One day, I finally knew...

The Journey

One day you finally knew 

what you had to do, and began, 

though the voices around you 

kept shouting 

their bad advice-

though the whole house 

began to tremble 

and you felt the old tug 

at your ankles. 

"Mend my life!" 

each voice cried. 

But you didn't stop. 

You knew what you had to do, 

though the wind pried 

with its stiff fingers 

at the very foundations, though their melancholy 

was terrible. 

It was already late 

enough, and a wild night, 

and the road full of fallen branches and stones. 

but little by little, 

as you left their voices behind, 

the stars began to burn 

through the sheets of clouds, 

and there was a new voice 

which you slowly 

recognized as your own, 

that kept you company 

as you strode deeper and deeper 

into the world, 

determined to do 

the only thing you could do-

determined to save 

the only life you could save.

~  Mary Oliver  ~

 

Dream Work, Grove Atlantic Inc., 1986 & New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992.

Hamstrung by Language

When humans began using language - which seems to be used more to dissemble & distract than to make whole & connect - our rapport with magic, with the miraculous that one pulsed throughout all that was around us, weakened until it was considered a myth, something found in fairy tales, not every day life.

It is sad but true that language, which hides true meaning & genuine emotion, pushes aside Wordlessness, just at it weakens the technologies of magic that once made the miraculous into the everyday.  Language weakens & pushes aside the magic, but it can't destroy it.  Which is why we can reintroduce the lost tool of Wordlessness to our lives, why we can reinstate its place of importance in all we do, in all that is around us.

Wordlessness * Oneness * Imagination * Forming

These are the four skills that help open us up to magic in our lives.  Instead of occasionally experiencing, occasionally seeing it our lives, these four techniques help us focus in on the miraculous that is not so rare as most of us tend to think.

Each of them makes such total sense as to leaving me with a totally, "Ah, yes - that makes sense" response.

Of course WORDLESSNESS is our truest self - we might not ponder it, but words are total artifice, created out of need to communicate with others. But put together two people who don't share the same language and the limitations of language becomes immediately apparent.  Words reflect our being's crassest self;  WORDLESSNESS embodies our highest, most fully genuine.

Of course ONENESS is our truest self - everything is one, barriers are themselves mere figments of imagination gone amuck.  Barriers between people & peoples, barriers within ourselves - they are no more real than the lines on a map that delineate countries.  Let go of the illusion of separateness, embrace & experience & be immersed in ONENESS.

Of course IMAGINATION is our truest self - everything that is but hasn't been manifested in the here & now is imagination.  Wow....  It's not cutesy or airy fairy, but downright amazing - when our true eyes are open, so MUCH we never considered because of thinking in space/time concepts keeps taking our breath way while constantly breathing new inspiration to help us see the unlimited What Is around us.  Instead of balking at questions, IMAGINATION opens the way to seeing the host of answers swirling around us.

Of course FORMING is our truest self, and the last aspect of the four - we start out with the illusion that we're formed, then liberate ourselves from language, our most obvious limiting illusion, language, see that everything is one, are awakened to the jaw-dropping endless vastness of imagination,  use all those new ah ha-nesses to come to genuine FORMING, which has no relation to the form we had starting out.

Totally cool....

CHANGE OF IDENTITY AHEAD ~ Spiritual Roadside Sign

This blog seems to be my go-to place for reinvention.  "Mise en place" strikes the perfect attitude, provides the just-right place to put together a workbook for the exercises that beckon me in Martha Beck's Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.  

Tried journaling, tried oversized Post-it Notes ~ both fell flat.  To stolid, passive.  Hit me in the wee small hours of this morning - blogging feels just right.

Everything IS in its place ~ just open our eyes & SEE it!!