Time to Go Inwards

The year has come to a close, summer and spring’s fertile energy of growth and productivity has decayed away; the energy of the land is no longer geared towards outward displays. A soft wet darkness has taken hold and it is time to go inwards.

Inwards into our soil, closer to our souls, the dark and non-verbal place of feeling, where the language older than words sings to us and we find the voice of who we are, the seeds that wish to be grown into our lives.

A threshold opens up on the land, inviting a whole new way of being, a way that is as ancient as the earth’s bones but which goes against the modern cultural narrative of busyness, youth and productivity. And because of this, many struggle with the invitation the wild gives us at this time.

For perhaps those that struggle have depended on certain ways of being that give them external validation, or perhaps they haven’t learnt how to sit in quietude with themselves and fear what they will find there.

Yet the wild shows us over and over that we are cyclical beings, ever changing and shifting so we can live a healthful life; that the inner journey is just as vital as the outer.

This time is an invitation to drop all that isn’t you or what stands in the way of your becoming, and like a heavy cloak, let it compost away, so you can come nearer to your own magic.

This is a death, a death of old ways, given up as a gift, so we can grow.

– Brigit Anna McNeill
via Facebook
October 31, 2023

Related Off-site Link:
Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself – Maria Popova (The Marginalian, November 21, 2019).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards
• Brigit Anna McNeill on “Winter’s Way”
• Brigit Anna McNeill on the Meaning of Winter Solstice Time
• To Dream, to Feel, to Listen
• Autumnal Thoughts and Visions
• October Vignettes
• November Musings
• Winter of Content
• Balancing the Fire
• The Autumn Garden
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2021)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2016)
• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”
• Autumn Psalm
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Autumn’s “Wordless Message”
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• A Prayer of Anchoring
• In the Midst of the “Great Unraveling,” a Visit to the Prayer Tree
• A Sacred Pause
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• Threshold Musings
• Stepping Out of Time and Resting Your Mind
• In the Stillness and Silence of This Present Moment
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• Samhain: A Time of Magick and Mystery
• At Hallowtide, Pagan Thoughts on Restoring Our World and Our Souls
• Resilience and Hope
• Hallowtide Reflections
• An All Hallows Eve Reflection
• Halloween Thoughts

Image: Michael J. Bayly.