Tag Archives: Life

keeping quiet : keeping still

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Mark Rothko - s/T, 1969

 

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

 

For once on the face of the earth,

let’s not speak in any language;

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

 

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

 

Fisherman in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his hurt hands.

 

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victories with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

 

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

 

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

 

Now I’ll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

 

– Pablo Neruda

 

From Extravagaria, translated by Alastair Reid (pp. 27-29, 1974)

A steadying, thoughtful poem for today and everyday. I’m pairing it with Pico Iyer’s wonderful TED talk, The Art of Stillness. I feel that stillness, silence and solitude – attributes of whatever we take to be sanctity – are seriously endangered experiences. Will they become extinct in our lifetime?

I’m a committed activist in this area of concern. My experience has shown me that these ‘non-activities’ are the bedrock necessary for the unfolding of what matters to me – authenticity, right relationship, unfolding wisdom, and creative expression.

 

 

Painting by Mark Rothko – s/T, 1969

grief is a shower of grace

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This Unlit Light - well of grief - image by Smith Eliot

 

On October 23, 2009, I wrote a post called the gift of grief:

Seven months since she spun out of her solar orbit and left my life.  Well, appeared to leave my life.

What a cruel lie it is to believe that those we love have gone; what an ignorant denial of Life’s infinity of guises and disguises; what a limiting perspective on the vastness of Life’s Play.

She is missed, yes.  But I find that if I simply allow ‘missingness’ to be its unadorned energetic self and ignore the siren-call of memory’s stories, she is there, in that movement of energy.  Missingness holds the blessing of mutual gratitude – a two-way appreciation of love known and cherished.

Who would want to miss such a blessing?  Who would want to “move on from it”?  Who would want to heal it, transform it, transmute or transcend it?

Who would want to deny the gift of grief’s solidarity, the diamond sharp sorrow shared with the mother whose child disappeared a decade ago at the school bus stop, the father whose son has just been shot dead practicing maneuvers for a dubious war in a distant land, the lover whose beloved has passed away before she was ready?

Grief is a great gift.  I love the way it keeps my heart soft.  I love the way I see it in your eyes, in the eyes of all ‘I’s walking this Earth.  It is a hallmark of the unclouded Light of human-being-ness.

Please don’t tell me to get over it.

April 3, 2016 – an update.

Only one word to change: “months”, to years.

Seven years since she spun out of her solar orbit and left my life.  Well, appeared to leave my life…

I still slip  – delightedly – beneath the still surface to “the secret water, cold and clear”.  I still marvel that these eyes spill tears of gratitude.  Love blesses me with grief.  I make no movement away, rather, I turn to meet it, gladly.

Grief is – for me – a shower of Grace.

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief

turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe

will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.

~ David Whyte

Where Many Rivers Meet
©2007 Many Rivers Press

The original post was inspired by an email exchange with Vicki Woodyard shortly after my mother’s death and the beginning of this blog.  Thank you dear Vicki.

Image by Smith Eliot

may life have its way with you

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Lisa Rivas: La Vida

 

May Life
have its incomprehensible way with you, and
may you have the courage
to welcome It
to embrace It
as you would your hungry body’s perfect lover

 

May you
be reunited with the innocent awe-full
bright awareing
that is born afresh
in every instant of aliveness
regardless of age or race or belief or religion

 

May Innocence
the eternal holy child
arise in your heart and bless us all
with its unconditional and utterly impartial Love
that we may, in turn
recognize its gaze in the eyes of all we imagined were ‘other’

 

With my deepest love and gratitude to you all, dear readers, for this holiday season and new year.

May blessings shower upon you – whatever moves you in this ever-sacred moment.

– miriam louisa

Artwork: La Vida, by Lisa Rivas

on labyrinths, grace and the via creativa

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When the new issue of the online magazine ONE : the magazine was published, I felt happy, humbled and honored to be the featured artist.

The text I contributed to accompany a gallery of images of my artwork made reference to what I call the via creativa.  Subsequently, and unexpectedly, I was asked to contribute some further words on this so-called via creativa.  I dug deep in my computer’s archives and found this little essay, written some years ago as a postscript to an unpublished manuscript, intended for inclusion in the eventual publication of an ebook on my blog wonderingmind studio.

Here’s an introductory paragraph or two.  I hope you’ll link through to the magazine to read the full monty – and sample some of the beautiful, wise, contributions from others –  Adyashanti, Unmani, Fred Davis, Eli Jackson-Bear, and more.

 

The Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth

 

The Labyrinth is a familiar symbol.  Its enigmatic presence has left footprints that fade back into the beginning of the human story.  Its origins and its purpose have been rich fodder for research and speculation.

I don’t pretend to know the truth of its tale, but see the archetypal labyrinth as apt visual shorthand for the map of a life, and that’s how its symbolism is used in this little essay.

The many lanes of the Labyrinth are in fact only one long path that winds and twists and turns back on itself as it explores all the territory of a life before arriving at its Heart.

By ‘Heart’ I mean the natural essence of the ‘walker’ of the Labyrinth – beyond both conception and perception – the unknowable and ineffable awareness we nevertheless recognize as our changeless Being.

As an artisan, I call this path the Via Creativa, but please don’t think I refer to any kind of laid-down, mapped-out path.

The path is a process, and the process creates the path.  It is the Via Creativa itself that teaches me how to make art and live Life.

[… ]

Continue reading at ONE : the magazine

the metamorphosis of the me

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If this “me” is not afraid of losing itself,

of no longer having anywhere to lay its head,

in short, when, pushed by the magnificent dynamism of doubt,

it is not afraid of disassociating itself from everything;

of rejecting its old associations,

and rejecting the new snares laid by the objects of the world in order to bind it to them;

of destroying the new entity which is being rebuilt on the ruins of the crumbling entity,

when this “me”, transformed into an incandescent torch

mercilessly burns all that is itself then one day,

becoming supremely conscious and no longer finding anything with which to associate,

that which remains of it leaps all together into the eternal flame which consumes all,

except the Eternal,

and being dead as an entity,

it is nothing but life.

~ Carlo Giuseppe Suarès
La Comédie Psychologique

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mutation of the me

Image source: Au bout de la route blog
[If you can read French you’ll find this link very interesting – it’s a conversation between Suarès and J Krishnamurti.]

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

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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

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awareness is an unassailable fortress

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For those whose investment in their version of the ‘bondage’ dream is high, there’s bound to be a reaction when they meet any soul who dares to declare the immediacy of unconditional freedom.

It tends to go like this:

– if you are audacious enough to suggest that no kind of meditation practice or spiritual work will ever result in wideawake freedom (aka awakening or enlightenment), they’ll say you are truly deluded

– if you aren’t deeply engaged in analyzing your personal psychological pathology, they’ll say you’re in denial

– if you aren’t rushing around saving the lost souls, the children, the whales, the environment, they’ll say you’re irresponsible

– if you aren’t full of fear for the future with its threats of terrorism, mass destruction, financial collapse and mayhem, they’ll say you’re avoiding reality

– if you are happily and contentedly doing what you love, they’ll say you’re selfish

The good news is that none of this matters one nanojot to Awareness.  IT couldn’t give a toss.  (Just check in and see for yourself!)  Freedom is never anywhere but at the beginingless beginning.  Freedom is fundamental.  All the delusion, denial, irresponsibility, avoidance and selfishness in the universe can’t affect the freedom that simply is THIS.  Neither can accusations and insults.

Please don’t think I am trivializing or dismissing any of the practices or activities mentioned above.  There is room for every-imaginable-thing to manifest in the vastness of Life.  Everything has its place and purpose.  But once one has tired of all efforts to improve oneself and the world, and the quest has begun to move inwards rather than outwards, these things fall away of their own accord.  Perhaps they will re-emerge eventually, flowering as the focus of one’s wholly impersonal wideawake wisdom.  Perhaps not.  It ceases to matter, for one knows that whatever the dance of appearances, the Great Unlit Light of pure Awareing remains unmoved and unchanged.  It is the only unassailable fortress – yet It is without form or shape or location!

I remember my Granny teaching me the anti-bully rhyme when I was a tiny tot – “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me!”  Wise old wideawake woman.  She knew that Unknowable Knowingness was her true identity.

~ miriam louisa