Starry-Starry Part 2 - Swimme and Tucker

 

The essence of the Universe story is this:

The stars are our ancestors.  Out of them,
everything came forth.  They have a birth.
They go through development.  They come
to an end...

[.....]

In many cultures throughout history humans intuited  that they
descended from the stars, even before they had empirical evidence
from science that our bodies were formed by the elements forged
by the stars.  Humans felt something in the depths of the night
as they contemplated the presence of the stars.  They began to
suspect that the meaning of their lives went far beyond what
preoccupied them during the urgencies of the daytime world.
They knew in their hearts that *their* journey and the radiance
of the stars were interwoven.

[.....]

Stars are the fiery cauldrons of transformation.  Stars are the
wombs of immense creativity and complex interactions.
Certainly there are similarities in the human experience...
Could it be that life is not possible without vast mysterious,
and ongoing transformation...

From:  Journey of the Universe
Swimme and Tucker

~

Art - Vincent Van Gough

Accepting reality - a meandering...

As I awoke one morning recently, it came to me in my
half sleep that I had to accept death...
That my current life experience may be the
beginning of my end -
and that I need to accept that...

My body and mind immediately relaxed...

I get that it's not about getting my life back, as I have been
wanting, but about accepting the impermanence of my life;
of everything basically, including this particular life
circumstance; my *ideas* about how life is supposed to be,
or recovering my life, restoring it to what it was before...

I've heard this all before,
through different spiritual traditions,
but this time it came from within
and was organic,,,

It's about accepting impermanence,
accepting death; death of ways of life,
death of beliefs, death of ways of being,
death of the body...

Not trying to recapture, or restore everything
to the way it was - so that I can "finish" my life...

But letting go of the idea that Life has to be/go
a certain way...

There was great *relief* in realizing this
- a profound acceptance of reality...

I felt freed of everything that has bound me:
ways of thinking, perspectives, feelings about life...

And also realized that I have been resisting the little
deaths in my life - the changes that create disruption.

*Everything* changes, *everything* dies,
that is - changes form; form transforms itself
continuously...

It is the natural way of life itself;

it *is* the reality.

I'm going to die (my body that is) at some point and
maybe this life circumstance is just the
precursor to that,
the doorway to that...

But I keep trying to make this current experience
change, to stop in some way - resisting it -
when in reality it is an opening.

I was almost euphoric,
because changing my perspective means the end of
suffering, struggle, trying to make things happen, trying
to have a "spiritual" perspective about it all,
trying to find a way *out* of my experience...

(although this shift is gradual, as I discovered)...

Everything is impermanent, transient...

I'm accepting (ongoing) that reality...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 8, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Transformative Cycles - Matt Licata

In the cycle of death and rebirth - the archetypal basis of all
healing and spiritual transformation - there are two aspects to
that sequence, each being an equal portal on the journey of
embodied wholeness.

There's the aspect of death, where part of ourselves
 must fall away: the death of an old dream, of me
and my life and how it was all
supposed to turn out.

At the other pole is rebirth, renewal, and the emergence of
new life.

It is understandable that the rebirth aspect is one we most
welcome and are drawn to: healing, union, the coming back
together of that which has fallen apart.

To embrace dissolution as path, as initiation, as a manifestation
of the ally [Friend] will feel contradictory and counter-
instinctual.  It will ached in the heart.

However, in many alchemical and mystical streams, dissolution
and the death of the material (known) is the very essence of
the path and required for our perception (and subtle body) to be
cleansed.

Rebirth is not possible without full participation in the process 
of death.  There is no doorway in and through without
embodiment to the cycles of grief. 

We see this experiential discovery for example in the writings
of Rumi, St. John of the Cross inThe Dark Night of the Soul, in
Teresa of Avila's vision of the Interior Castle.

[But] there's no real reference point for it in a lot of our
contemporary traditions, which remain oriented exclusively
to the upward, clear, and ascending currents.

In addition are the currents of the divine descent, the illuminated

black sun, the lunar cycles that unfold within the somatic
unconscious and the underworld.

~

Remembering that spiritual transformation and awakening
involve not only what we'll access and gain, but what will
inevitably be taken away in the process of being emptied out.

The goal isn't so much to rise up and out of the unwanted,
and unexpected, but go into its interior chambers.

The light found there isn't what we normally think of as 
"light".  It's a "full-spectrum" light that contains the dark.
It's not only the light that can hold us, but the darkness as well,
in a holding benevolence...

There's an innate patterning of experience within the human
psyche to falling apart and coming back together again.

Things "falling apart" and "coming back together" is the 
essence of a  more tantric, or alchemical approach to
healing and spiritual transformation...

Matt Licata

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
2012

 

Return to a Deeper Rhythm - LLewellyn Vaughan-Lee

As our world appears to spin more and more out of balance...
there is a pressing need to return to a deeper rhythm, to the 
cycles that belong to healing and transformation, and the
seasons of the soul.  Returning we may find balance resurfacing
from deep within, a balance that reconnects and restores us...

If we are to participate creatively in these toxic times, to bring
rain to a land where the inner and outer wells have run dry,
first we need to be present "in another country where things
are in order."  And this "other country" can be found in the
space between the in-breath and the out-breath, where the
soul is present.  But first we need to reconnect, return to this
place of balance.  And the simplest way is through 
stillness and silence...

Silence draws us inward, away from the clutter and the
distractions of our outer life, to the deeper roots of our Being.

Here our soul nourishes us, here we can be replenished, and
here we can help replenish the world.....  In the silence we can
drink deeply of the waters of life that are still pure, we can
commune with the primal forces of nature, we can return to
what is sacred and essential to our life, and to the life of the
Earth.

Here in this "other country" the air is not toxic, and the miasma
of today's world in this post-truth era is not blurring our vision.
The laughter of children still rings true.  Stillness is here, and
the seasons are in balance.  Every in-breath and out-breath is
sacred.  The breath, the soul, the Earth and its seasons, are
linked together, nourished by each other. 
It is time to heal....

Llewellyn Vaughan-lee
Sufi Mystic
2017

Excerpt from an article published by Garrison Institute

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Great Light - Jay Ramsay

I saw a great light come down over London,
And buildings and cars and people were still
They were held wherever they were under the sky's
Clear humming radiance as it descended --
Everywhere, in shops, behind desks and on trains
Everything stopped as the stillness came down
And touched the crown of our heads
As our eyes closed, and the sky filled us
And our minds became the sky --

And everyone, regardless of crime, class or creed
Was touched; as slowly we began to stir
Out of this penetrated light-filled sleep
Dizzily as the hand completed its dialing,
And the train lurched forward
And I saw faces looking at one another questioning,
I saw people meeting eye to eye and standing
Half amazed by each other's presence
I saw their mouths silently shaping the word why
Why didn't we know this? and yet knowing
They already knew, and without words
We all stood searching for the gesture
That would say it --

As the lights went green, we drove on...

Jay Ramsay

from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around
the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology) Edited by
Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Excerpts from Ivan Granger's Commentary:

.....one of the things I really like about this poem - it can be read
as a collective moment of awe, or of spiritual awakening- or a
city-wide encounter with a UFO... 

  It's not really clear what is happening, just that there is a
 shared moment of stillness and wonderment.  Everyone stops and
 is confronted with a dazzling, otherworldly reality.  What's actually
happening seems less important than the shared experience. 
Not only is this a witnessing of something that transcends the
 day-to-day existence, but there is also a recognition of fundamental
 connection with everyone else.

Then, of course, the lights turn green, and the business of living
continues.  But perhaps those people carry with them just a bit 
more sacred wonder into their daily activities...  and who knows
the many subtle, far-reaching ways it will continue to radiate out
through our lives?  This is how private experiences of transformation -
otherworldly or of the inner world - quietly transform the world.

.....we are visitors here, not permanent residents.  Our time on earth is
limited.  We may not know our departure date... best to stop

 and do what we came here to do. 
Offer a helping hand.  Share a smile. 
Do what the soul always wanted to do.
And discover the secret heart of things.

Ivan Granger

~

Many live challenged lives now...
The greatest gift we can give
each other is our compassion...

MM

~

Photo with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

Change - Frank Ostaseski

We don't grow and transform in our comfort zones.  We grow
when we realize we are no longer able to control all the
conditions of our lives, and are therefore challenged to
change...  When we release our clinging to what used to be
and our craving for what we think should be, we are free to
embrace the truth of what is in this moment.

No matter what we do or don't do, things will always change.
Change is constant and inevitable.  We need to trust ourselves
and persevere without despair...

Frank Ostaseski

The Five Invitations

 

The Basket - Robin Wall Kimmerer

The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey
from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands
and back to wholeness again as a basket.  A basket knows
the dual powers of destruction and reaction that shape the
world.  Strands once separated are woven into a new whole.
The journey of a basket is also a journey of a people.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

from: Braiding Sweetgrass

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Stirrings - Author Unknown

The Cosmic skies are stirring, there is change in the air
that may awaken us to some new truths.

How beautiful that we don't yet know the way.
How beautiful that there are elements of life
that still confuse us, make us feel deeper than
we could have imagined, and remind us of
what is real and pure in our hearts.

How beautiful, that even though we don't yet
know "the way", we can spread our wings,
shift our awareness, and trust that there is a
new unfolding that is destined to come.

It is the journey of metamorphosis that we
are being guided to walk...

Whatever comes, know that it is part of how we
move through our own cycles - into the dark
night of the soul, and then finally, into spiritual
wisdom...

Sometimes we need intensity to drive the
vehicle of transformation.

While we want to remain strong and centered,
we also don't want to limit or cut ourselves off
from allowing whatever comes to move us,
change us, and transform us.

We have to remember to keep shifting our
awareness of what life is and what role we are
here to play; to allow ourselves to keep questioning,
to keep allowing things to shock and surprise us, for
they are often the fuel for our continued unfolding.

Author Unknown
found on Facebook

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Courage - Matt Licata

A certain 'death' occurs as part of the ["spiritual"] process;
in the deepening of self-awareness...  There is a fantasy that we
can come out the other side intact, without having to sacrifice
some aspect of ourselves in the fires of transformation.  But it
doesn't really seem to work this way...  There is wisdom within
the reorganization itself that we cannot know if we abandon
[the process] prematurely.

When we engage in any work of depth, we inevitably come up
against a cultural bias toward the light, the upward, and the
brightened dimensions of the path.  We cannot sidestep or bypass
the darkened condition, those parts of the psyche buried and
hidden beneath ordinary awareness. This turning into the dark
can be quite challenging, especially if we identify as a 'spiritual
person' - kind, compassionate, giving, selfless, [loving], grateful,
forgiving, at peace, and not ever caught in the so-called
negative emotions of fear, rage, and depression.....but we must
find the curiosity and courage to engage this dimension.

[In this dimension] we see things that could not be seen from
the held-together state.  The old dream crumbles - the image
through which we'd been seeing ourselves, or any emotionally
significant part of our world - has finished its time here.

The wisdom in the dark is preparing the vessel [us] for the
next illumination.  The invitation is to allow the old to wash
away, and let our perception be reorganized.  New images, new
myths, new lenses must emerge through which we can navigate
a new world. [A new way of being in the world.]  A shift in the
heart is most required, a willingness to befriend ourselves at
levels previously thought impossible.

We must clarify within us what is most wanting and needing 
our attention, awareness, care and love.....even if it feels
unspiritual.  The intelligence in the heart brings forward the
prima materia for us if we slow down and open into the
unknown - and the unknowable...
We must honor the realities of our hearts...

Matt Licata
from - A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Yin/Yang Bowl

 

Death and Rebirth - Matt Licata

In each moment the sacred process of death and rebirth
is playing out within us.  With each breath something
in us is dying - some aspect of who we think we are -
or the spiritual path that once brought us meaning...

In the face of this dissolution, the question isn't so 
much how we can most quickly facilitate rebirth, but
to what degree we will participate [consciously] in the
death when it appears.  Psychological death, or
spiritual death, is not just a preliminary process in
which we engage so that we can put it behind us and
get on to birth.  It is a valid, holy unfolding with its
own intelligence...  [It is] a catalyst, and vessel of
insight, perspective, and revelation...

It is natural to resist this falling apart and do what we
can to put it all back together.  But it is only from the
womb of death - attuned consciously - that rebirth can
emerge.

Allow the death time to unfold, to share its poetry and
fragrance...   Death is not merely a phase to get through.
In those periods in our lives, when things are being
rearranged and reorganized inside and around us, we
can attune to what is truly being asked of us...  Listen
to the wisdom in death and what it has to teach us about
love...  We allow the dissolution so that new forms can
emerge and provide the transformation for which we
most deeply long.

Matt Licata
from - A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Waiting - Leza Lowitz

Art - Barbara Stone

You keep waiting for something to happen,
the thing that lifts you out of yourself,

catapults you into doing all the things you've out off,
the great things you're meant to do in your life,

but somehow you never quite get to.
You keep waiting for the planets to shift

the new moon to bring news,
the universe to align, something to give.

Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry the dishes, the job -
it all stacks up while you keep hoping

for some miracle to blast down upon you,
scattering the piles to the winds.

Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.

But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
And then you turn forty. Or fifty.  Of sixty... [or 70] :)

and some part of you realizes you are not alone
and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom -

when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,

it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,

and when a caterpillar turns to butterfly
if the pupa is brushed, it will die -

and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
it's because the thing is too small, too small,

and it needs to break out.

And midlife walks you into that wisdom

that is what transformation looks like -

the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,

the yearning and writhing and pushing,

until one day, one day

you emerge from the wreck
embracing both the immense dawn

and the dusk of the body,
glistening, beautiful

just as you are.

Leza Lowitz

~

Many people die with their music still in them.
Too often it is because they are always getting
ready to live.  Before they know it, time runs out...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

Divine Discontent - a meandering...

Something is arising in me - calling to me through the veils
of "spirituality" - that cannot be ignored...  The Call of the
Soul - the Passion of the Soul...  The call to a deeper
authenticity...

It's as if my Being, my Soul, is trying to free Itself from its
confines and constraints - A Divine Discontent.  There's a
sense of needing to break out of those limiting constraints,
to break out of a "role", a "spiritual identity", a "spiritual"
self-image that has kept me dancing to a tune that I now feel
out of sync with - out of sync with my Soul; needing to
find my own unique rhythm with life.

"Spirituality" has, in ways that I don't fully understand,
 suffocated my authentic expression of "The Mystery." 
And now I need to emancipate myself and live that
unique expression.  I must discover my own way, and
navigate my unique path.  It cannot be prescribed by others;
conforming to someone else's maps of Reality, but 
emancipating the true expression of the Soul, whatever
that may look like; listening to the authentic Voice within.

As I write these words, I feel myself settling back into
myself again - my Natural self - not an abstract 
"spiritualized" Self - hiding behind the
veils of "spirituality."

So what is my Soul calling me to?
What is my "unique path" - my unique expression?
What is the Fire in my Soul?

They are yet to be discovered...

But there is a kind of Alchemical transformation
arising within...  I feel its Fire...

_/\_

Mystic Meandering

July 1, 2022

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Turning of the Heart - Matt Licata

[You may be asking] Why, after years or even decades of working
on myself, meditating, praying, surrendering, and going to therapy
can it seem like nothing is changing! Why am I always feeling
disappointed?  When do I reach the end, become fully awakened,
enlightened, totally healed!  When will it change?  Will the
longing ever be fulfilled?

...true 'transformation'...does not always conform to the ways we
thought it would all turn out.  Many discover the 'great liberation'
in the realization that they are not who they thought they were..

...true 'transformation' isn't possible without tending to our
essential vulnerability and the entirety of unfelt feelings and
aspects of ourselves we have kept out of conscious awareness.

It is not possible for us to 'awaken' our live without befriending
all parts of ourselves, calling them all back home into the larger
field of what we are.  It is an attunement to the entirety of what
we are...

Many of us have quite a lot of insight into our embedded patterns
[samskaras and conditioning] and "know" what we need to do
to 'awaken'.  But - despite all the "knowing", fundamental change
can remain elusive.

At some point it might only be a turning of the heart that has the
power and beauty and poetic impact to soothe the cosmic exhaustion,
wounds and pain of an unlived life, where love is revealed to be
the ultimate medicine, which can penetrate the deepest layers of 
our conditioning and felt sense of separation.

We must tend to our turning of the heart through the fire of our 
own direct experience - opening to our pain, our grief, our longing,
honoring the psyche and the soul.  Mere [intellectual] insight
alone will not reveal the deepest layers... instead [they are revealed]
through awareness illumined from within by the heart, by warmth,
and by love.

Matt Licata
from: A Healing Space

~

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all
the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Rumi

~

Photo - Mysitc Meandering

 

Unfolding Spirals of Grief - Matt Licata

 Art by Joe Maccer at Deviant Art

Tending to grief is the essence of....providing a sanctuary and
safe passage for its unfolding - in the body, the psyche, and the
nervous system - which requires that we fall to the ground,
at times, and weep.

Weep for our shattering [collective and personal], for the dying
of a dream, for the  entirety of the unlived life.  For it is these tears
 that form the substance of the portal of joy. [Rebirth].

Grief is not something we "get over", but a partner we spin
with, honor at times, argue with at others, and lament with as
the cycles of our lives unfold.

We live in a world that has lost contact with the holy waters of
reorganization.  But to marginalize the experience of grief is
to work against nature.  Out in the natural world, the earth grieves
by way of her seasons.  We can feel that grief in a rain drop, if
we allow ourselves to be taken apart and put back together.

There is no endpoint to this restructuring, no final state of
resolution where we land in some untouchable place, free from
our embodied vulnerability, our somatic aliveness, and from
more burning.

Rather, we find ourselves in what the alchemists call the rotatio,
the holy rotation of vast cycles of rupture and repair that touch
and open the human soul.

The soul is endless and the visitors of grief may companion us
for a lifetime.  But the grieving, orphaned ones of the psyche
and soma come not to harm, but to reveal.  And to open a
doorway into wholeness, mercy, and light.

Grief is not so much a process that we "make it through" and 
come out the other side fully intact, but a non-linear transforming
midwife of the unknown.  It moves not by way of straight line,
but by that of circle and spiral.

Matt Licata, PhD

The Great Transition - Matt Licata

 In the current global environment.....as we navigate this
period of great transition, while we don't know exactly where
we're headed, we can slow down and prepare for what is 
coming next by deepening our wisdom and compassion,
both for ourselves and others.

By turning toward the Soul, the Heart, the Self, and attuning
to its intelligence and guidance, we can recommit to our
unique path of transformation, and remember what is
most important.

Each of us is called in our own way towards a life of
wholeness, purpose, and meaning, and we each have our
own hurt, pain, grief and wounding to tend to.

We affect, and are affected by, those around us.  We are
affected by life everywhere.  We come to this life with
unique gifts, and ways of engaging The Mystery.

We have all been wounded and the path of seeing our
wounds as initiation is one that is as old as recorded
history.  It is not an easy path, but one that is imbued
with mercy, grace, and a certain poetic beauty.  It is a
path of courage and kindness...

It is essential that we honor our unique sensitivities and
eccentricities and open to the possibility that even our
deepest wounding may be filled with guidance,
medicine and meaning.  [It is essential] to recommit
to the path of [the Soul], to embodied transformation
and healing, to participate consciously and access the
alchemical gold  at the core of our wounds as a gateway
to a life of deeper meaning, connection and aliveness.

Matt Licata, PhD

~

Photo from the internet

Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times - Matt Licata

 

Many of us are experiencing a deep restlessness and uncertainty,
not knowing what's coming next or how best to navigate this
transitional period.  But it is precisely in times such as these that
unique doorways to deep healing and transformation open,
often in unexpected ways.

It's so important right now to rest our nervous systems, to spend
time each day in activities that ground, center, and guide us
gently back into the experience of safety and connection.

In moments of fierce grace, when the rug is pulled out from
underneath us, our lenses of perception become ripe for
revisioning.

The alchemists, yogis, and mystics knew the importance of
dissolution and experienced it as initiatory.  It is the crumbling
of an old dream - my life and the way I was so sure it was going to
turn out - that can provide the rich soil for creative, embodied
transformation.

In order to be initiated in this way, we must slow down - and with
a passionate, alive and earthy compassion - attune to what is unfolding
and being illuminated right now.  To take some time to mourn
the reassembling of our world and to grieve all that we will
inevitably lose as we heal and awaken.

It is an act of kindness to remember that the transformational
process by its very nature is messy, glorious, and full spectrum...
not only an act of creation, but one of destruction as well.
It is an invitation into the temple of your own body, as a pathway
back into the depths of your own soul...

Matt Licata PhD

~

Matt Licata has written a new book called A Healing Space:
Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, using the images and
metaphors from rich and diverse traditions such as neuroscience,
alchemy, contemplative practice, and the poetic imagination.

It is written to be a loving companion to walk with you into the
mysteries of your own heart.  In the end, perhaps it is really only
love that matters now.  But just what that is must be discovered in
the fire of your own immediate experience, where there is unseen
wisdom and guidance for the way ahead.

Matt Licata, PhD
From his blogpost

I have not read it yet but will be ordering it on kindle :)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Power of Poetry - Ari Honarvar

Artist - Puisi 

...poetry is as much a part of a person as her heartbeat.
We can take refuge in the power of poetry.

Rumi not only understood the power of poetry, but also
found the sweet spot of language somewhere between
the clinical sterility of political correctness and the 
vulgarity of fanaticism.

He brought the traditional masculine God from the sky
and passionately embraced it as his genderless Beloved.
He and other poets like him closed the gap between us
and the divine until the Beloved was inside our beating
hearts - transforming the image of a rigid God of fire
and brimstone into the story of bittersweet longing
and union.

We partake together and the flow of emotion and creativity
merges, making it possible for us to participate in what we
long for: a deep connection with the divine...
[a deep *knowing* of the divine in us/as us].

Ari Honarvar
From: Rumi's Gift

[brackets mine]

Artist - Puisi

Cosmic Stirrings - Author Unknown

The Cosmic skies are stirring, there is a change in the air
that may awaken us to some new truths.

How beautiful that we don't yet know the way.
How beautiful that there are elements of life
that still confuse us, make us feel deeper than
we could have imagined, and remind us of
what is real and pure in our hearts.

How beautiful, that even though we don't yet
know "the way", we can spread our wings,
shift our awareness, and trust that there is a
new unfolding that is destined to come.

It is the journey of metamorphosis that we
are being guided to walk down.

Whatever comes, know that it is part of how we
move through our own cycle of ego into the
dark night of the soul, and then finally, into
spiritual wisdom.

Sometimes we need intensity to drive the
vehicle of transformation.

While we want to remain strong and centered,
we also don't want to limit or cut ourselves off
from allowing whatever comes to move us,
change us, and transform us.

We have to remember to keep shifting our
awareness of what life is and what role we are
here to play; to allow ourselves to keep dying
and being reborn.  Keep questioning, keep growing,
keep allowing things to shock and surprise us, for
they are often the fuel for our continued growth.

author unknown
found on Facebook

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
water droplets on a white background
color inverted and zoom blurred :)

Wild Portals of Unknowing - Fred LaMotte

"God leads every soul by a separate path." - John of the Cross

I cannot possibly know what is most important; that which will
transform me.  If I already know what it is I will never be free,
because I have packaged "liberation" as knowledge, in the tight
wrapper of a concept.  This means that spiritual transformation
can never become a program, a technique, or a course that I take.

The moments that liberate me are wild portals of unknowing,
when the blue sky of wonder outshines any cloud it contains;
vast emptiness shifts into the foreground; techniques, traditions,
concepts cultivated in the past, dissolve...

[.....]

The best meditation evaporates into amazement.  The best mantra
melts into silence.  The best guru dances in the mist at the edge of
a meadow, and disappears into your longing heart, where true path
has no beginning....

No, I cannot possibly tell what is most important - how a blue
moth disguises herself in a petal of lupine, why cascade lilies
frolic in a rainy mountain meadow, what the hermit thrush means
to silence.  I cannot know when the golden sun will burst my chest
wide open, turning the small dark chamber of self-doubt into a
boundless empyrean.

Fred LaMotte

Uradiance

~

Photo - Vortex Art
2011

Waiting - Leza Lowitz

You keep waiting for something to happen,
the thing that lifts you out of yourself,

catapults you into doing all the things you've put off,
the great things you're meant to do in your life,

but somehow you never quite get to.
You keep waiting for the planets to shift

the new moon to bring news,
the universe to align, something to give.

Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry the dishes, the job -
it all stacks up while you keep hoping

for some miracle to blast down upon you,
scattering the piles to the winds.

Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.

But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
And then you turn forty.  Or fifty.  Or sixty... [or 70] :)

and some part of you realizes you are not alone
and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom -

when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,
it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,

and when caterpillar turns to butterfly
if the pupa is brushed, it will die -

and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
it's because the things is too small, too small,

and it needs to break out.
And midlife walks you into that wisdom

that this is what transformation looks like -
the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,

the yearning and writhing and pushing,
until one day, one day

you emerge from the wreck
embracing both the immense dawn

and the dusk of the body,
glistening, beautiful

just as you are.

Leza Lowitz

Thank you to Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana

~

Art by Barbara Stone