Tag Archives: Beloved

a duet of paradox and praise

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Two heart-healing poems from Chuck Surface.

I found these on the poetry blog – being silently drawn – one of my favourite online oases for mind medicine. Thank you Tina Koskelo.

First, the paradox of our wideawakeness: How can it be that we are not this or that but thisthat? How can it be that we are simultaneously wave and particle? How can we reconcile apparent dualism with the unsplitable reality of our experience? As it turns out, this endeavour on the part of the insatiable thinker is less paradoxical than it would have us believe.

Like, can there be more than one meaning to ONE?

And then, a little hymn to the Beloved.

 

Richard Diebenkorn - Coffee, 1959

 

cream, two sugars, please

 

Within… Fullness, Completion, and Bliss,

Without… She prefers milk chocolate to dark.

 

Within… nothing can be added, nothing taken away,

Without… everything comes to Her, and goes.

 

Within… Unmoving, Ineffable Sublimity,

Without… She experiences ever changing manifestation.

 

Within… joy and sorrow have never been,

Without… She Shines, even in the midst of tears.

 

Within… time and space have never existed,

Without… She is born, grows old, and dies.

 

Within… within and without never were,

Without… within and without ever are.

 

Within… no preferences, propensities, proclivities,

Without… cream, two sugars, please.

 

Within… The Sun Shines,

Without… All is Illumined.

 

 

intimacy

 

There’s no intimacy in talking “about” The Beloved,

Moving away from Her into words and concepts,

As if She is not Present.

 

How rude.

 

She exists in the Quiet Stillness of our Heart,

When Attention returns from outward wandering,

And falls into Her awaiting arms.

 

How Inexpressibly Beautiful.

 

Some have turned Her into a science,

And argue Her existence, lawyerly.

They know nothing of Her.

 

Arid minds.

 

She cannot be “proven” through argument,

Or anyone “convinced” of Her reality,

Short of direct Experience.

 

Direct… Experience.

 

Only Longing entices the Beloved,

From Her Secret Garden…

In the Cave of your Heart.

 

How Ineffably… Sublime.

 

Chuck’s poetry website is In the Garden of the Beloved – a place to rest, and be both soothed and intoxicated.

Richard Diebenkorn, Coffee, 1959; oil on canvas, 57 1/2 in. x 52 1/4 in.
[Did you notice the bindi?]

Collection: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

when you know yourself

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Rajasthan, India, Tantric Painting

 

when you know yourself

you know that there is nothing that is not God

you know that the face of God
is the Face of faces
you know It as both He and She
and neither: nada
you know It as the Beloved
whose embrace you can’t escape
you know Its Presence as your
absence, or rather,
your secret sensuous melting
into the ever-nowness of your aliveness

when you know yourself

you know that there is nothing
that is not this immeasurable immensity,
always hiding in plain view

you know It as the Nameless One
wearing any nametag with equal delight,
quivering like a child’s smile
simply to be noticed

Beloved
when you know yourself

you know that there is nothing that is not yourself

– miriam louisa

Image – Hindu Tantric painting, Rajasthan, India. Made using tempera, gouache, and watercolor on salvaged papers, these paintings from Rajasthan form a distinct lexicon dating back to the 17th century. They were/are used to awaken heightened states of consciousness. They are not produced for commercial purposes, but simply pinned up on the wall for use in private meditation.
In the example above, the lingam and the yoni have swapped their traditional colour depictions; the intense black of the lingam has become pink and the pink of the yoni is now black. (Lest we forget that the Dance of Consciousness is infinitely mutable, utterly defying all labels.)
The lingam represents Shiva, the transcendental source of all that exists; the yoni is the creative power of nature and represents the goddess Shakti.  The lingam united with the yoni represents the nonduality of immanent reality and transcendental potentiality.

Tantra Song: Tantric Painting from Rajasthan

 

please take these offerings

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They often sneak up on me at this time of the year – a gaggle of words-wanting-shared. Yes, it’s birthday time – not a blog birthday, but another tick in the annual count for she-who-scribbles while her spacecraft steers itself around the sun…

Birthdays are a good time to reflect on one’s blessings, and to offer gratitude to our friends for their kindness and thoughtfulness. I always begin my birthday with a gesture of thanks to my mother, who not only gave me the miraculous opportunity for life, but also fostered, nourished and inspired the flourishing of that life in every way possible.

Now in my eighth decade, and delighting in life regardless of its curved balls, I feel to share some of the observations that have delivered me to this joy. It’s the best I can offer; may your mind and heart be able to receive.

Image source - https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/BoneStructure/

 

Life hurts.
But what you are never feels pain.

Everything changes.
But what you are remains unchanged, eternally.

You’re flat and exhausted and depressed.
But what you are is forever poised as equanimity.

You’re broke, stressed, squeezed dry, homeless and hungry.
But what you are is unaffected and impartial.

You’re smashed by disappointment, betrayal, abandonment.
But what you are is ever calm, accepting and unbroken.

You’re afflicted by physical and mental aberrations, abnormalities, imbalances.
But what you are never suffers for one second.

 

So what you are is clearly something with which you need to become very familiar. And it’s e-a-s-y to do so. You don’t need a formal introduction. You don’t need a manual or a map or a guide book. You don’t need to change your religion or your beliefs (although changes may well occur as a result). You don’t need a 12-step plan or a meditation practice.

What you are is more obvious and closer than the tip of your nose. It’s the one experience you can never escape, 24/7.

What would you call that? Your aliveness? Your awareness? Your presence? All these words come close, but none are ultimately true or exact. Why?

Because they aren’t yours. Or mine. Or anyone’s. Drop the personal pronoun, and there you are – radiant all-knowing alive presence. The Light of Knowingness, self-luminous, always-on, never-needing fuel or flint…

And that is what you are – free, fulfilled and flourishing as all you conceive, perceive and experience. All of it.

How wondrous that this is possible – that this primordial awareness is huge enough to hold the entirety of creation, excluding nothing – yet be unaffected and unmoved by any expression of its handmaiden, consciousness.

It is truly The Beloved, the Godhead of the saints and sages and poets.

And it is what you are.

 

Image source

 

emptiness blossomed as bliss

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Darshan with Mother Meera

 

yesterday

those eyes

(darkly luminous, utterly empty)

looked into my heart

again

and

finding no watchman at the door

they waltzed right in,

blessed the space,

and emptiness blossomed

as bliss

 

oh Beloved!

we who are nowhere to be found

miraculously find each other

for an embrace of just seconds

in a dance

that spans eternity

 

taking it all to heart

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Photograph by Alan Larus

what shall it profit me to know
that the leaf
has no color, shape or form
save those assigned by a bunch of brain cells?

to know that it has no existence
in time or space
aside from the space-time grid in my memory?

to know that it isn’t really anointed with
sparkling diamonds of dew
and it doesn’t really tremble
in the delicate dawn sunlight?

to know that all this appearance
is a figment of imagination?

in other words,
what’s the big deal to know
that form is emptiness?

if I stop there
where does it leave my heart?

I’ll tell you:
high and very very dry

but when I fall
into the suchness of the leaf
and wear its diamonds with delight
on my soft velvet greenness,
when I feel its quiver as my own
and float in its airy spaciousness

then I find, to my astonishment,
that the leaf’s gorgeous, sensuous livingness
and my own
cannot be wrenched apart

that’s when my heart leaps with juicy joy
and tears moisten my cheeks;
that’s when emptiness reveals itself
as none other than form,
and it’s so very clear
that love lies in the looking

–

It’s odd how outpourings are triggered. This morning this quote from the Bible fluttered across mindspace during a rapturous morning ‘meditation’. The last time I heard – or thought about – this quote was probably more than fifty years ago, when it was thrown, by a seriously strict teacher, at my friend and me for helping each other (cheating!) in a high school exam:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
– Mark 8:36 King James Bible “Authorized Version”, Cambridge Edition

It’s normally taken to refer to greed, ill-gotten gains and the loss of integrity, but after the poem wrote itself down I realized my take had shifted, or expanded. I think it could also apply thus:
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain intellectual knowledge of the world, and lose his own heart’s intimate intelligence?

The Heart Sutra had to get a word in as well. Mark the Apostle meets Avolokitesvara. You never can tell what/who will turn up on retreat!

Photograph by Alan Larus, who tells me he just “clicks the button”. His modesty is as awesome as his artwork.

how could you not love something like that?

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This is an unapologetic rant.

 
How could you not love something like that?

 

how could you not love something that

never leaves you
regardless of how often you ignore it?

that’s always self-shining –
never needing flint or switch or fuel?

that never changes
regardless of the vicissitudes of your daily experience?

that never takes sides
whatever person, team or nation you’re supporting,
whatever idea or opinion you hold?

that never breaks apart
even though your life appears to?

that never minds
n-e-v-e-r  m-i-n-d-s
that you spend your life running around looking for it
while it’s in your face the whole time?

how could you not love something like that?

something you can never escape,
and that’s so immanent
you are forced to accept it
as your own true identity?

how could you not then love
Y O U R S E L F ?

and everything arising
– thoughts, perceptions, memories, feelings –
within that inconceivable Self?

how could you not love that immensity which precedes
and includes all existence?

how could you not kneel at your own feet
in awe?

 

how could you pretend that your enlightened
heart-driven passion
was not the Great Passion of That
which holds the planets in their orbit?

 

how could you ignore the urge to pour
your energy and attention
into whatever opens your heart?

 

how?

 

– miriam louisa

a little prayer for the solstice

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For most readers of this little blog, it’s the summer solstice that will be celebrated today.  But for those of us in the lands south of the Equator, today is the shortest day, the darkest day of the year.  It is winter.  And here on my misty mountain it is raining and chilly – a perfect day for a prayer to the Unlit Light – the Beloved known by a thousand names – the One that never fails to listen and to love.  It’s a deeply personal prayer – and yet, I know it is shared by you and you and you, no matter what your gender may be.

 

Bill Viola - Catherine's Room

 

may I be a mother
to the motherless

 

may I comfort them

may I give them shelter

may I foster their creativity

may I assure them they are loved

may I re-mind them of their brilliant life-fire

 

may I be shown the way

 

may I be a Mother Miriam

as was she who allowed me life:
Miriam ma

aymen

~

 

Image: Bill Viola – Catherine’s Room

Yes – you’ve seen this image here before – it’s one of my favorites:
today I light candles