Rumi: The Book of Love

If you have not yet acquired a copy of Rumi's Book of Love, I urge you to do so now. This is the pinnacle:
From: "Where You Love From"

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes
this art.

Religion

"Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking". Dean William R. Inge

I find this quote a profound statement and agree with it wholeheartedly. It seems to me that those among us who feel compelled to "evangelize" their religious beliefs and invest tremendous amounts of energy into converting the unconvinced (or the merely content) is a folly of grand proportions and I can't help but wonder about the basic insecurity in one's faith if one needs the validation of others in order to feel safe and secure and "right" in that faith.

As a neo-pagan, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Taoist, I believe that my greatest gift to the world of faith is to simply walk in the ways of love and compassion and pray for balance and harmony, for myself, for others, for the world. I don't believe in sin, I find it a silly and immature notion. I do believe in Karma, but I don't believe it sneaks up on us and whacks us over the head for something we did or didn't do in a previous incarnation. For me, the most important thing in the ways of faith and religion is to keep things as clear and clean as possible. It's important to finish each day and be done with it. It's important to forgive myself, and others, fallibility and humanity. I'm quite fond of John Lennon's "Instant Karma":

"...Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Eve’ryone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you'’re eve’rywhere
Come and get your share"


Why on earth am I here? For the same reason I've been "here" over and over: I'm a healer, and according the the Buddhists, what I am is what I will be and what I will be is what I have always been: a healer and at 47 years old I'm beginning to understand just what gift I have been given; an ability to see the pain and hurt and disease in others and with that ability, a desire to do something about it, through acts of love and prayer and song. I am so deeply grateful for the people who come my way, and for the gift of being a force of healing for myself, and for others.

For this I am truly, deeply grateful.

Connie

Intuition

"Intuition is the treasure of a woman's psyche. It is like a divining instrument and like a crystal through which one can see with uncanny interior vision. It is like a wise old woman who is with you always, who tells you exactly what the matter is, tells you exactly whether you need to go left or right. It is a form of The One Who Knows, old La Que Sabe`, the Wild Woman."

****
" Ask within for her advice
She is the Mother of the Ages
Nothing surprises her.
She has seen it all."

Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Women Who Run with the Wolves

I do not have permission to use this quote. If I have offended, I apologize. It seems to me the information is important enough to be desseminated in whatever means seem appropriately intentioned.

For this I am grateful,
Connie

Sit down write

Live. Love. Life.
Sit. Down. Write.

What I accomplished this week

There is no Time

Time No Longer Exists.
Whatever moments are stolen
and spent in your presence
prove only to reveal greater
mystery
In matters of heart and soul
body and mind and passion
and ultimately,
a peace that permeates
every cell of my being.

For this I am deeply grateful.

Connie

Falling in Love with Rumi

I have long endeavored to seek out the poetry of Rumi and haven't until this weekend laid my hands or mind on his writings. I purchased Rumi The Book of Love just the other day and have fallen completely in love with his art. The love he writes of is the love of God, but it all rings fairly true on this more temporal and painfully human plane.

Where You Love From

Look inside and find where a person
loves from. That's the reality
not what they say.

Hypocrites
give attention to form, the right
and wrong ways of professing belief.
Grow instead in universal light.


When that revealed itself, God gave it
a thousand different names, the least
of those sweet-breathing names being,
the one who is not in need of anyone.

~~~~~~

You've so distracted me,
your absence fans my love.
Don't ask how.

Then you come near.
"Do not...," I say, and
"Do not...," you answer.

Don't ask why
this delights me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says,
"I know you're tired,
but come, this is the way."

~~~~~~~~

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this love to anyone?

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.

What I Believe

philosophy...I really like the teaching of the Theosophy Society...they have taken the basic truths of many spiritual and psychological teachings and made it all make sense! Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz was a member and the articles that dissect and analyze that story are truly illuminating. I am a great fan of Carl G. Jung archetypes and collective unconscious. As much as I am able, I try to interpret life experiences on the symbolic, rather than literal level. I believe we are here for one reason: to learn how to unblock illusion into the true reality that our souls are hard wired to experience love. Period. I believe that love is the most powerful magic wand on the planet. I believe it is possible to love freely, fully and without attachment. The journey of the soul is a solitary walk back to God, and although we are all capable of being channels of Divine energy and light, if we have blocked off different areas of the body (chakras), then that energy can't flow and we get stuck and can't move out of suffering. So our soul work is to heal our wounds and open our hearts to one another and allow that energy created when two souls merge to move out into the universe and fly around creating more healing.

Jumping off Cliffs

One of the gifts of grace and faith is the courage to take risks. I have been jumping off a series of perilous cliffs in the past several months, and although I've experienced some bumpy landings and even a crash or two, I am whole, I continue to heal and my heart continues to break further open, releasing and receiving more love.

I can't explain why I was born into grace, I just was. There are very often sign posts right at the edge of the spiritual precipice I find myself on the edge of. Some are silly signs, and I can't even believe I've found my way to this particular ledge, but there I am, too lazy to turn back and so I jump and the flight begins.

My parachute is faith in the abiding power of love and it is strong indeed. I have carried and held more than one fellow traveler who leapt with me over the edge. I have been carried and protected when my chute didn't open. For these gifts I am truly grateful.

Namaste`,

Connie

Tree of Life

My beloved

This from my beloved, in a day of troubling times:

"My soul reaches out to you in the deepest love."

Holding the 4th Chakra

I haven't written about Chakra's in awhile, but that doesn't mean I don't experience my life through them everyday. I am currently pondering the lesson of how to hold others in my heart rather than give my heart away. It's just so difficult to not come unhinged when walking around with your love center outside of your body. So, how do I learn the practice of letting others in and flowing love out, without my guts lurching because I can't keep my love in my body? I've have habitually given it away! This is a huge test for me and I don't know who the teacher is, but I'm ready for him/her if you're out there. I have faith that the answer will be revealed to me in due course. And then I can go about being a more effective healer because I'll be keeping that power in my body. That's my hope anyway.

Healing with an Open Heart

I continue to grow as a healer. I have been called to minister to the dying by singing to them. It is a deeply profound experience each time I do it. I recorded my first experience with George several posts ago. The second time I sang to a woman named Martha who died within ten minutes of my singing. I had sung, then left the room as her hospice worker checked on her. When I returned she was gone. Let me tell you that it was a profound affirmation that I had found a new calling. I sang to Ann on Sunday. She died yesterday. I sang to Shippie yesterday, and I hope she lingers on this earth longer, so I can spend more time with her beautiful spirit and loving presence. I don't mean to make it seem like it's about me, it is not, but I do seem to have the essence to bring a peace and calm into a room and embrace death with open arms.

I have grown in my own ability to love, to open my heart and to risk having it broken, over and over, if necessary, because an open heart is a vulnerable thing, and I continue to survive heartbreak and then always, I'm rewarded with some amazing new treasure, once my tears have dried, that elevates my spirit to a new level. I have learned that we must approach the wounded in what ever language they are fluent in, and then allow the love to flow out of us into them. I have learned that love is NOT give and take, it is only give: and give, and give. I take comfort in the knowledge that when love received makes it way back, it will undoubtedly be transmuted and tranformed into something more beautiful than anything we could recognize as originating from self, because in fact, it didn't originate from you or me at all, for we are only channels; the conduits of grace God chooses to broadcast the message through. For this I am ETERNALLY grateful!

Romantic Nihilism?

I met the most fascinating young man this week. We got into a philisophical conversation and I'm just speechless over his self-definition as a romantic nihilist. I've thought about it a lot and am still at the "isn't that an oxy-moron"? phase. What are love and a life with no meaning doing in the same definition? I DON'T GET IT! But then again, what second sight shows me is a heart with scars, a brilliant mind with a penchant for philisophical wanderings and desire to make sense of a chaotic world, where none of the institutions held dear in our society hold any real value for morality or ethics or anything to beleive in. I also see an artist who, if he were actively creating, would find meaning and purpose to his life.

Romantic: "inclined toward or suggestive of the feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love".

Nihilism: "the rejection of all moral and religious principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless."

What is even more intriguing to me, is the life journey that leads to an embrace of a philosophy that says, "there's nothing here that's important, this whole thing is meaningless". What led the "gen next" generation to an apathetic response to this gift we call life? How much effort does it take to be cynical? Any more effort than it does to live a passionate and self-directed hopeful life? Romantic Nihilism is rocking my world, I'm telling you.

And this is my question: if you found out on the last day of your life that everything you said, did and thought had tremendous meaning, how would you spend the last day of your life??

May all be honored in their quest for meaning in this life.

Connie

Response to Singing to the Dying

The following is excerpted from a longer message received today from a neighbor and friend. His daughter drown last June. She was 22 and a young mother.

"Reading your essay on singing for the dying has got me thinking. It got me thinking what I wouldn't give to sing to my daughter when she left this world. I would give everything I have and everything I will have to have been able to sing her to heaven.

Instead of singing though ... what I got to do is take her out for a scrumptious meatball sub the day before she died and have lunch with her and listen to her excitedly tell me about her new job. And listen to her protests when I slipped her some cash because as a young married couple I knew they needed the money.

I got a huge big hug when I dropped her off and I got to poke her in the sides and make her jump one last time like I always did for some strange reason whenever she hugged me hard. I got to hear her tell me that she loved me and would call me later as we she walked away.

No I didn't get to sing in her ear and hold her hand as she left this world but I guess we all have to take what we can get and for that I am ever grateful."

Who would you like to be singing to as they die, inviting them to gently let go to the sound of music? Call them, write to them, rollover and tell them you love them.

Namaste`,
Connie

There are No Words, Only Love

To my Beloved: there are no words, only love that leaves me speechless.

Happy Valentines Day

Namate`
Connie

The Disappearing Walls

When I was pre-school age, I had my first mystical experience. My sister Kim and I shared a bedroom in a huge Victorian house on Plum St. in Santa Cruz. It wasn't a place we lived in for long, but for a couple of years we did move around alot, apartments I mostly remember, one in Mtn. View even, where my innocence was stolen at a tragically tender age. I remember the sash tearing on my red velvet and chiffon dress with the embroidered cherries on the bodice. I LOVED that dress. I identified with that dress and when it was no longer whole, I began to forget a lot. Memory is such an illusive friend.

So, in the Victorian house one night, I woke up to a house with no walls. I could see through the entire first floor, into each room, and they all seem empty and dark. I have been trying to make sense of this apparition for over 40 years. Today, I got it. I was given the ability to see what isn't there, the sight to see beyond the walls that people build up around themselves. I see through to the heart of people, that's what the vision has been teaching me all these years. And that's probably why I tend to scare folks with my intensity. I don't mean to, it's simply a result of my type of sight. Kind of like a blood type: Open Sight.

The really strange thing was that the next morning, when I woke? The chest of drawers that stood between Kim and my bed was turned so that the back was facing my bed, the front facing hers, thus obscuring my view of her. And that is probably a pretty decent metaphor for the journey Kim and I have been on. I've never understood her and have only just begun to see through to her heart, which, like mine, was broken at a very early age when our father left us. I'm grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with and share love with my only sister.

Baby in a Buffalo Stampede

I had my first spiritual/philosophical crisis at about age five, in the grocery store dairy aisle. I remember stopping dead in my tracks and thinking, "how can it possibly be that we are born, we live, and then we die? That can't be all there is to this life thing." I don't remember sharing that question with anyone, and perhaps if I had, someone might have gotten a clue that I was not an average kid. But that isn't how my childhood went. I didn't know anyone who asked deep spiritual questions, and certainly didn't have access to people with ANSWERS to deep philosophical questions and thus became lulled into a spiritual apathy that took me years to wake up from.

My sister and I spent many a weekend afternoon in front of the television. We had the first color t.v. on our block in the early 60's but old movies weren't filmed in color so I have memories of watching black and white westerns on sunny afternoons in Santa Cruz, again, lulled into an apathetic, passive approach to a day off in a beautiful coastal town, just a half a block from the beach; there you could find Kim and I, splayed out on the sofa watching T.V.

I have a very specific memory of a snippet of film, several frames long: an infant native indian baby on the ground in the midst of a buffalo stampede. This memory is so vivid, so profound, that it has taken on archetypal meaning for me, wildly symbolic of the state of grace that we are all born into. I know nothing else about the movie, no plot, no time frame, nothing. But the image of a swaddled baby in the dusty center of a buffalo stampede, wailing and squalling has stayed in my conscious mind all these years. I've always wondered how to find out the name of the film, in order to find out the overall context of this deeply profound spiritual memory from my childhood.

What happened to the baby? I don't recall from the film, but I've always assumed she miraculously survived.

What it is to see.

I have begun to ponder the concept that sight is a construct that can only be described as innately personal. Color-blindness, for instance, how is a man with color-blindness ever going to understand what it is for me, to see vast numbers of colors, some of which may look entirely different to me than to any other individual? My eyes are brown, does that mean that I see shades of brown that green eyed people don't see? Wouldn't it be cool if I could see the world out of your eyes for a day? Wouldn't that tell me everything I need to know about you?

In the world behind my eyes, all colors are visible and when I close my eyes, and focus on my third eye I get a dot of purple, that shifts to green and back to purple. What do you get when you close your eyes?

Caroline Myss quote

"If I could place one jewel of inspiration in your soul, it is to tell you that every thing you do, say, think, feel, and all of your actions - are channels for grace in this world. You are a channel for and of grace. I wish people could experience the truth of that statement for just one second. Treasure your life and the gift of life on this planet. We are all we have..."