When experience is viewed in a certain way,
it presents nothing but doorways
into the domain of the soul,
and they are all found in the present moment.
….Jon Kabat-Zinn
the formidable present moment asks us to be in the middle…in between past and future, both realms so seductive in their emotional pull to be anywhere but here….as this earth spins and the fiery sun burns away, we must continually realign and find congruence in the only authentic moment….the sweetest and undiscovered now….may you swim in these warm, still waters……
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not……
…..David Whyte
Selfhood is not an imperial possession of the human orphan. It is not exclusively human. Selfhood is more patient and ancient, a diverse intimacy of the earth itself. If the earth has the most ancient networks of selfhood, then the memory of the earth is the ultimate harvester and preserver of all happening and experience. Life is seen to be woven on the loom of individual experience. Taking experience seriously must make it equally necessary to take the destiny or future of experience seriously. This is a particularly poignant necessity, given that the future of each experience is its disappearance. The destiny of every experience is transience. Transience makes a ghost out of every experience. There was never a dawn that did not drop down into noon, never a noon which did not fade into evening, and never an evening that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night. One remembers the sentence which won the contest of wisdom in ancient Greece: ‘This too shall pass.’ The pain of transience haunted Goethe’s Faust, he implored the beautiful figure who appeared to him, ‘Verweile doch, Du bist so schon!’ Linger a while, for you are so beautiful! Out of the fiber and density of each experience transience makes a ghost. The future, rich with possibility, becomes a vacant past. Every thing, no matter how painful, beautiful or sonorous, recedes into the silence of transience. Transience too is the maker of the final silence……..John O’Donohue
You who walk between two worlds … We discover this, whether it is between past and future, or between Spirit and earth, consciousness is the very essence of being, we discuss it like it was our own, yet our knowing, our knowledge, is the binding of the two into space and time, moments are described as ours yet remain a part of the forever that we are … This is difficult to put into words … May poetry define your Memorial day …
it is a gift to be able to perceive this inter-beingness….thank you for sharing it so eloquently…..moving just ever so slightly away from the ego opens up the whole world…..wishing you a day of sharing g.f.s…..