Autumn leaves are actually an embodiment of the process that is occurring during each moment of our lives - and beyond. The display of the vivid colors of red, orange and gold is in fact the result of the green chlorophyll - the substance that manufactures the tree's food from sunlight and carbon dioxide - draining out of the leaves and flowing down into the roots, where it is stored for the winter. When the chlorophyll leaves, the leaf dies and falls off the tree. Amazingly, the capacity of the leaves to glow in all of their glory comes from the process of dying.
Applied to our own lives, this means that the emotions which drain away our spiritual strength - feelings like doubt, disillusionment, anxiety and fear that would seem to "disprove" the insights we've been given - are actually the very condition for those insights to manifest themselves in all of their glory. These emotions - the "dying" of hope - are like the explosion of the firework and the destruction of the chemicals that produces the glowing display of colored light. Without the "dying" of those chemicals, there would be no show! Speaking in alternate terms, we might say that these afflictive emotions are the death-dealing fire that works to produce the life-giving light of insight.
The fact that evening sunsets produce some of the most vivid autumn colors adds its own weight to this realization. Indeed, it is the dying of the day's light that produces the most luminescent colors. As the poet Rilke would say, it is the shattering of the crystal cup that effectively produces the life-giving "ring." Let us, therefore, embrace the lessons of the autumn!
Photo: Aspen trees glowing in last light, Never Summer Mountains near Gould, CO, September 26, 2011
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