Tag Archives: beauty

Demand: A Little Gem

Posted on by Standard 4
Four Quarter Moon: Photographic collage by Noelle

Four Quarter Moon: Photographic collage by Noelle

“There is a very simple secret to being happy. Just let go of your demand on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. Your demands keep you chained to the dream state of conditioned mind. The problem is that when there is a demand, you completely miss what is now. Letting go applies to the highest sacred demand, and even to the demand for love. If you demand in some subtle way to be loved, even if you get love, it is never enough. In the next moment, the demand reasserts itself, and you need to be loved again. But as soon as you let go, there is knowing in that instant that there is love here already. The mind is afraid to let go of its demand because the mind thinks that if it lets go, it is not going to get what it wants – as if demanding works. This is not the way things work. Stop chasing peace and stop chasing love, and your heart becomes full. Stop trying to be a better person, and you are a better person. Stop trying to forgive, and forgiveness happens. Stop and be still.”
~ Adyashanti

Re-posted from Be Here Now an Insight Timer App community

Alphabet Soup

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Hidden River: Photography by Noelle

Hidden River: Photography by Noelle

After their all gone, I find I’m still here
Bound to earth a regular oak in the field
Captured in this moment a
Dog with her bone
Even the clock ticks slower than a
Frost’s melt
Goaded by the weight of
Hampered grief in my chest
I stand in the quiet, deciding?
Jump back in or dally
Kicking the cat
Love is at the center of all this, even as
Misery runs me down in
Narrow alleys that smell of
Old fish and over sweet
Poppies
Quit your begging at
Rama’s door, I say to the mirror
Salvation is in your
Tight belly – hungry for
Unity a
Volcanic sound blasting
With the power of
Excalibur
You are grace and beauty at the
Zenith of a transformation you command

This Abecedarian was created in the Front Range Writer’s Room hosted by Marj Hahne

City Walk

Posted on by Standard 4
Photo collage: City Pavement

Photo collage: City Pavement: Photography by Noelle

I walk along the Hudson river in Manhattan near my brother’s home. Cicadas are singing in the trees. Sail boats are on the water and today there is a good summer breeze. A father speaks to his son in a language I don’t recognize and the boy squeals with laughter, a language we all know. Two women jog past, sweating and talking about stock trades while four girls ride pink and purple bikes ahead of me. There is a group of East Indian men speaking in excited voices about something in a soccer game on a park bench. A large and very loud, woman covered in tie-dye down to her sneakers offers me jewelry, as an elderly man taps his way up the stairs with his cane behind her. Two men kiss by the water’s edge and a boxer’s head suddenly protrudes from a bush looking for a stick.  I hear the cicadas again in the trees randomly vibrating their timbrel membranes which make those distinct vibrating sounds we all know in summer. It’s like a musical back drop to all these people moving in and out like the waves on the river. More peaceful than the band playing on the speedboat that bursts by, but louder and more strident than the homeless man who speaks ceaselessly in a whisper to no one in particular. I smell the lilies in the garden boxes and fresh cut grass. I stop. A tendril of hair moves along my cheek. All of us are living our lives from cicadas to the homeless man. Each life as dense with events, mundane or exotic, as each seeks out. Every single one unique. Nothing is the same. Not each living thing, not each second that unfolds. That butterfly has never moved or landed on that hibiscus, with the light coming off the water like it is doing right this moment before. That’s why it’s all about The Now. Every second is a snowflake. A divine finger print that is like no other.

Great White Crane

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I feel the lapping at the farthest reaches of my mind from a stone thrown centuries ago
Cracking barriers like a dam giving way
It is more effort to hold in, than to break loose
I have nothing to hold onto
Bits of sand and dust
Everything to give
What is this resistance really?
Rubber band girl
It is plain to see that with what goes out only more floods in
A dam letting loose a rivulet that becomes a stream
A river to a great delta water course gushing into the bay
That opens further to an even greater ocean
There is no purpose to these chains that bind when I have only love to give
Let it rain until the floods have washed even the mud away from my feet
I walk freely in the reeds, a great white crane

Sandhill Cranes: re-posted from Bing photo of the day by Patrick Frischknecht of Aurora Photos

Sandhill Cranes: re-posted from Bing photo of the day by Patrick Frischknecht of Aurora Photos

Kintsukuroi

Posted on by Standard 2
Dead leaf beauty. Photography by Noelle

Dead leaf beauty. Photography by Noelle

Engulfed by grief I am driven to my knees, until back bent I am little more than a sapling in a hurricane.

Raging, fists to the sky with hunger for death in my heart I pace the hours certain of Divine betrayal. I am Shiva, Goddess of death. Blindly I plot tales of woe poor sirens must be calling to me from the deep. What wretchedness creeps into my soul as I tediously survey my faults, mistakes and missteps; no less a miser at his ledgers. There is no light. I am crawling in gravel up a mountain with no visible peak, but miles of trails that lead no where. I am confused. I am deluded. I am lost.

Still. Still. Time moves grief as a plowman’s mule. Bloodied knees always heal.

All wisps of smoke curling up into the ether now. Formless fog fading down the river of my life. The moment the last breath left my lungs it was already dead and gone, buried as my ancestors in dirt holes. Air fills the vacuum of my fading past, sweet and new.

When did I leave the bridge? What was the step that took me to the other side?

Kneeling to my sorrow now I dance to my joy. Swirling round and round free as the leaf floating on the current. The sorrow has ripped out my moorings it would seem. I drift with the river and worry not where it goes. I have already been where I could not go. With the hunger and vigor I gave freely to my rage I embrace the beauty of my life. I run with pounding heart captured by the power of my body no longer weighed by death and dark shadows. The mountain has gained no peak, but a fool’s laughter is heard along the trails.

Life, anyone’s life, is an endless sea of choices. Sing my hardy voice of love or hear it crack in the silence to a whisper.

Spit and shine, tarnish be gone. I am liquid silver, glinting in the sunlight.

Fresco

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Unknown source or origin

Unknown source or origin

Chips of concrete
Rock falling and plumes of dust
I look, an old fresco
Rich colors, now fading, cracks and missing pieces
Empty spots appear and within them – light
Iridescent, pulsating, alive

Pick in hand I hack
Cut
Smash
Tear at the image
Trails of rubble

I am not Gretel

I will not
Be following this
Trail back to anything
I once was

Step back
Ahhhh
How I’ve hungered for her
Glowing like the midnight sun

Luna

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Super Moon taken July 23rd by Leilani May in Denver, CO. Thank you for letting me share, Leilani!

Super Moon taken July 23rd by Leilani May in Denver, CO. Thank you for letting me share, Leilani!

If you meditate and have not checked out the Insight Timer App you should. It is certainly a fine timer to use while meditating but that isn’t what makes it awesome. It’s the connection to people meditating world wide and the various meditation groups you can join. Great way to build a habit of meditation and connect with people in a beautiful global sangha.

Most recently, Juan Crocco of Santiago, Chile sponsored a meditation event around the Super Moon at Summer Solstice. It was an extraordinary event where individuals from Tasmania to Nova Scotia shared pictures of the moon and spiritual community. The following poem I wrote for the event. The beautiful, super moon photo was taken by my fellow Insight Timer friend and wonderful colleague Leilani May.

Luna, Luna, Luna
You call to my lupine heart
And pump my blood, an immense ocean
With powerful tide
Divinely rolling into shore

Luna, Luna, Luna
I sing to your celestial body
Awash in the love of your heavens
And enchanted by the world you
Reveal to my lover’s eyes

Luna, Luna, Luna
At once, I become the hunting owl in the elm
And the mouse scouting for seed
The deer moving softly within the briar
And hare whose ear twitches
To fox’s stealthy approach

Luna, Luna, Luna
You awaken my sense of Mother Earth
Her thrumming, steady beat
Which taps my palm, little more than a moth’s wing
As my hand grazes the long grass stalks
That glisten silvery green in your moonlight

Luna, Luna, Luna
I sleep no more in this dream world
My vision has become as sharp as a nighthawk
I feel a mystery moving within me
Only to realize you have
In this dark night
Lit up the luminous nature of my spirit
For me to see I am the mystery

Luna, Luna, Luna
I sway in your pearly glow
A dancer alive in the field
I am a living galaxy twirling in your wake
My body a night shadow
As mystical as monks moving
By candlelight to whisper their
Midnight vespers

Luna, Luna, Luna
Feel my spirit reflect your brilliance
For I, too
Am a celestial being rising into the heavens
To light a comet’s trail for all to see

Luna, Luna, Luna
You call to my lupine heart
And pump my blood, an immense ocean
With powerful tide
Divinely you send me back out to sea

Luna, Luna, Luna