Life is Like...The Four Seasons

Life is like the cyclic four seasons. Irrespective of anyone’s preference, each season emerges when due giving way to the next like thoughts in the human mind where the cessation of one is immediately succeeded by the emergence of another. During the cold, nature shrinks; in autumn, it sheds; in summer it expands, and in the spring she blossoms.

Seasons we dislike seem to last longer. Flowers bloom in springtime and it rains in the monsoons. The temperature drops in the winter and mercury rises in the summer-like consciousness that is affected by the state of prana in your breath. It is all pretty set, almost like a put-up-or-shut-up system.

Similarly, we all experience life’s various colors. Depending on what time of the year you are born, you may experience spring before autumn or vice-versa. And depending on where you are born, you may enjoy pleasant sunshine for most part of the year rather than bitter cold all year round. You learn to cope with weather conditions. You layer yourself in the winter and the opposite in the summer. You get yourself an umbrella during the rainy season.

In some regards, it is like always running away from what is at hand. We are always trying to save ourselves. Being one with nature means to experience and enjoy absolutely everything it has to offer. While you should save for rainy days, you are not exactly a squirrel – are you? Go, wet yourself in the rain sometimes — it may well be grace that’s trickling down. Experience the cold — it will only make you stronger.

When the sun of adversity is shining hot on you turning the warmth of life into scorching heat, you find unbearable, you may consider moving to a cold place. When life looks listless like the naked trees of departing autumn, you just need to be a little patient. Spend your waiting period looking at pictures of the spring or move to that part of the world where fall it is not.

Change is constant; it comes in small, immeasurable units just like even the heaviest downpour is materialized by tiny drops of water. That may not be the desired change, however. To seek the change you want, you have to make decisions accordingly. In fact, you have to become the change yourself. A radical decision means a leaping change and a more conservative one brings about safer change.

Or, the other option is to simply turn inward and know that experience of all external phenomena is merely a short-lived experience of the body. The eternal bliss, percolating drip by drip, within you, is now looking like an ocean.

You are safe, happy, and blissful inside — completely protected from all heat and cold. While you can see the beautiful colors of fall, it is always spring inside with countless varieties of beautiful flowers dancing of their perfect glory to the mellifluous notes of the gale of bliss (Anahata nada); just the right temperature. No muggy weather inside; no bitter cold — only indescribable beauty.

Go on, have a vacation! Take a trip to the quiet seaside of bliss within you. I can help you with the one-way directions. For, I am confident, you will not feel the need or the urge to return once there.

Peace.
Swami