The Sage of Metal
What can the energy of fall time teach us?
This summer I reached a milestone birthday and can officially say that I’ve begun to swim in the Metal energy time of my life. I’ve spent many years gaining knowledge to be an expert in my chosen fields of study. First as an Interior Designer, then as a mother of 4, now a grandmother and an Advanced Energy Medicine practitioner and teacher of the Eden Method.
As a designer, Metal energy has taught me all about grace, elegance, and the pursuit of quality and excellence. You will never save money by looking for the cheapest deal. You save money by knowing who cares about doing the job well. You will always get what you pay for.
As an Energy Medicine practitioner, I have learned how to confidently trust my gut, how to separate myself from what is “my stuff” and what is someone else’s, the value of forgiving, nonjudgement, letting go, and knowing when to move on.
Metal time is that time when the harvest is ready, the wine has aged, and you get to drink from all its wisdom. Think of coming to the end of a good book and now having the pearls of insight from what you’ve read. It’s about learning and discerning but being at the end of the cycle there is not much left that you haven’t seen. The great strength of this wise element’s energy is the power of completion.
It’s not until a parent, a best friend or a childhood cohort passes away, which happens a lot more often now, that you realize the gifts you learned from them being part of your lives. There is nothing more to be said other than to reflect upon the knowledge you gleaned from the experiences you once shared with one another.
Death is a funny thing. Suddenly any grievances you may have had about that person just seem meaningless now. You can’t fight with them anymore, and what you may have felt defensible about with them when they were alive, seems pointless now compared to the memories that are flooding you of why they made such a significant imprint on your life. You have a newfound compassion that somehow you missed when you were disappointed with them not meeting your expectations. Never being able to see that person again teaches you what was truly important after all was said and done.
I remember when my mother died, and suddenly discovering she had been pretending her whole life to be someone she was not. She came from a family that cared a great deal about prestige and wealth. So much so that she married my father for all the wrong reasons. Eventually, they divorced leaving a great deal of trauma in their wake and I couldn’t help but think about all the years I’d wasted being angry and not speaking to her. We did reconcile when my children were born, as I had learned to forgive her for what I believed she’d done to me, and she was furthermore known as the super generous, awkward, shy Grandma to my children, and her grandchildren.
Yet after she passed as I went through her files, I realized the wealth she prized herself for, was a fabrication. She was completely broke, living off her credit cards with no financial income whatsoever! She never applied for social services for fear that she’d be found out. It had all been a case of smoke and mirrors, a charade that eventually was her demise. It was a humble reckoning to realize the “character” she had been playing for most of my life was not this critical, brusque, extravagant, authority but rather an unhealthy, scared, proud, emotionally struggling woman who didn’t know how to properly love or take care of herself. We all wear masks, and we spend a lot of time judging one another for stuff that is not who we truly are.
Maybe you’ve been a primary caregiver to an elderly grandparent, parent, sibling, spouse, or ailing friend, and while in it you might be thinking how taxing, heartrending, and difficult is. When it’s over you realize that you also took on a “character” yourself and now must refit yourself back into the world.
The death of someone we love forces us to face our own mortality and reminds us that no one gets out of here alive. When we reach the end of our lives, we are forced to accept that we will have to eventually let go of everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is what finally sets you free from the chains you’ve spent a lifetime wrapping around yourself. Our soul sheds the earthly “character” it’s been playing, like a part in a movie, that is now over. It detaches itself from the shackles of its well-worn body, and moves on in a non-physical way, separating itself from its human stories to recognize and fuse to the energetic core of us all, what it’s learned.
Being our authentic self is far less dense vibrationally than the masks we accumulate throughout our lifetime. In this Metal time of life, I care a lot less now about what people think of me and have begun to release and discard a lot of what’s no longer necessary in my life. I am still growing from the culmination of my triumphs and losses, but I am much more confident in my skin now to move forward with whatever is.
Love Becca