by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys
Have you ever taken time to notice the emotional flavor to a day or a season? Its easiest on those days that are noticeably un-seasonal. Its always easier to notice things that are different or changing. Those days in late August or September that we get a first hint of Fall, or the warm days in February or March that stir up the feelings of Spring. Often its a fleeting sense that we may barely notice, sometimes a whole day that has a different feel.
Here in the front range we have been having a very warm Winter, that has been feeling like late Spring for a while now. Even for Colorado’s infamously variable weather its been pushing things a bit and we have had a consistent feel of May through most of February.
For me the awareness is emotional, and the triggers mainly subconscious. It may be the temperature, the color of the sky, the way the light hits, or a smell, but suddenly it feels like a different season. Our subconscious memory structures are all associative, so when we get key sensory cues to the season the associated feelings and sometimes whole memory chains pop up to the surface.
We all have our favorite seasons, or ones that are challenging. Fall for me has long had a flavor of new beginnings, because of the school cycle that I spent so many years in. A mixture of excitement and anxiety. Other seasons have their own flavors that have built up over the years, some coherent, others mixed.
These flavors become the background of our lives, the layering of old emotions that form the stage dressing for current experience. As long as the progressions are as they have been in the past, and reasonably stately, we don’t notice them much, the emotional background is simply part of each season for us.
When things are different we can begin to be aware of how much old flavor we are constantly bringing to the present.
This whole Winter I’ve had the feeling of “summer”, of light in the darkness, of a joy and contentment that are not (for me) usual Winter fare. Now we are in high Spring in February I am noticing whole seasons of emotional content that are showing up. Past springs that were good or challenging, floating through my being. Other days I wake up and there is no particular feeling at all, and that feels strange, disorienting, and perhaps a bit uncomfortable.
Its actually a bit confusing. Part of me is, unexpectedly, calling out for more Winter, more inward processing time, more time to nurture my body and being. Am I ready for even more expansion?
I wonder if the clearing processes are moving so fast now that we are releasing the emotional charges not of single memories or events, but whole seasons at one shot. So I watch the old seasons roll through and know that they are clearing the way – to approach the new ones free of the old overlays.
When we can be aware of these associations we have the opportunity to transmute our relationships with each season: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. To clear the season’s past emotional flavors, to come to each one fresh and open, as children do, with excitement and anticipation. We are being stirred in a way that makes it clear that much of what shows up each day or week is not about the present energies and being in relationship to them as they are, but is echoing out of the memories of the past.
Releasing these old associations, attachments, resistances, we can actually feel today, rather than all the yesterdays. Not that we have to get rid of the past, but to allow it to be past, a faint echo, so we can be present to have new experiences of joy and wonder. That’s what makes the good memories so good, they were times in childhood or in love, when we were truly present to the moment, fully alive.
The churning of the seasons, by bringing the emotional overlays to conscious awareness, gives us the chance to claim this state again: being present and fresh in all moments, choosing new ways of relationship to the events of our lives, and new emotional flavors.
May your season, whatever it is, be wondrous and joyful, and all your moments deeply alive.
(© 3/2009)
