Waterways: photo collage, by Noelle
“Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.” -Carlos Castenada
Pathways: A Little Gem
Tag Archives: freedom
Alphabet Soup
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
Spirit Water
Urban Flow: Photography by Noelle
My spirit moves as water.
Fluid and full at a trickle as a gush.
Evaporating in the hot sun, yet frozen as the lake I stand on in muddied boots.
Permeable while demanding as a slap.
Softly infiltrating the skin and wearing my mind round as sea stones.
I pull nutrients from life as the salt water robs the drift wood white.
There is weight in my thoughts.
The settling of sediment of a thousand lifetimes on the reef of gray matter entrenched to the floor of my skull.
And still, I seep into the crevices of dams built long ago. Working steadily and freeing it all a duck feather swirling round in the eddy.
My spirit moves as water, influenced by a divine moon.
Above piece inspired from “New Organism” by Andrea Rexilius
Little Gem
“Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don’t necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk.” Diane Frolov
Spilled Milk: Photography by Noelle
Then Nothing
Reblogged from Ed Strachar Healer/ Bruce Cuse artist
The woodpecker strikes the metal roof vent
It rattles persistently in the early dawn
Then nothing
I listen more closely
I extend my hearing into the nothing
The silence is noisy
There is a whirring of the Universe ever present
A dove coos, distantly
Then nothing
My thoughts move the same way
Bills to pay
Then nothing
Work project memo to send
Then nothing
My thoughts are their own eco-system
The woodpecker strikes
So deep now, the rattle doesn’t register
Then nothing
I push my hearing even farther
I am listening for the pin drop
on a whale’s back
Off the coast of Nova Scotia
Then nothing
There is a whirring of the Universe ever present
If I allow it
It will lull me into peace
Little Gem
Continental Divide: Photography by Noelle
“EVERY path may lead you to God, even the weird ones. Most of us are on a journey. We’re looking for something, though we’re not always sure what that is. The way is foggy much of the time. I suggest you slow down and follow some of the side roads that appear suddenly in the mist.” Real Live Preacher
Untethered Boat
Free Bing stock photos
Today, I send into your meditation an untethered boat. It drifts in the early morning on a slow moving river, just off shore of a small dock. Bits of fog come and go and the sun is not quite up yet. You see glimpses of the opposite shore with trees and brush, but it fades in the mist as quickly. The oars rest in their locks at your feet. Your inclination is to pick them up and row. Row out onto the river and see where it goes or row back to shore and the dock. Three beliefs arise with this plan. The first, is to validate the belief that you must “do” something to get “somewhere”. The second is to affirm the belief that “effort” is also required to reach some destination. It may seem as if “doing” and “effort” are the same thing, but they aren’t actually. Doing means activity and busyness that may or may not take effort or yield any meaningful results. Effort means work, exertion, and definitely implies hoped for results.
What if you didn’t pick up the oars? If you simply let the boat drift in the morning mist? This brings us to the third belief. Can you believe in the river? Trust in its swiftness? Trust that it is going in a direction you wish to go? Trust that the scenic route, will, in fact, deliver the scenes you wish to see? Today, ponder what would happen if you let go of the doing, the effort, and the need to know where it’s all going. What would happen if you just let it all go and drifted on this slow moving river, in an early morning mist, with no idea where you are going at all?
Great White Crane
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
Kite Flyers
Stained glass at Living Arts Center Denver: photography by Noelle
How the mundane mimics the divine….
The little boy dances around his father in the late afternoon sun
The kite rises in the strong wind and he squeals with delight
Then, it pitches and slams into the ground
All movement stops in his little body
Arms drop to his side
Face crestfallen
He turns to his father who reassures
It’s okay
Just a downed kite
It will fly again
Pick it up and toss it into the wind
It will fly
So he does
And it sores, tail whipping like a dragon
The currents of the Universe are strong
Pick up your kite and throw it back into the wind
It will fly
It will sore
It’s tail will whip the sky like a dragon
Luna
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
Meditation Travelogue 
You must be logged in to post a comment.