Archive for April, 2010
As Easter Passes Us
As another Easter comes and goes, I think of life in the fast lane, which leads me to think of a time when my love and I were driving in the mountains. We needed to get somewhere and we were driving fast. Around a bend we entered a long straightaway, and suddenly we were bombarded by butterflies. We punched holes in great clouds of them, one after the other, as we continued on. Only after we reached our destination did we stop, look at each other and say, why didn’t we just pull over until they’d passed?
Were we momentarily asleep, temporarily out of the moment? Of course. After asking the question of each other, did we feel ashamed? Did we experience grief? Yes. Discouraged? Certainly. Ready to give up, admitting at last that, yes, humanity is doomed by our capacity for massive cruelty and slaughter? No. Not yet. Not ever.
Before
Why the sinking down at late day?
Before the will, there was always
A way, a way in or way out.
Before the match a world
To burn, before the barn
A field of wild grass and chickweed.
Before you, there were others,
So many you could not hold them
In mind. Before the mind
No trick mirrors, only wind, sun,
Stars and night, only these
To say all is well, and right.
To See and Hear
I couldn’t keep the damn glasses
clean. Kept wiping them and curs-
ing them. And my left ear was get-
ting worse. Those across the room
were shouting secrets behind a water-
fall. But I wasn’t ready. Kept wiping
the damn glasses. Kept trying to make
sense of things I couldn’t hear. I didn’t
feel stubborn. And I want so very much
to see and hear. Then after a long un-
folding, the cocoon my soul was eating
through gave way and I arrived in this
newness I can’t explain. Without put-
ting it all together, I realized it was
my eyes not the glasses. And the
waterfall was in my head. When the
optometrist flipped her lenses in the
dark, something deep inside let go.
When she reached the one through
which I could see, the tumblers in the
lock that is me fell open. When the
kind audiologist tucked the hearing
aid in my ear, the waterfall ceased. I
began to cry. Like the Wizard of Oz,
we become smaller and softer
when our curtain is pulled.
Dreaming
In the Life Artist color palette, dreaming is opening our Spirit intelligence up to “muse” with the Universal Intelligence. Dreaming in this context is less about our wish lists and fantasy lives and more about opening the portal of our consciousness to sacred time and space. In this place we allow our egos to rest in a way that too few of us from Western cultures are accustomed to.
We create with the Universal Intelligence instead of forcing or driving our desires to manifest. The three colors of Faith are dreaming, gratitude, and remembering. Dreaming is the color of Faith that initiates the creative lifecycle by opening our energy to the Universal Intelligence and allowing us to believe that there are compassionate and loving resources in the cosmos that are ready to collaborate with us and inspire our highest good.
When we allow ourselves to dream, truly “magical” things start to happen in our lives. When our consciousness is grounded in the trust of self and others, we are not grasping for things, or inclined to “fake” Faith. In the movie, “Bright Star,” based on the story of the poet John Keats, Keats’s character at one point says, to summarize, It may look we’re out in the fields doing nothing, but we’re actually courting our Muses.
As Life Artists, it is essential that we court our Muses, and dreaming is the pathway not only to invigorating your Spirit, but to saying “yes” to invoking the mystery rather than fearing it.
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