It’s the depths of fall so naturally I am thinking about death. Halloween or Samhain is the time of the year when what separates our inner world from the outer world is almost undetectable. There is an inescapable feeling of an unfamiliar otherness being right where we stand in the midst of our daily round. The darkness encroaches and things can get a little unnerving. This time of almost winter, when there is a natural slowing down, is a time when the parts of our self that are least known, and the least comfortable, come to the surface. The energy of this time of year puts us in touch with the ghosts of our past and our sadness at what still remains unresolved.

Reflecting on this jumble of feelings, and with more dark hours than light, brings about the oddest sense of self, life, and purpose. The question that may come to us more often is, are we living what really matters to us? This lesser known voice we all possess contains the irrepressible life force that lives within and helps steer us in the direction of what we’re meant to do in spite of ourselves. It leads us on new adventures, we begin another phase of life or have a lightening bolt of an idea strike us. The way to honor these questions and inspirations is to listen. When we resist or overthink or try to talk ourselves out of a flash of insight we ignore this inner prompting. Listening means we follow the longing that’s planted deep down, and when we do we are given something quite unexpected, the gift of our truest self.

Listening to this other voice can bring us into meaningful alignment. Mind, heart, and action all come together in an unexpected way and deliver the truth of who we are. Following through with the answers and ideas we find in these gray areas puts us in greater attunement with what is necessary for the soul to flourish and has the ability to heal us at our core. It may sound deceptively easy to pierce this veil of our inner world but it is amazing how little we actually listen. The other voice is our link to the wholeness within, and when we cultivate that, when we are focused on what calls to us from deep within, we live both sides of our self. We let the barriers that separate the two worlds within our self grow thinner until what we live is who we really are, then no more separation exists. This is the death of pretense. And that is what this time of year is all about.

Here’s to the death of what no longer works and the ability to surrender to what matters. Happy Samhain!

kb