Autumn Equinox Celebration: Rewilding the Soul (Online)

6:45 – 9:00 pm ET

Hosted by Hildur Palsdottir and Karen Kharitonov

All are welcome to celebrate the Autumnal Equinox with us! If you are registered for the Rewilding the Soul series, you do not need to register separately for the Equinox and Solstice events.

To celebrate Nature’s cycles is to honor our lives and interbeing. At this Autumnal Equinox, day and night meet in perfect balance. It is a sacred threshold—a time to acknowledge the steady turning of the seasons, to reflect on balance in our own lives, and to attune to the wisdom of Earth, our shared body.

Join us as we embrace both our outer and inner lives, honor the cycle of death that nourishes life, and celebrate the sacred balance of light and dark marked by the Autumnal Equinox. Together, as a community, we will celebrate this seasonal shift through ritual, shrine making, contemplation, meditation and sacred movement. Lama Willa will offer a seasonal reflection and guided meditation, and sangha members Shemaleiah and Anthony will facilitate a brief ritual of releasing and reclaiming.

Like deciduous trees dropping their leaves each fall in a process that reclaims their lifeforce and fertilizes shared ground, we too are invited to let go of what no longer serves us. This is not a loss, but an invitation to preserve our energy–in service of ourselves and others. The Autumnal Equinox invites us to root deeply and nourish what is essential during this darker half of the year.

Please join us to:

• Celebrate the sacred balance of light and dark
• Share in community, shrine making, sacred movement, and ritual
• Engage in Council, a practice of deep listening and exploration

The celebration will begin informally at 6:45pm with 15 minutes of shared shrine making. During this time, we invite you to prepare your own Autumn Altar that reflects this season of balance and transition. Your wild altar might include plants (native to your area), seasonal harvest, and other natural reminders of nature’s bounty. Feel welcome to gather leaves, seeds, fruits, stones, or other natural treasures from your local landscape for this purpose. Candles, herbs, and/or incense may also be included to augment the atmosphere of intentionality. We encourage you to point your camera to your altar during this time so we may share in each other’s sacred creativity.

At 7:00pm we will formally begin our celebration. Our evening will end with an invitation to all to engage in small group Council Practice, an intentional practice of listening and speaking from the heart that builds community and trust, and provides a context for collective wisdom to emerge. Whether or not you have been participating in the annual Rewilding series, all are encouraged to stay for council circles–deepening our relationship with the Earth and each other as we reflect on how the process of rewilding is manifesting for us this season.

More details regarding preparation for Autumn Altars and Council Practice will be included in registration emails.

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf
~Wendell Berry

Rewilding the soul is inner work that attunes us to the wisdom and love that are always flowing around and through us, the non-conceptual voices of the natural world that seek to draw us home to our deepest being, our core of deep compassion, kindness, and availability to extend ourselves to each other and the wider world.

If you would like to contribute to our online community altar, please email your season inspired poetry and art work to Hildur at ecodharma@naturaldharma.org. (We will share as much as we can during the live session and share all to registrants as follow up.)

Suitable for all levels.

Zoom Link

The Zoom link will be sent several days before the retreat to all those registered by then. If you register after that date, you’ll receive the link with your confirmation email shortly after submitting your registration. If you don’t see an email from Natural Dharma Registrar or Wonderwell Mountain Refuge, it may have mistakenly gone to your spam folder or to Promotions or Updates in Gmail.

Important: Please put these this email address in your Contact or Safe-Send list to make sure you receive our emails:

• register@naturaldharma.org

Program Cost

Our program fees provide essential support to our non-profit operations and NDF’s mission to spread the Dharma in accessible, relevant, and creative ways. Our goal is that no one misses out on our events due to lack of funds. Thanks to our generous donors, we are able to offer tiered pricing and additional support to fit varied financial situations: 

• May All Beings Benefit! *– supporting access for all and general support for NDF operations
• A Middle Way – covering the base cost
• Held in Sangha Loving-kindness – offering ease when financial resources are limiting

If the lowest cost tier creates an obstacle to your attendance, please see our financial support options on the registration page. The process is simple and does not require extensive information. Financial aid is immediately approved using discount code options that allow you to contribute the most you are able while honoring your particular resources.

* The difference between the May All Beings Benefit! tier and the Middle Way tier will be considered a tax-deductible donation and will be acknowledged as such in writing. Contributing at this level helps us offer financial aid to other participants. Thank you!!

Access to Recordings

NDF offers unlimited access to recordings, which are accessed in your user dashboard (more information about user accounts provided in a pre-retreat letter). If you have a user account, please register with the same email you use to log into your dashboard. If not, an account will be created for you using your registration address.

Availability will vary depending on the type of event and the backlog for our precious resource volunteers. Thank you for your patience.

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