At some point you stood there, in the first living room you ever knew, when you were new to the world, and life seemed simple. And you saw it all with new eyes: the old sofa. The worn table. Toys scattered on the floor A big picture window to let the light in.

And at some point, you were playing in this room: maybe it was Saturday and your father napped on the sofa. Maybe it was a weekday, and your mother was in the kitchen. Maybe you were happy; maybe you were sad; maybe you’d been jumping on that old sofa, or making a fort out of the couch pillows.

You simply being yourself in your body. And then, in that moment, something shifted. Perhaps you caught a glimpse of a spirit from the window’s corner, or perhaps something flashed in your eyes, a ray of sunlight glinting in a way you’d never seen it before.

You were so young then: two, three, four.

Everything was still wonderment, but already, you’d started to know pain. Everything was still wonderment, but already, you’d begun to forget.

The stars in your eyes had not completely faded, but they’d become shrouded, so the dazzling deep knowing of the Universe faded to a kind of vision you’d forgotten how to use, a type of seeing that was not useful for earth life.

And yet, with this particular flash of light, it all came back to you: the sun streaming in and illuminating clouds of dust in the air, so that everything in your view were specs and glints and orbs of light, particulate upon particulate, a light-filled energy field.

And you understood once again, what you had nearly forgotten, that this is what we are: particulate light, floating in constellations, floating in universes, mixed and melding, always light. This is energy, this is love, this is Divine, this is us. You knew it before you were born. You remembered it again when you were young.

You can remember it today.

As you begin to see this stuff of the Universe with your adult eyes, the visible manifestation of what we call Divine, it is easy to recall more fully who you really are, what we really are: energy, light, love.

It’s all around you, it is you—not just what is seen, but what is also unseen: the energy within the energy, the space within the space, the universes within the Universe.

There’s a particular rose bush that sweeps over an archway in our garden. Most of the year, it’s just a mass of green. But at some point, a profusion of tightly held buds shows up almost overnight

One day there’s just leaves—you could go out with a magnifying glass, and no bud would be there. The very next day, you can’t see anything but the buds; they’re everywhere, the branches are laden.

It’s just a matter of time.

During the last weeks of June, when the buds are preparing to bloom, I might head out there every afternoon, looking for the tell-tale signs of pale white petal.

But it’s like waiting for popcorn to pop on the stove. All you can do is heat the oil, stand clear—and after waiting what seems like an eternity, you take your attention away for one second, and suddenly popcorn is flying wildly around the kitchen, while you madly race to find a cover.

The roses are like that too. Blooming when we least expect it.

One day, after we’ve tired of searching the buds to see if they’ve opened, we’ll awaken to the sweetest most heady perfume wafting in through the open windows. ... the roses have bloomed, and it is a delirium of scent and color and beauty.

People are like this too.

One minute you’re tight in the bud. The next you’re exploded into beauty, fully expanded in yourself.

This happens repeatedly in your life, over and over again. Bud to bloom. Always, in the timing that is exactly rights for you.

The road I drive each day cuts through an ancient apple orchard, curving and winding through farmland that’s long been let go.

It’s mostly overgrown now: the once orderly orchards are now a tangle of meadow and new forest. But there are still old apple trees amidst unkempt land—gnarled with age, and growing so close to the road it’s almost dangerous.

During the height of the harvest, they scatter their abundance upon the road; golden yellow apples, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand drop onto the road, not just one, but hundreds.

And then, these same apples stay on the road for weeks; ripening until their skin splits from the sun, sweetening until the point of rotting. The animals come and partake, and then the birds and insects. But mostly, the apples just lie there, until they’re run over by cars and finally washed away by the autumn rains.

A few times, I’ve seen intrepid folks with apple baskets: light-weight wooden containers that they carry around their necks while they pick. They’ll be out there for a few hours, picking baskets full.

And yet mostly, the apples go to waste.

After all, it’s not an orchard any more—it’s a road through an orchard. It’s almost as if we can’t see the apples outside of our understanding of “orchard” It’s almost as if apples don’t exist for us, when see them out of context.

And yet—here is magnificent abundance: bushels of apples that fall to the ground, then are smashed under car tires as people drive to work, school, wherever they’re headed on a busy morning, windows rolled up against the crisp fall air, minds busy with a million thoughts, oblivious to what is actually around them.

These apples roll onto the very path that we travel. And yet only a few will even notice them. Fewer still, will harvest this abundance.

I stopped the car one misty morning, pulling to the side of the road as communing cars swerved past me. I looked up into the branches of this tree still laden with apples, and smelled their apple smell, and listened to the slow hum of bees droning across the ground, glutted with sweetness.

And then, after I’d had my own fill of this perfect morning, these perfect unclaimed apples, the very sweetness of the bees underfoot ... I got back in my car, and headed on my way. The apples are probably still there, for whoever will slow down enough to see them.

A study was done of the platypus, the venomous, egg-laying duck-billed, web-footed, beaver-tailed mammal which lives in Australia. The study set out to determine the genome of the animal, or the entirely of the animal’s hereditary information. Where did it come from? What was it made of? How did this particular animal contain so many parts of different species: reptile, bird, mammal?

The results of the study, an exhaustive sequencing of 2.2 billion DNA base pairs and 18,500 genes, was inconclusive. Nobody knew how, or why or what had caused the platypus to be the amazing mix that it was.

And yet, this study did not stop the platypus from being, living, or enjoying itself as it walked around in its home down under! It did not stop the platypus from eating food with its duck-like bill, or waddling with its web feet, or recreating its progeny in platypus eggs.

In fact, the study affected the platypus in no way whatsoever.

We spend an inordinate amount of time in our young adulthood (or later on in life if we have been too busy going to school or raising a family or building a career in our young adulthood to tend to these questions,) of trying to figure out who we are.

What is our heredity? Who do we come from? What do we look like? What are our characteristics? What are our gifts? We try to plot and assess and figure out ourselves based on our likes, dislikes and characteristics ... when really, none of it matters.

You may be man or woman. You may be of this race or that, or a mix of many races. You may have hair of any color, or no hair. You may be short, tall or in between. You may be from Europe, Africa, Asia, America or anywhere else on earth. You may have a talent for music, dance, science, writing or holding someone’s hand.

None of this really matters.

Certainly, the particular mix of genomes that make you up as a person make you unique—there’s no one like you. But there’s also nobody like anyone else. We’re all unique—so what’s the big deal?

When we stop looking at the particulars of our differences, and instead begin to see the particulars of sameness ... this is where things get really interesting.

We’re all as uniquely unique as anyone else, as anything else on the planet.

It’s a passage of young adulthood in which we discover who we are, we claim our right to be different, we become concerned with who we are.

In later years, we are no longer concerned with this question, this way of sorting or separating ourselves into this category or that. We are happy enough, just to be.

Head out into the blustery rain and look closely, and you will discover the maples laden with furry brown "helicopters"; the whirling seeds that twirl down into dirt and loam, so they may stay safe and blanket through winter.

Even in autumn, the season of hibernation and emerging darkness, the maples are already preparing for the light. So too it is with us; now is our time to rest, retreat and burrow,  trusting that light will come again.

This month, you might be experiencing:
* Slowing down by choice
* Sleeping, dreaming, welcoming the shorter days as a comfort
* A turning away from from busyness; a feeling that it "doesn't matter"
* A deep longing to spend some time by yourself, with yourself
* Planning and partaking in conscious retreat
* Extraordinary and new understandings arriving in quiet moments
* A renewed relationship to nature, the planets, the Universe instead of people
* The ability to fully concentrate on projects
* Knowing you are waiting — and understanding that there is no rush or hurry

Some questions to ask at this time:
* Am I comfortable with slowness, stillness, alone time? If not, why not?
* Am I comfortable by myself, with myself? If not, why not?
* Do I need to formalize my retreat?
* What am I learning most, right now?