#8 Joyful Transformation 2026

Month of and for Joyful Transformation
October 8 to November 16, 2026

Many exquisite changes occur this month. We on the path for joy can discover delight in observing, experiencing, and honoring these changes. In our hemisphere the precious daylight surrenders to a time for deepening. Surely as the season changes, our souls – our sense of our souls – become both witness and participant in these transformations.

Friends sent this image of heavenly magic occurring over and with Mt. Fuji.

Way of Beauty

By Larry Ward

I am here now, walking on this precious red earth
the smile of the moonlight
the grace of the trees in wintertime.

I want to be awake when the stars come
to gather me up in their arms,
when the earth whispers goodbye for now.

I dwell in the sacred thus-ness
beyond words and beyond forms.

I walk through this world with love’s wisdom
in my heart and deep justice in my mind.

My bones rejoice in the joy of Beauty’s way,
shining and blessing all in the ten directions.

Konya, Turkey, celebrating Rumi and the Sacred, Photo by Mehmet Akim.

Here’s a gentle practice to guide us into new possibilities for the month of Joyful Transformation:

• Notice some tender place — in your body, your mind, or your heart – a place that carries chemistry that you might label pain.
• Breathe in and out as you focus on the pain, acknowledging it, facing it, allowing it to name itself. Listen for a possible message. Notice the message.
• In your mind’s eye, let this tender place of pain become an autumn leaf blowing in a quiet breeze, still connected to its mother tree. Imagine touching the leaf. Because of the amazing interplay of various chemistries, some leaves can become orange, yellow, red, magenta, and still retain some green. Allow a sense of awe to rise at the possibilities of all these colors contained in one leaf.
• As you wonder at the leaf, invite the delicate chemistries of shift and change to rise in your awareness and move through your body the way they have risen in the leaf. Give those chemistries some attributes, such as love (as Tagore suggests), beauty, and an opening to joy, as you marvel at nature’s complexity and perfection.
• Breathe in and out. Can you imagine that the leaf displaying all those colors also knows that it must soon drop away in order to make the tree safe, able to survive the winter. Can you let the beautiful leaf go? Watch it float out on the wind, and come to rest on the earth. There it will give itself entirely to enrich and strengthen the soil preparing for new growth.