28.8.10

On Impermanence

David Whyte, in his remarkable teachings and poetry, "What To Do When Wakening," reassures us that there is a lot of help out there in the world about how to live our lives to our fullest potential. As I have opened to the "frontier" of my own life, even as I enter the late autumn of my seventh decade, I am astounded by the truth of this as I read from top to bottom the tall tower of books I've accumulated recently. One pithy paragraph in Martine Batchelor's "Let Go" reads:

"When I saw my father die, I felt great sadness but also in that intense emotional moment I experienced fully for the first time the reality of impermanence. Thereafter I started to relate to people in a different way, because I knew for myself how precious they were, that their life rested upon a simple breath, the last breath I had seen on the lips of my father."

When I read this, I smiled to remember I was exhilerated and humbled to witness the first breath each of my sons took, the treasure at the end of labor from which I have been profoundly blessed; ah, yes, that same breath that left Martine's father's lips. Sometimes the sacredness of life is simply breath taking.

SOTL, off to cease the day...

27.8.10

Why are you unhappy?

Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself —
And there isn't one.

Poem by Terence James Stanner Gray a/k/a Wei Wu Wei
9-14-1895 - 1-5-1986

Love that... SOTL

19.8.10

Black

Black
I was taught to be afraid of the dark
I mean that deep midnight of spooks
A people bereft of their soil
and shackled to anothers plow
sustaining themselves on the
discards of someone else's supposed munificence

Black
I learned to be ashamed in the dark
what kind of people would allow themselves to be enslaved
bound, gagged and carted off against their will
to an unknown land?
I skulked as the shadow of my class, unanswered.

Black
Crime infested neighborhoods, drug overlords, poverty stricken ghettos,
HIV/AIDS Ravaged, Down-low manipulators, violent gangs,
misogynistic populism, rampant health disparities,
widening educational gaps, skyrocketing unemployment.
When that loud group of boys got on train how I have recoiled in judgement
The distance I tried to place between myself and that shadow
earned me a lifetime of imprisonment, stuck in my own foul reflection

Black
But now as I look, I see an primal energy, raw and irrepressible, a sacred strength
passed on through decades of hardship, in song, food, and fellowship
and the ability to endure the most nightmarish tempests
such will erase and transmute the jim crows and apartheids
because nothing less than love and truth are the alchemical agents
working to free us all at last

Black
I used to be afraid of the dark
but now I embrace it in wholeness.
When you sit alone in the true depths of darkness
you begin to be breathed by it and you realize
that chasing the light can be a distraction.
I celebrate the mystery of darkness
I surrender myself to the unknown
to discover in each shadowy moment
the inherent beauty of the night

Inanna

18.8.10

16.8.10

sprouts, inspired by and dedicated to CPE and Abi

This painting was inspired by a book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and my dear friend Abi.
The book is called The Dancing Grandmothers. To BE Young While Old, Old While Young.

Abi told me this:
...It was of a tree stump, with an axe stuck in it, and from the end of the axe handle, leaves had begun to sprout… the remembered life-force of the tree had traveled through the head of the axe, and flowed up into the handle…





















Detail:






















Spacehugs,
Yvonne

15.8.10

Crystal Clarity

Love Is
who We Are
not what We do
The mind can never know this...
...We cannot become aware through thoughts...
what only the Heart feels

We are Aware of the Greater Intelligence arising on the planet
through Our Hearts
fueled by the truth of Love

unconscious actions can not occur in the space of Love
I now, understand, the U2 song: "Pride (In the Name of Love)"
Bono pleas with us: "What more 'in the name of love' ? "

It is all coming together now...
perfectly clear

14.8.10

through Amma and Us

"Awakening the Universal Motherhood"
Amma with children, taken from Amma.org


"The essence of motherhood is not restricted to women who have given birth;
It is inherent in both men and women,
It is an attitude of the mind.*
It is love, and love is the very breath of life."

I include with this... We are also awakening to the Universal Childhood...

We are both, the essence of mother and child... withIn....
Our In-herent Innocence

*Heart
Aralan said...
As a parent who still has his parents around I am so much more aware of how this is true and how even beyond the parenting we are all one living organism.




Doreen said...
It is marvelous how this unfolds. Everyone has a unique experience within the life situation...and yet everyone 'has been' a child (essentially 'still Is')....and everyone has 'come through' a mother!! We know directly how to be a child and how to be the mother to our True Self. All children reheart Us of this 

5.8.10

every thought that passes through the mind is a figment of imagination
imagine it all disintegrating in space
free of all concepts
in totality
I don't recall the song of a bird
we are it