Tag Archives: stillness

birthday poem

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In this uncreated emptiness

- an unfurling, unfolding
energy-locus trembling with
sensations so varied
they appear to hold
no common currency -

experience swings

from melting tenderness
and wide-eyed wonder
to the creaking pain
of bodybits worn and stressed
(there’s a tutu pirouetting
on satin points in one scene;
stomping across the stage
leaden-hoofed in another)

In this uncreated emptiness

there’s a seeing, a knowing
a luminous awareing of every tonality
and every texture
every nuance of light and shade
shimmer and flicker
conspiring to create an apparent world

there’s an immaculate stillness
unchanging, unmoving, unaffected
by the stories told by
pleasure, pain or perfection

there’s a brilliant beingness
in which every dance
listed in life’s repertoire
is danced by be the one

whirling
crazy lover
inexhaustibly romancing its insatiable
self

emelle says:
off with the training-wheels,
away with the Zimmer-frame
I raise my glass to Life!

Beloved, let this heart beat long enough
to whirl a few more orbits of the sun
dissolving, giddy and swooning, into your arms
which are
none other
than
my own

~ miriam louisa

sinking back into just this

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.

just this……in all its simplicity……
welcoming what is here already……
not coming……not going……
obscured even by seeking……

So we meet in the paradox of apparent teachings, retreats, trainings or gatherings, to celebrate and explore this nameless presence that we are. At first, there is the tendency to accentuate the myriad of practices the yoga tradition has developed, to focus on concepts like nondual, true nature, awareness, self-inquiry or other-inquiry.

But all this activity eventually leads us to a giving up. And in this surrender what is revealed is seen to be what has always been here, before the search began, during its full intensity and after its cessation. The task turns out to be ceding to stillness, and in that stillness the recognition of just this.

Falling back and resting in what is so familiar that it has been overlooked during all the body sensing yoga, during all the pranayama, all the yoga nidra and amidst all the dialogues, amidst life itself, we find our self simply sinking back into just this.

~ Joan Ruvinsky

Gratitude to Kathleen Knipp for introducing me to Joan Ruvisky’s work and recommending her for our wideawake women page. “Her teachings, offered in both prose and poetry, as well as verbally, are yet another beautiful expression of the inexpressible through a woman’s voice.”
~ ml

for as long as wanting wants

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.

for as long
as wanting wants

anything – anything
even
not-wanting
stillness is abandoned
great silence is silenced
peace is merely a story

.

for as long
as wanting wants

there will be a wanter
an insatiable grasper
an inexhaustible seeker
deaf
to the savage wisdom
that whispers
you are that
which you seek!

.

for as long
as wanting wants

and the wanter
believes
it has more substance
than a thought;
believes
it’s real, with an agenda
(noble, naturally)

Heart
is divorced from its
Beloved.

~ miriam louisa

in a heap at each other’s feet

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Look, the vast Light stands still
Our clearest Light is One!

and

Then it was as if I suddenly saw
the secret beauty of their hearts,
the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire
nor self-knowledge can reach,
the core of their reality, the person that each one is
in God’s eyes.

If only they could see themselves as they really are.
If only we could see each other that way all the time,
there would be no more war,
no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…

I suppose the big problem would be
that we would fall down and worship each other.
~ Thomas Merton

source: the nonduality highlights

come sit with me

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…

I have plumped up a cushion for you.

There’s a box beside the door -
you can leave your mind there
(no charge).

Rest in this silent place
allowing succulent stillness
to fill your tired bones.

Stay.

Stay until you hear
the whisper of your heart’s wisdom:

“This unfathomable peace – it is your own
blessed beingness!”

Stay.  Please stay!

And when you go
you will know a secret
that can never again be un-known.

Beloved, you are the love of your life.

…

Tauranga
Aotearoa New Zealand

suffering doesn’t get a look-in

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Crikey. Here I am contemplating the wantless life and the disappearing worlds and out of nowhere comes Life-as-a-lethal-lurgy. It invades my body and lays it to waste; days of dry heaving and a giddiness that has yet to take off its Sufi-shoes.

There’s nothing remotely pleasant about being sick. It’s a process that has its own mysterious reasons, strategies, timings. I’m in awe of the intelligence that powers this bundle of bones. I can’t grow a toenail, build a cell or mend a tear in the sheath of my skin. But this body has The Complete Maintenance Manual and Toolkit built-in. The only requirement from my side is to relax and … relax more, to get out of its way as it does what’s necessary. And what amazes me in this simple allowing is that suffering doesn’t get a look-in.

I’m not pretending to myself or anyone that I won’t seek help, or that it’s cool or enjoyable to be ill. It’s horrid. But what I notice now is that it can be horrid without being difficult. It can be both painful and peaceful. It can be whatever it is and be loved for whatever it is. It’s very odd, but don’t-mind mind seems to be the most powerful healing tool of all.

The most effective medicine: silence and stillness and a sinking into the spaciousness in which it is all arising.
Take as required.