd at 8:54 pm CT.

We are in a time of interim.

Between Summer and Fall.

Summer’s waning light. Fall’s bright, crisp color not yet arriving.

You are in this time of interim
where everything seems withheld.*

I am here again. This time with learning how to listen more deeply with my body as I continue to learn the lessons pneumonia brought this summer.

Dave and I are here, too, with our planned move to Port Townsend, Washington next year, and all the things to take care of, understand, and prepare for.

Clients and friends are here.

• Finding a new way to be living with alcoholism.
• Recommitting to a path of practice when busy life keeps overwhelming.
• Searching for a way to break up old patterns that just keep pulling back to “happy” oblivion.

The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.

This is a difficult place to be.

Our bodysouls know there is another way, and yet “the way forward is still concealed.”

In each moment, we must choose, without seeing the way forward, to stay devotedly, steadfastly turned toward our new life.

We must drop deeper than egomind, into an alive body and heart, connecting to the intelligence of life living in / through / as us.

Even though the old has not yet died away and the egomind will constantly try to pull us back into our old ways, we choose to practice presence–to come back to the Truth of this moment.

There are so many paths for getting under the chattering monkey mind and for cultivating presence: meditation, conscious movement, Course in Miracles, the Diamond Approach, the Work of Byron Katie, The Embodied Presence Process, Circlework, women’s work, the Enneagram, voice work, yoga, zikr, mantra, dance, prayer–to only name a few that have graced my path!

It’s all about coming into Presence NOW, under the mind chatter, to whatever needs to be experienced in the moment–often revealed quite unexpectedly in body and/or heart.

“We soften our focus, remain alert, and drop deep into ourselves.” (Anne Hillman in Awakening the Energies of Love, p. 295)

We make a conscious choice to shift our attention.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

Can we let the coming of Fall–of beautiful and then falling leaves, nature’s interim–support us in not knowing how?

Can we simply do our practices and face forward toward the unknown newness we yearn for in our bodysouls and trust the process?

Can we faithfully endure so that our hearts are prepared for our “arrival in the new dawn”?

How are you abiding in your interim?

What is supporting you?

* Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from John O’Donohue’s blessing For the Interim Time, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings.