Corn Moon – Ripening

original image by Claudio.Ar

Small, compact, hard. The seed is placed into the luxurious, cool, welcoming earth, all tightly bound up in itself. Contained within its hard shell exists all its potential – the plan for its future growth, size, shape, fruit.

The soil starts to work its magic. Gently softening the hard outer casing, waking up the divine spark within. Roots begin to travel down. Tender shoots begin to travel up. Stems start to strive towards the sky. Leaves form and the plant gains a sense of solidity about it, a presence.

In a relatively short space of time, this tiny seed has fulfilled its potential. It has sprouted. It has grown. It has flourished. It has fruited. And now it is ripening.

We can see this process in ourselves to. We plant our hopes. We nourish our desires. We tend to our dreams. We do the work and take the steps in order to achieve our goals. And in return for our attentive ministrations, they ripen. We ripen.

We can feel this ripening in our bodies. Suddenly, our foot comes off the brakes and we find that all the energy we were channelling into production, growth, fruition, harvest, is no longer needed. We have achieved what we came to do – we have reached the very zenith of our cycle.
And yet this doesn’t always feel very comfortable when we are used to movement and effort and momentum.

Suddenly we find ourselves in a moment of stillness and readiness, and yet we are held in that place. No more work to be done, and not quite at the point of harvest, we stand poised at our ripe edge – ready to drop but arrested in pregnant pause.

This is a time to take stock and to enjoy a moment of rest. Lean into this precious period of time and enjoy the sweetness of our own ripening. This doesn’t need to be a time of stress or strain, of ambition or adventure.

The temptation may be to plant new seeds. Our work here is done, isn’t it? We planted, and supported, and nourished. Let’s move on. Let’s plant more. Let’s start anew.

But this is exactly the impulse that we need to resist. When we continually invest our energy into the next big thing, (and there’s always a next big thing!) we don’t allow ourselves to receive the return of our investment. Energetically, we risk depletion. The point of ripening goes un-noticed, un-celebrated, ignored.

Our cycle remains incomplete and we remain unfed. All because we struggle to sit within this ripe moment, this invitation to engage in dolce far niente – the sweetness of doing nothing, because nothing needs to be done.

Rest in this moment. Recuperate, restore, relax, revive. Enjoy the gift of all your hard work and sit with ease at the edge of harvest. After all, you deserve it!

Enjoyed this article? You can find more deliciousness here!