Category Archives: Chaos

filling the well & leaks & doubt

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a vessel for emptiness

Back to square one is the starting point of any genuine expression. Genuine square one is when you realize the desolateness, the spaciousness for that which is completely devoid of any feedback. You have finally confronted your good old self. This type of square one is primordial, the genuine one. There is no reference point…..Chogyan Trungpa

this reminds me of our own innate knowing & the responsibility to not deplete its arsenal of awareness….those leaky places which empty our loving places, cause us to surrender our authority & limit our longings….

Things Considered when Filling the Well….

holding the moon tight

finding that perfect corner to watch the world in silence

gathering flowers

sometimes it’s Rilke…sometimes it’s Nietzsche…..

sometimes it’s Charlie Brown…

remembering you have a couch & using it to rest

regarding all as a dream

cookies & milk

sand & wave & shells

starting over, beginning again, & forgetting why…

glossing over naked reality for awhile…

yoga, yoga, yoga…

sitting with true purpose

writing lists

checking out holy places in everyone you know

looking for the bottomless wild

remembering that floating comes before growing

Most of us never received a wise & mature introduction to the immense challenges, privileges, & possibilities of the life we entered into. Developing discernment helps us learn life’s lessons more clearly & quickly, turn challenges into opportunities & avoid unnecessary obstacles. We can then say, I have lived a good life, that I have touched &

I have been touched by……life.

Mariana Caplan

souls don’t drown, & hearts float up….

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tentative....

I love cats partly because of their inherently quiet & meditative state…

Like them, I need quiet….need to be unplugged, (funny in the blog world yes?) & in my own innate space….this says what we inherently know….

When alone, a layer falls away…& a natural kind of meditation lifts us up…our heart opens….we see things from a new vantage point…

All because we have allowed space to happen……we meet ourselves again & again…

When a person encounters her individual soul, we say she has uncovered her unique gifts, her destiny, her life purpose, or personal meaning. Through soul encounter, she learns why spirit & nature gave birth to her particular way of belonging to the world……Bill Plotkin

That melancholy place is a marvel of your own radiant drowning….

& the soft space curled up with a cat….

adularescence or the shimmer of life’s flux…..

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moonstone & moods & fleeting moments...

“For me, facing the full catastrophe means finding & coming to terms with what is most human in ourselves. Catastrophe here does not mean disaster. Rather it means the poignant enormity of our life experience. It includes crises & disasters but also all the little things that go wrong & that add up. The phrase reminds us that life is always in flux, that everything we think is permanent is actually only temporary & constantly changing. Everything. The major avenue available to us as individuals for handling stress effectively is to understand what we are going through. We can best do this by cultivating our ability to perceive our experience in its full context. If we can change the way we see we can change the way we respond.” …..Jon Kabat-Zinn….Full Catastrophe Living

Been thinking about lots of friends going through lots of things….how we move through time’s relentlessness….how much beauty we miss along the way…. how resilient we are…

Like the moonstone’s shimmer…there & gone….blinding & searching all at the same time….full of mystery & questions & change…..

This is the fire in motion….

If you too, are working on things, going through things, not quite dealing with things….may you move through with a renewed aura of okness….

it’s a beautiful day…

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big sky...big life...

the waiting of winter, of soul’s light…captured in this luminous poem…

Eye Mask…

In this dark I rest,

unready for the light which dawns

day after day,

eager to be shared.

Black silk, shelter me.

I need

more of the night before I open

eyes & heart

to illumination. I must still

grow in the dark like a root

not ready, not ready at all.

Denise Levertov

it’s a haunting day…..ethereal & moving…

…’soul making’ wrote philosopher Jean Houston, ‘is not necessarily a happy thing. Crucial parts of it are not. We need to hold onto the celebration of becoming, to the bliss that wells up from the deeper places we’re tapping…I stared into the night, my heart pounding…..Sue Monk Kidd

don’t forget…it’s a beautiful day… 

navigating others…retreating….

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just can't unplug from noise...

One of my favorite dharma teachers is Dr. Seuss; he captures the human condition so beautifully. One of his stories starts with two  people walking toward each other along a narrow road. When they meet, they each refuse to step to the side so that the other can pass. Everyone else builds bridges & even whole cities around them, & life just goes on. But the two stubborn ones stand there for the rest of time, refusing to budge. It never occurs to them even after 85 years that they could be curious about why the other is refusing to move, or that they could try to communicate. They could have had a really interesting debate in all those years even if they had still never moved. The point is not that you’re trying to achieve harmony or smooth everything out. Good luck, if that’s your goal. The point is to live together on this earth with our differences, to communicate for its own sake. It’s about widening your circle of compassion. And when you can connect with your own suffering, you can reflect that countless others are feeling exactly what you feel in spite of a different story line…Pema Chodron

Isn’t this where connection is real? Alive? Hostile? Unbelievable?

I really don’t always ‘like’ being so connected to so many humans…..don’t really want to be around others…don’t always want to hear another story line….

The paradox lies, of course, in being so connected, yet driving others away…

But we need each other…..we need stars & wishes & touch & shared pretending…..remembering humanity’s feeble lifeline…

Furthermore we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, & where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world…..Joseph Campbell

pain is real…in shadows & physics…

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shadow work

Whatever your difficulties—a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness—you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do—despite your circumstances—are to be present and to be willing to love…..Jack Kornfield

a quote like this leaves nothing to be decided….

more like pretending than deciding…

it’s too full…too perfect….not enough to explain many, many things….

and yet, I am so drawn to this quote….to this disquieting ideal….

where the sidewalk is not full of confused & weary faces….

but cynicism & pain & ugliness are very real…look in your shadows….

do you see choices?

If you look for the truth outside yourself, it gets farther & farther away. Today, walking alone, I meet him everywhere I step. he is the same as me, yet I am not him. Only if you understand it in this way will you merge with the way things are…..Tung-Shan

this choice seems a bit like a random fortune……or is it?……

not getting so caught up in stories…. asking again & again…who am I?…

moving away….and into….deep sky…

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soaring away from the glare...

The wounding of our lives becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old stories & to become the vehicles through which a new story may emerge into time….the value of our wound is that it breaches the soul; the psyche is opened so that “new questions begin to be asked about who we are in our depths”….Jean Houston

This beautiful place of questioning is immense….so vast & awesome in its tenderness, yet difficult to contain in our day to day issues……yes?

And so easy to bring our insecurities in to keen drama….yes?

The mark of human maturity is the capacity to withdraw projections….Marion Woodman (jungian psychologist)

Not there?…..me either….ok….

Don’t run too quickly though…

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty & courage. Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest sense, something helpless that needs our love….Rilke

Deep sigh….maybe?

water is haunting me…

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shallow, deep or in between...

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I…..I hardly know, Sir, just at present…..at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”…..Lewis Carroll

We are working on being the one “I” among many….the one more desirable, authentic, intuitive….like choosing the shiniest, most colorful & lively fish from the wishing pool….

The idea of water’s transformative aura…..shape-shifting, forgiving, a bit annihilating of old habits….ahhh….to shed the self…..then to try & reclaim it…..I am caught up in this idea of water this week….

Rather silly isn’t it?

Just allowing these nuances of wave & whoosh & the quiet heavy weight of water to wash over the week like…..waterfalls….

Without preparing ourselves through preliminary practices, the only answer to the question, “Who am I?” is “The same old fool.”…..Swami Sivananda

Ok, so what are ‘preliminary  practices?’ Something like chasing your tail, then pretending you don’t need to chase your tail, swim along awhile, & then catch yourself chasing your tail again?

Like I said, it all seems a bit silly doesn’t it?

nurturing or drowning in water’s purity

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water deep & longing...

The highest spirtitual path is life itself. You have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, & it’s not the usual stuff (career, marriage, God, etc)…it’s ‘do you want to be happy?’ Once you make that choice, your path becomes more clear. You then realize how much control you really do have……Michael Singer….The Untethered Soul

We sink so easiy don’t we? And we also sometimes want to hide from ourselves…..what better place than under water….where we can only hear bubbles….so nurturing…carrying us awhile…..

The surface of water is the only place where we see our reflection…

under is wild & deep & easily deceiving….no decision needed to be happy or not…

And yet, we dive deep in knowing…in longing for soul & water to carry us further…to hold us under long enough to reveal a new reflection…

You are not dead yet. It is not too late to open your depths by plunging into them & drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there…Rilke

Dive deep….

get drunk….do not be martyred….

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teasing the muse...

Get Drunk:

One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing; the only question. Not to feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders & bowing you to the earth, you should be drunk without respite. Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, as you please. But get drunk. And if sometimes you should happen to awake, on the stairs of a palace, on a green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your own room & find that your drunkenness is ebbing or has vanished, ask the wind & the wave, ask star, bird, or clock, ask everything that flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them the time; & the wind, the wave, the star, the bird & the clock will all reply: “It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually Drunk! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.”……..Baudelaire

What is your pleasure?

drink up…