It’s that time again, in the northern hemisphere, when trees shed their leaves, flowers release their blooms, and the winds of fall sweep us through another cycle of change. There is something about the blush of color covering the season, the quiver of yellow, orange and red across nature’s outstretched hands, that makes my skin tingle. I am drawn to surrender myself into the embrace of such inviting wonder.
We talk sometimes about autumnal color as if it is painted atop our environment forms. It is not, of course. The richness of a maple tree’s crimson brilliance or an aspen grove’s golden shaking comes from within. There is a complex chemistry at work, an interplay of light, temperature and moisture with the nutritional sugars running through arboreal veins that generates the unique palette of pigment that we experience every September and October. The magnificence of nature is not something applied by an external artist.
The beauty of the fall springs from the internal.
All living things have an aura, an energy field that surrounds each form of life. Whether plant or animal, the energy radiating from every organism is real. It can be measured – as heat or electromagnetic wave. It can be experienced – as color, vibration, or frequency. It can be visualized, through special photographic techniques. We and the world around us resonate. We exude life.
There are people who report that they can perceive the color of a person’s aura. I’ve never been able to do that; no matter how much I try to soften my gaze, color fields surrounding others, if they exist, are not visible to my naked eye. I can, however, feel when someone’s energy is open, hesitant, or hostile. That sensation doesn’t need my eyes. It is accessible through other channels.
I can also feel when my own energy changes. And, if I pay attention, I can watch how those around me react to that change. For better or for worse, my thoughts and feelings can be sometimes exposed by the flow of energy inside me that, like a tree’s sap, reaches the surface of my physical being in surprising and not always helpful ways.
Have you ever closed your eyes and turned your awareness into your center? This is accessible through various relaxation and mindfulness techniques. For me, I sometimes shut my eyes to see, with my internal vision, what sort of energy is within. The experience can be powerful. First, there may be nothing; my vision peers into an emptiness. What follows may be a series of hazy, almost imperceptible pulsations, as if the images that my retina last received from the external world are dissembling, the nerve cells still twitchy and responsive to that input. Then there is nothing, an inky yet un-inky stillness. I might call it black but it is really emptiness. The retina receives no stimulation. There is nothing to see. There is no light or form to process.
If I open my eyes, right at that moment, the outside world seems fresh. But, if I keep my eyes closed, if I bring no thought or intent, and if I let my vision relax while maintaining something I can only describe as an internal viewfinder, sometimes, from somewhere deep within the optical emptiness, color stirs.
At first, it isn’t really color; there is only a sense of a swirl, of a probing, a release. I am not reaching in, like some painter with a brush. Instead, what is within seems to be shimmering outward. I can almost feel a force within me feeling itself freed to open, to expand. There aren’t thoughts associated with this. There isn’t emotion. It is almost a non-physical energy. It isn’t a memory. It isn’t some sort of sheltered consciousness. It is uniquely itself.
And then, sometimes, if I just allow the experience to be, like a flower in the sun, it opens. Streams of essence enter. Like a non-physical well that spontaneously gushes from depths beneath my physical form, a sense of expansion swells and, with it, color. Orange, green, blue, magenta and a range of the rainbow rushes up and out, as if a celestial fireworks is fired from the most internal place that this form I call “me” can experience. I cannot and do not ask for color. I simply experience color. In the strangest and yet most wondrous of ways, I am color. Or, in an odd yet magical way, color becomes me.
I am light; I am dense. I am expanded beyond my skin; I am life contained within the semi-porous boundary of my physical form.
Is this how a tree feels when it vibrates majestically in the autumnal sun?
There is so much beauty in the world. In the seasons we are blessed to have, may we all continue to learn how to share as much of that beauty as possible.