Awaken With The Dawn

Awaken With The Dawn

The morning is newly awakened in your eyes. Dawn reaches above the tree line in gathering shades of pink and pale blue. You can hear bird calls of several different species intertwine in the crisp air around you and you feel free and healthy. You bring the fragrant air deep into your lungs and exhale a fine mist just as the sun rises above the horizon. You can feel the sky expand as it blows through your hair, warmed by the gentle ball of fire. You feel a harmony within yourself. The boulders seem perfectly positioned to catch the quickening light, the moss clinging to the large arcs of stone has a slow and irrefutable purpose, trees balance light and shade in constant interchange with the wind, creating a dynamic pattern which the wild grass in the meadow you stand in resonates with until the air seems to hum around you. You’ve never seen a morning like this, an awakening that mirrors a slow gathering of love in the basket of your heart.

To Know Without Knowing

To Know Without Knowing

You see a flower

At the moment of unfolding

The last purple petal spreads

Like silk over your eyes

And you stare in wonder

How could such beauty exist?

The yellow belly button

At the center of the bloom

Yells yellow at your eyes

Till you think of the sun above

Your heart leaps for love

Reminding you of something you’d nearly forgotten

You walk over and snap the green stem

The umbilical cord to the Earth severed

The petal now swings like a pendulum in your hands

As you begin to think of other things

And the colors will never match that moment

The petals won’t even try

They know without knowing

They can’t trace a direct line

To the magma center of their home

From the vase on your coffee table

A Prayer For A Sunday

A Prayer For A Sunday

There is a cure for our sickness

This cure need not be administered with prayer

It does not require faith in a higher being

It does not require a strong foundation of belief

It can be administered by the scientific method

A method some would say caused this sickness to begin with

Fighting poison with poison

The cure is simply said

But momentous to execute

A revolution would flow in its wake

Do what is good for the Earth

What is good for all other forms of life

Including the rocks and the water that rushes over them

For they have souls too

Do this, say no to destruction and waste

And yes to balance

Yes to helping all life flourish

We should grow up

And be the stewards we were made to be

Then everything will be a prayer

Faith will be unquestioned

Because it will be a seed

Sprouted from each individual’s heart

As they tend the Earth with their love

And sow it with belief

 

Nature

Nature

Everything is vibration...Everything is song

Offering

 Offering

I made a furrow in the dirt with the tip of my finger and gave you an offering of tobacco. I asked if I could spend some time with you and you said yes without hesitation. I could tell you thought this request strange, as the birds never felt the need to ask.

I settled my back against your trunk, Grandfather, wise with the passing of time, your skin wrinkled and grey like an elephant’s. I took in your oak strength, exchanged breath with you in symbiotic communion, our most ancient vow, our deepest entanglement. I opened my heart because I knew you would accept anything I offered. It is not in your nature to deny. I pleaded for your wisdom and guidance. What should I do? How should I proceed? I stared into your beautiful canopy of sinuous branches, rippling like snakes frozen in time. Your net of verdant spring leaves ensnared my eyes and you spoke into my rapt attention.

You want to know, you want to be sure and have your guarantees but the heart’s path is not one of surety. See how my limbs curve toward the sun, molded by the seasons? I could not know what was to come, drought, storm or sun. I took what came and grew according to my nature. The path of the heart is like a strong wind. You do not fully know your heart yet. You have stepped into the current’s edge where you feel slight breezes and occasional gusts. Go deeper into the wind, follow your intuition, go where the air quickens, ever go towards that, using all your body to feel the source. One day you will enter the mighty flow, the main artery of wind and you will unfurl your heart and use it as a sail and you will not travel according to plan nor to a set of coordinates but according to a higher plan that has already been laid out for you, the magnetic north of your being. Do not seek the knowable way. Do not seek the safety of the clear path. If you can see the result and work towards the result than you are already at the end and there can be no journey. There will only be the passage of time. Be afraid and go with your heart, cling to it as your center for where it leads is where you are meant to be.

The net released, vision faded and I traced your skin with the swirls of my fingertips and gave thanks.

The Creation of Love

The Creation of Love

I think it can be agreed that a creation is the product of a creator. It stands to reason that music was generated by the mind of a composer and a sculpture was made by the hands of a sculptor. Much can be learned about the nature of the human psyche from the seeming obviousness of these statements because upon analysis these statements are in fact, completely false. The inherent flaw these statements contain is the supposition that we created ourselves and the world around us. This is the thinking of a person living under the curse of insanity for we clearly did not create the air and vibrational laws through which music moves nor did we create the tree from which the sculpture is made. I don’t even want to bring who this creator was or is, whether this creator is a who or what a he or a she or an it or a set of laws – this argument does not require knowing what created all we see and know, it simply requires acknowledgment that humans did not design the mountains nor did we dream of the ocean and its waves and make them come to be. We had nothing to do with this. In fact, as far as the rational sphere can tell – the oceans were around far before humans even existed. Now that we have established this, what then does it say about us that we make wild and insane and bold statements like, “Isn’t he a wonderful composer?” It says we are living a lie of the grandest proportions. It says we have the utter hubris to lay claim to everything we see, this is our Kingdom and we rule and do with it as we see fit. Look around you. How is the management of this Kingdom of yours going? Your greatest assets are disappearing. What are the two things you must have? One, if you go without it for minutes, you die and the other if you go without it for days, you die. Air and water. How’s the air and water in your neighborhood? What do you think about going down to the local river and taking a drink? Would you be afraid to do such a thing? Where are the trees that supply your oxygen? We are cutting them down at an alarming rate and poisoning our waters, literally tainting our blood and asphyxiating ourselves. This is what happens when we harbor the insane notion that this is our Kingdom and we are the creators of our destiny. And what is to blame for this deadly and erroneous judgment? The ego. It must protect itself. And the only way it can protect itself is with lies because the ego itself is a lie. It whispers to you that you are a creator, a painter of beautiful images but I ask, did you create color and the materials you paint with? Did you construct the eyes that behold? Everything belongs to the true creator of this universe. Humans are simply a conduit for the miracle we participate in, nothing owned, everything given. You say but the ego is necessary! I did not ask for my ego, I inherited it! And this is true. The ego is necessary for survival…or it used to be. Feelings of dominion, the reservoir of rage, anger, greed, selfishness and fear which is the ego’s small domain, all contributed to help the genes survive, helped our ancestors live. But something happened. Our animal cousins must have no small measure of ego for we are not far from them and we did not arise from nothing. Maybe the difference is not one of intelligence but of perception. Somewhere along the way during our billions of years of journeying through time we boldly leapt from the peace of living in harmony to the dis-ease of living with the lie we are masters. Is this not the greatest evil, the very devil not just in your midst but embedded in the very core of your perception? The one who tells you you’re special, you’re different, you deserve more? And where has this gotten us as a species? Lonely, depressed, fractured, insane and desperate people who long for the peace of harmony but don’t even know how to ask for it.

There is one act of creation that has been given to us that is truly our Kingdom. And how blessed we are that it is the highest act of creation. This act of creation is love. It is our creative birthright, one we are all born with and all with equal capacity and measure. If everything we create is the result of and reliant upon the context into which we are born then truly the feeling of love is ours and ours alone. This feeling generated by the life which is yours can only come from within and is not dependent on nor does it answer to others. This is our only one and true creation, absolutely as unique as the individual. And what beauty! What grace it is to give and receive! Love, simple and pure and utterly profound. When it is unattached to the ego and selfless, as true love is - it serves to put the ego in its rightful place, as a servant to the higher Self. The result of the alchemization we undergo in the peace of love is communion. Understanding that we are no different than our brothers and sisters, that we are each inherently the same, children of the cosmos, which is what Father Sun in the sky reminds us of, a perfect circle, without beginning or end, ceaselessly giving off light and heat, always providing to everyone and everything without reservation or judgment. We are also children of our Mother Earth, all of us participants in the great web of life. The miraculous property of love is that it helps you realize you are not alone, you are not separate from the water or the trees nor indeed any living thing. When you see the world in this light, as it actually is, then you live in harmony because you are no longer perceiving yourself as outside this web, this magnificent system…we have a word for feeling outside this web of life and this word is hell. When one loves and removes themselves voluntarily from hell and it is voluntary and it can be done at any time for hell is an illusion, this separateness, it does not exist, even in the warrens of the most fetid city, we are still not separate, we are still tied to this web. But look what happens to this web when too many of us are living in hell, living out of the ego, sickness spreads to places we don’t even know about. Trees are felled. Mountains literally razed and waters rendered undrinkable and sterile with toxins. We need to claim our birthright and become the creators we are and live in harmony and love and this will mean we treat our cousins and brothers and sisters, the animal and plant life, with profound joy and respect for we would cherish them as our teachers and our providers and we would care for them as we care for ourselves, not look upon them as objects to be used as we will. Then there will be harmony and the deep peace that comes with it. Our waterways and air will be pure our forests will thrive because we will be thriving, in love and gratitude and honor.

Wild Beast

Wild Beast

You’re being stalked by a wild beast

If you stop and listen in the stillness

You can hear it sniffing the air

For your scent

When this beast catches your essence on the wind

Mingled with moss and trees

And the feathers of birds

It knows it will surely devour you

Don’t fight the inevitable

If you keep running

And trying to lose yourself in images

And the flickering desires they kindle within

You’ll only make it worse

The beast will flay you with such exquisite mastery

You won’t even feel it

And one day you’ll wake up and realize

You have no skin

And you’ll wonder how you managed to continue

Perhaps the heart isn’t subject to gravity

And it just keeps going in the direction it was set

The spirit is a master oarsman

Change direction

Get it over with

Follow the musty scent and low growl and

Throw yourself at your doom

Be torn to shreds by its great claws

Listen to the wisdom of its roar as you suffer

The ancient pains of dismemberment

And know it is your mind that cares

When it’s all over and the beast has done its work

Ask yourself

How can it be that I am still here?

I am no longer running because

I no longer have anything to protect

I am an empty vessel filled with bottomless love

Then you see the beast wears a mark

And this mark is your name

You come to understand this beast is your savior and ally

Because it only hungers for that which need not be

 

My Heart Radiates Desire In Waves

My Heart Radiates Desire In Waves

My heart radiates desire in waves that

Beat ripples of time

Filling the air with lines of energy

Don’t tangle!

Be strong and true

Like the arrows

Shot from a huntsman’s bow

Help me find my way to you

Help me hear your clear call

Through the obfuscating noise of

Confusion

Woven into the fabric of this Earth by

Minds enthralled by stories

Learned sitting at the feet of fear

Under the cold and insufferable

Light of reason

Blow through this tangled web we weave

Like a gentle breeze

Traveling through branches

Unhindered and free like water

Fill this humble sail

Made from scraps gathered from

True moments I’ve lived

Stitched together with sinew and time

Send me to you

So that I may drown myself

In your siren call

In Your Hands

In Your Hands

I placed myself in your hands
And didn’t even know it
Looking back
I realize
Your great hands rose up from the ground
And scooped me up
In your cornucopian fingers
Like a gardener does a small plant
Roots and earth and all

I walked a path
Through one of your untouched old places
The vibrations of trees pulsing in my chest
And rising up through my throat
The energy transformed by my being into song
I was so utterly taken
By the great woody beings
Who had stood through countless seasons
Over thousands of years
Adding ring upon ring of wisdom
To the great knobbed fingers

I, a mote to their sense of time
A passing shade flitting within their shadows
Found a quiet place and sat
And sang to you for love
And the woods bore witness
To the rushing of air
As I was swept up in your arms

The Discarded University

The Discarded University

It is a human birthright to live in a state of connection and grace. We are born with an innate ability to communicate and receive messages from our Creator. Some call it the Great Spirit, God, Nature, Buddha-thought, Gaea, Pachamamma…this energy, this all knowing and all loving energy is called by many names but all cultures agree as to where this energy resides and this place is in nature, untouched by human hands. This is rather obvious. Prophets and sages and seekers do not go into the canyons of Manhattan to commune with their Maker, they go out to the wilds, the old places where canopies have overspread the plants beneath and provided the wisdom of shade for thousands of years. This is where a direct line of communication can be established, where messages can be received, if the instrument is ready and sensitive enough. Pachamamma communicates through Her children, through the other life forms we share this Earth with. She sends messages through the plants and whispers to us through the sighing of trees, through the wind in leaves. Those of us who live in cities have been almost entirely cut off from communicating with our Creator. She has no messengers to send. The imprint of the human mind is everywhere. Hard asphalt covers dirt, buildings made in the image of the human mind with all of its shortcomings and constraints, boxy, inelegant, wasteful, crowd upon the eye and fill it to brimming with half-truths and blatant lies. The city as designed for buying and selling, growing rampant with the fertilizer of ego and greed and dire misunderstanding. Pachamamma has been driven out by the hubris of the ego, the false state of the mind that mistakes creation for its own. There isn’t a one of us that doesn’t know there is something drastically wrong. Not one of us is free from the nagging feeling the world we live in is terribly and catastrophically out of balance. We don’t need to do most of what we are doing. We need alignment and healing, we need the loving song of our Mother to bring us back, to reawaken us to what we are. Sacred, holy creatures put here in the ocean of time to learn, to experience and take our place in the great construct that is the expression of the Creator, the web of life. We are here to learn a single lesson and this is all. And how are we to learn if we’ve discarded the university? We’ve surrounded ourselves with a leaded box and are cannibalizing one another with the nightmares we’ve come to believe are true. For many, nightmares have become their birthright. This is false. We need to go back to the old, powerful places, open our senses, let go our false desires and fears, generated by this one-sided construct of the mind and go back to the multifaceted and energetic construct which was made for us. Our home. Our true place. It fills me with a sadness too deep and too hurtful for words to think we can not receive the messages intended for us. There is much to be learned from the singing of birds and the harvesting of fruit. Our true text is the book of nature. Our cousins are the plants and in many ways our progenitors for without them there would be no oxygen to breathe. And what insanity that we cut the trees down for profit. Truly they are our lungs, we are utterly dependent upon them for breath…and we cut them down. What dangerous self-destruction. What is truly frightening is that the Creator, Pachamamma will not be put aside, will not lick Her wounds in the last untouched places, no, She will resort to other means of communication to get through to us. Disaster, flood, famine, pestilence, suffering and war…these are all the products of not being in alignment, of cutting ourselves off from our teacher and savior, cutting ourselves off from the energy that loves us absolutely and made us perfect.