"Sometimes when kindred souls touch, whether that is born through a physical or a virtual moment, the energy that binds is real and transcends anything that we can comprehend."
[W. Clyburn, 2008; from personal correspondence]
Showing posts with label heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heart. Show all posts
6 Oct 2011
ties that bind
2 Jul 2009
reminiscing
...We are participatory beings who inhabit a participatory reality, seeking relationships that enhance our sense of what it means to be alive. While we believe and cling to a perceived truth, we're unavailable to hear anything new.
Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen to the heart more carefully.
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all.
The idea of life is that we continually get the teachings that we need to open our heart. To the degree that we didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting our soft spot, how to stop armoring our heart, we're given this gift of teachings in the form of our lives, to give us everything we need to open further.
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness there is, how much space.
Unfortunately, gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us...
[22 APR '08]
Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen to the heart more carefully.
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all.
The idea of life is that we continually get the teachings that we need to open our heart. To the degree that we didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting our soft spot, how to stop armoring our heart, we're given this gift of teachings in the form of our lives, to give us everything we need to open further.
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness there is, how much space.
Unfortunately, gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us...
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25 Jun 2008
the gap between right and wrong/black and white
Is the connection we feel with other beings just a recognition of the oneness we all are a part of(?)...
I'm aware that when I help others it is in order to work on myself. Not as an egotistical act but, I work on myself in order to help others. We cannot ever escape the wholeness. We are it, it is us--Drops in a vast ocean of consciousness yearning to know itself.
Do I have clarity?... A part of me roils in pain while another me sees forever. My soul sees way further than the event horizon, while my heart is lost in the storms of emotion. So the short of it is, I do and I don't.
When we start out on a spiritual path we set ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in many ways. But in fact, ironically, experiences along my journey have helped me realize that life is about taking yourself completely as you are. Then, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are - to heighten our awareness of exactly where we're stuck.
Humans habitually erect a barrier, called blame, that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We invariably do that with the people who are closest to us, as well as with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better - Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect the heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in ourselves. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground - In the Gap Between Right and Wrong.
Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point, you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live - In the Gap Between Right and Wrong.
I'm striving to prevent myself from become undone by fear and trembling, while I take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening me. And all I see is illusion, while still clinging to the familiar, perceived truth. But only just.
I know that when we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
The clarity of black and white we can only hope to know for briefest of moments, as the pendulum stops to take a breath on its dive down through the endless shades of gray... till it reaches the other side, for another brief breath.
That is the clarity I see. For all of us.
Do I have clarity?... A part of me roils in pain while another me sees forever. My soul sees way further than the event horizon, while my heart is lost in the storms of emotion. So the short of it is, I do and I don't.
When we start out on a spiritual path we set ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in many ways. But in fact, ironically, experiences along my journey have helped me realize that life is about taking yourself completely as you are. Then, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are - to heighten our awareness of exactly where we're stuck.
Humans habitually erect a barrier, called blame, that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We invariably do that with the people who are closest to us, as well as with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better - Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect the heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in ourselves. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground - In the Gap Between Right and Wrong.
Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point, you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live - In the Gap Between Right and Wrong.
I'm striving to prevent myself from become undone by fear and trembling, while I take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening me. And all I see is illusion, while still clinging to the familiar, perceived truth. But only just.
I know that when we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
The clarity of black and white we can only hope to know for briefest of moments, as the pendulum stops to take a breath on its dive down through the endless shades of gray... till it reaches the other side, for another brief breath.
That is the clarity I see. For all of us.
[edited personal mail]
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13 Oct 2007
The chapter of a Buckle of Carnelian
Papyrus of Ani: Chapter CLVI
 |
| The Ptolemaic geocentric model of the Universe according to the Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris). |
At the end of the universe is a blood red cord that ties life to death, man to woman, will to destiny. Let the knot of that red sash, which cradles the hips of the goddess, bind in me the ends of life and dream. I am an old woman with more than my share of hopes and misgivings. Let my thoughts lie together in peace.
At my death let the bubbles of blood on my lips taste as sweet as berries. Give me not words of consolation. Give me magic, the fire of one beyond the borders of enchantment. Give me the spell of living well.
Do I lie on the floor of my house or within the temple? Is that hand that soothes me that of man or priestess? I rise and walk. The sky arcs ever around; the world spreads itself beneath my feet.
We are bound mind to Mind, heart to Heart -- no difference rises between the shadow of my footsteps and the will of god. I walk in harmony, heaven in one hand, earth in the other. I am the knot where the two worlds meet. Red magic curses through me like the blood of Isis, magic of magic, spirit of spirit.
I am proof of the power of god. I am water and dust walking.
From 'Awakening Osiri' from Papyrus of Ani, also known as 'The Spells of Coming Forth by Light' translated by Normandy Ellis (1988)
[Traditional translation of 'The Egyptian Book of the Dead' by E. A. Wallis Budge]
At my death let the bubbles of blood on my lips taste as sweet as berries. Give me not words of consolation. Give me magic, the fire of one beyond the borders of enchantment. Give me the spell of living well.
Do I lie on the floor of my house or within the temple? Is that hand that soothes me that of man or priestess? I rise and walk. The sky arcs ever around; the world spreads itself beneath my feet.
We are bound mind to Mind, heart to Heart -- no difference rises between the shadow of my footsteps and the will of god. I walk in harmony, heaven in one hand, earth in the other. I am the knot where the two worlds meet. Red magic curses through me like the blood of Isis, magic of magic, spirit of spirit.
I am proof of the power of god. I am water and dust walking.
⊕
From 'Awakening Osiri' from Papyrus of Ani, also known as 'The Spells of Coming Forth by Light' translated by Normandy Ellis (1988)
[Traditional translation of 'The Egyptian Book of the Dead' by E. A. Wallis Budge]
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