riding a magic carpet through ignorance

Posted on May 25, 2013 by In Blue

The experience of grace evokes the expression of gratitude. Grace and gratitude share the same root word along with gravitas, and there is a strong interconnection among these three states. When people internalize and integrate their experience of grace, their character naturally deepens and they develop gravitas. In Latin, gravitas is similar to charisma, and is defined as a quality that draws us to those who embody dignity, integrity, wisdom, substance, and presence. Being conscious of where grace is present in our lives motivates our expression of gratitude and cultivates gravitas. Gratitude is the external expression. These moments are rare gifts in which we open to an expansive place within our nature, where all is ‘right with the world.’…..Angeles Arrien

going against the grain of angst into a sweet bath of bliss, okness, radical gratitude…may you be struck by kindness and unnecessary daydreams, the kind that change everything….come into your own ancient insights…..

Moccasin Flowers

All my life,

so far,

I have loved

more than one thing,

including the mossy hooves

of dreams, including

the spongy litter under the tall trees.

In spring

the moccasin flowers

reach for the crackling

lick of the sun

and burn down. Sometimes,

in the shadows,

I see the hazy eyes,

the lamb-lips

of oblivion,

its deep drowse,

and I can imagine a new nothing

in the universe,

the matted leaves splitting

open, revealing

the black planks

of the stairs.

But all my life- so far-

I have loved best

how the flowers rise

and open, how

the pink lungs of their bodies

enter the fire of the world

and stand there shining

and willing- the one

thing they can do before

they shuffle forward

into the floor of darkness, they

become trees.

…..Mary Oliver

inevitable beauty

We often speak of knowledge dawning on us, and in truth, the gradual process by which mystical insight penetrates the ignorance of conditioning is much like the rising of the sun. As its first rays begin to catch the contours of the land, more and more details come to light until the world around us glistens brightly in the morning dew. Similarly, each insight reveals to us with greater clarity the nature of what is, as the light of spiritual realization dispels delusion and unveils the truth of things as they are. For some, this truth may indeed open up in a sudden blaze of understanding like the midday sun, but for many, the moment of true awakening is preceded by the subtle shifts of insight that help to prepare the way. As Emily Dickinson tells us, ‘The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.’….John Greer

the philosophy of spiritual drive

Posted on May 24, 2013 by In Blue

Inborn rationalists and inborn pragmatists will never convert each other. We shall always look on them as spectral and they on us as trashy- irredeemably both! Why not simply express ourselves positively, and trust the truer view quietly will displace the other……Henry James

it’s kind of like contemplative gardening…..a subtle collapse of the world into a new and better existence……a harvest of true self….encompassing all seasons…..

The self-actualizing tendency is a part of human nature. Moreover, this urge is not limited to human beings but is part of the process of all living things: It is the urge evident in all organic and human life- to expand, extend, become autonomous, develop, and mature. In each of us lies an inherent drive toward being as competent and capable as we are biologically able to be. The drive toward health is not an overwhelming force that sweeps aside obstacles; it is easily blunted, distorted, and repressed. Carl Rogers sees it as the dominant motivating force in a person who is functioning freely, who is not crippled by past events or current beliefs. For Rogers, the tendency toward self-actualization is more than simply another motive among many; it is the primary motivational drive……R. Frager & J. Fadiman

who lives in this life?

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This outgrowing proves on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appears on the patient’s horizon….Carl Jung

scampering through our muddy lives….coming clean

Posted on May 23, 2013 by In Blue

You have not danced so badly, my dear,

trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One,

You have waltzed with great style my sweet,

crushed angel,

to have even neared God’s heart at all.

Our Partner is notoriously hard to follow,

and even His best musicians

are not always easy to hear.

So what, if the music has stopped for awhile.

So what, if the price of admission

to the Divine is out of reach tonight.

So what my sweetheart,

if you lack the ante to gamble for real love.

The mind and the body are famous

for holding the heart ransom,

but Hafiz knows the Beloved’s

eternal habits. Have patience,

for He will not be able to resist your longings

and charms for long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,

trying to kiss the Magnificent

One.

You have actually waltzed

with tremendous style,

my sweet, O sweet,

crushed angel.

…..Hafiz

we are so hard on ourselves…….the beauty of life moving on lies in our deeper perspective…..a knowing that allows for all of the twists and turns….maybe we can look back without regrets and say, ‘I did my best’…….sweeten your memories with the understanding that things are the way they are…..a simplicity, a paradox, and a little comfort…..

The life cycle is, as its name implies, a cycle. At fifteen years of age, life stretches straight ahead of us, a highway to riches and fame. But as we mature, so does our understanding. Sooner or later, it dawns upon us that our trajectory is anything but a straight line. We zig and zag, double back upon ourselves, tie ourselves in knots, branch out in new directions. And as we approach death, we may discover that life’s two ends meet. Moreover, each stage along the way recycles its material into the next; an adult doesn’t emerge full-born, like Athena out of the head of Zeus, but unfolds naturally from the lengthening limbs and thickening muscles of adolescence. Our life is a coming-into-being, a gradual disclosure of our true self…….P. Zaleski & P. Kaufman

down the twisted & twining memory lane

Naw, nobody taught me nothing.

I just watched and picked it up.

That’s how you used to learn everything;

you watched and figured it out

and went ahead and did it.

Nobody taught you.

…….elderly Yurok canoe maker

demystifying the descent

Posted on May 22, 2013 by In Blue

The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question,

Nor is bought with going to amazing places.

Until you have kept your eyes and your wanting

still for fifty years,

you don’t begin to cross over from confusion.

…..Rumi

aversions, illusions, discomforts, and ambivalence all call us into our shadows….when we descend to witness our own cycles, we honor our genuine experience…..we re-enter life, ascend and renew, rebuild and find clarity…self-confident and more gracious…..

Why must we go down and in? Because as we do so, we will meet the darkness that we carry within ourselves- the ultimate source of the shadows that we project onto other people. If we do not understand that the enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone ‘out there’ into the enemy, becoming leaders who oppress rather than liberate others. But, says Annie Dillard, if we ride those monsters all the way down, we break through to something precious- to ‘the unified field, our complex and inexplicable caring for each other,’ to the community we share beneath the broken surface of our lives. Good leadership comes from people who have penetrated their own inner darkness and arrived at the place where we are at one with one another, people who can lead the rest of us to a place of ‘hidden wholeness’ because they have been there and know the way. Why would anyone want to embark on the daunting inner journey about which Dillard writes? Because there is no way out of one’s inner life, so one had better get into it. On the inward and downward spiritual journey, the only way out is in and through…….Parker Palmer

standing strong in shadows….

Years ago, I read an interview with the Dalai Lama. The interviewer was surprised to hear the Dalai Lama say that he regretted that he had not been present at his brother’s death. The interviewer, assuming probably correctly that the Dalai Lama has a pretty continuous sense of an infinite presence within and around him, assumed incorrectly that this awareness of the essential nature of all reality would shield him from any pain caused by being a human being who loves not just humanity but particular humans. The Dalai Lama is a human being, and a human being is a wholeness that is both this essence and an individual self with a history and passing thoughts and feelings- an ego. When we know our wholeness, when we are consciously aware of both ego and essence, we feel the pain of loss in our lives not as crippling devastation that makes us want to give up on life itself, but as human sadness that we know will change with time, as all feelings do. The Dalai Lama had not been crippled with guilt or agony over the circumstances of his brother’s death, but he could acknowledge and be with his sense of loss, his sadness. Awareness of the essence of what we are does not take us away from our feelings, but it can give us a perspective that makes it easier to be with these feelings without identifying exclusively with, suffering painfully over, or acting upon them…..Oriah Mountain Dreamer

we carry our heavy hearts

Posted on May 21, 2013 by In Blue

Whatever you are feeling when you lose someone or something is exactly what you are supposed to be feeling. That is healing. You will heal, you will return to wholeness. You may not get back what you have lost, but you can heal. And at some point on your journey through life, you will see that you never really had, the way you thought, that person or item you were mourning. And you will see that you will always have them in other ways. We long for wholeness. We hope that we can keep people and things just as they are, but we know we can’t. Just as there is no good without bad, or light without dark, there is no growth without loss. And odd though it may sound, there also is no loss without growth……Elizabeth Kubler Ross

a beautiful life and a beautiful death…..the sunrise and the emptiness and lessons in holding hands….nurturing growth is only part of the story….we nourish the end-breath and the spectral light and the daunting tasks of those who have gone before us….may the vigil be warm and soft and knowing……

Trust and patience combined with openness and acceptance- qualities nurtured by mindfulness practice, help us develop the necessary relationship between compassion and equanimity and learn to respond from a place that is deeper than our personality and our conceptual mind. With equanimity and compassion as inseparable companions in our work we are also less judgmental and less attached to outcomes. All too often though, our so-called strength comes from fear, not love; instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, through equanimity, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open, representing choiceless compassion…….Roshi Joan Halifax

mourn for the beauty & the moon & the wide, wide well…..

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,

the more joy you can contain.

…..Kahil Gibran

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

Make Believe Boutique

Sundries & Curiosities for the Adventurous. A Tribal Inquiry.