Equinox, point of poise. For a moment we hang in the balance, dark and light equal, then the season tips and pours toward darkness.

In the high country of Colorado, the streams run lower now, their voices muted. Aspen leaves fly on the wind, gold against the deep autumn blue of the sky, and settle like bright Christmas tree ornaments on the dark branches of the evergreens. The grasses have turned from green to rust. There is a hush in the forest.

It is a time of change, transition from the outward manifestation of summer to the inward turning of winter.

As we experience the cycle of the expanding and contracting of the light, the cold and heat and the temperate space between, we are reminded of our mortality, of the seasons of change that come in our own life cycle. A shift of season often has a quality of poignancy.

The tide of change flows always, but within its flow there are moments of poise, like the Equinox, not only with the seasons, but in those times when our life shifts, turns in a new direction.

When those moments come, I think of the words of my sufi teacher. “Between the inhale and the exhale, realize. Between the exhale and the inhale, realize.”