nothing like a gentle nudge to have fun

Posted on May 20, 2013 by In Blue

We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.

……..Rumi

This is the place of no fear….of puddles and puppies and paint and princesses and posies…..may you welcome the graceful cycles of an inner journey….a great harmony of insightful gifts…..from the void to bloom….from heavy to light…..from staid to a twinkle in the eye……

When the True Self breaks through, a new and impassioned approach to life often makes itself known. We tap into an inner radiance that I call ‘delight.’ I’m speaking of a unique kind of response to life that can coexist with our most painful realities. I’m speaking of the joy of saying yes to life in the core of our being. I believe that the capacity to delight in life is deeply carved by our waiting. ‘When I planted my pain in the field of patience,’ wrote Kahil Gibran, ‘it bore fruit of happiness.’ Delight can become a way of life, a way of journeying. There’s a saying, ‘Religion is not to be believed, but danced.’ I like this idea, for it shifts the emphasis from our endless pursuit of religious knowledge back to the dimension of living our religion in such a way that it becomes a dance, a celebration in which we open our arms and say yes to life. When Jesus said that he wanted his joy to be in us and our joy to be full, he was also saying that he wanted his delight to be in us. He wanted our delight of be full. Finding the inner child, Delight, plumps and widens our joy. She lives in all of us. She tickles our frozen places and frees us to laughter, exuberance, simplicity, and spontaneous moments that extract the essence of the True Self from deep inside……Sue Monk Kidd

true self, playful self

If I have inside me the stuff to make cocoons,

maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too.

…..Trina Paulus

a fretful balance between life & living

Posted on May 19, 2013 by In Blue

The soul lives contented

by listening,

if it wants to change

into the beauty of

terrifying shapes

it tries to speak.

That’s why

you will not sing,

afraid as you are

of who might join with you.

….David Whyte

we’re in it now…..

In the popular European myth of the Holy Grail, the young man, Parsifal, goes out into the world to seek life’s deeper meaning- his soul (which is what the Grail ultimately symbolizes). His travels take him to the castle of the sick Grail King (who, as in most myths, symbolizes the old story, the ego’s old and fortressed way of being in the world). The only cure for the king is for an unknown knight ( a Wanderer) to come along and ask the king two specific questions. But Parsifal’s mother had taught him that questions were foolish or rude, and so Parsifal does not ask. Consequently the castle (and the vision of the Grail) vanishes, and Parsifal finds himself in a great wilderness through which he must wander for many years, until he has learned enough, through the trials and losses of life, to be ready to ask the right questions. The first question is, ‘Lord, what ails thee’ By asking ourselves (our egos) that question- and living it- we, like Parsifal, develop understanding and empathy for how we co-create many of our ailments and how those difficulties teach us what we need to learn. We begin to uncover our sacred wounds. We develop compassion for ourselves, learning to appreciate our mistakes, failures, and wounds as much as our talents and successes. The second question is, ‘Whom does the Grail serve?’ By asking, ‘Whom does my soul serve?’ we learn to turn our attention to the deeper purposes of what we do. We enlarge our vision of what’s possible and gradually learn to root our actions in soul. The answer will have two parts to it, like two sides of a coin: we serve the specific purposes of our souls and we serve our people, and we do one by doing the other. By living the question, ‘Whom does the Grail serve?’ we come to know our true destiny and the identity of our people. By staying attuned to the question of meaning, we learn to sanctify life. The Jungian analyst Robert Johnson writes, ‘To ask well is virtually to answer.’ When an answer does arrive, it does so not by way of the ego but by way of the soul….Bill Plotkin

there’s this wiggle room in the psyche….a discomfort away from our fidgety gifts into comfort and complacency…..but the deep soul will not allow it….find out where this leads….call to it in the night if you dare to be free and aware and insanely whole…..

And something ignited in my soul,

fever or unremembered wings,

and I went my own way,

deciphering

that burning fire

and I wrote the first bare line,

bare, without substance, pure

foolishness,

pure wisdom

of one who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open.

….Pablo Neruda

illuminating self-transcendence

Posted on May 18, 2013 by In Blue

Exploration is a less important need than that of safety. We know, for example, that only one who feels inwardly confident, who has a certain degree of faith in his or her ability to meet the unknown, can venture forth. The ability to confront conflicts and fears, to acknowledge our longing for security, for roots or unending love and approval, yet- at the same time- to remain unswervingly fixed on an insecure path because we sense it to be our right path is, to my way of thinking, heroic. This takes the courage to be. Thomas Merton says of the monk who confronts his own challenges squarely, ‘The paradox that one must face, if he really takes the truth seriously, is the pragmatic fact that sincerity means insecurity’…….Marsha Sinetar

filled with self-awareness is empowerment extraordinaire….these leaps of strength call us to the deepest truth of our life, one that will unleash a paradoxical unselfishness…..whether we step outside of conventional life or embrace the minutiae of domesticity, it is only through passion that life invites depth and wonder……

While it is useful to make bridges even to those groups one does not belong to, and it is important to try to be kind, it is also imperative to not strive too hard, to not believe too deeply that if one acts just right, if one manages to tie down all the itches and twitches of the wildish criatura, that one can actually pass for a nice, restrained, subdued, and demure lady-woman. It is that kind of acting, that kind of ego-wish to belong at all costs, that knocks out the Wild Woman connection in the psyche. Then instead of a vital woman you have a nice woman who is de-clawed. Then you have a well-behaved, well-meaning, nervous woman, panting to be good. No, it is better, more graceful, and far more soulful to just be what and as you are and let the other creatures be what they are too…..Clarissa Pinkola Estes

the way of fire….

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow- It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life……Dietrich Bonhoeffer

from heart to tongue to a whisper

Posted on May 17, 2013 by In Blue

Storytelling is imaginative and creative in nature. It is an act by which man strives to realize his capacity for wonder, meaning, and delight. It is also an act in which man invests and preserves himself in the context of ideas. Man tells stories in order to understand his experience, whatever it may be. The possibilities of storytelling are precisely those of understanding the human experience. ….N. Scott Momaday

imagine speaking in tongues or not speaking or knowing many languages or writing in code……how connected are we in our words? are they enough? how much confusion do we cause? how much beauty? poetry? tenderness?

Words are intimately connected to thought, to the very flow of consciousness. ‘How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?’ asked E.M. Forster. At first glance, this quip may be no more than a gloss on the old saw, ‘think before you speak,’ but I think that Forster is driving at something more profound. He is suggesting that thought and speech are one and the same; that our thoughts lead at best a shadow existence until they are married to words. As another old saw has it: ‘Speech is the mother, not the handmaid of thought.’ Approaching this level of being- the very act that makes us human- we immediately enter the religious realm. Words, no less than silence, escort us to the spirit…….P. Zaleski & P. Kaufman

finding destiny

All words are spiritual- nothing is more spiritual than words- Whence are they? along how many thousands and tens of thousands of years have they come? those eluding, fluid, beautiful, fleshless, realities, Mother, Father, Water, Earth, Me, This, Soul, Tongue, House, Fire……Walt Whitman

on the threshold of a shifting truth

Posted on May 16, 2013 by In Blue

And don’t expect any understanding;

but believe in a love that is being stored up for you

like an inheritance,

and have faith that in this love there is a strength

and a blessing so large

that you can travel as far as you wish

without having to step outside it……Rilke

what can you hold on to?

Just as there is religion and there are many religions so there is the Way and there are many ways. The first, the outpouring at the source, the second, the network of waterways issuing from it. One cannot be separated from the other. The Way divorced from its ways is a dead abstraction; the ways without being nourished by the Way cannot live. The Way is known to all religions. Always it stands for the truth and the dynamic manifestation of the truth in the holy life, the life divine; a fact superbly epitomized by Christ in his words ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.’ Indeed it may be said, that the Way is not just one religious concept amongst many others, or even the central concept in any one religion, but religion and the Way are synonyms. One of the oldest religions in existence today, Shinto, denotes ‘the Divine Way’ or ‘the Way of the Gods;’ Buddhism regards itself as a vehicle progressing along the nirvanic path, and Judaism is called ‘the Way of the Lord,’ and a highway for wayfaring men, of which Isaiah says ‘It shall be called the Way of holiness.’ A Christian follows the Way of Christ, and it is now a generally accepted fact that Christianity was originally known as the religion of the Way of the Way of God, in the same manner as the Islamic term for religion in general is mashab, the Way……Edith Schnapper

to endure the work of love in this human experience calls our ideas of peacefulness into question….maybe this tangled world is the peace of promise, the spacious possibility of a life unraveling into simplicity…..a reframing of growth and adaptability….blessed be….

Symbolism is the language of the unconscious mind, the deep wisdom that is part of how we are made. Many things we do without thinking are ways the unconscious reminds us of our larger nature. It may take many years before we can draw the sword from the stone personally and know who we truly are. Before that time, the unconscious may reach out, without our knowing, to feed parts of ourselves which have been neglected and disowned and strengthen them until we can come back for them……Rachel Naomi Remen

an archetypal descent into sweetness

Posted on May 15, 2013 by In Blue

Out breath

and in breath-

know that they are

proof that the world

is inexhaustible.

…..Ryokan

being sensitive to the energies surrounding us really finds us in the center of a mystique that disquiets hunger and begins a quest for a new alchemy of initiation…..we are completely unaware until we find ourselves craving the wild and innocent sweetness of our deep hearts…..

When we closely attend to the sensations and reactions of the body, we come to see in the body, solidified mind- a kind of perpetual reference to the past. A catalog of old imprints and deep conditioning, a reference library of the illusion of separateness held solid in the once flesh. In this exploration one discovers the states of mind and holdings which reinforce the idea, ‘I am this body, I am this mind.’ But when we allow the mind to sink into the heart, we enter life at a level where healing is appreciated in whatever form it takes. To see for ourselves with clear attention what is ‘real,’ never settling for a single answer, but always continuing deeper through levels and levels of understanding so that the healing can penetrate to the very marrow of existence. When we get up in the morning and don’t take anything for granted that day, when we want to see whether life is real or just a dream, then that day becomes very precious, unforgettable in these tens of thousands of forgotten days. Days where we have brought so little attention, so little tenderness to ourselves, so little of that joyous bewilderment of not knowing, of being willing to participate directly, of taking nothing for granted. Seeing that even the word ‘real’ changes meaning from moment to moment as awareness enters deeper, as mercy melts resistance and our edges dissolve into the unknown……Stephen Levine

fire up your wild gifts…..

In order to make positive changes, we must be able to catch ourselves in the act, which is a recognition born of awareness. Often we behave according to the dictates of our personality. When we are able to notice things like what we are doing now, how we are feeling now, what we like and dislike now, who we are now, and how all of if it is serving us in the big picture of things in a state of honesty, without judgment, our old patterns will fall away, and we can live a life of our own choosing. If you are able to not give in to the negative urge to shut down, you will begin to feel the you which is beyond your identity in this life. This essence is who you really are. The real you is a feeling place instead of a thing that is quantifiable, so it can only ever be experienced instead of intellectualized……Teal Scott

eat life with 2 spoons

Posted on May 14, 2013 by In Blue

Less effort is sometimes better.

This is true with respect to observing our thoughts

and our connection with the Soul.

The less significance we give our thoughts,

the easier it will be to connect

with the deeper parts of ourselves.

…..Richard Carlson

ok, so divine intention is all well and good, but the deeper reaches are accessed through a heavy dose of excitement, inter-connectedness, and a push/pull from the heart and soul……the waters are deep and the nights are long…..so make a little room for play…

Let me begin by saying that I think there is big difference between ‘nourishing your soul’ and ‘being nourished by your soul.’ We don’t nourish our soul. Our soul nourishes us. We don’t do something to our soul so much as have our soul do something for us. Our challenge as human beings is to open ourselves to receive this nourishment- to rekindle our connection with our spirit, the spirit that is always there waiting to nurture, heal, and direct our lives. To bring out the best in yourself and enjoy your life to the fullest, nothing is more important than learning to open to, and accept, the nourishment of your soul. As you open yourself to your soul, a calming sense of peace and connectedness develops within you. This peaceful feeling deepens your levels of thought, releases the innate healing powers of your body, reminds you to be grateful for all the gifts of life, and broadens your perspective, so that you can be at peace with the way things are…..Jack Canfield

how to breathe & pierce life….

Peace of mind has nothing to do with the external world; it has only to do with our connection with God. Love really is the answer. We’re here only to teach love. When we’re doing that, our souls are singing and dancing. When we remind ourselves that we are spiritual beings, that life and love are the flame eternal, that’s when our soul is nourished. Nourishing our soul is the recognition of what our purpose is: to love and forgive. It may sound simple, but it isn’t easy. Simplicity is very difficult for a confused mind to understand. The ego wants to make everything very complex. It wants to make the intellect our God. We nourish the soul when we find value in the stillness of the moment, recognizing that the present time is the only time there is. The essence of our being is love, and forgiveness is the key to our happiness……Gerald Jampolsky

re-surfacing our wild promises

Posted on May 13, 2013 by In Blue

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door,

in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread.

Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

…Derek Walcott

your soul-home invites you to journey through the topsy-turvy antics of what sustains the fire, the hearth and home of passion…..the way is where the light feels warm, the disused is found and the daily routine suspended if only for a moment….trees call and suddenly need to be climbed….

The spiritual teacher Krishnamurti maintained that there was no path to truth. Creative work is always about accessing some piece of the truth, and so at some point it always requires that we leave the path, the well-worn patterns of activity and inquiry that make us feel safe. For many of us, for those of us who know how to work hard, be productive, and keep to a schedule, this can be the most difficult part of the process-finding and entering empty time. Empty time is a necessary time of transition from doing to being, from acting exclusively with our will, often in response to others’ needs and the world’s schedule, to opening to the creative process, which has a different kind of rhythm, a flow that is not exclusively within our control, a movement that will take us to unexpected places. If there is one consistent thing that stops people committed to doing creative work from doing it, it is this: a lack of necessary silence in their lives, an inability or unwillingness to find and stay with the stillness, to regularly create empty time in their day or their week. For as surely as a disciplined creative practice brings us to our creative work, so the spaciousness of empty time in our lives allows that which lights a fire within us- the muse, the creative impulse of the life force itself- to find and speak to us…..Oriah Mountain Dreamer

the seductive pull of belonging to your wild numinosity

What it all comes down to is that art is not made by a special breed of people, but by ordinary people who have dedicated a piece of their lives to special work. Art is much more the product of a commitment made by ordinary people than the product of unique talent possessed by some chosen few. Doing special work can become a routine part of your life- in fact, it almost has to if you’re actually going to get any work done. Artists are not weird people who work when inspiration strikes. Artists are regular people who work all the time, and lead real lives all the time as well. Fix breakfast, cut the grass, do the laundry, write a poem. That is the real life of an artist…..Ted Orland

a time to rise up & a time to fall down

Posted on May 12, 2013 by In Blue

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there. I cannot rightly say how I entered it. I was so full of sleep, at that point where I abandoned the true way. But when I reached the foot of a hill, where the valley, that had pierced my heart with fear, came to an end, I looked up and saw its shoulders brightened with the rays of that sun that lead men rightly on every road. Then the fear, that had settled in the lake of my heart, through the night that I had spent so miserably, became a little calmer. And as a man, who, with panting breath, has escaped from the deep sea to the shore, turns back towards the perilous waters and stares, so my mind, still fugitive, turned back to see that pass again, that no living person ever left……Dante

consumed by gravity

‘Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be,’ writes the artist Agnes Martin. ‘I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step.’ We aren’t in control in the way we think we are. And we aren’t alone. There is a light, a luminosity behind the appearances of this world. There is a luminous, loving intelligence above us, watching over us, caring for us. What we really have to share is not any spiritual treasure we imagine we have stored up, but our poverty, our common human situation, our inability to know……Tracy Cochran

seeing things as they are in the nitty-gritty light, complete with a flawed escape plan determines our crossroads…..it really comes down to whether or not we can accept our vulnerability….this choice is so human, so clear, so presumptuous, so insistent, and so unavoidable…..

Taking what some psychologists call an ‘approach’ mentality to life is a key marker of well-being: being curious about the world, interested in new people and experiences, even when they scare us. Avoidance, by contrast, means letting fear control us, not going to new places, trying new activities, or exploring ideas that don’t fit our existing mind-set. Mindfulness- noticing events in a warm, open, and inquisitive manner- develops the courage to meet our lives with genuine interest. It doesn’t mean there’s no discomfort when we are to be curious. It means we’re willing to tolerate not knowing what might be around the next corner. In return, we experience the delight of being able to look, listen, taste, touch, feel, and learn from our environment. We may not know all the answers, but we don’t limit our perspective……Ed Halliwell

glowing in the greening heart

Posted on May 11, 2013 by In Blue

Live loud enough in your heart

and there is no need to speak.

….Mark Nepo

we taste the green in our hearts when we listen……we absorb the oneness inherent in those green spaces of our stories…..please be relentless in your memories…..hold that greening of spring so close……

May the door of this home be wide enough

to receive all who hunger for love,

all who are lonely for friendship.

May it welcome all who have cares to unburden,

thanks to express, hopes to nurture.

May the door of this house be narrow enough

to shut out pettiness and pride, envy, and enmity.

May its threshold be no stumbling block

to young or strained feet.

May it be too high to admit to complacency,

selfishness, and harshness.

May this home be for all who enter,

the doorway to richness and a more meaningful life.

…The Siddur of Shir Chadash

a cathedral in chains, in dreams, in hearts….

As we age, if we do not do meaningful work, any one of the following three obstacles identified by Dr. Cohen- fixed psychological patterns, fixed ideas, and unresolved family and social situations- will prevent our full creative expression and mire us in depression. The challenge at the Rustic Gate is to consciously identify and overcome these obstacles. The Rustic Gate requires that we remain connected to our creative fire, the fire that will sustain our health and well-being. This fire has to be rooted in meaning and generativity or it will not be sustainable. To generate is to initiate, to inspire, and to originate something that is meaningful, hopeful, and sustainable for ourselves and others. We give back to our families and communities, sharing our wisdom, experience, and passion, and leaving a legacy. What aspects of our lives are asking us to reconnect to the creative fire? How many projects have we completed in our lives? What have we contributed to our world, our community, and our family that makes a difference? Our work here is to connect with beauty, a major source of creativity and generativity. Beauty feeds the soul, and the soul feeds the creative fire. Medieval religious philosopher Thomas Aquinas suggested that three things are required to create beauty: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (radiance). Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai believed his art, creativity, and happiness improved with age because his love of the beauty and the majesty of Mount Fuji continued to inspire him. Paul Cezanne was inspired in his art by nature’s beauty. In later life, our creativity, generative energy, and meaningful service compel us to make contributions that are sustainable, whole, harmonious, and deeply satisfying to the soul…..Angeles Arrien

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