Inner Rhythms...

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything other than prose poetry.  But I’ve been thinking about “Inner Rhythms” lately; the Inner Rhythm of Being, and how that wants to move in and through me – and wanted to write about it.  I receive an on-line “newsletter” from a Nature Artist in northern Vermont by the name of Rod MacIver who has spent a lot of time alone in nature, getting in touch with his own life rhythm.  He reflects:

”A balanced life is based on its own rhythm.  If you don’t set your own rhythm, and have the discipline to follow it, your life will move at the speed of the culture around [you], which moves too fast.  The space we make for quiet time affects our thought patterns and, in turn, the quality of our lives.”  And, he asks: “To what extent is the rhythm of your life a result of…..adapting…..to the flow that surrounds [you].  Or I would even say, to the people around you. Have we entrained to the people around us – living their rhythm?  I  know I have…

I felt a resonance with his words, knowing that I needed to find that sense of the larger Inner Rhythm again, not just my own personal daily rhythm with life, but the Flow with the Inner Being, commonly called the Tao, the undercurrent flow of Life within – from which all movement arises.

The only way I know to do this is to turn within to The Silence where The Rhythm of the Inner Being is felt – the Rhythm of Silence ItSelf.  Being in The Sacred Silence is what brings me joy, and a felt sense of Presence.  Finding that Inner Rhythm, The Silence of Being, is “Divine Communion.”  This, for me, is the True Rhythm, the Rhythm of Pure Being ItSelf – the deep undercurrent of Life that animates all life – which is The Silence.  This is what calls to me – over and over again.

But the hypnosis of the world keeps me/us magnetized to the ways of the world and pulls me/us out of this deeper way of living and knowing.  We are conditioned to be drawn to the external drama of the world, to chew on it, teethe on it…  It’s the pablum of the matrix we live in.  But no one trains us to turn within to the Quiet Inner Presence of Silence.  And so we follow the rhythm of the world (the civilized, political, chaotic world), with its hypnosis of separation from our Inner Being, instead of turning  inward to the Awareness of the Inner Rhythm; to that interior space of The Rhythm of the “Great Mystery” that pulsates Its Aliveness within us, and does not depend on a name, label, or identity – or the world’s rhythms…   

I’m curious, before your innocent Heart was hypnotized by the rhythms of the world, what did you want deep in your Heart, not what you wanted to be when you grew up, but what did you really long for?  What called to you? Do you remember?  Do you know now?

Photo: Bliss Lotus Mandala
2013