i have spent time in this life untangling the perceived hurts, emotional abuses and neglect brought to me through my familial life. i have spent time sorting through actions, and feelings, organizing them into categories, tagging them for reference and reliving them for intensity. i have spent time delineating who is responsible for what, when did it happen, and why am i holding onto it?
Time Bound, Time Framed, Wheel of Time
And today in this present my heart awakened and offered this to me:
i had the perfect parents, i had the best childhood, the best experience where everything unfolded as it should have done; where else would i have gone if not to the family in which i was born?
Life times of misapprehension, of distributing misunderstanding. Life times of offering dis-ease, dis-comfort and despair how could my arrival within this beautiful planet of gestation have been other than the wisdom present at the moment of my birth?
How else could i have gained the opening to a more generous, kinder, compassionate heart? It is with gratitude that i thank my mother and father for the gift of life incarnate. It is with gratitude that i finish this story’s end.
The Gentle Thought of Flight
Some Thoughts About The Anusara Debacle
The more I read about the “fall” of John Friend and the Anusara Yoga organization the more I sense that we need to focus some of our attention on the growth of Spiritual Capitalism and how that effects our understanding of what George Harrison so clearly wrote in “This is Love—[using] the power free to everyone…….”
I am not suggesting that individuals who have studied and have some expertise with these matters not be compensated, there is after all a tradition of supporting those who help others to achieve a clearer understanding of spiritual transformation, but we must make a distinction between this tradition of support and the profit motive.
One of the greatest weaknesses of Western culture is the ingrained story that someone is going to come along and make it better for us. We all pursue it one way or another and the effect of this kind of wishing is to create a condition where individuals abdicate their own destiny in favor of one object. This kind of approach is damaging all the way around particularly when it is wedded to a free market economy and the sacredness of private property whether it be a piece of land or a recreation of an ancient path into something that resonates to the present.
Let us be clear: NO ONE OWNS THE TRUTH
We all embody a bit of the divine and we all need each other to help us dig it out from within but that should not be cause to abandon our responsibility in favor of letting someone else express that divinity for us. By placing ourselves in a subordinate position to another who seems to be further along the path of realization than we are at that time, is to fall into an institutional framework that fosters inequality and misapprehension.
If we want to change the world through transforming our own understanding then we must respect the basic principles of spiritual unfoldment and be certain that our teachers do the same.
Standing Still Softly Sighing Singing Serenity
The Flutter of the Heart
Between the flutter of the Heart
a pause
a silence
An infinity
embracing
light
Wings spiraling
swirling
stardust
dancing
Matrices
mesmerize
Solar
wind
moving
Kaleidoscopic
Kore
lunar
breath
cresting
Growing
Expanding
Between the flutter of the Heart
11.6.2011 - EJJ
KoalaBodhi - There are no straight lines in the ocean
The Archaeology of the Soul: Digging the Inner Life
Installment #1
Spiritual work should not be taken lightly; not only is it hard work, it can be dangerous. I define spiritual work as the exploration of the inner self. There is a tendency when an individual first begins this kind of work to look for the magical part of the process. The path is strewn with interactive opportunities and everyone is attracted to one or another of these “gateways”. It could be a deck of Tarot cards, the I Ching, Astrology or the Urantia Book all of which contain the energy to ignite the impulse to explore a different level of consciousness. While all these tools are valid it is when we judge one to be of more value than another that we can lose our way.As the Buddha so aptly pointed out: everything is dependent on everything else.
During my senior year in high school, which ran through September 1967 to June of 1968, I was part of a unique group of explorers. We had discovered a book shop on State St. in Chicago aptly named the Occult Book Store. The owner of the store, Russel, not only provided rich new reading material of other perspectives on the universe but he was one of the first individuals that I had met who held an alternative view on how the world operated. While he introduced me to the idea that there were things hidden everywhere and that life could be read as a text the most important piece of the journey rested in the adage “KNOW THYSELF” because it was the key to all understanding.
I had just turned 17…..and I had no idea what I was doing. I thought, like most adolescents, that I had a pretty good grasp of what it all meant. I had the information, I could see the truth and I could pull others along with me as we went forth in our quest. It was that romantic. I imagined myself all sorts of archetypes that I embodied but I couldn’t quite imagine myself as myself because it was too painful to be me.
The problem with being young, intelligent and ignored is that it can lead to all sorts of questionable decisions that have real world consequences. I didn’t understand that a spiritual quest on the planet Earth necessitated being embodied on the planet and learning how to live and work with other people. My take on it rested on one simple pursuit: how do I get off the planet Earth? How do I disembark from the karmic wheel of pain and sorrow I had been born into? In the late 1960s there were plenty of ways which were attractive because they promised instant enlightenment and gratification. What could be more freeing than that? What consequences could there possibly be? I had the information all I had to do was leap over and through the gateway. What could go wrong?
Inner Whispers →
An outstanding guide and tool provider for those who journey forth to the Vibrant Compassionate Heart
STAR GODDESS
She was free falling through space. She sensed that she was at the beginning of her journey. She was at that moment when heat and light were coming together but had not yet met. The void still existed and yet its demise was eminent. She could see it all: the beginnings and the middles and the myriad endings of lives lived and lives longed for. She was poised, as a diver poises mid-air right before form and substance impact upon one and other.
She was the youthful huntress of a thousand dreams and wishes. The earth was hers as she ran silently through the lush temperate forests of her spirit. She played among the named and unnamed of creation. She was their protector and their light. Everywhere that she went she made her life known, her passing resounded from field to sky. No one knew of her existence, yet everywhere was her stamp of identity. She was the warrior maid, the explorer, knower and doer of infinite nights. She walked dreams and visions, but none could touch her or come upon her living being. She brought solace but she was not a comforter. She would listen to the tales told for and about her, but she let them slip through her wakefulness like water over rock. She would respond when her name was invoked but so quietly it felt like the breath of a whisper. She was a bit of silver against the glint of gold, and she was the soul of earth embodied within it.
She blossomed forth into her own fulfillment. She wrapped her arms around her young and brought forth more. She stood full bosomed and nurturing, the swing of her hips likened to the waves lapping along an ocean shore. She nested her young and attended to their needs lovingly and wholly as this was all she had ever done and ever would be. She brought forth joy from pain and knowledge from doubt. She understood the rhythms of those that surrounded her and imparted the unguent that would remove the sting from the wound of her brood. She would laugh and tell a good story, shedding light on obscure bits of lore and fashioning a garden from seeds others cast aside. She found joy in the dance and could be seen in the fields ripe for harvest twirling weaving her special magick, beckoning others to join her.
She became ancient, but never grew old, you could tell by looking into her eyes. She would begin slowly wrapping herself in a cloak as black as space itself as she walked the path between the dimensions defined by time. She was all knowing and all seeing still but more seasoned and cautious. She held within the life of her eyes all the wisdom of the ages that she had witnessed and would witness before and after she had begun. She would be feared as she took stock of all that was hers to survey. She would do what she had to, not out of malice but out of the need that creation itself called forth. For every action there is an equal and relevant reaction and it was her cause that urged her to look upon all that was done and would be done.
She was the Seer, the Knower, and the Doer. By many a name had she been known and in many ages had she brought forth and invoked the Great Cycle. In many more ages would she be misunderstood and then forgotten. As the cycle continued and continues she would be rediscovered and reinterpreted but she would always remain herself hovering in that moment before creation: Virgin, Nymph, Crone. The Spinner and Weaver of stories, the Mother that is left at the beginning of the journey and She who we return to when weary of our task. She stands at the center of creation itself reflecting the greater light of life, but she is not diminished by it because she is the light itself.
©Edna Jan Jacobs July 1, 2011
IN GRATITUDE
When I consider the people that I have known in my life who I met because of my deep need to experience the vibrant heart of compassion and immerse myself in its cascading flow, I can only bow in gratitude and wonder.
I began a spiritual quest in earnest in 1968 and since that time, through the many challenges that have made up my life, there has been much wisdom gained and ground covered. I have lived in many different types of communities: hippie, academic and spiritual. I have often felt rootless and disconnected but there has always been a truth to be discovered, an awareness, a wakefulness that I could never have obtained in any other way. Throughout my travels the people that I have met along the way have been unique and inspiring. Some of the accomplishments of those that I have met have rippled throughout the world in a grand and public manner. Others have quietly tended their life as the gentle currents of a stream carry away the seeds of their achievements. But they all share a desire to repair the world whether it be the one within or without and they have been animated in their passion by the compassionate heart.
Thank you, thank you to everyone. I am forever grateful. I could not have come this far without you and my heart vibrates with gratitude.
