Easter fire of mercy & renewal

Posted on March 31, 2013 by In Blue

‘Oh God, give me light in my heart and light in my tongue and light in my hearing and light in my seeing and light in my feeling and light in every part of my body and light before me and light behind me. Give me, I beg you, light on my right hand and light on my left hand and light above me and light beneath me. O Lord, make light grow within me and give me light and illuminate me.’

….Muhammed

evolving toward ecstasy….

Master Eckhart identified a place within the soul that neither time, flesh nor space can touch. This sacred temple is in every heart. He believed this to be the ‘Vunklien,’ the simple, divine spark within us. In that spark your own essence and the essence of God are the one brightness. It is a lovely idea that the passion at the heart of the human is indeed divine. Light plays on the surface of things. When night comes, it clears all the light before it. But fire can reach and penetrate inwards to the essence of a thing- to the heart where no hand or eye can reach. The warmth and fire in the human heart is that of the Holy Spirit. The heart of Easter renewal comes out of the paschal fire; it is a wonderful image of renewal, regeneration and creativity. The Easter fire comes from the heart of God. This offers a glimpse of the divine imagination. God is never still. God surges and flows and is wild. This aspect of God’s vitality has been lost for so long within the tradition. The danger of such a concept is that it deadens the deity. This is where all fundamentalists and sects get lost. If we could but retrieve the idea of God that Jesus had we would revolutionize dead religion……John O’Donohue

Easter, a time of volatile renewal and a deeply emotional bursting open……this sacred sunrise lights the path of grace, to grace, from grace and burrows in the heart…..the ancient rites of atonement, conscious gratitude, and self-forgiveness nurture the gentle tides….from darkness to light…..moving from self-righteousness into natural harmony….

Spring has great significance in the many spiritual traditions of the world. It can be a time of sanctification, purification, surrender, redemption, liberation, or resurrection. The word Islam itself means surrender; to submit one’s life to God. In the Judaic tradition, Passover offers an opportunity to be liberated from selfishness, to grow in love, and ultimately to become love. Easter is the time when Christians celebrate the purification inherent in redemption, liberation, and resurrection. D.P. McAdams, in’The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By,’ has found that personal redemption and expressions of deep gratitude are consistent themes in the lives of highly generative people: those who produce benefit for themselves and others. In all the spiritual traditions and redemption stories, human beings return to and experience the natural states of freedom, love, humility, and goodness. All acts of mercy produce healing and restore the soul…..Angeles Arrien

the roses know passion in spite of thorns

Posted on March 9, 2013 by In Blue

When we dedicate our lives to bearing witness to truth, our hearts become irrepressible. A Western photographer told me how he had seen this spirit in an old Tibetan nun who had been imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese army for fifteen years. After her release she fled to India, and he wanted to include her wizened face in his portraits of Tibetan elders. As he looked into the large camera lens, he could see her lips murmuring her prayers. When he asked her what had sustained her through these terrible ordeals, she said that no matter what happened she had never stopped saying prayers of compassion for all beings. In the midst of being tortured, she prayed for her torturers. When they saw her lips moving, they bound her mouth with tape. When they saw her lips moving, they put on more layers, but her prayers would not stop. And when she was free, still her prayers continued. No matter what happened, the nun prayed for the well-being of all. That was her true liberation, her unstoppable True Being shining through…..Jack Kornfield

emboldened by the passion of this life and the irrepressible spirit, we become our life instead of making it fit….we stop rehearsing and learn that commitment is the real expression of love……we stay visible with who we are rather than what we want others to see….we become real……like the velveteen rabbit, it happens through love…..

The day before his death, John was in a waking coma. His face was full of tension, his head thrust far back, the muscles in his throat were tight and constricted. His breath was a struggle. Clearly this was another stage of dying, but to me something seemed stuck. A famous teacher with experience in these things told me that his spirit was trying to leave his body and that I should touch the top of his head to show the way. A physician told me to increase his morphine to relax his breathing. A body worker told me to hold certain acupressure points on his feet to relieve the tension. I tried them all, but nothing changed. Instinctively I just wanted to wrap myself around him. I climbed into bed, cradling John in the curve of my arms. I remember rocking him back and forth, and as I did I began to sing sweet lullabies to him. Not the nursery rhyme variety, but the kind you make up as you go along. As I sang softly in his ear, my hands knew what to do. My opened hands circled his heart. I could feel him sink into me, my body cushioning what was left of his bony form. Eventually his throat began to relax and his head came forward. His eyes opened. They looked relieved. Afterward I wondered if I had done the right thing. Maybe I should have followed the teacher’s advice. Had I pulled him back from some near-death state? Stopped some process of release? I don’t know really. I do know that the heart has to be soft before any of us can be free…..Frank Ostaseski

see these gifts of a passionate life…..

I love roses, but Medgar could never afford to buy me a florist’s bouquet. So he did something better.Every year he made a ritual of giving me bare-root roses to plant in our yard, and eventually, three dozen rosebushes were the envy of our neighbors. Once in a while, Medgar would gather a bouquet, or perhaps just one rose, and hand it to me as he came through the door. It became an unspoken verse of the love between us……Myrlie Evers

the heavy mist hiding our courage

Posted on March 6, 2013 by In Blue

You have to strive every minute to get rid of the life

that you have planned in order to have

the life that’s waiting to be yours.

Move. Move. Move into the transcendent.

That’s what the whole sense of adventure is.

…Joseph Campbell

and we shall be urged into gratitude once again….looking down into that hole of life and death never finds us ready……the ethos of this fragmented and seemingly random culture hovers around our willing hearts, warning and subduing and draining……maybe this is why we are called to love…..to seek the very paradox and healing that moves with us on this amazing journey…..

Those who seem most alive are those who want the truth more than life itself. If you want life more than truth, you will seldom touch the truth of your life. Our original nature is like clear water. Born again into a world of wildly changing forms, though having no essential form of our own, we take on the shapes of the containers we are poured into. We become sons or daughters and are told to think of ourselves in that manner. Acculturated, we bend to the curves of that arbitrary modality. Slowly we freeze into that shape. The straighter and harder the edge the more we are praised as being someone of merit. Our mind like a wild river, our heart like a desert. But water is water. Melting, it remembers; evaporating, it ascends. When you let go of control of the universe, when you let go of everything, only the truth remains. Your actions come out of the present. There is no force. Fully present. Able to respond, not out of personal desire, but out of a sense of the appropriateness of things. You respond from the flow itself, or perhaps better stated, the flow responds to itself. Letting go of the little mind, of your suffering, is simpler than you think, though it’s the hardest work you will ever do…….Stephen Levine

dog days of the spiritual path…..

Glorious is it to see

the caribou flocking down from the forests

and beginning

their wandering to the North.

Timidly they watch

for the pitfalls of man.

Glorious is it to see

the great herds from the forests

spreading out over the plains of white.

Glorious to see.

I think over again

my small adventures,

my fears.

Those small ones that seemed so big-

for all of the vital things I had to get and to reach

and yet there is only one great thing,

to live and see the great day that dawns

and the light that fills the world.

……Inuit Poem

the gifts of our human sweet spots

Posted on February 15, 2013 by In Blue

You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path. Each path is only one of a million paths. If you feel that you must now follow it, you need not stay with it under any circumstances. Any path is only a path. There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush of the Universe. The only question is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then it is a good path. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use……Carlos Castaneda

painting a picture of our lives would reveal deep violets, raucous orange, and every shade of blue….we are changelings….falling in love again and again with each season, with each lovely song…falling out with our plans, our ministry to loss….in that one glimpse of a stark heart without judgment, we shift once again into being fully alive, fully frail, fully blessed…..

The sun returns, pushing away the grey sky in forgiveness painted blue. Long shadows appear over the deck and the green of a small ficus tree is illuminated. The wind that rattled the stray beer cans is quiet now; leaving the neighborhood is eerily silent and waiting. She gives herself to the television in the next room. He sits on a once white plastic deck chair. He stops, smokes, takes a long sip of coffee—a break from the stream of words. It’s a late Sunday afternoon near the end of summer. He can smell the sourness in the air of autumn approaching. He can taste the acridness, the oranges, the reds, and the rusty browns. He feels the warmth on his skin, tickling the hairs, now golden on his arms. Looking up, he sees the birds dart among the rooftops, gathering together, and a moment later, dispersing again. The sunlight settles gently over the trees. He asks himself if he has ever truly seen his backyard before—to have this direct impression of it, without his luggage of words. Has he ever listened to its orchestra of wind and trees? It is as though, behind all the seemingly ordinariness, something struggles to shine through……Luke Storms

remember tenderness….

To see the world as it should be seen, and so to see the true glory of God reflected in it, requires the cultivation of charity, of an eye rendered limpid by love…. The Christian seeker should see two realities at once, one world (as it were) within another: one the world as we all know it, in all its beauty and terror, grandeur and dreariness, delight and anguish; and the other the world in its first and ultimate truth, not simply ‘nature’ but ‘creation,’ an endless sea of glory, radiant with the beauty of God in every part, innocent of all violence. To see in this way is to rejoice and mourn at once, to regard the world as a mirror of infinite beauty, but as glimpsed through the veil of death; it is to see creation in chains, but beautiful as in the beginning of days…..David Bentley Hart

the riddle of knowing God…..

Posted on February 6, 2013 by In Blue

So now I was in the Hole for the first time, no light, no bed, shivering in the midst of summer in a cell that was damper and darker than the Swiss dungeon of Chillon that Byron had written about and that I had visited a couple of years earlier. ‘You won’t come out,’ they said, ‘until you agree to obey orders, all orders’…. For no reason I can explain, I began to discover how little it mattered where you are or what anyone does to you. I was sure that what I had done to get there was right and somehow the longer I was there the better I felt…..I felt warm inside and filled all over with love for everyone, everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t know, for plants, for fish, animals, even bankers, generals, prison guards and lying politicians- everything and everyone. Why did I feel so good? Was it God? Or approaching death? Or just the way life is supposed to be if we weren’t so busy trying to make it something else? From now on, no one will ever frighten or control me, on one will stop me from living to the full and loving to the full, loving everyone I know and everyone I don’t know, fighting for justice without seeing anyone as an enemy…..David Dellinger

untethered & freefalling….

Always say what you feel, and do what you think is good and right. If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I’d see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already….Gabriel Garcia Marquez

something is triggered in the hopes & fears of a messy, well-lived and worn-in life…..colors are brighter, the voice of the soul sings a bit more sweetly, and ‘beingness’ outshines the ego-need of separating me from you….the inseparable heart and soul kiss in the pain of ‘suchness’……

It helps to remember that despite all struggles for identity, despite the weight of living, there is an irrepressible ounce of spirit in each of us, a wellspring we carry within, that can be blocked but not contained. It emanates through all beings as the longing for love and peace. When opening our longing, our honest want for love, we open the fountainhead of spirit, and then, like Kabir’s pitcher (Take a pitcher full of water and set it down in the water- now it has water inside and water outside.) We musn’t give it a name, lest silly people start talking again (about the body and the soul), we are water living in water, love living in love, a small thing alive in a big thing alive, a breath inside a wind…..Mark Nepo

an empathic call to the stalled insights of the heart

Posted on February 3, 2013 by In Blue

By bringing attention to your mind and body you can make any activity transformative, and thus live more deeply. At its core, transformation requires becoming more conscious, becoming more aware of your own mind. Through this greater self-awareness, you develop the capacity to see more clearly into the minds, feelings, and intentions of others, a skill psychologists call ‘mindsight.’ Ron Valle, transpersonal psychologist, spoke about the value of meditation practice for cultivating the awareness of ‘witness consciousness’- the ability to observe yourself and others in a nonjudgmental manner. ‘I recommend meditation as a practice. It’s a matter of just doing it. I often describe it as being like brushing your teeth: you do it because you do it. You don’t struggle with, ‘Well should I brush my teeth or not?’ or ‘Should I spend one minute or five?’ You just do it. Try it. Then observe and trust your experience. Experience is the bottom line. The second thing, the being-in-the-world part, is to hold the intention: to be aware of that witness or observer as you go through life, no matter what it is you’re doing. It’s the remembering or awareness to observe your mind. By making meditation a living practice, life becomes meditation’…..Cultivating mindful attention and awareness is an act of liberation; it’s a self-determined assertion that you can be free to be who you choose to be, even in a world filled with clinging and cruelty, a world that doesn’t always support creative unfolding. As vipassana meditation teacher Noah Levine tells young people in juvenile detention centers and prisons: ‘being awake and aware is one of the most radical, rebellious things you can do’……Marilyn Mandala Schlitz

and we believe that which is good & true…..

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double Dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bedroom. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day…..W. Beran Wolfe

there’s no place like home in the heart….how do we find home when we get lost? our vitality, the shine in our eyes, the cycle of cutting away the superficial layers….all of these call us to the trail, to the evocation of deep silence, to the womb of the heart…..never allow the wild soul to die from lack……

I think, most of all, my practice is born out of an absolute intention to live life fully. I do whatever it takes in order for me to show up as best as I can in that energy. It’s often difficult. It’s often very, very difficult. My own life story is one of having made two suicide attempts as a young person, having been raped, and then going through deaths of intimate family and friends, and divorce- you know, the manner of life experiences that we all have. In all of this, I choose as best I can to stay present and conscious to what my options truly are. That’s new. I hadn’t always known that there were options. It used to feel as if I had to live life in reaction to how it showed up for me. And now I’m finding that I’ve always called it into being the way it is. Now I have an opportunity to shift what I’m calling it. It’s seldom as immediate as I would like. But there’s something that calls me to just stay there. To keep chipping away at the parts that I don’t want to continue to experience. And so I think my practice is this chipping away. It’s being still enough to recognize when it’s out of alignment, and courageous enough to know that I can pull it into alignment using the right tools and resources…. Andriette Earl

the sensual rhythm of our innate values

Posted on January 28, 2013 by In Blue

When I am not present to myself, then I am only aware of that half of me, that mode of my being which turns outward to created things. And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them. Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self toward God. My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties. My senses, my imagination, my emotions, scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth. Recollection brings them home. It brings the outward self in line with the inward spirit, and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love that reaches down into the mystery of God…..Thomas Merton

we move through this world as if the sun & the rose & the breath were eternal…..& so they are except to say that all is a mirage of hope & touch & the hum of time….we twist ourselves into what we should do & forget who we are & why we move through this world with the sun & the rose & the breath….may we love into the squalid & irresistible purity of ‘the way it is’ & know it’s heartbeat like our own….keeping rhythm with the soul of nature…

The spiritual essence of ourselves is our actual nature, always present beneath the polished surface of our lives, more durable than all of our protective posturing. It shines through the cracks in our defenses, it pervades and radiates throughout our body and everything around us- no matter what we are doing or feeling. This unfettered being does not resemble the fearful vision of untamed desire run amok. Rather, our true, wild nature is the fundamental unity of our mind, heart, and body…….Judith Blackstone

the rippled effect of conventional bruteness tossed by the wayside….

Here is the only place and now is the only moment in which to look for how to live who and what you are. Going home, knowing who and what we are and why we are here, is not something we have to earn by getting it right, choosing perfectly, or trying harder. Sometimes work is required, sometimes pain is endured. Loss is an inevitable part of being human. The reality we live is impermanent, constantly changing. Knowing this, facing the impermanence of our reality, we may be tempted to move away from loving deeply to protect ourselves from feeling the inevitable losses so acutely. But that would simply be fighting another aspect of the reality of being human, the reality of loving fiercely, of appreciating deeply and so being attached to the beauty we experience with the people and places and things we love. Being human means we are not detached, we are deeply connected to and affected by life. This is what it means to answer the call, to commit to being here in a human life, as a human being: to love what is mortal, to love what is unpredictably changing and impermanent, to love while being mindful that everything, every person, every place, every moment we love will change and pass, but to love anyway. And to love what you love fiercely, no-holds-barred, nothing held back, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it, knowing that the reality of who and what you are as a human being is inseparable from this body, this world, this life you claim and inhabit fully. And when the time comes to let it go- and no one can ever predict or control when that time will come- to let it go…..Oriah Mountain Dreamer

perspectives of the wild, caged heart

Posted on January 23, 2013 by In Blue

According to a ‘A Course in Miracles,’ our job is to tell someone they’re right, even when they’re wrong. That doesn’t mean we’re supposed to lie. It does mean, however, that it’s always our mission to affirm someone’s humanity, even when we’re disagreeing with his or her perceptions. Our spiritual challenge in any situation is first to recognize a person’s love and innocence, and then to speak from that perspective. For it is not our disagreements that wound; it’s our criticism, attack, and blame that wound. Until we know we’re solidly on loving ground- past the temptation to even subtly blame- we had best be very careful with what we say and how we say it. Some words cut, while others heal. But spirituality means a whole lot more than merely speaking in softer tones. Judgment can whisper, and it’s still a judgment. Our spiritual task is to surrender the thought that we have the right, in any situation, to judge whom God would never judge, or to condemn whom God would never condemn. And that means everyone. Once we do- when we have allowed our hearts to soften into genuinely right relationship- the words with which we express ourselves in a disagreement become guided by a higher source……..Marianne Williamson

heart perspective one…..

When I was younger, my benefactor asked me a question, but I was too hotblooded to understand it. Now I am older and I ask it of you. You must look at your life and your way, and there is no shame in dropping whatever you have undertaken, as long as it’s not done out of fear. But there is one question, and one question alone, that matters. Does this path have heart?……Carlos Castaneda

heart perspective two…

If forced to name them, the biggest obstacles to peace are ourselves and the world. Often en route to the truth of my soul, I get stuck in myself or lost in the world. Or the reverse. Still we carry the treasured essence within. It is always with us, very near though it may seem far, and there is no place else to find the treasure but underneath our agitation. it waits there like gold on the bottom of a shallow lake, and though we stand in the water, the treasure at our feet, this stirring of our reflection keeps us from seeing. More often that not, I need to stop moving and thinking and fixing, and simply reach within myself. So run, if you like, for it will all come with you. Or think and reason as many times you must, for your heart will outlast the ripples of your thought. Or blame the things of this world if you need to, for the things you blame will eventually disappear. Then you and I will still be left with ourselves and the world and the treasure at our feet…..Mark Nepo

heart perspective three….

three ways of dipping into that wild love…..as wild as circus magic…a prayer to the nameless depths of doubt, a toss into the wishing well of unflinching clarity, and the delicate mirage of end-of-the-rainbow rapture…..seize this caged harmony and set it free…..joy in this world is dependent on our ability to deliver it from judgment….sprinkling it like gold dust….

the beautiful colors of our deepest sorrows

Posted on January 5, 2013 by In Blue

we make beauty….

The word blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggests that no life is alone or unreachable. Each life is clothed in raiment of spirit that secretly links it to everything else. Though suffering and chaos befall us, they can never quench that inner light of providence.

…John O’Donohue

the visionary in us seeks a new kind of lens to feel our way through the small times….because we are human, we plumb the depths of sorrow until we are raw, just so that we may know hope again..the ultimate moral question may center around indifference to our own suffering, because without that knowing we are simply indifferent…..

To stand up and be worn to something deeper is a pledge that living forces us to keep. I drove 500 miles down the California coast with the mountains on the left and the ocean on the right. For days they spoke to me of standing up and wearing down. Of course, I was driving a road we have made down the middle. During the fourth day, the road became a ribbon. It was here it was most beautiful. I found the world out there all in here, and now I know: The current of life requires us to stand up, again and again, and we are not defeated when we are worn down, just exposed anew at a deeper level. We are meant to live between the two. In this way, life keeps getting more and more precious. It is a natural law like gravity or osmosis: Stand up to be worn bare. It is how everything in the way is thinned, so we can feel just how thoroughly alive we are….Mark Nepo

finding mercy in the ancient laws….

There are four portals- or entryways- to the experience of gratitude. Blessings are the primary, cross-cultural portal through which we experience gratitude. Additionally, learnings, mercies, and protections are three other portals attributed with fostering gratitude in various worldwide cultures. To bless is to sanctify; to recognize the presence of grace; to confer well-being or prosperity upon others; to invoke divine favor upon others. Blessings are gifts that open doors to healing connection, meaning, and transformation. Whenever we are learning, we are growing. Our learnings and the understandings we derive from them form a universal portal that engenders gratitude for all the ways we learn, including initiation rituals or rites of passage. The meaning of the word challenge is an invitation to grow or extend beyond what is presently knowable or familiar. We do not develop without learning. To be merciful is to have a disposition of kindness and compassion that bestows unexpected forgiveness or clemency. When we extend acts of kindness and compassion to ourselves and others, we cultivate mercy and open more easily to our own forgiveness work. Anyone who has ever received the gift of forgiveness knows that it is one of the greatest gifts they can receive, and their gratitude emerges spontaneously. Every culture has practices, prayers, rituals, and invocations for protection. Feeling protected always engenders gratitude, and this is not limited to those who protect us in the seen world or others who may choose to watch out for us. We also call on the help of ancestors, the Mystery, and saints and angels for protection. We can understand the magnitude of gratitude’s power when we consider how the intention of thankfulness corresponds with the deepest human realities of connection, creativity, healing, and wholesomeness. These universal portals of blessings, learnings, mercies, and protections offer the human spirit the gift of awareness, the ability to recognize all those things that can inspire gratitude amid the paradox of life’s happiness and suffering…..Marianne Williamson

2013 blessings for a transcendent new year

Posted on January 1, 2013 by In Blue

Transformation not only shifts how you view the world, but also how you relate to the world. In every situation, ask yourself, ‘Am I being an actor or a victim? Am I valuing or devaluing? Am I focused on me or on us?’ As humans, we are meaning-making creatures. We can create any meaning we want. Why not create a life-enhancing set of possibilities, rather than an endless refrain of victimization and suffering? Manifesting your transformation in the world is what makes it substantial. For many, transformative realizations are grounded through service to others. Offering service to others can be a rite that both expresses your intention to grow and transform, and anchors your realizations in everyday reality……Marilyn Mandala Schlitz

the spontaneity of gratitude is a gift in itself

Service is my practice. Service is one of the most powerful of the practices. As you watch someone being taken unaware by something like cancer, they go through a process of healing. It’s a process of evolution of the self towards wholeness. There are steps in the process, and people go through them in different ways. I believe the final step is service. People who are able to use and experience crisis, suffering, and loss in a way that evolves their unique being will, in the end, use that unique being in service to others, because service has become natural to them. The experience they’ve been through is, in some sense, the universal experience. Having been through it, they don’t hold themselves separate from the suffering of other people. They don’t protect themselves in the way that most people do. I think that a lot of people speak of the web of connection as an intellectual thing. That’s very different from knowing it in every cell of your body as the ground of being…..Rachel Naomi Remen

send out mercy and blessings……make every act meaningful…..bow to your own heart and promise it a renewed benevolence….consider carefully what is needed this year….may we contemplate change and ask, what is the real work of our life? remember wonderment as a virtue…..

The transformation process involves synchronicity, the numinous, and some coincidence or the unexplainable. It most often is signaled by an expansion and upliftment and a deep peace and grounding. It’s a fire that mobilizes you to do something outside of yourself. It’s something that wants to alleviate suffering or create more happiness in the world in some way. I think most of the transformational process, 80 percent of it, involves the unseen…..Angeles Arrien

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