It’s time to harvest our efforts and start a new chapter. The Harvest Moon, which came at the beginning of October this year, is Mother Nature’s gift of the time to enjoy our achievements and think of new beginnings. In a (very eventful) month that has followed since the start to the Harvest Season, it’s been difficult to find the time to really sit and reflect, and think about the future.
This time of year always gets me thinking. What is it I want? What is it I am going for? And yet, many times in the past, I have held off on answering these questions, waiting for the new beginning on January 1st. After all, this is the start of a new year, right? This is when I should start fresh. It is funny how my body and soul prompt me to ask these questions in autumn and yet, I subconsciously or consciously, choose to ignore them and “wait” until New Years. How does my body even know when to ask, before my brain does?
My grandmother taught me that autumn is the most important season of the year.
“It defines how well you’ll do in the rest of the seasons.”
When I was younger, I had trouble understanding exactly what she meant by that. I knew that she would refer to their actual harvest, when she was working with my grandfather in the fields, like other farmers in their community. Their basic income was what they could sell from their yearly harvest, keeping only what they could consume. If they had a bad harvest, the year ahead would be difficult. But she had a wealth of knowledge, including how nature’s rhythms impact our spirits.
Harvest Season. The time when mother earth is prompting us to collect on all our efforts.
Our whole being is in sync with this time. The time when we look to collect from the seeds we had planted and the growth we have achieved. We do tend to ignore it though, caught up with our modern lives and consumerism. Thinking about it further, I wonder how the process of harvesting can be applied also in our modern age.
You don’t need to plant literal seeds in order to grow. You plant seeds when you want to make a change in your life. It comes in the form of a new and more meaningful job, a change in a relationship or friendship, a move to a different area, a change into how you experience the world as a whole. It can also be small changes like eating healthy, starting to exercise or getting a pet. All the hardship you put into anything you do are planted seeds indeed. You expect, and rightfully so, that the time will come where you will harvest what you planted, when you’ll collect the fruits of your efforts.
This is the meaning of late Autumn. Collecting your creations and then planting new ideas, hopes and wishes for the year to come. In other words, preparing for the new season.
For my grandmother, the Harvest Moon guided her and other farmers while they worked as quickly as they could to harvest their crops. It is a full, bright moon, the first actually that occurs the closest to the autumn equinox. It’s captivating, illuminating, and provides clarity in many different ways.
The Harvest Moon symbolizes a new beginning, and the following Harvest Season is the time to channel this energy to both collect fruit from previously planted seeds and set new goals.
Journal Prompts to Help You Begin
Take a few deep breaths, look inside, and answer some of your most important questions.
- Who do I want to be?
- What is not serving me any more?
- What’s one thing I can do today to step towards who I am becoming?
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