angelbirdflies

The resolve is to tell the truth. And the deeper truth. And the deeper truth.

Stop looking. Not in the next moment when you have what you are looking for. But now. In this moment. And you will discover that all you have ever sought is what you have been all along.

I have been unable to write. All words seem an unnecessary distraction, inadequate to the expansion back of them and woefully deficient. Loss, grief, confusion, joy, bliss, expansion, contraction, heart ache... all pass through the web of experience ... some linger longer than others. Such is the dance of the human. Perhaps if I add a few words here, the words will break free and give my heart room to breath once more. Save Save

 "Yell into the belly of the Earth", she told me, "she will listen and ease your aching sorrows". I yelled until I was hoarse. I was twenty-one. Burdens fell from careworn shoulders and we were sisters ever more.  The other day a friend entrusted me with a Kabbalistic myth. In the telling, 144 souls were created at the dawn of time. Those 144 souls eventually splintered into the multitudinous fragments of sentient life on planet Earth. Now I look out upon the mosaic of life and believe that my kindred spirits are my clearest reflections of the original soul from which we sprang.   Now she travels the final steps along the sharp, stony terrain of cancer, I walk with her, my heart aching.  I see ahead a field, beautiful and inviting, with tall grass, clear skies, shade trees and a small bubbling creek nearby. There are ample places to rest.  She is tired.  I say, softly, lean on me, we're nearly there. This grief has settled in and it's not wha...

Words. Insufficient, awkward, clumsy tools with which to communicate.  They have all but dried up.  Each one spilling forth is incomplete and one-sided, ill-suited to its task.  Drawing water from an infinite well, they cough wet sand on the surface of things, unable to match wholeness with anything other than division. Ah yes, but these are what we have. My beloved heart-sister, one of the greatest loves of my life, is leaving form and I, with deep tenderness, am breaking open, admitting that I know nothing and yet am so generously known as everything. She freely shared her love with me, year after year, until my own well was discovered to have been full all along. The heart never grows tired of loving, no matter the cost.  It pours love like an inexhaustible river filling the parched places so long tended by words alone. Now, I have no words to offer at this parting.  Each one spills out, empty and inadequate. The heart simply breaks and love spills o...

And then You are like this: A small bird decorated  With orange patches of light  Waving your wings near my window,  Encouraging me with all of existences's love --  To dance.  And then You are like this:  A cruel word that stabs me  From the mouth of a strange costume You wear;  A guise You had too long tricked me into thinking  Could be other -- than You.  And then You are...  The firmament  That spins at the end of a string in Your hand  That You offer to mine saying,  "Did you drop this -- surely  This is yours."  And then You are, O then You are:  The Beloved of every creature  Revealed with such grandeur -- bursting  From each cell in my body,  I kneel, I laugh,  I weep, I sing,  I sing.  -Hafiz

Beauty everywhere, Care in every detail. We imagine ourselves separate, Alone. While all the world is Conspiring, in Simple Wonder... Nothing is excluded.

The first time I met the Dalai Lama at 23, I had anticipated looking into his eyes and seeing how beautiful he was.  But when I looked in his eyes for the first time, and each subsequent time, I was utterly overwhelmed by how beautiful I AM.  It literally knocked all the human babbling straight out of my mind and cracked my heart wide open.  He offered a clear mirror with my own beauty reflected.  I have met with many clear seeing eyes who do this.  Children often do it. Nature does this.  And occasionally we have loved ones who do it as well.  I just spent an amazing week with my beautiful sister, beauty reflecting back and forth, exploding with joy, wonder and heart cracking splendor. This is the gift that we can bring to every moment.  The gift of clear seeing.  At core we are all infinitely beautiful.  When this is seen we discover ourselves already in Eden, inraptured through and through, by a radiance in which everything is ...

 So much beauty, there are no words.

When walking alone in nature for long periods of time something wonderful happens.   The mind, generally so full of it's own diatribe, begins to   s  l  o  w   down and the senses atune to the rhythm of life all around.   In the trees overhead, an avian fillabuster worthy of parliamant is in full force.  The wind whispers of her ongoing love affair with tree and cloud.  The bees buzz, matchmakers for flowers, busily dancing from bloom to bloom. Squirrels scurry amidst branches, hurriedly racing from perch to perch.   As the mind settles it's inward churning, a subtle shift takes place.  The listener, as a distinct other, no longer exists.  There is no "me" and nature, there is just T H I S... this grand arising, exactly as it is. The "me" is simply another note played through the unique instrument of self. A note in the vast and  indescribably beautiful symphony of life.  

Since everything is but an apparition Perfect in being what it is Having nothing to do With good or bad Acceptance or rejection, One may well burst Out In laughter. 14 cent. Tibet Long Chen Pa

"That which I am seeking  I already am." Imagine you are standing in the sunlight with eyes squeezed shut looking for the light. Open your eyes.

When you find the "Doer" call me. But I don't expect to hear from you. "Madness!" you say, "Of course there is a me." But have you ever gone looking, for the paradox in plain view? It's too immediate to notice, too simple to believe. There is no where to go and no one to get there. This. Is. It.

A t   Some point Your relationship With God Will Become like this: Next time you meet Him in the forest Or on a crowded city street There won't be anymore "Leaving." That is, God will climb into Your pocket. You will simply just take Yourself Along! --Hafiz

Resist your temptation to lie By speaking of separation from God, Otherwise, We might have to medicate You. In the ocean A lot goes on beneath your eyes. Listen, They have clinics there too For the insane Who persist in saying things like: "I am independent from the Sea, God is not always around Gently  Pressing against My body." --Hafiz

Newness. Spring is afresh with new life.  Flowers, buds, sprouts... the world all around is painted in brilliant hues and I am basking in the view.

Life is paradoxical. Something in the mind wants to control it, to understand, predict, plan and otherwise navigate life with gusto. In it's effort to stay safe, the mind plans and worries, frets and paces, thinks and judges, moralizes and intellectualizes, but Life is... life. There is pain and pleasure, unbelievable beauty and unimaginable ugliness, sickness and health, fullness and scarcity. It's not an oscillating pendulum, forever swinging between dual points of interest, it's paradoxically all of it at once. We spend years trying to make life safe.  The beautiful irony is that it's not safe and it's not unsafe.  It just is as it is. Our willingness to be with, and as, that paradoxical truth IS what all the great teachings were pointing to all along.

I have noticed something about life... everything changes. We arbitrarily decide which weather we are meant to have...sunny, playful, loving, stress-free, affirming, fill in the blank... and then we worry about the forecast.  We plan and prepare, we fret and watch for news, for signs, for disaster. Listen. It's gonna rain. It's gonna storm. There may be hurricanes and floods, blizzards and tornados.  It's life.  There will be ups and downs.  The kids will drive us nuts and they will surprise us with their brilliance.  People will amaze us and disappoint the holy shit out of us.  Our health will be smooth and it will be rough.  We will laugh our asses off and we will crumble to the floor crying.  There will be birth and there will be death. It's all here. We wait for summer to set in and for the clouds of life to disperse forever.  Some of us call it enlightenment, others success.  Some call it the right relationship, other...

Longing. Have you ever noticed that much of our life seems to be spent reaching toward the next moment in a misplaced attempt to escape or appease a persistent feeling of longing? Instead of sitting tight with the longing itself, we look for an explanation. "I'm not satisfied in this relationship." "I need to find my life's purpose".  "Do I even have a purpose?"  "Maybe if I can just clean up the shit pile from my childhood or get my ass back in therapy." "If I had more money I'd feel safe."  "If I was truly loved I'd know contentment." "If I were enlightened all of this aching and suffering would be replaced with the 'peace that passeth understanding'."  Longing scares the holy shit out of us.  We run like hell away from NOW.  Where are we going?  Toward the next promised something, in hope of release?  News flash...it's another NOW.  It's just longing in a new...