This occured a few days ago in Portland in the US, and its so beautiful, well it has to be seen to be believed. Best wishes to the joyful couple. Drying my tears over a cup of morning tea…..
I lost my world, my fame, my mind
The Sun appeared and all the shadows ran.
I ran after them, but vanished as I ran
Light ran after me and hunted me down.” Love’s Fire. Rumi
Wild winds sweep across the mountains. It is suddenly cold, minus degrees wind chill, tumbling grey clouds across the ranges. In the thin light leaves chase timelessness down empty streets. Winds gusting up to 100kph, lashing the eucalyptus. Chimney smoke scatters across the village, the sweet hot smell of ironbark dancing twirling and disappearing into the twilight
I havent written much here of a personal nature for a while. This must one of the few blogs where as author Im not so interested to be identified, by image or name. Yes theres no photos of me in Hanumanasana, or standing on my head beside a clifface. Just a small outpouring of prana in alignment with my highest aims as a human being. The web has created a cult of narcissism, only amplifying insidiously now by twitter, where broadcasting ones thoughts incessantly is hailed as post modern cool, which sorry, as a largely pre digitaldood I really dont comprehend. The goldmine is interrior afterall and out of the blue has been one corner of my life where the muse can freely dance around the soul and heart of the sacred frontiers without feeling too naked to the world.
Sacred is secret in many regards, particularly in the indigenous traditions of this country where ones dreaming is tied intimately to the land, and the ceremony around honouring one’s deities, or ancestral beings. So in considering where my attention is, and what would serve my aims, a friend has mailed me comments from Bruce Lee on living the simple life, from 4 Hour Work Week, T. Ferris. I love this…
One does not accumulate but eliminate.
It is not daily increase but daily decrease.
The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
And at this stage of my life despite my best efforts I seem to be pulled into greater complexity, in my work life, relationships, in the demands upon me. Tho Im slowly surrendering to the fact that as in the original meaning of mindfulness, an english translation from the Pali sutti, or sanskrit, smruti, a verb meaning … to remember, I return to my practice, working with whatever form is arising, remembering to be present to whatever is going on in my life is a great gift of grace. Keeping it simple. I remember this miraculous life.Of the many stories this week is a friend Im spending time with who has only a few weeks to live. Ive known him for a long time and we are at that place of dropping all superficiality and placing attention on what is Real. Today we met and I read to him this from Rumi.
Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence reamins the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade,
But do not be disheartened,
the source they come from is eternal, growing,
branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?
the source is within you,
And this whole world is springing up from it.
The source is full,
And its waters are ever flowing.
Do not grieve, drink your fill.
Don’t think it will ever run dry, this is the endless ocean.
From the moment you came into this world,
A ladder was placed in front of you,
That you might transcend it.
From earth, you became plant,
From plant you became animal,
Afterwards you became a human being,
Endowed with knowledge, intellect, faith.
Behold the body, born of dust, how perfect it has become.
Why should you fear its end?
When were you ever made less by dying?
When you pass beyond this human form, No doubt you will become an angel and soar through the heavens
But don’t stop there, even heavenly bodies grow old.
Pass again from the heavenly realm and
Plunge, plunge into the vast ocean of consciousness,
Let the drop of water that is you become a hundred mighty seas.
But do not think that the drop alone becomes the ocean.
The ocean too , becomes the drop.” Trans by Harvey, A (189: I1994) The Way of Passion.
Escarpment: MichaelWhiteart.com
“I would beg you dear Sir as well as I can to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” Rainer Marie Rilke. Letters to a Young Poet. 1903
The Love of Divine Rebels
http://www.soundstrue.com/podcast/the-love-of-divine-rebels/?#bottom
Photo by Jamie Squires
A few days in Brisbane, Queensland with sangha. Open blue skies, warm days, a perigee super moon over Moreton Bay throwing a net of silver across the quiet waters. Wonderful to just be with beloveds. Many considerations. Where is my practice? This thread that connects me to all that is Real? The material question. Extemporising in the presence of the guru. Attachment parenting. Trusting and risk. To be moved by the guru in the world now he is gone. Trying new things. Certainly feeling the inspiration and imperative to move more into my highest aims for love and the work in the world, and that means stepping out to someplace new. Heres a list of practices to protect. Whats yours?
Heres a few for this pilgrim.
Yoga
daily sitting, puja, and arati
sangha contact including work projects
study
diet
sleep
walking the national park
writing
To conclude these words from my dharma sister Karen, which are so beautiful and inspiring to me I had to include them here. See more here at http://www.gardenstreetjournal.blogspot.com.au/
“My great good fortune is to have a spiritual teacher and a lineage – a line or a thread connecting me to the Sacred. And the Yoga tradition is also a lineage onto which I have held for almost 40 years now. The idea of staying connected to lineage – not letting go of the thread – is one of the reasons I like this poem so much
- The Way It Is, by William Stafford:
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
I can let go of the thread but the lineage of grace does not let go. The true teacher does not let go. Ever. I can know this more perfectly atTreveni. In the dailyness of my life at home and with the help of practice I hold on to the thread but it feels at times as if I’m just holding on to something thin and tenuous. Retreat and sadhana reveal the radiance and love that stream like a great river in the center of the thread and then I am no longer holding onto a thread but moving inside it – and knowing it for what it is: slender as a spider’s thread, brilliant as a million moons -a powerful, bright current of grace. And this breaks my heart, which is worth everything, because from that broken heart, as inevitably as exhale follows inhale, the love and brilliance of the Sacred can flow like a great river to wherever It will. “
Its cold on the wall this morning, even with such warm company. Fingers cramping with the brush. Perhaps our last long session before the big chill. The streets are awash with the colours of autumn, reds, orange, bronze and amber. The earth is falling into itself, preparing for winter. I feel its call, to return to that which is quiet, sacred, true. We walk the Centenial Glen circuit as rain begins to fall across white tea tree flowers and the cliff walls littered with rockclimbers like dragonflies, on hanging ropes. So now a soup cooking on the stove, Fiest on the stereo,”be the burn, be the key” reflecting on cultivating clarity, kindness generosity and compassion in the midst of the storms of living. Taking responsibility for the sword of clarity that practice demands.
Heres some more on conscious feeling from Nextculture.org.
Feelings arise in and of the present moment, come out of your authentic self and vanish within a couple minutes. Whereas emotions feel like feelings yet they last longer and are either; incomplete feelings from the past, or inauthentic feelings from someone else. Most of us live like children and are completely driven by our emotions. Completely and ignorantly. Heres the ten distinctions. For more of this radical, lucid and insightful work see Clint Callahan’s latest book. “Directing the power of Conscious Feelings.” Hohm Press.
“1.There are only four feelings. Anger, sadness, fear and joy. All feelings fit into one of these catagories or are mixtures of these four.
2. There is a difference between thoughts and feelings. Thoughts come from your intellectual body’s mind. Feelings come from your emotional body’s heart.
3. There is a difference between feelings and emotions. Feelings come from ourself in the present moment. Emotions are incomplete feelings that come from the past, or inaunthetic feelings that come from some other person or organisation.
4. Feelings are absolutely neutral energy and information. Neither good nor bad, positive or negative. feelings are feelings.
5.Feelings serve you powerfully in their pure form, not mixed with each other. Mixed feelings include depression (anger and sadness) mealcholy (sadness and joy) despair, shame, guilt ..
6. Feelings can be experienced from 1-100% intensity. In each moment you are always feeling all four feelings, but one is always bigger. This is what you are feeling.
7.There are two phases in feeling work. Phase 1 you learn to detect and avoid low drama (any action designed to avoid responsibility.. ie being the victim, persecutor or rescuer) through consciously feeling neutral unmixed 100% intensity feelings. Phase 2 you learn to create high drama (any action in which you take responsibility) through consciously applying the vast info/ energy resources of your feelings with adult responsibility.
8. As an adult you can consciously integrate feelings into responsible speaking and listening so that feelings serve you relationally and professionally.
9. Feelings work is part of a formal rite of passage that awakens archetypal structures and talents that have been lying dormant within you, waiting to be turned on and used to fulfill your destiny.
10. Stellated masculine and feminine archetypes form the basis of a new and truely sustainable culture, oriented toward being present and being with, and less toward consuming, owning, having going and doing.”
There is no weapon for the realisation of truth that is more powerful than this: to accept yourself. -Swami Prajnapad.
Melbourne boy Gotye’s perfect pop song with its mesmerising video “Somebody I used to know” has finally taken off in the states we hear today. This song was rated Australias number one song here in 2011 on Triple J’s Top 100. Its timely on the sacred frontiers as today as I am confronted with the many people I know who are in relationship crisis, family breakdowns and heartbreak. None of us are spared. It strikes me the degree of ruthless honesty, integrity and awareness we can meet these painful times with is so vital.
The one post in the life of this blog that generated the most hits and interest was Werner Erhard’s commentary on love and relationship which I post again in honour of this broken heartedness. Of what is most real in us, embracing all our darkness, confusions and intensities. Here is the door. In my own dark night I discovered my willingness to be broken open generated the eventual breakthrough to a new way of being of world. That there can be no breakthrough without breakdown is a universal law. May your breakdown be long sweet and smouldering that you may be born anew, and shout from the rooftops Rumi’s words,
“Jump to your feet, wave your fists,
Threaten and warn the whole universe
That your heart can no longer live
Without real Love !”
From a talk given by Werner Erhard on the Experience of Love in 1973
Let me tell you what love actually is. Love is the experience that someone’s all right the way they are. It’s not all the garbage. This thing about songs and all that survival stuff. All the stuff you talk about. What love actually is, is the experience that someone else is all right exactly the way they are. To love somebody you have to choose for them to be the way they are. Exactly. Not, “Gee, if you’d only cut your hair, then… you know, it would be okay.” No, it’s got to be all right just that way. That’s perfect, that’s absolutely perfect, just that way. And, they’ve got to be all right the way they’re not. Now, if you make something all right the way it is and all right the way it’s not, what’s another word for that? Space. The person’s got the space to be. You know, they can be. They can be the way they are and they don’t have to. Because it’s all right with you for them not to be the way they are. And it’s all right with you for them to be the way they are. That’s love.
The bottom line is to accept the person the way they are and the way they are not, that’s love. Let me put it in more fundamental terms. To be able to tolerate someone the way they are and the way they are not – is loving them. The highest expression of love is the experience that you are creating that person exactly the way they are. They are your creation exactly the way they are, and you are creating the space for them to be any other way. That’s an ultimate expression of love. To create the space for people to be the way they are and to create the space for people to be the way they aren’t. That’s it. And if you’ll notice, there’s no survival, and it’s not worth anything. It’s not worth a thing. The only thing that happens to a person functioning in that space is that they discover themselves. The person creating that space – you know what happens to them? They discover themselves. That’s pretty much it on love. No big deal. It’s not all that complicated. It is relatively simple, just not so easy to do.
And what I’d like to do is to get to a little bit of what love is, and then take a little bit closer look at what blocks us from experiencing what love is, and essentially love is …. And that’s it. See, it isn’t any more complicated than that. And it’s very difficult to get that. You see, what’s very difficult to get is that’s all there is. All the rest of it is an illusion. You see “I love you” is an illusion. It really is. And I really hate to break people’s illusions up. I shouldn’t say that because I really enjoy doing it; it’s my business. (laughter) And I would really like to communicate that “I love you” is an illusion. And if you take a look at “I love you” you’ll see that this idea of “I love you” is really an illusion and I think if you’ll look at it with me for just a moment, you’ll see that it’s an illusion. If I walked up and say “I love you” that’s got to come out of the notion that I might not. You see, it’s got to come from a sense that there’s something other than “I love you”. It’s got to mean “not other things” and “not before I found out that I did, but now I love you”; and “I don’t love other things, I love you – and not other things”. You see, this whole struggle that you and I go through to achieve love, to get love, to have love, to be loved, to love each other; this whole thing that everybody keeps preaching about is all nonsense.
The fastest way to destroy love is to make a goal out of it, because people who are trying to be loved come from a place that they’re not loved. And people who are trying to love come from a place that they don’t love. And people who admonish other people about loving each other, never got it, they just never got it. That’s all nonsense; that admonishment to love one another. The truth is that that’s all there is. And if you take the barriers out of the way, if you take the pretenses out of the way, if you take those things that you didn’t take responsibility for in your life out of the way, what you have left is love. And that’s really the whole story about love.
Love is.
And this from NZ’s Kimbra, Settle Down.
More of these wonderful videos from http://nextculturetrainings.org/
Two essential books to read by Clinton Callahan, which are not really books, but trainings and doorways into transformation. These books have/ are changing my life.
It is time afterall, we all grew up. For ourselves, for each other, for the world we are leaving to our children. Here are the tools.
1. Directing the power of Conscious feelings. Living your own truth
2. Radiant Joy. Brilliant Love- Secrets for creating an extraordinary life and profound intimacy with your partner. Both published by Hohm Press.
Under the easter full moon we sit around a raging campfire. The ancestors are here, in this place before time. Their hands blown with ochre on the walls, milleniums ago. The water runs lucid and pure through fern covered gullies, singing of the mysteries of the eternal. The children’s voices have finally quietened. Now the moon high above the hidden valley casts a net of luminous silver, all things shine.
From this silence our lives emerge.
To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when
the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” – Mary Oliver
This is what is 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 & impermanent, to love while being mindful that everything, every
person, every place, every moment we love will change & pass, but to love
anyway. And to love what you love fiercely, no holds barred, nothing held back,
knowing that the reality of who & what you are here & now as a human being is
inseparable from this world, this life you claim & inhabit fully.”
- Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from The Call
Heres some images of progress on the school mural which we have been working on over weekends the past 4 months. Heres our local fireman and acupuncturist in deep samadhi on the wall. The pictures are exact copies of paintings the children have drawn… all of local flowers and animals.
If you are a regular reader back in spring I wrote of our wildflower hunting every wend over spring which were then presented to the children from kindy to year 6 to draw while they were in class.
We are working voluntarily to paint four walls of the school hall to bring joy and colour to the school. The project has been overseen by local artist Jenny Kee, and will feature the front wall entirely of Waratahs. This will be the third wall we probably wont get to until after winter, as soon it will be too cold for paint to dry on the walls. So heres a selection, all unfinished as yet. As second coats, final touches and borders, then finally anti graffiti coats go on the walls the school is being transformed. Once a wall is finished Ill post the final images here to celebrate this beautiful collection of art that is intrepreted through the eyes and hearts of innocence.
