As events unfolded through the latter part of last month, I found myself blowing into my little God Whistle asking for strength.  It was a February of change and challenges that shook me more than anything had for quite some time.  The strength did come and right beside it flowed wisdom and comfort.

I dubbed this last month a period of “Bethie finding her religion”.   There is nothing like situations that metaphorically or literally bring me to my knees to remind me I’m not in charge here and frankly, there’s very little I’m in charge of around here.  And isn’t that a relief?  If I had to rely on myself to spin the planets, orchestrate thousands of different processes in my body, raise the sun, set the tides, we’d be having a lot of chaos in the world.

Often I don’t post about the particulars of the sh*t hitting the fan in my life.  It is found in between the lines of my poems and posts.   What I do tend to write about is the place I finally land, a little stronger, a little wiser and ultimately returning to what remains when all else falls away — that all consuming Love that’s back of Everything.

I’ve not yet reached the point where I’m grateful for all the contrast and challenges when I’m in the thick of it but I know enough now to see that I’m always grateful for the delicious expansion that comes just as soon as I’m willing to take my own hands off the levers of control.  As Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote “in the difficult, are the hands that work on us”.  Yes … the hands … not my hands.  Once again I am reminded of the humility and surrender in a simple prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  Surrender is so much a part of the fabric of this Universe.  As surely as the day must surrender to the night, so must I give right of way to the “hands that work on us”.

I’m going to post some quotes from A Course in Miracles which played a big part in “Bethie finding her religion” again.  In the ensuing weeks I’ll post some lessons from the workbook.  There is much in ACIM I don’t understand but I’m comprehending more of it than I have in the past and I find the lessons to be so liberating that I believe they actually could be life-changing.

“There will come a time when images have all gone by and you will see you know not what you are.  It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound.  Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is.  When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on no assumptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt.  There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this.

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not
know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look
upon the world or on myself.

Yet in this learning is salvation born.  And What you are will tell you of Itself.”

Chapter 31, V:17

“The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself.”

Chapter 31, VI:7

This is the final passage in the text:

“And now we say “Amen.”  For Christ has come to dwell in the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm eternity.  The journey closes, ending at the place where it began.  No trace of it remains.  Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone.  Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly and all creation recognizes You, and knows You as the only Source it has.  Clear in Your likeness does the Light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You.  For we have reached where all of us are one, and we are home, where You would have us be.”

Chapter 31, VIII:12

And finally I leave you with a passage from the poem entitled Today, by one of my favorite poets: William Stafford.

“Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now, You could close your eyes and go on full of light.”

what if all our paths are the right path

what if there is no wrong path ever

what if the only thing that held us back from knowing this,
is a conclusion that it’s a bad unfolding, it’s not good, it’s wrong

what if we took a deep conscious breath up from our
toes through our legs and spine and up to the tippy top
of our head

and exhaled onto the shores of this Divine Knowing:

All our paths are the right path.

past the borders of happiness and unhappiness
a rim of fire oaks bid me on the blue horizon

smooth hand like leaves held me there
while the first hard rain fell

I kneeled and leaned into the heady fragrance
of an ancient wisdom revealed
beneath the old rough timber

it spoke of the delicate balance in being
at once firmly rooted while gently yielding
whenever the fall winds swept through

I heard of the necessity of winter’s annual arrival
for stillness is the silent cathedral of the earth

I learned that what drops away gives rise to rich black loam
so that nothing that is cherished ever perishes

listening intently now, the old knowing timber whispered
how it never seeks to contain what cuts deep

no, you give it up to the low slung clouds overhead
to be carried on the wings of the air

©heartsdeesire

]]> http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/02/23/wisdom-of-trees/feed/ 5 Beth/Bethie trees_at_Woods_Canyon_Lake http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/02/21/innocence/ http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/02/21/innocence/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:24:41 +0000 heartsdeesire http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/?p=2494 ]]>

this world is innocent

free of motive or agenda

the only question that remains:

are we?

Imagine a world where
“not one illusion is accorded faith”

If it isn’t the voice of strength,
if it isn’t the voice of love,
if it isn’t the voice of confidence,
it is the voice of illusion.

Imagine according your faith only
to the voice of strength, love and confidence.

Imagine withdrawing your consent,
your agreement with all else.
Imagine paying all else no mind.

Imagine.

["not one illusion..." is taken from ACIM]

If a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety like light and cloud-shadows
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand
and will not let you fall.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~
Letters to a Young Poet

“Pain Is Inevitable. Suffering is Optional.”  (Zen Aphorism)

It’s a very famous quote that I’ve heard many, many times but only recently began to get a sense of what I think it really means.  Life happens, stuff happens — this is inevitable and responding with pure, genuine, heart felt pain is what is natural.  Or said another way, it is letting your heart break open with love.

But what is suffering?  I think suffering is letting your heart close down in judgement — judgement either of one’s self, another or a situation, whatever that may be.  Suffering includes regrets, all forms of “if only’s” and “I should have’s”.  It also includes believing that there is something wrong that you have done or something intrinsically wrong with you or another.  Blame of anything or anyone leads to suffering.  Negative out-picturing of events, past, present and future also cause suffering.  An idea that says life can never be the same without a person, a situation, or a condition being met, will certainly lead you on a path to suffering.  If we do the simple math, it often looks like: this happened + I judge it to mean this painful thing = I now suffer.

Any time you are in pain that has led to suffering you can be certain it includes some type of discrimination.  I call it discrimination because it selectively screens out what is truth in favor of a perception that separates you from believing in yourself or others and ultimately from believing in Life’s tendency to flow towards well being, balance, order, benevolence and grace.  As long as we are willing to settle for conclusions and judgements that separate us from all that Life willingly and daily offers up to us, we will suffer.

Where’s the way out?  When suffering, ask yourself what are you believing about yourself, another or the situation right now.  Now ask yourself if you unequivocally know that whatever it is you are believing, is absolutely true.  There is very little, if anything, to which you can honestly respond with a yes.  Now, are you willing to suspend what you’ve been believing?  You see, wanting to be on the other side of suffering is a beginning and wanting to be in self friendly relationship with yourself is a must.  Yet wanting won’t be enough, it requires your willingness to live in harmony with yourself.  And sometimes that willingness comes a bit at a time but come it will for one who is ready to walk in harmony with his or herself.

Want the world to be a peaceful, harmonious place, a world filled with love and loving people, want it to be a world without discrimination?  It all starts at home with a willingness to walk the inner walk of living in friendship with ourselves one step, one day at a time.

the beauty of the trees

the softness of the air

the fragrance of the grass

speaks to me

and my heart soars

~Chief Dan George~
Opening Ceremonies Vancouver Olympics 2010

I’ve been thinking lately that night dreams are my final frontier in consciousness.  They fascinate me and I wonder if they might be a link for us between the physical world and the non-physical, Spirit world.  Or as Susie called it in The Lovely Bones, the Inbetween.

I dream every night vividly.  Last night before I went to sleep I was thinking about my Mom who died in 1988.  Macabre thoughts perhaps about whether her body deteriorates even though its embalmed.  Thoughts of that moment when I was saying goodbye to her, as she lay in a coffin, and just had to reach out and touch her hand one final time.  I cringed and quickly withdrew my own hand as I felt her cold, hard skin.

Last night in my dreams, we have moved into another house again, something we so far seem to do about every five years or less.  Even in my youth we moved around quite a bit.  So once again another move, but this time it’s back to the first home I ever purchased.  I bought it about a year after my Mom died.  She had never seen it, my home, my first “real” home.

There are boxes everywhere.  We are in the living room and there’s a lot of talk with the kids about their first day at a new school.   The front door slowly swings open and my Mother walks in.  I know that she’s visiting us from the Spirit world and I yell out to the rest of the family that my Mother is here.  She takes a seat on a couch.  There are boxes cluttered all around her.  I sit outside the ring of boxes that seem to surround her.

My Mother then comments how she has finally come to see me: “I’m so close you could touch me but you don’t, you let the boxes be in the way,” she says.   “Here’s your chance and isn’t it interesting that you let the boxes get between us.”  I tell her, “oh my gosh, you are right, what am I thinking, let me move the boxes.”

I clear a space and I sit down beside her.  Yes, here is my chance.  My Mother has only ever played small bit parts in my dreams, almost as an aside.  Now here she is playing a central role.

I look deeply into her eyes, they’re bright and dark and luminous just as I remember them.  Her eyes are the darkest brown, so dark, they remind me of the color of dark chocolate.  I take her hand in mine and run my hand slowly over hers.  It’s warm, soft and smooth.

She’s wearing a navy blue suit, large lapels and buttons the size of small saucers.  I note that her outfit is circa 1970s.  The decade when she would have been in her 40s still wild around the edges, still relatively young and most of all, free of the medical label she would later have pinned to her.

I see that she has two necklaces on.  One is a rhinestone necklace and the other necklace extends long down her chest and at the end of it dangles a small golden whistle.  I reach out to touch it.  “It’s a God whistle,” she tells me; “I use it whenever I need God.”  “I want one,” I say to her.  And the next thing I know, I’m awake and the dream is over.

I could analyze the dream “to death” if I wanted to but I don’t.  I love living in the questions and not having all the answers.  I love final frontiers that are never conquered.  I love, as my friend Kim says, being alive in the mystery.  I love that I get to be alive and live in the mystery of it all.

I love you Mom, the path is clear now, no more boxes to get between us.  Your fair skinned hands — they are warm, soft and smooth, that’s what I take back with me.  It’s the gift you left for me in the Inbetween world of my dreams, that, and a small golden God whistle.

And now, I’m off to find my own God whistle.  It’s what we’ll share now.  It’s my forever link to you Mom.

stop

the turning wheels of your mind

look

the miracle of life is happening all around you

walk

out that door with a heart filled with wonder

breathe

it all in

you

are alive

feel

the rhythm of a heart pulsing within you

you

are a part of this miracle

here, now

bask in the splendor of it all