Category Archives: Chaos

our bodies call us back down to earth…

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rediscovering…

Deep spirituality is not an out-of-body experience. Physical form is the way we experience spiritual reality on earth. Come into animal presence. When we awaken somatic perception, we take the ownership of healing away from an ‘expert’ & give it back to our own body. Healing begins when we release & rediscover these instincts. When we follow the body’s lead, we enter ‘dream-time,’ through sleep, slowing down, rest, & communing with nature. A good way to ‘come into animal presence’ is to create for yourself time-outs or mini-rituals. Anything that reminds you in a visceral way that you are a walking miracle can become your own body ritual….Elizabeth Lesser

love these body rituals….walking meditation, textured sweaters & great boots over roots….stretching like a cat (yoga)….sunlight on my face….ocean water…..fresh lemons…how do you reconnect body to mind?

spiritual body’s own rhythm….

There is a deeply rooted desire or need to transcend who we naturally are. Some higher power finds us unacceptable as we are. We’ve spent several thousand years learning the arts of self-transcendence. But life is a matter of incarnation. The soul is an entity that lives within our human body. Over-spiritualization is a real danger. If you want to heal, you have to surrender; you have to give up control; you have to stop trying to be perfect, because eventually you have to face the fact that you cannot completely control your life….Marion Woodman

finding the sunshine in a to-do list…

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gentle space calling

The Word

Down near the bottom of the crossed-out list of things you have to do today,
between “green thread” and “broccoli” you find that you have penciled “sunlight.”
Resting on the page, the word is as beautiful, it touches you as if you had a friend
& sunlight were a present he had sent you from some place distant as this morning— to cheer you up,
& to remind you that, among your duties, pleasure is a thing,
that also needs accomplishing Do you remember? that time & light are kinds
of love, & love is no less practical than a coffee grinder
or a safe spare tire? Tomorrow you may be utterly without a clue
but today you get a telegram, from the heart in exile proclaiming that the kingdom
still exists, the king & queen alive, still speaking to their children,
…to any one among them who can find the time, to sit out in the sun & listen

…Tony Hoagland

oh, to just be for a day!….for an hour….for a moment….what does that mean anyway? do we know how to hum softly in a daydream? do we know how to contact our own longing?

I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!

No time to say hello! Good-bye!

I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!

….The Mad Hatter

difference between seeing the bird & being the bird…

I wake clear & rested, light flooding my room. The day seems endless & free. But making coffee, I notice three bills I haven’t paid, & after showering, I notice I need a haircut, & since I’ll be out that way, I think I might as well pick up my shirts. But I so want to spend time in the sun. So I think, well, after these errands, I’ll go to the park, & then I deliberate which park will be just right & decide on one forty minutes away. Finally, wanting to make sure there is some fun in all of this, I call a friend & plan to meet her at a movie at six. Now I have to hurry along to make sure I can get eveywhere on time. But, thankful, while gassing up, I hear a small bird & lift my head just as a cloud opens & the light floods my mind, & I drop all my plans like change on the ground. I laugh at myself. I can so easily become a slave to a schedule I create. Not one of these things is necessary today. I drop everything & follow the bird into the sun…..Mark Nepo

diminishing mystery….the illusion of separateness….

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hope rooted...

Last night  I spent an hour in the dark transept of St. Patrick’s Cathedral where I go now & then in my more lonely moods. An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature & her response. In the cathedral I felt one presence; on the highway I felt another. The priest in me worshipped one God; the poet another God. The priest worshipped Mercy & Love; the poet, Beauty & Might. As I sat dreaming with humanity, I felt how the glittering altar worked on my senses stimulating & consoling; I went tramping through the fields & beheld every leaf & blade of grass revealing or betokening the Invisible……Wallace Stevens

it’s the awesomeness, the daunting past & the intricate human language of connection that calls us to bow our heads to cross & mountain….we find healing in the flickering candles, the tiny leaf, & the truth of the senses…

and yet, we can’t always reconcile our place…can’t allow love’s mysteries….we separate our God from each other…..remove our hearts from experience….disengage soul from faith….

Don’t you ever,

You up in the sky,

Don’t you ever get tired

Of having clouds between you & us?

….Nootka Prayer

let hope work its tiny miracles….

Music is being played to the cows in the milking barn. Rules have been made & confirmed: only sacred music is to be played to the cows, not ‘classical’ music. The music is to make the cows give more milk. The sacred music is to keep the brothers who work in the cow barn recollected. For sometime now sacred music has been played to the cows in the milking barn. They have not given more milk. The brothers have not been any more recollected than usual. I believe the cows will soon be hearing Beethoven. Then we shall have classical, perhaps worldly milk & the monastery will prosper. (Later: It was true. The hills resounded with Beethoven. The monastery has prospered. The brother mainly concerned with the music, however, has departed.)

…..Thomas Merton

we’ve cycled through these stories before…..

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take me with you...

Awake

Waking today

just before winter

when I try to name the color of grasses,

how I feel of their beauty,

there is no word.

I think of the time before there were

words

when you would know morning mist

by the feel

of your loved one’s skin & hair,

& when someone came from the forest

of dry leaves

you would know by their scent

even if they carried no wood.

Or the heat of their body skin in summer.

Or if they came the winding way

down from the mountains

they would be covered in cloud

returning to the fold

or if they had gone farther, to the ocean,

you’d know them by their far-seeing eyes,

& when some travelers return

& are shining with light

you know, without saying, that they

have been

in touch with other worlds.

I have no wealth to speak of

other than this,

all this, just to praise the dry grasses

& their color that can’t be spoken

in words.

….Linda Hogan

there seems to be a deeper story to be told just under the surface of things….like polishing stones…we find our essential self when we allow the natural cycles of our lives to renew us…our continuity is trustworthy….

Under every deep a lower deep opens.

….Ralph Waldo Emerson

we seek…..

The story within & beneath the familiar story is almost always full of insight & possibility. It may take courage to go another level down, to abandon clarity, however illusory, for an unknown period of confusion & puzzlement. Our habitual stories usually protect us from the mystery of our lives. Whenever a story puts an end to reflection & further storytelling, that story is now serving as a defense. The poetics in a person’s story is its opening toward insight…..Thomas Moore

coming up for air after drowning

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unfettered descent & reemergence

The founders of all religions have gone on quests. The Buddha went into solitude & then sat beneath the bodhi tree, where he recieved an illumination that has enlightened all of Asia for 2500 years. After baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus went into the desert for 40 days; & it was out of that desert that he came with his message. Moses went to the top of a mountain & came down with the tables of the law. Almost all the old Greek cities were founded by heroes who went off on quests & had surprising adventures, out of which each of them founded a city. You might also say the founder of a life- your life or mine, if we live our own lives, instead of imitating everybody else’s life- comes from a quest as well……Joseph Campbell

unflinching in our confusing & sputtering lives, we can use this ‘holding on’ to be deeply touched by life….this is what I call radical okness….

we can redefine mercy….

we will recall our finer moments as ones that rocked us out of wasting our life…riveted our capacity to feel deeply…..to care about each other….to care about drowning on dry land….

When we disintegrate, going down into life & into our potential for vitality, we may have to give up the fantasy of ourselves as sentimentally whole. We may have to risk experience instead of keeping it at bay; for it is the impact of life & soul that makes us into persons of depth & character. I suspect that the common glorification of wholeness & unity is a defense against the alchemical dismembering of our emotions & thoughts into a mature, tempered soul. We are always becoming whole, & that means that we are never whole but always disintegrating as we go……Thomas Moore

behind the intellectualizing of the mystique

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alice discovers paradox

Sometimes the mountain

is hidden from me in veils

of cloud, sometimes

I am hidden from the mountain

in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,

when I forget or refuse to go

down to the shore or a few yards

up the road, on a clear day,

to reconfirm

that witnessing presence.

Denise Levertov

the aesthetics of changeling moods & graces show us our sub-conscious pitfalls….whether we want to note them or not…we have to fall down the rabbit hole again & again…

The superimposition of the dream state on the conscious-awake state is something that is very important to all artists. It’s not a rational world; it’s a rationalizing world. It’s one in which we’ve constructed states of reality that are quite complex…..James Turrell 

do we really know how ‘rubber-stamped’ we really are? how labeled our intellect is for us? this is why our imaginations are crucial…they are what truly define us…call us wild…

where does the rabbit hole go?

Free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker

on this earth in which life blazes inside all things?

Your liberty does what it wishes with the powers it controls, but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there.

Look carefully in an animal at a spirit alive:

every flower is a soul opening out into nature;

a mystery touching love is asleep inside metal.

‘Everything is intelligent.’ (Pythagoras)

And everything moves you.

In that blind wall, look out for the eyes that pierce you:

the substance of creation cannot be separated from a word.

Do not force it to labor in some low phrase!

Often a Holy Thing is living hidden in a dark creature;

and like an eye which is born covered by its lids,

a pure spirit is growing strong under the bark of stones….

Gerard de Nerval

our humble ways & the vine of humanity

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gather the glow & emanate out

 How I see the world is a product of my experiences, so there is undeniable worth in my own accumulation of perspectives. But I restrict myself when I become so attached to my one way of seeing things. The power of listening to multiple views comes from the flexibility of mind it affords. It frees me from the unconscious hold of unexamined views….& much of my sense of self is derived from an amalgamation of such views. Whether it’s listening to a person or otherwise, if I listen long enough it creates an opening. If I can embrace the unknown…while being firmly rooted in developing wisdom through my own experience…I am freeing myself from the prison of limited identity….Viral Mehta

no identity crises please….feel joy in the quirky roots & knotted tendrils of your contradictions, changes, projections, ordinariness, & unchecked stagnations….

move in to common experience by recognizing your shadow in others….your passions held in unlikely sources….& your understanding simply not always noted….in a sometimes caustic, hyper-individual-focused society, it is so kind to listen to one another…

Our fault is not moral, it is original insfficiency. Sin is the littleness of being….Bruce McEver
I promise…I’ll change…. 

the inextricable entwinement of light through man & sky….

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the journey of light…

From Jacques Lusseyran who lost his eyesight at the age of eight. From his book ‘And There Was Light’….after his time leading Anti-Nazi resistance…

I began to look more closely, not at things but at a world closer to myself, looking from an inner place…

I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place which might as well have been outside of me as within. But radiance was there, or, to put it more precisely, light. It was a fact, for light was there. I found light & joy at the same moment, & I can say without hesitation that from that time on light & joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together.

this light is our consciousness…it speaks to us….vibrates an initial glimpse of spirit…it’s up to us to respond….not rigid…not another way for our sanctimonious projections to alight….neither sinful nor ethereal……yet it is the fearless & transcendent attitude which lifts life & death out of our small judgments….spacious awareness of what is….

The mysterious properties of light, which have preoccupied every great scientist from Galileo & Newton to Einstein & Feynman, gave birth to the early twentieth century’s twin fundamental theories of modern physics, relativity theory & quantum mechanics, each rigorously verified & yet profoundly paradoxical. Scientists & philosophers struggle with their meaning, struggle to understand light. Einstein declared, toward the end of his life: “Fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to the answer to the question, ‘What are light quanta?’ Of course today every rascal thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself.”….Christian Wertenbaker

our sky of the heart, lit up like fireworks, from twinkling to bursting, attests to the purity of inner man….& the astounding paradoxes within man as parallels the phenomenal world…spiritual virtue?….

by the light of the moon….all angels are heard….

seeking light in the complex webs we’ve spun

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symbolic courage of light...

we can see softness in these lights…..tradition, comfort, hope older than time….

if we find intolerance, misunderstanding, harshness…..we can come back to softness….

come back to our inner light….in solidarity with all the others coming back to light…

The flame encourages us to stop & be present where we are. It reminds us of our own inner flames that leap & dance around our intentions. The wax melts. It shows us how we must give ourselves to find others. There is an inner longing that asks this of us, for only so will it become be-longing. When my flame feels as if it is blown out, can I learn to trust, to wait in patience for it to be rekindled?…..Gunilla Norris

we can walk away…..we do not have to figure it all out….we can simply be tolerant, deeply knowing, & accepting….because our inner source says so….it flickers…

giving in to light…

Sometimes there’s just too much to consider, too much to understand & analyze, too many consequences to play out, too many things to clean & repair. Sometimes the best use of our will is to drop it all, walk out from under the webs we’ve spun, the problems we have to solve, & walk into the light….Mark Nepo

a gentle reminder to soften into the light….it doesn’t have to be strong, all powerful, or too decisive….things are lit more beautifully in shadows…

the landscape of compassion….where angels hover….

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hovering angels

 Compassion may be the single most important trait on the spiritual path, the very essence of enlightenment. On the verse, ‘You shall follow the Lord your God….& to Him you shall cling,’ the Talmud asks, ‘How can one follow after the Divine Presence?’ Just as He is gracious & compassionate, so you should be gracious & compassionate. Compassion is not just another virtue, it is the chief means of attaching ourselves to God……Eliezer Shore

as we move into our lives with a deeper awareness, keen questioning, & a yearning for that which cannot be named, we move into the realm of compassion….testing our boundaries & hitting our ugly spots…..staying present with the bare truth of tough humanity takes an enormous amount of courage & the same self-compassion as we attempt to heap on others….

this life is not a game, & it’s not always nice…..the deeper we practice (whatever your spiritual or human-loving path), the more we realize what compassion is not….it’s not pity, it’s not helping, it is not a deed or kindness….it’s not being able to know why or how we are motivated…

we simply share in the suffering of others….it’s not what we think or feel, it’s what we are……

it is pure…..yet it is found in the gritty space, the uglies…the place where only angels tread….

calling all angels…

Christ’s call to love one another is a call to leave the prison of our fragmented ego, to ‘forget ourselves’…to turn away from our small selves & open to the needs of others. The real significance of Christ’s cross is not a sign of suffering & death, but a sign of God’s humility, his will to empty himself of his divine status to share the sufferings of the world. It is the same compassion that led the Buddha to lay aside his freedom from the cycle of birth & death in order to show all beings the path of liberation from the prison of self. It is the same compassion that countless people in all religious traditions continue to attempt in their own lives…Irma Zaleski

our willingness to be present to another is the ultimate challenge…our finest gift….& the hardest slap in the face sometimes….step into our humanity…..becoming who we were meant to be….

hold ourselves softly….