THE CYCLICAL NATURE OF LIFE AND THE ETERNAL

Ayurveda recognises the cyclical nature of life.

It recognises that life is not linear but is in fact more akin to the circle.We have births, death and rebirth throughout nature.

This attention to the cyclical nature of life lends Ayurveda it’s respect for and attention to  the changing seasons. And Ayurveda invites us to adapt our living accordingly. We are born from nature and so are impacted by it’s changes and required to live in accord with those changes if we are to sustain a sense of biological and psychological equilibrium and resilience. 

Just as nature has it’s cycles through the circle of a year, so we in this human form have our cycles within the circle of life. We have the springtime, summer, autumn and winter of our years. We die and perhaps are reborn. And we have springs, summers, autumns and winters throughout our life. Times to plant seeds for new ways and projects: times to celebrate the fruits of our endeavours:times to gather in the harvest, and times to slow down and to rest. 

Our pagan ancestors also practiced this remembrance of the circle of life in their spirituality. They too listened to the shifting messages of nature through the passage of a year and aligned their living, including their spiritual life, with it. 

The legacy of our ancestors’ understanding of the circle of life can be seen even today in our annual calendar of festivals, including the festival of Halloween.

What we now know as Halloween is was once a pagan festival called Samhain.

I love this point in the year. Not for the increasingly commercial Halloween, but for all that it encourages us to remember and reclaim: an increasingly forgotten belonging to the earth on the one hand, and an ancestral heritage on the other.

We live in, and are consumed by, a very material existence. This leaves us little time and space to remember the invisible depths and treasures that exist always in the heart of our own being: little time to reflect upon the nature from which we have been borne and are in essence ever a part, and to which we will one day return.

This festival of Samhain has as a central theme, the notion of a thinning of the veil between the visible and invisible worlds or embodiment and spirit, It calls upon us to explore the invisible life of the soul, including the very depths of our own soul.

As the darkest days of the year descended, our ancestors believed that as the light dwindled, the dimension of life world which is usually hidden from us, becomes accessible for us. In darkness the invisible asserts itself and becomes visible. That invisible world at Samhain includs the world of the deceased, of our ancestors. 

In Ireland, traditionally, a fire would be lit in the home and the door left open to welcome the ancestors in at this time of year. 

 Our departed were believed to be never very far from us. And at this time, as activities slow down in the darkness, and as the darker days naturally bring with them an inclination towards introspection and with it a receptivity to the invisible, the ancestors can move even closer to us. 

Ayurveda too places a focus on ancestry, The Vedic tradition has it’s own time of year, in September, when the spirits of the land are called upon to support good agriculture and the spirits of the departed are honoured.

Living in algimment with the earth’s rhythms and linking our spiritual life with the same, can restore to us a lost sense of belonging. It is the Earth that we have come from: and Ayurveda teaches us that we are made of the same building blocks as everything else in nature, our body is made of earth, water, fire, air and space. Our body is a manifestation of the consciouss which moves it.  And this consciousness is one and the same as that consciousness at the heart of all this existence. 

Ayurveda also values honouring and remembering where we have come from in terms of our descent from a line of ancestors extending back infinitly in time. In this remembrance also we heal body, heart and mind, and restore ourselves in spirit. 

And so at this time of year, as we arrive at the peak of Autumn and approach nature’s Winter, Samhain prompts us to enquire not only into where we have come from, but also to where we will return. What will we take with us when we cross the threshold finally from the visible to the invisible life? What is it within us that is hidden perhaps from our every day striving and preoccupations and yet will be lasting and enduring when we come to rest in the eternal?

These are the questions of the Samhain time. 

This peak of Autumn, with Winter approaching and with a theme of the departed, can serve beautifully as a reminder of our mortality. This does not need to be a morbid, depressing or frightening remembrance. It can cause us to take care of our activities, our thoughts, our engagements, and to cultivate a conection to that which is  fundamental to who we are – our own soul.

One day each one of us will take our last breath, and to contemplate what we will take with us at that moment awakens us to who and what we truly are, in essence.

This not only helps to take away the sting of death. It also can serve to enrich our current life. As we bring into our awareness, a remembrance of our essential being, we develop a different perspective on life and on ourselves. Maybe we will then be better able to live our days in a more balanced, whole and fulfilling rhythm. 

As the Reverend Alan Jones says in his beautiful contribution to Graceful Passages, “Gift of Life”:

“In my tradition, we try to practice dying every day so that we may be fully alive. What I understand of my prayer life is to place myself on the threshold of death, to participate in my dying, so that I may live each day and each moment as a gift. What I cultivate is a grateful heart”.

At this Samhain time, and at any time when you feel that you are in an personal autumn of your life, take quiet time, enquire into the following and re-member who you are, where you have come from, and where you are going:

1. Take time to remember that you are born of the Earth, and will one day return to her. 
2. Can you awaken to a remembrance of the cosmic rhythms that move the Earth’s seasons, and re-member that you are also a part of those rhtythms and the cyclical changes in this body of earth.
3. Reflect perhaps on that which is enduring in the nature around you, and the memory of the earth, even perhaps of ancestors, ancient ones who have walked the same paths and fields and woods that you might walk. 
4. Remember your own ancestral line, all the good you have inherited from them, and prayers for the healing and awakening of those ancestors who were maybe not so benign. 
5. Your own deeper, most essential journey – a return of your body to the earth, and your spirit to the world of the invisible and to your ancestors.
6. What in you is enduring and will outlast that transtion? What is changeless within you, and so true? What is changeful and so not truly who/what you are?
7. How would the enduring, changeless, essential, direct your embodied life herenow?

Make a small altar – add a candle, a picture of a guru or deity or saint, a small crystal and a picture of one of your departed loved ones, as a representation of all in your line who have passed before you. Light the candle as an offering, with a prayer for the healing of those who have gone before you, those how are present with you in form in this current earthly life, and those who will come after you in future generations. 

May the difficult and the challenging be dissolved in the light of your enquiries and growing awareness, not only for you personally but for your ancestors and your whole family line. 

May the love and the goodness of your family line grow, flourish and bear the ultimate fruit of awakening to love, light and healing. 

For a Samhain guided meditation on the ancestors, please visit our YouTube channel.