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what will you do…?

peaceful

what will you do…?

when the worry is gone
when the self condemnation is gone
when fear is not your bedfellow

what will you do with that new wide open space

lay down in it
breathe deeply
close your eyes
you are home

©heartsdeesire

Blustery Day

a blustery autumn day today
the last of the maples
the cherries and the stately alders
releasing their leaves

they compel me to set free
the old that hangs on

in favor of what newness
may blossom
from my limbs

©heartsdeesire

Life Never Fails

image locale

Messiah

I have fallen between the cracks
and landed in the spaces
where love never fails

Beloved, you are my captor
and I am bound by your love

I hear you whisper softly
don’t speak. words fail here, just listen

churning on the seas of your desire
I am the rising and the falling

the beginning and the ending
the fullness and the emptiness

journey to the furthest point of your yearning
I am the anguish and the exaltation

I am the grain of sand awakening the pearl

I am the morsel you are tasting
be it bitter or sweet

quench your deepest thirst here
where you think I’m not

I Am.


©heartsdeesire

image locale

Anais Nin

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

I Get To

freedom

The greatest trick and most subtle secret to doing anything really, really well, is loving that you get to do it at all. And I’m pleased to say, you get to – The Universe

I am loving this quote that popped up in my inbox this morning from none other than the Universe at www.tut.com

Next time you are feeling that you “have to” do anything, what about shifting it to “I get to…”  I have to feels so much like bondage and I get to feels so welcoming and expansive.  It’s embracing the moment over opposing it.

If you can’t come by “I get to…” wholeheartedly then look beyond what drives the activity.  What are the benefits it provides for you?  Even the most commonplace humdrum activity can become something wonderful when viewed with a heart that says: I get to.

As always, both the hands that bind us and the hands that free us, are really our own.  Thanks for that lovely reminder today from the brilliance of Mike Dooley, the genius behind TUT.

Meryl-Streep-Best-Lead-Actress-Nomination-Doubt

Sophie’s Choice, as some of you may remember was an American film from the early 80s.  Since then the term “Sophie’s Choice” has come to symbolize a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” standard of choice.  It’s really the no-choice.  As in the movie, Sophie must make the choice between her son living or her daughter living, choose one and the other must die.

Often when we are wrestling with a problem, we don’t see outside of the paradigm of a Sophie’s Choice.  We might see two options and often apart from the framework of our current beliefs lies a third choice.  The one not yet visible to us.  To illustrate an example of this, often creative people, musicians, writers, artists, etc. want to make their livelihood doing what they love but they don’t see how that could happen.  In that case, following your passion may signify losing financial security.  We have even coined a term for it “the starving artist”.  Risk going for your passion and you risk everything or maintain the status quo, bang away at the passion-less job and have some measure of financial security.  That’s the either/or, the Sophie’s choice, the no choice at all.

Yet outside that system of beliefs, lies the third option.  The third choice is not the either/or posture for whenever you are contemplating – to have this, I must risk losing this – you can know instantly you are working within the framework of your own limiting beliefs.  While you may not know what the third option is you can remain open to knowing what it is.   In a world that spins planets, regulates the tides, raises the sun each day and orchestrates countless precise details happening behind the scenes of every living organism, we can begin to see this same Universe can work on our behalf to bring us all the resources that we would ever need and then some.  It requires one thing of us and it’s what we are willing to believe, what we are willing to give ourselves to and what we are willing to open ourselves to.  Okay, that’s three things it requires of us but who’s counting?!

Next time you find yourself smack dab in the middle of a dilemna that you can’t see your way out of, remember – there is a third option, you haven’t seen it yet, you may not know what it is, but you can remain open to knowing and you can begin by questioning any notion that says: to have this I must relinquish this.

Image Locale

simplemiracle

This world is full of miracles.

They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering.

They are the dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream.

The body is released because the mind acknowledges ‘this is not done to me, but I am doing this.’

And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead.

~ A Course in Miracles ~

The Novel

writing-a-book

This poem by Denise Levertov is dedicated to all of you participating in NaNoWriMo.  Those, who beginning today and for the next 30 days, will breathe life into characters and plots and fashion the words that will illuminate them page by page — for your creativity, your willingness, your commitment and your courage, I salute you.

The Novel

A wind is blowing. The book being written
shifts, halts, pages
yellow and white drawing apart
and inching together in
new tries. A single white half sheet
skims out under the door.

And cramped in their not yet
halfwritten lives, a man and a woman
grimace in pain. Their cat
yawning its animal secret,
stirs in the monstrous limbo of erasure.
They live (when they live) in fear

of blinding, of burning, of choking under a
mushroom cloud in the year of the roach.
And they want (like us) the eternity
of today, they want this fear to be
struck out at once by a thick black
magic marker, everywhere, every page,

the whole sheets of it crushed, crackling,
and tossed in the fire
and when they were fine ashes
the stove would cool and be cleaned
and a jar of flowers would be put to stand
on top of the stove in the spring light.

Meanwhile from page to page they
buy things, acquiring the look of a
full life; they argue, make silence bitter,
plan journeys, move house, implant
despair in each other
and then in the nick of time

they save one another with tears,
remorse, tenderness—
hooked on those wonder-drugs.
Yet they do have—
don’t they—like us—
their days of grace, they

halt, stretch, a vision
breaks in on the cramped grimace,
inscape of transformation.
Something sundered begins to knit.
By scene, by sentence, something is rendered
back into life, back to the gods.

~Denise Levertov~
Poems 1960-1967

08-12-EagerInnocenceArt by Rassouli

I’m the slave of the Moon. Talk of nothing but moon,
or brightness and sweetness. Other than that, say nothing.

Don’t tell of suffering, talk of nothing but blessings.
If you know nothing about them, no matter.  Say nothing.

Last night I went wild. Love saw me and said:
I’m here. Don’t shout, don’t rip your shirt, say nothing.

I said: O Love, what I fear is something else.
—There’s nothing there. Say nothing.

I’ll whisper secret words in your ears. Just nod yes.
Except for that nod of your head, say nothing.

A moon pure as spirit rose on the heart’s pathway.
How delightful, to travel the way of the heart. Say nothing.

I said: O Heart, what is this moon? Heart beckoned:
For now, it’s not for you to know. Say nothing.

I said: Is this face angel or human?
Neither angel nor human. It is other, say nothing.

I said: What’s this? I’ll lose my mind if you don’t tell me.
He said: Then lose your mind, and stay that way. Say nothing.

You who sit in this house filled with images and illusions,
get up, walk out the door. Go, and say nothing.

I said: O Heart, tell me kindly: Isn’t this about God?
He said: Yes it is, but kindly say nothing.

~Rumi: Say Nothing~
Poems of Jalal al-Din Rumi in Persian and English
Translated by Iraj Anvar & Anne Twitty

*my gratitude to Terri C. for introducing me to this poem and these two translators.

horseThere is an old Taoist parable.  It begins with a poor farmer in ancient China who worked a small plot of land with his teenage son. During this time horses were considered a sign of wealth; the richest person in the province owned no more than a few of them. One day a wild horse jumped the poor farmer’s fence and began grazing on his land. According to local law, this meant that the horse now rightfully belonged to him and his family. The son could hardly contain his joy, but the father put his hand on his son’s shoulder and said, “Who knows what’s good or bad?” The next day the horse made its escape back to the mountains and the boy was heartbroken. “Who knows what’s good or bad?” his father said again.  On the third day the horse returned with a dozen wild horses following.  “We’re rich!” the son cried, to which the father again replied, “Who knows what’s good or bad?” On the fourth day the boy climbed on one of the wild horses and was thrown, breaking his leg. His father ran to get the doctor; soon both of them were attending to the boy, who was upset and in a great deal of pain. The old farmer looked deeply into his son’s eyes, and said, “My son, who knows what is good or bad?” And on the fifth day the province went to war.  Army recruiters came through the town and took all the eligible young men to fight the war.  All except for the young man with the broken leg.

This is such a beautiful illustration of why it’s relevent to suspend judgment, conclusions and assumptions about anything.  Judgements and the like don’t reflect the bigger picture.  We don’t always know in the heat of any moment, what is good what is bad.  What is a blessing, what is a gift, what is a challenge in the moment that provides further expansion for us later.  We don’t always know, but we can remain open.  We can lay aside the impulse to make any seeming fact mean anything.  We can trust that the nature of all things is continually unfolding – and perhaps find a lot more ease in this open and receptive place.

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