The Door…
Shared with me from a friend’s beautiful feast of a blog, Trail of Leaves: “If I were to be asked what we are, I should answer: ‘We are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words can deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.’
[…]
The supreme questioning is that to which the answer is the supreme moment of eroticism—that of eroticism’s silence.”
George Bataille – Death and Sensuality
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Riversong…
throw the mountains down on these depths
cover me in dross and tangles, slice through the channels
but
i
will
thrive…
this whispering stream of life deeper still,
moss-covered resilience humming…
something ancient, always new.
nothing can kill, mute, destroy
the singing song of soul within
you,
me,
all.
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A River Runs…
…through my soul
filling all the hungry places
within,
calling out songs ancient,
healing tired corners scorched
by loss,
restoring, reviving, resurrecting
creative flow…
This past week I was gifted with the opportunity to hear the most deafening roar of Tallulah wonder I believe I’ve ever heard. Nature’s songs have become more fierce, richly bellowing out a ferocious opulence. I managed to scramble, clamber onto huge boulders with a camera while watching my kids with some trepidation. They were so awed and touched by the overwhelming roar that their usual eager risk-taking tendencies settled into a sober respect for the power. I didn’t need to worry. They weren’t about to be foolish. Such a huge treasure this river…
[click on the images to get a much better view…]
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The Real You
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Just Keep Going…
“God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.”
Rainer Maria Rilke – Book of Hours, Love Poems to God (Translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows)
Just keep going…just keep going…these are the words that grab me today, speaking particularly to and of the heart. Whatever the changes, the stalls, the back up against the wall one more time story, the edging away from that wall, the vision of beyond and deep within, whatever the story…just keep going (even in your moment of collapse, be in it, go into it knowing you will cycle back up onto your feet and one day they will dance). Tom Cowan has a workshop for shamans that focuses on the spiritual practice of shapeshifting (no, you don’t fly over your ex’s house as a crow on a mission…). One of the elements of the workshop I appreciated probably the most details the 3 cauldrons of the soul. One in particular speaks today in this poem, in the one phrase: Just keep going. As one of the cauldrons Cowan details, the heart says “I act!” I respond. I go forth into the world from this amness (the cauldron of the belly or gut). And then: “I know” says the cauldron of the mind or, more accurately, the crown. But this knowing is not the knowing of logic. It is the knowing resonance with the Divine pattern of one’s life and of humanity in the grand eternal scheme of love. It’s an intuitive unfolding knowing into that daily reality as we “just keep going.”
And that’s my world lately. I wanted so many things to be accomplished by now and yet, the time hasn’t made room for those things to emerge. Other things are growing, emerging slowly. More precious, deeper knowings of purpose, of resonance, of acceptance of this path. When healing the amness layer of self, the heart cries out to act, to do, to express in the life what is brewing deep within. But timing can make the difference between a fractured movement and a whole flowing vision-in-motion.
On. With. It.
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Inception (More Weird Courage)
I went to see Inception last night. And learned a few things. I learned that I’m sick of sitting anywhere but high up and a bit further back since the screens are so engulfing huge panoramic now. I feel like I can’t even see what’s happening. You have to have bigger eyes, spaced further apart just to catch all the detail. And therefore, a bigger head. (Beware…we may “evolve” with this trend…mua ha ha…maybe those aliens are from a loop in a dream we dreamed back when we were more evolved and and and we’re stuck at the second dream within the dream and they’re trying to get us out and and and. I’m kidding….?) I learned that you don’t necessarily have to be sure what the hell is going on in the plot to get some gold from it. Sounds like life sometimes, eh? What else? I learned I really appreciated Leonardo Di Caprio in this role. The suggestion of beginnings and what’s “real” always gets my attention but this was a major twisting path covering all that can be lost or gained in illusion. Or…”reality.” I loved the subconscious “people” in these dreams. The projections. They speak deeply to the truth that when we change things in our worlds, we stir up all kinds of reaction around us until we make peace with the choices we’re making. This affirms my personal growth tenet that insists on serious downtime in growth phases, taking the time to become aware of what internal backlash is kicking up a storm so we can go into that storm and heal the conflict without wreaking havoc in our actual daily lives. I didn’t honor that rule soon enough and it caused me some pretty nasty injury a few years back. As I sat there watching the dream morph and the parts play out, it blew me away how deeply they reach into the truth. When we believe we deserve to be destroyed, misunderstood or otherwise accused for making pivotal changes in our lives (or not showing those changes soon enough to suit the understanding of others), we tend to reap that belief. But I have always had some pretty intense existence issues. This movie hit on some amazing layers, reminding me of the power of shamanic work in healing dreams, memories and other traumatic projection-imprinting events. I want to see it again just to remember some of the lines that struck gold.
It’s so important to be aware of those projections within, to consider the possibilities – even the worst ones – in order to cultivate that courage to implement change, to create in love. What cures the worst projections? Self-acceptance, forgiveness, release from a fixation on right/wrong without losing a sense of what’s important and a huge dose of weird courage. Speaking of…
It makes me think of a very strange moment with my sister, Elizabeth. She has Down Syndrome and does fairly well these days unless someone disrupts her sense of reality with a wedding or an upside down salt shaker. But the last night she was here I joked (over her head) about her to mom, saying “watch out…she’s probably God’s emissary on a mission to show how we treat her. she’s going to have the most amazing reports on some of us. how we assumed so much. she probably understands everything we say and is restricted from showing it. I can hear her now with God ‘They were so full of it. Thinking I didn’t get it! And boy did I get a lot out of their guilt too!'” On that note, without previously showing any indication of having been slightly in tune with any of us (and having had her own conversation with an imaginary friend off and on there as we all talked with each other ’round my table), she looked up from her meal, straight at me with a grin, big bright eyes looking right into me and an emphatic “uh huh!” coming out of her chuckling mouth and then a pat on my shoulder. I was stunned. Looked away. Looked back at her. She was still grinning at me. Holy Shite. We all shuddered, eyes wide, total dead silence for a moment, then stepped back from our sense of things and pulled out the totems FAST.
Just when you’ve got it all figured out, the joke is what’s true…? Life is a trip…
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Re-Member
“…the re-membering occurs when we begin to reassemble the parts of our inner knowing that we lost by taking the risks involved in being human. Birth into a human body is similar to taking an entire universe of information and consciousness, shoving it onto a microchip, and placing the particle containing all the wisdom inside a tiny human body that has no control over its own movements for a while…
That birth experience alone is enough to create forgetting. From that point on, our daily human experiences present enough shocks that we become aware of less and less of our inherent potential. How’s that for a Coyote trick? You have to learn to gain control over your growing baby body, then learn to deal with all the emotions of growing up and all the judgments of others who tell you something is right or wrong, no matter how you see it with your child’s eyes of wonder. We learn and adopt habits based upon the families we have and the cultures we grow up in. No wonder we forget! Then, later, we learn to drop everything we picked up that does not support us and reassemble all the beliefs that do help us remember who we are, why we are here, where we come from, and how it all works together. That’s some task! No wonder we are required to have an abundant sense of humor in order to survive that kind of cosmic joke!” Jamie Sams – Dancing The Dream, Pg. 152
Love is big enough to endure the shift, the dropping of all we picked up that does not support who we are, the reassembly of beliefs into a tapestry more suited to our ancient make-up of innocence and shadow.
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Sacred Sit-In
I’m about to head off to class and have appreciated being able to actually breathe after my midterm. I read the reactions to the last post and sift through my own thoughts. I look at Sams’ statement here and it grabs me…
“The power of personal connection to the Creator and to spirituality is found in the individual who is willing to commit to life’s paths of initiation.” Jamie Sams – Dancing the Dream…
I’d say that the power of personal connection to the Creator and to spirituality is found in the individual who has decided to face his or her limitations and to simply enjoy the current “location” of development. Whether temporarily or permanently. So would Jamie Sams. But I felt it was worth noting. We are amazing conduits of Source whether we’re working hard at the “paths of initiation” or just unfolding into our days. But we tend to forget that.
It’s too easy to take a level of awareness in transformation and turn it into the next big standard/shovel burying us where we are because we’re not “there” yet. Every step is valid. And sometimes we really are victims and need to acknowledge and heal.
So, here’s to sacred sit-ins . . .
and sit-downs and lie-downs and.
Resting into a trust of our inherent capacity to grow whether we “commit” to it or not.
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Sacred Path
“Our personal progress is a matter of free will. How deep we are willing to go to reach understanding depends ultimately upon our desire to become explorers. We can see ourselves as victims being tossed between bliss and despair, or we can look deeper and begin to take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and actions. When we choose to change, refusing to become victims, we have chosen to see life from the eye of Eagle. The power of personal connection to the Creator and to spirituality is found in the individual who is willing to commit to life’s paths of initiation. When we acknowledge that we are spiritual beings who are willing to fight in the trenches of human self-empowerment, insisting on personal integrity, we have chosen to test ourselves by entering the paths of human initiation that lead to authentic wholeness.” Jamie Sams – Dancing the DREAM…
These wise words bolster me for the week and upcoming months of change. Sams’ insights speak to the heart of where I’ve been and where I’m going.
On. With. It.
