Return to What Was Never Lost

 Sam Falls: Agrippina and Claudius, 2022

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there."

RUMI

Every autumn, nature models the sacred art of letting go. The trees, in their quiet wisdom, surrender their leaves not out of loss but out of trust — trusting that what falls will fertilize what’s next.

Nature reveals a universal truth: every beginning begins with a letting go.

This same wisdom is embedded in Kabbalah. It’s no coincidence that Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, always falls on the New Moon in Libra, the sign of balance and harmony — and that Yom Kippur, the Day of At-One-ment, arrives ten days later. The days in between, known as the Days of Awe, are the sacred space — a time to reflect, forgive, repair, and return to alignment with ourselves, others, and the Divine.

In Kabbalah, the preceding month of Elul, the month of Virgo is a month of purification and introspection — a cleansing through forgiveness that prepares us for renewal. It’s a spiritual harvest: we gather what has been, release what no longer serves, and make space for new life to emerge.

Just as the trees cannot bloom anew while clutching old leaves, we too cannot step into what’s next while gripping the debris of resentment or guilt. To atone is to reclaim at-oneness — to bring discordant parts of ourselves, and our relationships, back into coherence.

As Alfred Adler reminds us, “We are not determined by our experiences, but by the meaning we give them.”

And as Viktor Frankl teaches, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space — and in that space lies our freedom.”

Together, they remind us that life is not dictated by what happens to us, but by how we choose to interpret it. Every moment offers the possibility to begin again.

The Dance of “Me” and “We”

This season mirrors the Aries–Libra axis — the eternal dance between I AM and WE ARE.

Aries, the spark of individuality, meets Libra, the harmony of connection. To live in balance is to honor both: the courage to stand as oneself and the grace to see oneself in another.

The Aries Full Moon, always marked by Sukkot, is a cosmic culmination — illuminating where we are called to release outdated identities and narratives. It invites us to cut the cords tethering us to the past and to begin again from a place of freedom.

In relationships, we often remain trapped in familiar patterns because we continue to see one another through the lens of old wounds. We say we want change, yet unconsciously cast others in the same roles — reenacting rather than relating.

Psychologically, this is the etiological trap: explaining the present entirely through the past.

Adler called this the creative power of the individual — our capacity to reauthor our story. Modern therapy calls it narrative transformation.

For thousands of years, Kabbalah has called it teshuva — not repentance, but return: a return to truth, to love, to the wholeness that was never lost.

The Libra–Aries polarity reminds us that the word individual (Aries: I AM) comes from the word indivisible (Libra: WE ARE). True individuality is not separation, but coherence — living as both unique and united. This is At-One-ment: not erasing difference, but awakening to interconnection.

Letting Go is a Sacred Practice

The Fall teaches that letting go is not an ending, but the beginning. The leaves that fall enrich the soil. The fast that empties the body nourishes the spirit. The forgiveness that softens the heart restores our capacity to love.

We are not static beings. We are dancers in time — partners in an ever-changing choreography between self and other, holding and releasing, me and we.

Each act of letting go is a bow to impermanence and a return to life’s cyclical intelligence.

As both mysticism and psychology affirm:

To forgive is to free.

To release is to return.

To let go is to begin again.

Sending Love,

J