Category Archives: Chaos

a life of mini deaths & rebirths….

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finding sky

I find you, Lord, in all Things & in all

my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;

as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small

& in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

The wondrous game that power plays with Things

is to move in such submission through the world:

groping in roots & growing thick in trunks

& in treetops like a rising from the dead.

…Rilke

we seek the sacred….silent & reverent in our aloneness……that yearning which calls us down sometimes….we don’t know what to make of our crooked hearts…we try to move lightly forward…clinging to the strings of our life….

this profound weekend calls for an inquiry into these baffled hearts….these basic assumptions…a reflection in sweetness….like jelly beans….

 What must die? Any resistance to the bigger truth. Any holding on by the little ego part of me that cannot see beyond its own nose. Practicing dying means living as close to reality as we can in each moment. It is the ultimate bravery. The spiritual warrior stands undefended before the truth. Every day you are given an embarrassingly rich array of opportunities to die to your resistance to what is so about yourself, your life, & those you share it with. Try it….Elizabeth Lesser

how shall we bear our crosses today? 

what does your house hold? where does it crumble?

or is it just letting in more light?

the shadow work of chaos & unstructuring choices

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come rest awhile

maybe ‘it’s’ about ‘trying’ less…..not harder, not longer, not stronger….allowing rather than doing….’being you’ means being with you….

‘Enlightenment is like the moon reflected in a dewdrop on a blade of grass. The moon does not get wet, nor is the drop of water broken…And the whole moon & entire sky are reflected in even one drop of water.’….Dogen

In truth, the smallest stem of a damaged heart, like a single blade of grass, holds the essence of everything alive. Enlightenment is the kiss of anything…moon, storm, or kindness…that opens us to that essence….Mark Nepo

where are you touched by life? the magnificent reflected in the hum of your heart at rest….’feet up’ as a symbolic act of refuge….a healing….the most rational act of heartfulness…..allowing humanness….stop chasing our tails long enough to remember why….our shadows are always just out of reach…

every small choice may be more fundamental than the big ones…

It can seem relentless to be aware so much of the time. Yet, pausing often helps us remember our ability to choose. Remembering to ask, ‘what’s enough here & now?’ takes us deeper. We will find ourselves ripening into another way of being. It happens as silently & as slowly as an apple turning red…….Gunilla Norris

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silent motion

adrenalin swirling in an overflowing head

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forget the day...

If at times you feel numb or distanced from the essence of what you know, perhaps your mind, like the sage’s teacup, is too full. Perhaps, like a bowl too full of fish, your deepest thoughts have no room to move. To let God like a great wind rim our head like an empty bowl. Information is not wisdom. But how do we empty the mind? By not overthinking. By not replaying fears or dreams or doubts or praise. By choosing the most important thing on our endless list of things to do & doing it fully after tearing up the list…..Mark Nepo

we run on adrenalin & feel pretty good about that…not knowing when to just stop….not knowing how to just stop….not feeling right about saying I need to just stop….never finding the right time to just stop…

we don’t empty….we don’t routinely refuel with nature, poetry, tea, walking, music, art, bubble baths, moon watching, cat hugs…..

It isn’t easy in our complicated world to enjoy the pleasures of ordinary living- children, family, neighborhood, nature, walking, gathering, eating together. I imagine life not as an ambitious quest, but as an anti-quest, a search for the ordinary & a cultivation of the unexceptional.

….Thomas Moore

we walk right out of our skin….disconnected….we’re all head…no body….

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity, your very effort fills you with activity…..Jianzhi Sengcan

the hippies know a bit about letting go….let them dance… 

the catacombs of the inner life

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effulgent chrysalis

Remember the day when you tore through the fabric of things & you were taken alive, pinned motionless in the racket of rackets of wheels upon wheels turning without turning, & you within it all, always seized by the same motionless moment, repeating, repeating, & time made only one revolution, everything revolved in three innumerable directions, time turned back on itself- & eyes of flesh saw only a dream, there existed only a devouring silence, words were dried peels, & the noise, the yes, the noise, the no, the black & visible howling of the machine denied you,- the silent shout ‘I am’ which the bone hears, from which the stone dies, from which what never lived believes itself to die,- & you were reborn at each instant only to be denied by the great boundless circle, wholly pure, center & only center, pure except for you…..Rene Daumal

the rich fabric of our wanting seizes our questions….shapes them into a love for truth…a love for love’s sake..encountering, enriching, enmeshing…

the disturbing whispers of true reality are the tender pains of our deepest longings…give in to the wrenching beauty of knowing the abyss is there to be discovered….

leaving to come home…

‘I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once & cannot add up the sum,’ wrote Carl Jung, expressing the powerful experience of being open to the full range of one’s inner life. If we want to live fully, we must also feel fully. In order to feel, we must learn to touch & taste the great pulse of life that moves through our bodies, deep psyches, & hearts…..Mariana Capland

possessed by the glare of incandescent soul

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the undoing of day...

Creative work is seeing through one’s eyes,

not with them….Edward Weston

I am not contained between my hat & my boots….

Walt Whitman

…in other words, we see through our entire body…

but seeing is elusive….like being under water or walking gingerly in deep fog…

being possessed by light & love & the lyrical nature of paradox….& yet…

you continue to only touch, kissing so softly an image which feels like peace…this fleeting consummation of seeing is your fullest expression…

the undoing of day brings the night’s cyclical struggle to know…

golden light seeping into soul…

There is a citadel, inviolate,

The inmost hidden kernel of the heart,

Changeless, eternal, imperturbable,

A rock unmoved amidst the storms of life,

Girdled by veils of purifying flame,

Through which the questing soul,

in search of peace,

Must pass, & passing suffer, till the spark

Which struggles, all but snuffed,

within this clay,

Has blossomed into lightning radiance,

Has shriveled every cinder shred of self,

And borne aloft on phoenix pinions

Can over-breast the battlements, & sink

Tenderly down to silence fathomless.

…Hugh Brockwill Ripman

may the lustre of your dark night see into day….

heart & mind collide under the moon…

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essence of heartbeams...

The mind creates the abyss, & the heart crosses  it…..

Sri Nisargadatta

Many of the great sorrows of the world arise when the mind is disconnected from the heart. When we touch beneath all the busyness of thought, we discover a sweet, healing silence, an inherent peacefulness in each of us, a goodness of heart, strength, & wholeness. In discovering this healing power, we sense that everything is intertwined in a continuous movement….Jack Kornfield

this time of year calls our hearts out….tentative, raw & superaware…..wanting to open, yet needing the sweet cover of moon….needing rapture, but we’re too meek….

The goal is an awakened heart, one that feels everything there is to feel: joy & hope, enchantment & aliveness; & also longing, sadness, anger, & pain. We feel how wonderful it is to be alive, how funny, how tragic. We don’t shut down when the feelings get troublesome; we stay awake even when it hurts. This is the path of the heart: to develop tenderness toward the self & each other by opening wider & wider to the wonders & the woes of the world….Elizabeth Lesser

yes, dear heart….fly to the moon…wide & winsome & wild….

  moon cradling heart….

our hearts laid bare….bathed in warrior tears…

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discernment

As an inlet cannot close itself to the sea that shapes it, the heart can only wear itself open…..Mark Nepo

an uplifting epithet to hope….better than hope…maybe this is the genuine heart of beautiful sadness…..reminding us that we simply open over & over again to this beauteous life…

A hungry heart is a tender heart. And tenderness contains a certain element of sadness. Trungpa Rinpoche explains this as a natural & beautiful condition, the result of staying open to the full experience of life. He used the term ‘warrior’ to suggest how brave we must be to defeat our own self-deception, while at the same time remaining open, sensitive, tender. Happiness is ours when we go through our anger, fear, & pain, all the way to our sadness, & then slowly let sadness develop into tenderness…..Elizabeth Lesser

This is where discernment comes in…..like a built in duality in our heart centers…..we must keep our eyes as wide open as our hearts…..differentiating the many levels of our ego’s choices & judgments….being able to abide & ride the storms which surely come with being more awake, genuine & hungry for meaning.

may you value yourself enough to allow the tears

 & then walk the many lonely walks…

cocoon your gothic heart & then with eyes sharp,

choose your boundaries….

bullfighting & teasing the calm center of madness

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verdant & existential plain

To find equanimity & peace requires an acceptance of the mystery of life itself. When we find this calm center within ourselves, it is as if we reach what is called in bullfighting our querencia. The querencia is the place in the ring where the bull feels safe. In order to successfully fight the bull, the matador must force the bull off its querencia, its place of wholenesss. This place in us as human beings is our centeredness & balance where we can remain calm, peaceful, & wise….Jack Kornfield

balancing sorrow & passionate discord…..allowing everyone’s problems to be their own….resisting indifference….maintaining openness…..experiencing the ultimate paradox of acting with complete unconditional love without controlling…

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 find an abomination, we shall find a god. And 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

this darkness all around us can only be illuminated by light….

 a calm center without walls….

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can’t hide from kitsch, drama & thorns….

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prayer has no keeper

If we attempt to explain the experience of ‘being the question,’ we can only talk around it. Because ‘being’ is an experience, and the moment we try to describe it we shut down around an idea. But perhaps we could attempt to describe it by saying that being the question has something to do with our ability to tolerate or bear witness to the full expressions of experience, rather than closing down around them & then reacting to them through our preferences….Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyal

ouch….an inner thorn…..a veiled end-of-the-line, move-your-life-forward catalyst which only seeps in deeper without prayer….

like bad kitsch….

without the doubt parade…without the avoidance…without the unbearable drama which we so can’t let go….it’s about loneliness….true, unutterable, real-deal, compulsion of being…

 The essence of all poverty consists in the risk of annihilation. This is the leap of faith from ourselves to the other. This is the risk involved in all loving…..Jahn Main

get your head right….. 

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nourishing angel nuances….big wings please…

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my mother's shrine to the angels...

If you are fully alive, alert, & responsive to the challenge of every moment, then you are living a spiritual life….

David Steinall-Rasi

live as if the angels were guiding you…

clear vision, emotional rush, magic unicorns….

sweet nothings, silently drawn, phoenix fire…

unconditional self-love, wise compassion, abiding storms…

happy feet, failed thresholds leading to open doors, joy….

wonderment, checking in everyday, prayer…

demanding change, heartfulness boundaries, deep play…

a little soul rush please…
Unity consciousness leads us to the same moral behavior that religions dictate for their followers. The difference is that when we ourselves choose, from the depth of experience, goodness over evil, we become good. If, instead, we do merely what we are told, we layer goodness over unhealed parts of ourselves…Elizabeth Lesser

This is why we call our angels to journey with us in healing & loving….