Tag Archives: letting go

Everest

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Mt. Everest: free Bing Photos

Mt. Everest: free Bing Photos

“The moment you are in now is the best moment you have ever lived”. The sentence has no qualifier. This moment now. Not two days ago or when that lottery ticket hits it’s impossible sequence of numbers. This moment now. Its one of those curious phrases that hangs in your brain on a coat rack of ideas. It has an odd potency like tea leaves read in the bottom of a cup. That phrase stands alone and crystal clear. This moment I am in right now is the best moment I have ever lived. Seriously, if that doesn’t stop your train of thought even briefly at Main Street and Spruce nothing will. This moment now.

You have to dig deep when you embrace it. It doesn’t merely suggest your adventure is happening now, it’s saying unequivocally that your ship has left shore, the sails are full and your sword is fully polished in its haft. Not a journey that’ll start with the promotion you’ve been vying for or the relationship you’ve been hungry to have. Whatever your luck, good, bad, indifferent it’s the best possible circumstances unfolding for you right now to make your story your own. More than this it suggests that the secrets to all the mysteries lie in this ridiculously loud, chaotic, poor, wealthy, busy, mundane, habitual, silent, lonely life you lead. “The moment you are in now is the best moment you have ever lived” is the genie in the bottle. The diamond found in a cardboard box. It’s Everest.

Home

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If pain, sorrow, regret, confusion or fear are appearing in your present experience right now, do not turn away, do not use the labels ‘dark’ or ‘negative’, do not assume any kind of cosmic deviation or ‘sin’. For these are sacred and intelligent life-movements, all, undivided from the vastness of creation, waves of the limitless ocean of Self. They are your beloved children, all, forgotten movements of yourself, longing for your warm presence – a moment of undivided attention. “Remember me!” they cry, one last time, and will you ignore them today? Or will you finally accept your birth right? Will you remember that everything you long for is already appearing, disguised as everything you reject?

Will you remember that you cannot be anywhere other than Home?” ~ Jeff Foster

Quicksilver

Posted on by Standard 2
Image re-posted from Enchanted Nature Facebook page

Image re-posted from Enchanted Nature Facebook page

Quicksilver glistening
To night eye of
Iridescent trails
In an ebony and indigo wood
Shimmering bark
Drips to worn paths
Made rivers of
An even deeper blue

Moon glow fills
A darkened soul
Bright as
Phosphorescent
Jellyfish in a
Black sea

Coyotes yelp
Plaintive calls across a field
Tricksters of the
Night kingdom
Romanced like I
To sing by silvery
Light

Beginner’s Mind

Posted on by Standard 3
Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook Page


Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook Page

I thought I was at center. I felt as balanced as a ballerina in Swan Lake. At the place of nirvana where cherry blossoms float down and the world smells of nag champa. Where you aren’t wrestling snakes in the evangelic’s circus tent, but sipping honey from lily cups. One of those cool Zen-catching moments that Ram Dass and Kornfield talk about as casually as the goodness of roasted potatoes at Sunday supper. You know when the sky opens as to Moses and you’re blessed with eternal peace. Then the horns blared and I looked at the dashboard clock. Funny how certain we can be about things, until we’re not.

Time. The time to get from here to there. It haunts me like a wolf. If I can let the time go then I’m catching Phoenix feathers and dropping into downward facing dog, a hawk swooping Earth. Hourglass snatches me up, though, and she is a mean old, nanny demanding I learn my lessons. Feels like someone should have mentioned that time is a whip cracking in your head that’ll be your undoing if you aren’t careful. Instead we are offered lovely chimes to mark it.

I thought enlightenment was a place, like Intercourse, Pennsylvania where it was always funny to touch that spot on a map. That with the right amount of effort and time I’d be there, properly dressed and ready for congratulations. The fattest, blissed out cat, in full lotus that ever walked through the doors of the Ritz Carlton of the Tao Te Ching.

Oh, all of the thoughts you have thunk, little grasshopper.

A work in progress from The Writer’s Church in Boulder, CO. Hosted by Marj Hahne. Inspired by “Elegance” by Fleda Brown.

Winter Sun

Posted on by Standard 4
Winter Sun: Photo by Noelle

Winter Sun: Photo by Noelle

Winterscape barren as white bones picked. Edges sharp, light and dark. No color and much shadow till it weighs the heart to stone. All life in movements of sugar dust winds at high speeds across the now crusted snow. Crows cling to power lines as cattle huddle on grassless slopes. It hurts to look. To wrap oneself tight feels the only comfort. A lonely hug in a bereft land, silent, but for the wind.

Willfully, I force the aperture open wider than nature allows taking in angled rays, piercing and yet strangely soft in brilliance. Hitting the retina at full force I refuse to blink. Face warming despite wild, moisture sucking winds I open my arms wide. An invitation I give; opened and exposed. The cold strokes my warm belly as if it were a lover. I tolerate the chilly caress with shivers to remind I am no fool. I wait, each breath a blacksmith’s billows, for all treasures want for my patience. Then it comes as she tips along the mountain ridge.

Diamonds alive in the snow. Pinks and yellows arc across the lens with halos in green. Sunlight refracts off tearing lids bouncing back with a light of my own. Pupils snap wide as the eyes see what was there, but ignored – a rich, cornflower colored blanket surrounding the Earth. A blue sky as deep as Spring waters and endless as a sea. The heart quickens. It feels life and nearly breaks in exaltation of a winter’s suns penetration down to the soul. Warming the optic nerve, a pulsating signal to a wintered heart. Quiet my soul has slept in the cold, dark hours of December, but the great orb offers her hand now to dance. How could any spirit refuse a winter’s solstice waltz? Surely, I cannot.

Silent Revolution

Posted on by Standard 3
Image and quote re-posted from Meditation Masters Facebook page

Image and quote re-posted from Meditation Masters Facebook page

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.” ~ Jim Morrison

Let Go: A Little Gem

Posted on by Standard 2
The Violin: A study in the formation of frost: Photo by Noelle

The Violin: A study in the formation of frost: Photo by Noelle

“Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you’re striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You’re already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, look in, let go.”
~ John Welwood

Let Them Run

Posted on by Standard 4
Re-posted from Enchanted Nature's Facebook page

Image re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page

I want freedom. Freedom from a tongue bound by convention. Freedom of thought that need not be harnessed back like horses wild. Let them run, I say. I want freedom of time that has no tick. No deadline. It belongs only to me. I am the boss who’s burning that midnight oil for inventions that build a life. My life. I want freedom of style as I slip on skinny jeans, GoGo boots and too much eyeliner. I want freedom of money, mullah, bank, green dogs braying with a jingling, jangling pick me up off my sad ass, hard times, hard luck self. I want freedom of space. Open plaines and wind swept deserts. Where I can walk a mile or ten in my crusty, beat up hikers and no one holds my line to any destination I desire. I want freedom of heart. Open it up wide as a storm gray clam glistening with sea water and pearls, while it still holds the grit I earned honestly. I want the freedom to love you. Love you as I take you into my skin, bury you deep in my belly and warm you up like mama’s stew. I want the freedom to open myself to possibilities and disaster. Good times and crazy adventure. I want freedom that only a bird knows. Alone, in a winter wood, with nothing but silence and every branch I own.

Work in progress from The Writing Church Writer’s group hosted by Marj Hahne, Boulder, CO. Inspired by the poem “What Do Women Want” by Kim Addonizio