Tag Archives: forgiveness

hold them to your heart

Posted on by

4

Image credit: Awakening Women on Facebook

 

they will tell you
to never bow down
before anyone

they will tell you
not to give away
your “own” power

they will pour scorn
on your invocations
and your prayers

they will dismiss
your open-hearted ache
for all things wild and abused

they will laugh
at your love affair
with silence

hold them to your heart –
they know not what they do

they do not know
the open secret
too obvious for the intellect,
too close to be grasped

they do not know
the bliss of humility
that bathes the body
and silences the mind
when one has melted into All
and all flows into One

expressing as It wills
(and knowing it, or not)

– miriam louisa

 

Image credit: Awakening Women on Facebook

calling in the all

Posted on by

16

Since the One is already here and
inescapably so
there is no need to seek it
or to call it in.
The One is busy being One
whatever one chooses
to believe, or pretend,
want or not-want.

There is no need to summon
the One
to the hearth of the heart:
it is that Bright
eternal flame, unlit, undying
(some call it Soul)
apart from which we have
no being.

It casts its eyeless eye around
the hearth’s welcoming glow.
It notices the pillows are plumped
and the kettle sings.
It smiles upon the cluster of
creative, competent, contented
luminaries who have gathered but –
many chairs are empty.

Too many chairs are empty!
Too many tender embers of the One
are absent – worse,
they haven’t been invited to this gathering
of Soul-celebration.

Call them in! The cry echoes through
the clay embodiment
where all those unwelcome embers
languish in exile.

Call them in! Assemble the entire company!
Welcome them all
without reservation or condition;
sit them down, give them tea,
make them comfortable, thank them
for the priceless part they have played
in the journey to now.

Let them know they are loved.

And in they straggle: the timid, the traumatized, the ashamed, the guilty, the grieving, the manipulator, the opportunist, the mute, the defensive, the secretive, the hypocrite, the liar, the sentimental, the stubborn, the light-fingered, the greedy, the stoic, the fearful, the arrogant, the immodest, the undeserving, the critical, the insatiable, the self-righteous, the confused, the impatient, the narcissistic, the lazy, the lost, the untrusting, the ungrateful, the exhausted, the incompetent, the mean, the jealous, the utterly deluded … in they straggle.  Some have been banished for so long in the mind’s push towards spiritual or philosophical perfection that they have forgotten the existence of a home hearth.  They creep in, cringing.

The chairs fill up and the tears flow – tears of forgiveness, tears of contrition, tears of loving appreciation.  Unimpeded, the flow opens out into a current of ecstasy.

And as the clamor settles, the fire in the hearth leaps into life, igniting all these precious embers until the entire company is burning with the Bright.

For this is the ultimate alchemy:
acceptance that the all and the One are One
and never was any ember not a member
of the One Bright beingness
for whom distinctions and differences
have never been a problem;
the One Bright unassailable beingness
known as incredible You.

~ miriam louisa

All know that the drop merges into the ocean,
but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.
~ Kabir

the world will not be troubled by you

Posted on by

2

This post is inspired by three wise wideawake souls: Jac O’Keeffe, whose cluster of words – borrowed for my post title* – made my hair stand on end; Lama Mark Webber, who advised me to “Never stop emptying!”; and Lama Choedek, Rinpoche, who so lovingly taught me that FORGIVENESS is the kindest gift one can offer oneself, and the world. Homage; deep bows to you.
 

R e l e a s e   R e t r e a t   R e l a x

 
When I think about forgiveness I see a beach with a quiet tide, just like the Bay here, where I lived out the last decade, and where I am at present a visitor.  I see a woman (well, now, doesn’t she look familiar!) standing at the foaming edge of the water releasing a lifetime’s worth of pain, negativity, frustration, and fury – stuff buried so deep within her body that she had no idea it was even part of her.  She just rips herself open, intent on releasing the traces of memory that are no longer relevant to her life, along with all – friends, foes, family – who feature in those memories.  Out it all goes.  She’s weeping: tears of contrition, tears of joy, tears of release and gratitude.  She’s in the grip of bliss, actually.

The phrase “backing off” arises; retreating from mental engagement with the old wound-laden stories.  I see the waves edging up onto the sand, obliterating all the traces of those who left marks, and the marks they left.  I see the incoming tide meeting the outflow of her tears and retreating back to the womb of the ocean, carrying the past with it and leaving nothing but gratitude for Life’s learning.

I see the woman kneeling now.  She loves the world – its beauty and incomprehensible order have always awed her.  She deeply feels the troubles of the world and prays that those contributed by her mistakes, misunderstandings and delusion be erased and never repeated.  She prays that the dream of world be refreshed and restored to its transparent luminosity for all who dream – whether they know it or not.

She rises.  She walks away from the water and finds a spot beneath fragrant shade.  She lays her body down.  She relaxes.  Breath by breath her body releases and her mind retreats.  She rides the tide of her breath back to her unknowable spacious source and relaxes as that breath-breathing beingness, that incandescent awareness.  All the phantom yesterdays, yester-wheres, yester-whos and yester-yous vaporize.  She smiles a little smile – Hafiz was right about separation from God being the hardest work in the world.

And she smiles again at the realization that forgiveness is about giving and giving and giving; giving back to Emptiness; endlessly emptying.  She knows that there is no end to it; there is no ‘until. . .’

– miriam louisa
 
*Born to be Free, by Jac O’Keeffe

Photo by Luke Norris