Tag Archives: Rashani Réa

what once felt like grief

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Rashani Réa - what once felt like grief

Poetry and collage by Rashani Réa

Rashani needs little introduction to readers here – her beautiful poem the unbroken was posted many moons ago.  If you missed it, please click on the link  below.

Some months ago Rashani was so kind as to compile a couple of her little Card Decks with words from the several websites and blogs I cultivate online.  It’s taken me as many months to overcome my shyness, but I reckon I might be ready … and Rashani’s work is so beautiful it should be shared and celebrated regardless of my reluctance to be seen as some kind of “awakened” writer.  I’m just a scribbler who likes to see what gets written, and sometimes what gets written is amazing.  The crack in the world widens a fraction and Grace finds the gap.

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Card Deck by Rashani Réa

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Card Deck by Rashani Réa

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I’d love to think you might have a look at these little ‘Altar’ decks at Rashani’s site. And while you’re there, have a browse through her collection of greeting cards, postcards, books, ebooks, and posters available for purchase. All proceeds go towards Rashani’s work at Kipukamaluhia, her home and retreat sanctuary in Hawaiʻi.

Rashani’s website

small card decks by Rashani

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A new addition is a writer’s journal, inspired by the SAND conference last November. It includes more than forty of Rashani’s collages with words by women and men who are exploring and sharing nonduality. (Including yours truly.)

Rashani Réa Nondual Reflections Journal

The Nondual Journal has 144 pages and measures 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches.

It doesn’t seem to be loaded to Rashani’s website as yet, but you can order from her directly:

808 929-8043
rashanirea[at]yahoo.com

Rashani’s poem:

the unbroken

the unbroken

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There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

~ Rashani Réa

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goneness, grief and grace

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to truly grieve
is to, somehow

(by Grace?)

find the guts
to welcome
goneness

 
Grief and sadness are often mistakenly thought to be the same. They aren’t. Sadness will have its time and place – usually in the immediate aftermath of a loss. But sadness isn’t good company for those whose work is to grieve.

Sadness, as Byron Katie so succinctly put it, is “a hissy fit”. Sadness looks backwards and wants the what-is to still be the what-was.

Grief meets the what-is with no agenda other than to be 100% present, nakedly nowful.

The astonishing gift of grief and grieving is that it opens us to a love beyond anything we have ever known.

Rashani Réa, in her quietly, powerfully, honest book Beyond Brokenness says she has never met anyone who isn’t unconsciously holding grief.

I decided to take a look, and yes. There it was, patiently awaiting the impartial light of awareing. A little list of gonenesses, each one a treasure, an irreplaceable chapter in the story of a Life.

As this unlit light beams them into presence they come into full bloom, they mature and scatter their seeds of wisdom. Then – they vanish.

The only residue is the wetness on my cheeks.

And this love!

This sweet, helpless, holy love; it is love to die for.

Might you have a goneness list in hiding?

Go for it beloved.
 

Whoever finds love
beneath hurt and grief,
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new guises
~ Rumi