What have you been working on this year? What have been the patterns, the lessons, the challenges? Because all of that is going to be really loud for you in September. September is always the climax of the year’s patterns, the time when the Universe asks, “Have you gotten the message yet? Here, let me TURN UP THE VOLUME FOR YOU.”

If you’re lucky, you have worked out enough of it that this just helps you resolve the patterns you’re working.

For the last 13 years, I have kicked off September by going out to the desert and stretching my limits. From Abbey of the Arts:

“In the Hebrew and Christian scriptures the desert is a place of preparing our hearts, of stripping away of false securities, of radical surrender, and of invitation to transformation. The Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert for 40 years and the early Christian monks went out into the desert to find a place of profound solitude and silence. The desert is an archetypal place where we confront our inner demons and are purified and transformed by the its heat.”

This year, my journey resulted in some very clear messages, which is great, as long as I remember to follow through on the instructions. That’s always the real challenge, isn’t it? Follow through and owning responsibility.

I was doing a bit of reading today, gathering my thoughts for the New Moon ritual I’m writing for this month. Rabbi Menachem M Schneerson, in talking about the self-examination one should do at Rosh Hashanah, wrote:

“Such a “balance sheet” can be valid only if the evaluation of the full extent of one’s powers and opportunities was a correct one. Only then can one truly regret, in a commeasurable degree, the missed opportunities, and resolve to utilize one’s capacities to the fullest extent from now on. The period of time before and during Rosh Hashanah is not only the occasion which demands spiritual stock-taking in general, but it also begs for a profound inner appreciation of the tremendous capacities which one possesses… Needless to say, before a man sets out to conquer the world, he must first conquer himself, through the subjugation of the “earthly” and “beastly” in his own nature. If a person does not fulfill his task, and does not utilize his inestimable divine powers – it is not merely a personal loss and failure, but something that affects the destiny of the whole world.”

I love this. Owning your life, owning your responsibility, taking stock… All of this should include not just what needs fixing, but also what your gifts and talents and skills are, and if it does not, you are shirking your responsibility to the Universe. Think about it. If you don’t think you have difficulty with this, I challenge you to write a list of 100 things you like, admire or respect about yourself. Go ahead, take your time.

Many people think of the Virgo New Moon as being about water, and Autumnal Equinox as being cooling and balancing. Maybe it’s where I live, in the heart of Southern California, but September is all fire for me. Fire is about transmutation. It’s the only element that is defined by its action, and it always demands a sacrifice. A sacrifice is different than an offering – it’s generally not your choice what you give, and it’s frequently something you were still attached to. But its gifts are frequently more powerful; so powerful, in fact, that you don’t always recognize them as gifts when they appear.

September’s energy is Phoenix energy, fast combustion and transformation followed by the (potential) rising from the ashes. It’s a free will universe, you can always wallow in the grief and the mourning, or you can find the gifts of the transformation and move on. This is why I am doing a Life Affirmation meditation on 9/11, why I walk the labyrinth, why I focus so much on lessons in September. I want to move forward.

Don’t you?