By North Fork 53 Tea Farmer Ginger
Relax, Bee Well, Happy Fall
xoxo
Happy Fall Equinox ,
Did you know that on Wednesday September 22nd – the Fall Equinox there were exactly 12 hours each of day and night across the entire planet? We are all on the same clock, experiencing a kind of global balance.
I think that’s so cool- and it started me thinking about balance in my own life.
Why I make such a big deal about it, and how I’m always striving for it and can never seem to find it.
And why on some days I think trying to be in balance is totally frustrating and on other days it’s a beautiful thing.
Ok- let me explain.
I‘m out of tea tins. I’ve been waiting for them on back order since August and the date of arrival keeps getting pushed back. Seems the effects of COVID in China has rippled out to impact even little tea farms on the Oregon coast.
So (being the double fire sign that I am) get stressed and impatient. I don’t know if I should release the fall line of teas in bags or wait.
I hate not being able to control when things happen.
So then I remind myself that it’s really not about me. COVID effects everyone.
It’s another global balancer. We all feel it. And on the whole spectrum of COVID I am getting off easy. Not having tea tins is totally fine when I can breathe.
It’s just a matter of putting things into perspective.
When I do my frustration turns to gratitude and a kind of inner balance is achieved.
So why not use this big Equinox Energy to your advantage?
Grab a North Fork 53 cup of tea and check out Ginger’s Fall Equinox Guide To BALANCE –and why it matters to your happiness.
ps. Fall Teas (in 2 sizes of bags) are arriving on the website and at market this week- stay tuned!
Finding Balance
I used to think of balance as the tippy toe point of a ballet dancer. One leg in the air perfectly held still while the other finds it’s mark on the ground and somehow holds her body in a feat of exquisite controlled balance.
It’s that moment when all the hard work and sweat she has put into her art comes together and produces awe in a crowd of onlookers.
There is no doubt that we have those moments in life. We have our “peak experiences” that we are proud of. It may have taken suffering to get there but damn it looked and felt amazing while it lasted.
But peaks are eventually followed by valleys, and that too is a process of perfect balance, though it rarely draws the same level of applause.
Balance is something most of us strive towards yet it always seems elusive. Who doesn’t want a balanced life, relationship and bank account? Yet try as we might to calm down or spend less or look better, at what point do we actually rate our lives as being “in balance”? And why do we care? Who determines what balance looks like after all?
Enter the Fall Equinox
The Equinox is moment in time when we are in balance, whether we realize it or not. Our Sun is shining directly on the Earth’s equator, resulting in both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres experiencing exactly the same amount of day and night. This moment of cosmic balance between the our planet and our Sun only happens twice a year (the other being at the Spring Equinox in March).
An Equinox is a very different way to experience balance vs. a ballerina.
One is a result of the natural laws of the universe playing themselves out effortlessly. The other is a momentary illusion created by physical effort and control.
If in life we strive for balance by performing in the hope that others will approve it will take massive amounts of energy.
Life is much easier when we can remember to be the Equinox, not the ballerina.
Letting Go
Fall Equinox signals the edge of the winter season. From this point forward the nights will be longer than the days. Night continues to deepen until the longest night of the year at the Winter Solstice in December.
This is the harvest time. When we gather in all of the crops that grew from the seeds we planted during the Spring Equinox. Nature finds balance in the ebb and flow of the Sun’s light as it strikes the planet. Our lives are determined by this timeline- the weather, the seasons and our bodies responses to change.
Balance in the Northern Hemisphere means that living things slow down in response to less sunlight.
Trees drop their leaves and rest in their roots until spring. Animals hibernate or migrate. Plants drop seeds and die back.
We here in the US have designed lighting, fuel, entertainment and food systems that act the same year round. We call this balance and stability. But like the ballerina, this show of sameness takes a tremendous amount of effort and control over resources and people to produce.
Imagine what could be brought into larger ecological balance if we acknowledged and worked with nature’s cycles and slowed down in the winter? Consumed less? Conserved energy? Rested and restored our bodies, minds and spirits?
The Scales & The Spiral
The Fall Equinox is also when we enter the astrological sign of LIbra. The symbol of Libra is the scales- which are used to weigh things in balance. Because of this Libras are normally seen as being well rounded and easy to get along with. They are good at keeping things in life balanced and tend to value rest as much as work and the arts as much as the sciences.
Libra reveals another way we perceive balance.
The 50/50 rule.
Under Libra logic- a balanced life would be equal parts good days and equal parts bad ones.
I kind of love this way of looking at things because it allows for half of our lives to fall into the “this sucks” category. If we just accepted this as reality how would life feel different? Imagine living through your hard days and not judging them as “bad” but as essential balance to your easy days.
In fact, your days are just a series of events and emotions unfolding. Your mind is the one that categorizes them as good or bad.
What if you valued every set back, illness, fight and disappointment as totally necessary for you to experience a jump forward, health, calm and happiness?
What if when you looked back on your life you discovered that there probably were equal parts “good and bad” times -and that even the bad times eventually led to good ones, until new bad times came along restored life to balance.
What if that is all life is really about? Just scales tipping back and forth, a natural ebb and flow of known and unknown, struggle and growth.
It would take no effort on your part and there would be no way to do it right or wrong. You could let go and trust that all things balance out in the end.
The Spiral
In the ancient world they thought of balance beyond linear points or equal amounts. They felt balance in nature as rhythm; expansion and contraction, ebb and flow. They used a symbol that repeats itself in nature, the spiral, to represent balance in a moving and changing world.
The Fall Equinox is not a fixed point on the calendar but a dynamic dance between two cosmic bodies hurtling through space inside of a swirling galaxy in an ever expanding universe.
In that larger sense, humanity itself is but a teeny tiny part in a much larger balance.
All of our worries: pandemics, climate change, war, politics, health, injustices are all playing out in balance with the larger laws of nature.
Even our resistance and our struggles to change things are a part of it- as is our indifference and failure to change.
In the spiral there is no beginning or end. It’s just creation and destruction in endless motion.
Life is rhythm and we are the dancers. Not trained ballerinas performing for others but the ancient Goddesses who danced life into creation with their very beings.
In the spiral we are the creators of the lives we want.
We don’t have to focus on balancing or tipping the scales in our favor because in the spiral every action has equal force. All things are in dynamic balance and every thought and action shapes the whole.
No act is too small to create spirals of expanding kindness. No loving thought or visionary idea is lost under the weight of the world.
Your being exists in perfect balance to what is and what will be.
You can let go and trust that you are enough and that it’s all in perfect balance at every level.
Happy Fall Equinox!
Drink tea, eat apples and watch the leaves spiral in the wind,
