Stories

Stories

These are told

And they become
Who we are..
Often entangling
Or imprisoning..

What if we

Bring them all

Into our fireplace

And allow the

Rising fire

To re-create..
Stories become
New freedom 
unfolding...

Of relations

Of relations

Everything out there

Is ready made to

Speak of relations..

But the world

Has been pulled

Over our eyes..

With in-sight

Say the sages

We might peel

The wool away

And Eye

A new world

Of relations...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

For our abundance

Which we elevate today

We give thanks..

But also sensing

Our lingering hunger 

And longing

Whether rich or poor

We are all there..

Standing and waiting

For real abundance

On a renewed 

Thanksgiving Day…!

Sacred geometry

Sacred geometry

in progress

A healing

A healing

Pavement at sundown

wears snowmelt sand..

Quiet and empty

until one vehicle

tires and sand

their special crunch

cut a crevice

in Quiet space..

Then in passing

fading in distance

Quiet once more
swallowed the crunch

healed the crevice...

To suppose that the eye….. Charles Darwin

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei ["the voice of the people = the voice of God "], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."
---Charles Darwin

The season's light

The season's light

These celebrating weeks

Offer the settings

For an overcast

A dark concealing

Of the season's light..

Busyness and buying

Small concerns compound

Webs of chaos attach

As a virus

To the season's light..

Fortunate is she

While boxed and bound

Finds that moment

Unexpected quiet glimpse

Of the season's light..

Perhaps this footnote:

A paradoxical gratitude

For that chaos

Her viral entryway

To the season's light...

sitting and moving

sitting and moving

these simple states

offer their essence..

a cycling

mature and youth

above and below

dance and sorrow..

ever transforming

one to other..

by this
for this

we came..

through this

we depart...

false ground (John O'Donohue)

“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.” 
― John O'Donohue

live as butterfly

live as butterfly

landing softly

on every-thing

solid or thought

soon lifting off

winging as wave

touching higher

dimension..

glimpsing now

a new home

in Wholeness...

Unfolding

Unfolding

“Unfinished Poem
I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.” 
― John O'Donohue

Dallas 50

Dallas 50

Our remembering today

Of that day and days..

Slaying and blood

Drenching the media..

Loss was personal

Tears were deep

Shared with many..

Shadow appearance on

A national soul..

Yet the shadow

Briefly edged unity

For many enduring

On that day...

chill coming

chill coming

cold front near

evergreens sense chill

waving in dark..

imagining

becoming

one evergreen

those branches

needles..

bracing

for chill...

incarnation

incarnation

re-incarnation
speaks of re-peating
getting things right..
better it seems
each is unique
in collective whole:
each is new
first time arrival
new beginning
 new image
and Whole...

Trailhead

Trailhead

the beginning

a cosmic form

issuing from 

this place..

head then body

climbs and curves

rock and water..

the ending feet

as the head

remembered..

a trail and

a universe

unfurled...

Emptiness

Emptiness

a fearful state

looking for loss

no-thing there

annihilation 

of all known..

avoidance most say

protects a self..

yet many find

there remains a

longing..

and that which

is longed for

resides in that

emptiness fled..

once more

approach we must

to discover at last

a simple joy

filling our being...

Experience

Experience

in progress

Experiential Knowing

Mysticism is when God’s presence becomes experiential and undoubted for a person. You can see a kind of courage and self-confidence in the mystics. That puts them in an extraordinary category. Most of us believe things because our churches tell us to believe them and we don’t want to be disobedient members of the church so we say “I believe,” as we do in the Nicene or Apostle’s creed. A mystic doesn’t say “I believe.” They say “I know.” A true mystic will ironically speak with that self-confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self-confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general. The only things we know at any deep and real level are the things we have personally experienced. Creedal belief, however, holds onto us until we have that experience! This is an important distinction, and why we need creeds as well. Each generation and person cannot start at zero.  Richard Rohr ~ Adapted from an unpublished conference recording in Assisi, Italy, May 2012

Stretch

Stretch

in progress

dwell in possibility

dwell in possibility

in progress

nothing to argue about

nothing to argue about

arguments 

never ceasing in 

our dimension..

unwillingness asserts
no allowance for
elevated convergence..
hidden fears that
elevation will find
that each is
rooted in nothing..
yet no-thing is
partner of both
and ready to 
wave downward
a new argument
cleansed and polished
with invitation to
elevate again...

when we are autumn

when we are autumn

autumn sunlight

finds its colors with

 shades of resistance..

and in the leaves

 we find our mirror..

reflecting gold meets

 resistant green..

 with summer memories

 green knows now

darkness comes soon..
gold feels a thread
from next spring..

these leaves are we

our gold and green

when we are autumn…

for E Rose

eye contact

eye contact

conversations

quite often are

words inflected

delineations

hand motions

shapes shown

directions pointed..

but there is

that something more:

contact and break

sameness in contact

freedom and identity

in break..

break is departure

for a moment

a difference locating..

then a return

restoring of same

with new energy..

gaze and break

ingredients of

illusive dialogue...

Beginning

BEGINNING 

Why is it so difficult to take that first, necessary, close-in, courageous step to reclaiming our happiness in life? Perhaps, because taking that step leads to a kind of radical internal simplification, where, suddenly, large parts of us, parts of us we have kept gainfully employed for years, often rehearsing the old story, are suddenly out of a job. There occurs in effect, a form of internal corporate downsizing, where the parts of us that do not wish to participate or have nothing now to offer are let go, with all of the accompanying death-like trauma, and where the last fight occurs, a rear guard disbelief that this new, less complicated self, is all that is needed for the new possibilities ahead. It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more complicated, our identities clouded by fear and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.

From the upcoming
Readers Circle Essay Series II
“Beginning”

David Whyte

Beginner's Mind

STRETCH…November 18th, 2013

The importance of nonsense hardly can be overstated. The more clearly we experience something as “nonsense,” the more clearly we are experiencing the boundaries of our own self-imposed cognitive structures. “Nonsense” is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality. There is no such thing as “nonsense” apart from a judgmental intellect which calls it that.

True artists and true physicists know that nonsense is only that which, viewed from our present point of view, is unintelligible. Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.

In general, physicists do not deal in nonsense. Most of them spend their professional lives thinking along well-established lines of thought. Those scientists who establish the established lines of thought, however, are those who do not fear to venture boldly into nonsense, into that which any fool could have told them is clearly not so. This is the mark of the creative mind; in fact, this is the creative process.

Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters 

Einstein and Consciousness

Pillar STRETCH on Monday

November 18th, 2013

MacKenzie Place

(Union and Fillmore)

4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Media and discussion on:

"Einstein and Consciousness"

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

Facilitator:  Charles Coon

Einstein's gift

Einstein's gift

They are called

special and general

and these still

stretch our 

comprehension..

Now in evening

he speaks to each:

Important he says

is simply You..

Your observing

unique and relative

reaches untold

importance..

Theirs does too..

Then he says

here's my Truth:

all that gravity

energy and things

are only curves

in that dimension

space-time my name..

From this plateau

we can return

to our gravity

energy and things..

Knowing now of

our lives as

Light...

dialogue disturbed

dialogue disturbed

A community gathering

with a calm surface

erupted of a sudden

to an external

stimulation..

a visiting speaker

uncovered it seemed

sharp hidden dualities..

these dualities flared

left brains fired

and a fragile dialogue

was disturbed..

Also fragile were

searches for identity

self searching for Self
awakening on hold..

A microcosm of life

in our time…?

Nonsense

Nonsense

from this uncluttered

ground..

a child's clear sight

sprang two relations

brand new

changing our world

after centuries of

exalted common sense..

born again

born again

My daughter he said

is a born again..

What in its depth

does this phrase

oft repeated mean..?

A crucial first

question seems to be:

Is the utterance coming

from a place of 

 self-awareness
with energy exchange..
An alignment with
perennial experience..
Another routing:
a belief formulation
of external birth
which  awaits arrival
of new bearings..
Where are you
dear daughter in
sprouting new life…?

Honesty

HONESTY is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, with the world, or with our self. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty. Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth. The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become. Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of loss that is conferred upon even the most average life. Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. Honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where there is no realistic choice between gain or loss. David Whyte from Readers' Circle Essay, "Honesty" ©2013 David @[213407562018588:274:David Whyte] PHOTO: ©DW Buckland Wood. cotswolds England.

Just feel this

Just feel this

A photo of

symmetry and light

contrasting dark figure..

Explanation, even this

would destroy

the incoming spell..

We must then

sink into the

lighted core...

Just feel this…  Gregg Braden on Facebook

The torus path

Truth Of Mysticism & Sufism

Take one step away from yourself and— behold!—the Path!

- ABÛ SA‘ÎD IBN ABÎ-L-KHAYR

Escape into Reality

DMT: The Spirit Molecule shared Spiral Out's photo.

Between

Between

This signpost may point

to the place where joy resides..

A knife edge

 found at daybreak and sunset
with oppositional guides as

not earth and not sky

a superposition science says..

An intention with poise

may find this sacred edge

with exhilaration and healing..

There arguments are stilled

a place of oneness marked

with a glint of light...

Gregg Braden

SECRETS of the LOST MODE of PRAYER

“The mystery and possibilities of the space that connects two events has long been honored in the wisdom traditions of our past. Native traditions of North America, for example, state that two times each day the earth enters into precisely such mystical realms. We find one realm immediately after the sun disappears below the horizon, just before the darkness of night arrives. The second realm occurs just before the sun reappears from the edge of the sky, after the darkest part of the night.
“Both are twilight moments—neither completely day nor completely night. It is during this time, the traditions suggest, that an opening occurs in which profound truths may be realized, deep healings may occur, and prayers have their greatest power." pages 91-92, SECRETS of the LOST MODE of PRAYER, Gregg Braden

Reaching

Reaching

Writing those words

of poetry

we are advised

to surround them

with silence..

We acknowledge then

that no word

performs alone

but with silence

surrounding

our words reach

for more...

As Kingfishers Catch Fire (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

“As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves -- goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells,
Crying _What I do is me: for that I came_.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is --
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.” 
― Gerard Manley Hopkins