How To Make The Most Of This Autumn Equinox
On overwhelm, with a few complications in your personal life, not to mention the impact of the nightly news? When life feels confusing, exhausting, even downright scary, you know you need to rebalance, that your wellbeing depends on it. Fortunately, a powerful occasion of celestial balance is coming your way; you will want to take advantage of it.
Tuesday morning, September 22, 2020 (9:31 a.m. EDT) the Autumn Equinox arrives, officially marking the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere.
As a spiritual teacher, I’ve long been moved by this annual event, as it is a representation of the balance of the natural world and recognition of its link to the spiritual. Each year, between September 21st and 24th, the Sun crosses the celestial equator as it moves southward. It marks the end of summer, and the beginning of autumn.
In contrast, for the residents of the Southern Hemisphere, it is for them their Vernal Equinox, and time to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of Spring.
You can view this as not only a celestial event, but a spiritual one, because it signals transitions, and for this reason it is observed and universally embraced worldwide. Whatever and however the event may be observed, this is inarguably nature’s way of defining the seasons and is our way of staying in harmony with them.
It is a time of balance, with, for the briefest of moments, night and day of precise equal length, before introducing the shorter and cooler days that lay ahead. It is fitting that astrologers mark the Sun entering Libra, showcasing it rising and setting in balance. Perhaps you can mark the event by receiving (or giving) a little energy healing to bring you back into your best balance. If that’s not available, think of your favorite acupuncturist, as that’s another way to get rebalanced. And then there’s your meditation practice – that too inspires your best balance.
The Autumn Equinox is properly blind to cultural differences, and is viewed differently, and celebrated in unique ways around the globe.
In Asia, the Equinox has a special place in Iran, but also at the Great Pyramid of Egypt, in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
It is said that in the Pacific, the mysterious giant statues on Easter Island are aligned to recognize the equinox.
Among countless examples in Europe is the celebration of a harvest festival in the UK, while the French called the Autumn Equinox “New Year’s Day” on their calendar.
In the Americas, it has been marked by a wealth of rituals observed by indigenous peoples since ancient times: in America at Cahokia, and throughout Mexico at the El Castillo pyramid at Chechen Itza and the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, and the nine terraces of the Mayan underworld.
Nowhere, however, is its observance more profound and in many ways more dramatically fitting than in South America, at Machu Picchu in Peru. For those ancient peoples, the sky was their calendar. They built observatories, such as the Intihuatana high in the Andes, that provide an elevated and experiential viewing platform like no other on earth.
The observatory precisely indicates the four equinoxes and solstices, a timeless monument created to observe ancient rituals aligned to life’s highest and truest purpose. That site remains ever faithful to the principles along the path to spiritual enlightenment.
Most remarkable, however, is in its significance for us today: we are living in a time where too many have riveted their focus upon our differences, intent upon deepening what divides us, instead of bringing us together.
We know better, and we honor the truth of this annual Celestial event, that unites us worldwide. Bringing the people of the earth and different cultures together is no small and unimportant thing.
It is, miraculously, truly another cause for hope and celebration.