Summer can be a peak experience and that is why people like it. Summer feels generous.
There is a bumper sticker that says “Be Love.” This is the season to be love.
Fire is the element of summer. Fire is also spirit, the universal life force that supports matter and form. This is the time for our fire/spirit to leap with expansive energy, with wider limits and boundaries.
At its best, the fire element ignites our spirit with a force of unity, communion and oneness with all life. At peak, it is our higher self. Our higher self generates joy, bliss, and a love of self and others. When in contact with this, we radiate our highest ideals in connection with our pure nature.
One childhood summer memory I have is paddling from the bow of a canoe, my mom in the stern, and the family poodle, Bernie, perched on top of the point of the bow, nose in the air like a hood ornament. This felt like victory, unity, fluidity, joy.
Summer energy brings enlightenment. It has the most full cup of qi. This season feels very now, very present.
It’s easy for people to want to be at the peak at all times. But it’s not realistic, we have to go through other seasons’ mediums and lows. In this way we learn to discern differences and how to be with each of them.
Summer is the top of the mountain. It is the peak season. Fall is hiking down; winter is sitting by the campfire at basecamp; spring is climbing toward the peak.
The heart houses the spirit, and this is the season of the spirit, yours, ours, mine- tending to it, letting it laugh, letting it emit light. It’s a time to conduct joy rather than anxiety, harmony over disharmony, generosity over withholding, unity over disunity.
We hum with abundant love energy when linked with our higher self.
The opposing force is our lower self, always linked to ego, which leads to feelings of loss, alienation, comparison, separation from our true nature, competition, and insecurity. The ego habit creates negative thought, emotion, and behavior patterns.
When uncertain, pause a moment and feel it out. Ask yourself, “Am I following my divine guidance or the ego of my wounded self?”
To be aligned with our divine self even for small moments is soul nourishing and generates a fertile inner garden of awareness.
Remember a time when you were being love or felt beloved, giving and receiving. Practice it this summer when it’s easiest and most natural. Be love. Be beloved.
The nature of summer per Chinese medicine:
Organ: Heart
Element: Fire
Sound: Laughing
Emotion: Joy
Thought: Enlightenment
Climate: Heat
Instinct: Spirit
Secretion: Sweat
