I sit here considering what I feel like writing. I've started this entry a couple of times but the content didn't reflect where my heart and focus are right now. Those beginnings, relegated to 'drafts' at this point, have become fodder for future blogs, I suppose.
So here I sit, right now, fingers on the keys, listening to devotional chanting, peripherally aware of the candle flickering on my altar and enjoying the mild scent of frankincense lingering in the air.
I recently started to read through the writings in the spiral bound notebooks I kept during the five years following a spontaneous awakening experience I had in 1995. What I have anticipated as an arduous task is actually a tender revisiting of a period of my life unmatched by any other; a time when I often felt on a tether of sorts, hanging on for those moments when I landed and found some semblance of occasional 'footing'. Reviewing those years by perusing the notebooks is my effort to compile whatever in them might be salvageable and and to discover what, if any of it, I might want to share. Aside from knowing I was having a unique and mystical experience, it's clear I had no real idea of how to navigate it and did not understand the nature and magnitude of it's influence.
What I did understand was that it was compelling and that I was in the presence of a benevolence I had never experienced before in it's omnipresence, wisdom and power to love. I could never have guessed, at that time, the degree to which the changes I was thrust into would reshape the trajectory of my path and alter my version of reality as I knew it up to that point. Lots of evidence of searching and seeking in those pages as my paradigm was utterly shifting and my footing was disrupted. I had many questions, thoughtful and sincere ones; all of which were answered, eventually.
When I look at those notebooks, the poems stand out as expressions of the heart. There is tenderness, vulnerability, love, longing and deep connection. They reflect, most clearly, the nature of the teachings pouring through me at that time; teachings I came to rely on to carry me through the disassembling of my life that defined those years. They sometimes ignite the memory of the very experience that preceded the writing of a given piece and I go tripping down memory lane seeing bricks in the path behind me that had become obscured or forgotten.
I have come to realize the teachings in these writings reflect common, universal truths. In this way, I don't find that I say anything new, really. I only express it in a way that is unique to me. I want to share some of these poems with you because I want to offer what is in my heart. I must share what is in my heart. That they might reach into the part of you that knows them intuitively and instinctively; that you might settle in and feel comforted by them would also be a lovely outcome. May they light up in you a willingness to remember, and may they hold you like a familiar cradle, cozy in every way- good for the heart, good for the mind, good for the spirit. Might they arouse the fierce and sacred adventurer in you.
One final note-you will see that I am oriented around this 'place' within me, this voice, the 'teacher within' or the deeper wisdom as the divine feminine. You don't have to believe 'in' this, believe it is possible or true or have a similar orientation to appreciate the love, the surrender and the relational nature evident in these writings. It doesn't matter that I say 'goddess' or 'mother' to express the ever-present love or consciousness that drives this boat we are all on. Do you think there is relevance in the distinct names we each give the life force at the center of this play of consciousness? My language here reflects my experience of how this awareness unfolded in me. The nature of the sacred, of consciousness, is that it is available and known to us in a wide variety of forms and faces because we are widely varied. We don't have to agree on what that form is to appreciate that there is something awesome that underlies all else; an 'animating principle' of sorts, to borrow from biologist, research scientist, author and speaker, Rupert Sheldrake, who names the animating principle as "that which makes living things alive." (https://www.sheldrake.org/about-rupert-sheldrake/interviews/in-the-vale-of-soul-making. ) Whatever that might be for you, however you understand it, insert your meaning into these pieces when I say 'mother' or 'you' or 'goddess.' It's all the same, isn't it? It's a force, an impulse, a steady rhythm within and around us. Call it what you like. It isn't in it's name that it reminds us who we are.
Take your time. Pause between each and reflect, perhaps. Savor those that speak to you. Use them in service of your own opening, if you feel so compelled.
My heart to yours...
*I bow my head down before you. Longing to kiss your feet, I reach.
Suddenly aware of the pulling forward in my chest, I cry.
I cry with what begins as longing and becomes gratitude.
If I feel brave and I unfold into this aching, I eventually find you.
The veil between longing and gratitude is thinning.
*You alone have the fullness of my heart.
It lies beating in the palm of your hand.
*Like a ripe cherry tomato, in my full plumpness you reached for me
And tucked me inside your mouth. And there, in the warm moisture of
Your command, I began to take new shape. My self reflection changing,
I entered the madness of this radical shapeshifting as you spit out any and
All parts that left me ill-equipped for the next passage.
Having your way with me amidst my protests and terror,
You clearly were the chewer and I, the chew-ee.
And so it is.
May it always be so.
I, gratefully, have become you.
All of the chewing, spitting, savoring and swallowing has served to bring us
Together again, just as you said it would.
The illusion of separation now dissolved, I will live forever in your belly.
Never again to be separate.
Never again to long for you.
Never again to be alone.
*I am merely human. You are everything.
To simply wash your feet would be enough to carry me endlessly.
*You will make it so utterly painful for me to not share the bounties of this
relationship that I will be forced from my hesitation out into the open.
I will be birthed right through for all the world to see.
You will use me so that they will see you.
*I watched as my chest split open and my wailing heart spilled out
and became a garden for you to walk in.
And so you have.
And I am forever changed.
And I am dying.
My heart, once, seemingly my own, is now your domain.
When did you move me in this way?
Who are you that I return again and again to my willingness for you to take me?
You, my holiest love, my most compassionate heart, my ever-patient teacher.
You offer a steady and gentle hand to this seeker.
And you never give up.
*I am losing my mind. This is a welcomed relief.
*I am forever coming home.
I am coming home.
I am home.
*You are all that I have. If I lose you, there is nothing.
You are my holy one. My holy mother. My holy teacher. My holy lover.
Without you, there is no life for me.
*Close your eyes.
Be still.
Listen.
The holy violet wants to open
For you.
*Teach me to be full of you so that I might drink from my own cup and be renewed.