Ouroboros 2

noone and a star stand

noone and a star stand,am to am

(life to life;breathing to breathing
flaming dream to dreaming flame)

united by perfect nothing:

millionary wherewhens distant,as
reckoned by the unimmortal mind,
these immeasurable mysteries
(human one;and one celestial)stand

soul to soul:freedom to freedom

till her utmost secrecies and his
(dreaming flame by flaming dream)
merge—at not imaginable which

instant born,a(who is neither each
both and)Self adventures deathlessness

~ e.e. cummings

Essential Unity

 

Ouroboros

Fear of the Inexplicable

We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any 
way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible 
in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded 
of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most 
singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. 
That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done 
life endless harm; the experiences that are called “visions,” 
the whole so-called “spirit-world,” death, all those things 
that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been 
so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could 
have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
 the existence of the individual; the relationship between 
one human being and another has also been cramped by it, 
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
 endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
 bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone 
that is responsible for human relationships repeating 
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and 
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable 
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes 
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation 
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
 from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of 
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
 that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a 
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
 down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
 insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
 Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons 
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
 us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
 We are set down in life as in the element to which we best 
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
 years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
 hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be 
distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to
 mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, 
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; 
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we
 arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us 
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
 still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust 
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
 ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into 
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses 
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps 
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless 
that wants help from us.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Sublime Generosity

You are the fountain of the sun’s light.
I am a willow shadow on the ground.
You make my raggedness silky.
The soul at dawn is like the darkened water
that slowly begins to say “Thank you, thank you.”
Then at sunset, again, Venus gradually
changes into the moon and then the whole nightsky.
This comes of smiling back
at your smile.
The chess master says nothing,
other than moving the silent chess piece.
That I am part of the ploys
of this game makes me
amazingly happy.

~ Rumi

Trans-formation

Today I am remembering that beauty and truth are eternal, but that forms are not. All forms change, evolve, dissolve, re-form. That is to say, everything transforms in time, through death or dissolution. It simply is.

Yet, nothing essential can ever be lost.

I love the metaphor of the wave and the water. Every wave rises, crests, falls, disappears entirely. What was lost?
The form of that wave.

What was that wave made of?

We suffer unnecessarily because we believe we are the wave.

But of course, at essence, we are the water.

This is not to say that we should not become attached to forms. I think it is inevitable and beautiful that we do become emotionally attached to our own lives and bodies, our loved ones, the form of a particular relationship or work, a place… and loss and grief are an integral and necessary part of this story. Recognizing our true essence does not mean disengaging from the bonds that we form. Engaging fully with life, in the full awareness of your vulnerability, takes courage and real strength. When the time of loss is here, we must grieve. To be willing to live so openly and courageously is the best way to live, I sense. I also imagine that it is nearly impossible to live so willingly open without some sense of the eternality of the essence of things, or without awareness of the wholeness that we belong to. So much of our suffering we create ourselves in resisting loss and death. We close our bodies down energetically in fear. Hearts become dry and dim. Our minds grow rigid. We get stuck in habit patterns that don’t even serve our own happiness, let alone the happiness of others.

A teacher of mine says that to transcend is trance-ending. Another teacher says that to transcend healthfully, we do so in a way that is inclusive of all that came before rather than in a way that is dissociative. As our consciousness shifts to include perspectives that reflect a deeper truth than we could previously discern, there is yet an embrace of the more limited perspectives, and a respect for how they served us and for the particular nuances that each level of perception illuminates, but the spell of that more limited perspective is broken. As we begin to see that we are the wholeness as well as the part, it is possible to honor and love all the parts more deeply. As we transform our consciousness, it is possible to make space for fear and grief, and to feel them wholly while remaining rooted in the peace at the core. I think sometimes we remain rooted by a thread, and for all you can access it the peace at the core seems like a pipe dream, or worse, like delusion, but if you know that you don’t have to feel it or see it right now, if you even know that it might be true that at the core is peace, then in the willingness to consider this possibility there is an opening. As in the story of the man who awoke in the darkness of night to see the shadow of a fearful snake in the corner on the floor, who trembled in a panic for hours, and when a storm rolled in and a flash of lightning lit the sky and shined in through the windows, he saw… a rope coiled in the corner on the floor. And as the sky blackened once more he was no longer afraid, even though again he was in darkness. One moment of illumination can anchor us in a deeper truth, even while habit compels us to tumble back into the prevailing trance and doubt what was revealed.

Discipline = to become a disciple of the deepest truth or most adequate perspectives that you have ever accessed. To be a disciple means that we apprentice ourselves to the ongoing development of our capacity to live in integrity with our deepest awareness. This means that we are committed to the practice of surveying our consciousness, our lives, our choices, relationships, habits, and actions in order to discover where a less adequate perspective may be prevailing, and then to do the work of bringing everything into alignment with the deeper awareness, even as awareness is continuing to evolve. This can be deeply challenging at times. And it is in the challenges and contractions that we need to call on ourselves to remember what we saw in that streak of illumination — the snake was a rope — then we can gradually bring the light of that illumination into those shadowed blinds within us. I guess that this is what practicing faith is — not adherence to doctrine or hiding from fear within the fortress of orthodoxy — but reconnecting to the truths of our own moments of great love, deep clarity or intimations of a grand vista that is yet beyond our imagining. I think that faith is choosing to invest trust in what was revealed in those sublime moments, even when it seems most dim and distant and doubtful. Faith need not mean certainty. Only consideration of possibility and a willingness to remain open to it. Only humility.

With love,
Lauren

Tao

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
When you are content to be simply yourself, and don’t compare or compete,
Everybody will respect you.

-Tao Te Ching

photo is a still from the Korean film “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring“

Medicine

Joey Lawrence Photography

Angeles Arrien writes:

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask you one of four questions:

When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?”

Auspicious Awesuspicion

THE KNOWING by Sharon Olds

Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise-
comaed, and woken, we lie a long time
looking at each other.
I do not know what he sees, but I see
eyes of surpassing tenderness
and calm, a calm like the dignity
of matter. I love the open ocean
blue-grey-green of his iris, I love
the curve of it against the white,
that curve the sight of what has caused me
to come, when he’s quite still, deep
inside me. I have never seen a curve
like that, except the earth from outer
space. I don’t know where he got
his kindness without self-regard,
almost without self, and yet
he chose one woman, instead of the others.
By knowing him, I get to know
the purity of the animal
which mates for life. Sometimes he is slightly
smiling, but mostly he just gazes at me gazing,
his entire face lit. I love
to see it change if I cry – there is no worry,
no pity, a graver radiance. If we
are on our backs, side by side,
with our faces turned fully to face each other,
I can hear a tear from my lower eye
hit the sheet, as if it is an early day on earth,
and then the upper eye’s tears
braid and sluice down through the lower eyebrow
like the invention of farming, irrigation, a nomadic people.
I am so lucky that I know him.
I am the only one who knows him.
When I wake again, he is still looking at me,
as if he is eternal. For an hour
we wake and doze, and slowly I know
that though we are sated, though we are hardly
touching, this is the coming the other
coming brought us to the edge of – we are entering,
deeper and deeper, gaze by gaze,
this place beyond the other places,
beyond the body itself, we are making
love.

Extinguish Thou My Eyes

LOESCH MIR DIE AUGEN AUS

Extinguish both my eyes: I see you still;
Slam shut my ears: I can still hear you talking;
Without my mouth i can implore your will
And without feet: Towards you i keep on walking.
Break off my arms: I shall still hold you tight;
My heart will yet embrace you all the same.
Suppress my heart: My brain knows no deterrent;
And if at last you set my brain aflame
I carry you still on my bloodstream’s current.

— Rainer Maria Rilke