Photo montage by Noelle
“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.” -Richard Wright
Sustenance
Tag Archives: love
Spiritual Practice: Little Gem
Mystical autumn: Photography by Noelle
“The spiritual practice of love builds community, as do kindness and gratitude, and prayer. Try saying this silently to everyone and everything you see for thirty days and see what happens to your own soul: “I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future.” If we said it to the sky, we would have to stop polluting; if we said it when we see the ponds and lakes and streams, we would have to stop using them as garbage dumps and sewers; if we said it to small children we would have to stop abusing them, even in the name of training; if we said it to people, we would have to stop stoking the fires of enmity around us. Beauty and human warmth would take root in us like a clear, hot June day. We would change.”
Joan Chittister Taken from Spiritual Literacy, Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life by Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat
Explosion of Life
Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook page
I am an explosion of life
A quasar in a inky, black Universe
Demanding my light ignite the night
I give forth the cool spring fed spot in a warm summer lake
As the trout leaps to the dancing of the gnat
I am pregnant with the pregnant pause
Spinning wildly the eye of the storm turning as a dreidel
The gush of air on the inhalation before the soprano’s note
And the loud guffaw of the homeless man careening on the curb
I am a butterfly clawing out of the chrysalis
And the caterpillar spinning my cocoon
Dew drips from my leaves
Sparkling diamonds on spider’s web
As headlights flood the interstate
Sucking out silence, an undertow with no bottom
I am a hungry belly starving for sustenance
Through the eyes of the desperate man who sees the oasis
While the tigress drinks unafraid at the edge of the silent pool
The hand before it plucks the cord
The vibration of the piano key struck
Rose petals fall
As coffin lid clicks
Lifting up my eagle’s wings as I dash into the air current of love
Cracking like thunder with nothing but silence in my wake
I stretch beyond the hairs on the skin
My force felt as a blast from the great furnaces
Roaring into now
I am an explosion of life
Pooh: Little Gem
Bridge over Dutch Creek: Photography by Noelle
“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” Winnie the Pooh
Demand: A Little Gem
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
Exiting
Lone Leaf Beached: photography by Noelle
It felt good as done at the start. Bound, lost, no exit. Pressure to make a diamond lays on my mind. After all these years have I nothing? No smooth finish, but a stumbling out the door. Denial isn’t a river in Cairo, the old joke trails, but it is an immense watercourse in my mind. With Titan effort I withdraw and hibernate the winter. At first waiting for Godot. Then like driftwood, I surface upon a lone beach. No place to go. No direction suggests itself and after a bit, I can no longer sit. Crying. No warmth or comfort. I walk. Crying. Then walk with the most outrageous and worrisome yelling, before walking with no sound at all. First aimlessly, then with a longer stride. More determined, yet aware of what floats by me. Breath in, breath out. I no longer appear to be in any hurry. Anticipation taps at my heart. Single and free, alone on the beach. The expanse a welcome blanket and the endless sea it’s own serenade of the lover yet to come.
Inspired by The New York Times crossword puzzle: 3/11/2012. An exercise in creativity from Front Range Writers Room hosted by Marj Hahne
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
Little Gem
Free Google Photos
“Your task is not to seek for love, merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it.” Rumi
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
Night Hawk
Baby Cooper’s Hawk; Free Bing Photos
I hear the call of a young hawk in the twilight. It’s calling to it’s parents for food. It’s a distinct sound. Plaintive, persistent and young. It calls as if it has not eaten in days or with a sound one would associate with deep loneliness. But it is fed with great care by parents never truly out of sight. I have struggled, of late, to realize this is how I have been praying. Plaintive, persistent and with an immaturity difficult to face. It would be easy to allow this growing awareness to burn my wings and bring me down. Yet, the key piece of the analogy is the parent aloft and ever watchful. Equally persistence in it’s readiness to feed me what I need. My youthful demands do not change the parenting. It is steady, attentive and focused. I may pray like an eyas certain it will starve for food, but Source Energy patiently awaits and knows I am growing steadily into a great flyer.
Meditation Travelogue 
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