Archive for June, 2011
Michele McHall video: What is the Whole IQ?
In this clip, Michele talks about the connection between awakening the Whole IQ: Spirit, Heart, Mind, and Body intelligences and the relationship to the four quadrants in our brain. As we develop our awareness and capacity to understand and live from the whole brain, we generate more connections, possibilities and intimacy because we are less likely to be entrenched by strength our dominant intelligence or submerged in the reactivity of our more vulnerable ones.
So You Feel
You are at the bottom of a deep well.
You’re tired of breathing dank air,
Fed up with the close, damp walls and the dark
And so out of patience with yourself.
But with the little surge that’s left
In your flashlight look down at your bare feet.
Honestly, are there two
More exquisite feet in the wide world?
Close your eyes. Imagine your honey-colored hair
Diving into space like a waterfall in sunlight.
Your long fingers are grace notes. Your arms
And legs embrace and make way through the forest.
Your navel is earth’s core, the sky’s yearning.
Your throat is the gift of a sacred swan.
And your eyes? They are always casting spells.
Even now, gazing to heaven, an oaken bucket
Appears to gather you up and hold you close
And return you to the bright good day.
Thrown Back
Twenty years ago today, the tumor growing in my skull vanished and I was thrown back in the streets like Lazarus. Today the rain is a fine mist and I open my face for a long time, till I remember again that it is skin receiving water from the sky. After twenty times around the sun, all I can say is perhaps falling in love with the world is the bravest thing we can do. I only know that my heart grows stronger every year, a muscle gaining each time I love. This beautiful rush of life is all we have and still we struggle to get out of it. Like fish we labor to make it to the sand as if that shore were Heaven. And if thrown back, we can grow bitter when we think we’ve failed but humble when we can accept that waking tomorrow in all of this is being saved.
More of the Same
The tomorrow I’d so looked forward to was like that—more of the same. No door opened, revealing a golden path of light. The person I hoped to hear from remained silent. The mail I’ve been anticipating for weeks failed yet again to arrive. A contract fell through. The advice I eagerly sought wasn’t forthcoming. Support systems seemed fragile, barely existing at all.
Meanwhile, the sun ramped up its activity, more boldly announcing its lion-like, summer self. Come August, just a few short weeks away, the temperature will approach or surpass 100 most days. This past week, we’ve all felt it coming, and yesterday I noticed the first signs that the green hills will soon be yellow.
The world’s windows are always opening despite our assumptions, desires, and disappointments. The magic we’re a part of but only tune in to sometimes happens all around us and in us. Even when we don’t think so, it’s saving us, restoring and encouraging us onward.
This summer I’m often going to be contemplating the slippery balance between closed doors and windows opening. Yes, doors and windows can form the basis of an excellent equanimity practice, reminding us that we are always going. No matter what condition we are in, we are always going.
To where? For what reason? Be open to any and all answers.
May your balance be as supple and as sure as you need it to be.
My Own Path
I was born with the ability to see in metaphor. This has been my inborn way of relating to the one living sense. From the earliest age, the world has spoken to me in this way. The analogous relationship of things has called, not in words, but in a silent language that has somehow shown me, however briefly, the web of connection under everything. This gift is a function of presence; that is, when I am present enough, metaphors appear. They are my teachers. All of my poems are just notes from these teachers. Seeing how things go together sustains me. The moment of such grasping is like a synapse that is fired and life-force is released. Presence and time are servants of light. In this, enlightenment is an experience, no matter how brief, of the light within coinciding with the light in the world. In moments of enlightenment, like moments of poetry or love, we both lose who we are and sustain who we are. In such moments, we are sent back into ourselves illuminated.
The fact that I have lived a life as a poet is testament to my friendship with metaphor. That the life of poetry has exposed itself as a life of spirit is testament to my friendship with the connectedness of all things that metaphor exists to praise. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if we write it down or not. The true poetry happens the instant the metaphor is seen. The rest is blessed labor to make the invisible visible. So after a lifetime it’s clear that the human form of light is love which only presence and time can comfort into being. The way immense sunshine and heat cause the light within a seed hidden in the earth to seek its own nature and somehow break ground.
So my own path of listening has led me here. For much of my life has been devoted to staying in conversation with everything around me—with the mystery, with God or Source, with the rivers of change, with you. As I get older, I long even more for the wisdom and companionship of other living things; to stay in conversation with all I love, with all I admire, with all who have suffered and given of themselves to stay alive and to keep life going. In many ways, our stories are part of one story. Our pain is part of one pain. Our surprise at the beauty and fragility of life is part of one chorus of awe. My passion now is to stay as close as possible to the pulse of what is kind and true; to stay in conversation with what happens there and to experience more and more ways to listen.
Over the years, the trail of these conversations has become the books I write. The further I go, the more of one water they are, as if each book is a different shaped bucket which I haul to the sea, scooping what I can. When it is full, well, that’s the next book. And each book uncovers some learning that leads to the next. In this way, each book is a teacher, leading me more deeply into the many ways of being here.
Down Time
The days have been unseasonably muggy in the Rogue Valley for a week now, and I have felt sluggish, like being under water too long.
I had words to edit and write today, and galleys and books to read, but all I really felt like doing was sleeping. I did that for a couple of hours when my eyes wouldn’t focus, then stay open during the reading. I slept soundly, awoke peacefully, and returned to the writing. But nothing came.
Earlier in my life, I would have toughed it out, staying in the chair, staring, writing words and sentences I knew were bad before they landed, grinding my teeth and urging the right words to come.
Instead, I put the writing away and went downtown to watch the new Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris. It felt great to spend ninety minutes in Paris, and even better to know that I had listened to my body telling me, Hey, take a break! I listened, as I don’t always do, and now I look forward to what tomorrow may bring. Mostly, though, I’m grateful for this quiet, subdued, Neptunian day. I’m thankful I tuned in.
May you hear and heed your inner guidance, too.
In the Back of the Eye
What the heart sees from under its break is
always true. When I had cancer and Grandma
died, that moment erupted, a silent explosion
that sent her away and deeper into me at the
same time. When the sun came up behind
that mountain on the way to Santa Fe, my
soul somehow knew it was safe to creep back
into the world. When I was afraid in every
direction, the only place my heart could chew
was in the meadow of now. It’s as if we carry
a very soft emblem of the fire of life way inside
and we are hardened to keep it from going out.
Then one day a bird we’ve never seen pokes at
the window and we think nothing of it but every-
thing within us knows it’s time. And the hard-
ened places start to crack and the heart stirs
from its waking sleep. And all the softness
we’ve carried since birth is suddenly at the
mercy of wind and rain. Now when I see you
rubbing your hand, I feel all the things you’ve
held. Now when I see the snow cover the trees,
I hear the story of every tree. Now I am forced
to stop on track 19 at Union Station, letting
everyone rush on by, feeling their filaments
of soul flicker.
Spring: A State of Mind
Spring in southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley seems very elusive this year. We have had day after day of
rain and chill. And yet, the hills and gardens are wildly green. The bees are back, humming everywhere as I walk and walk.
The bees are lovely in their working music. Their motion and color dazzle and amuse me. Often, I lean in to honeysuckle or wisteria just to be with them. They go on about their business, paying me no mind, or at least none that leads to a sting, a natural world reproach.
And so writing this I consider: surely spring has come to my valley after all. Spring is an event of earth and sky, an emotion of weather. It is also a state of mind, an inner weather and emotion.
My spring may be wet and gray and chilly, but it is my spring just the same. It’s thrilling to be here, in it, part of it. When the sun arrives, it will be just as thrilling to say hello, welcome back. It’s enough that my mind is filling up with the season’s colors—gray, green, blue, white, yellow. The word, yellow . . . it sounds so much like hello.
Hello, and blessings and happy spring to you wherever you are.
The Better Way to Go
One at a time, they come off the plane:
looking for someone, arriving alone,
returning, beginning. They get off.
I wait to get on. Suddenly, it’s not
just the 11:35 to Chicago. But the
immigrants leaving Europe. Or the
thousands filing in and out to see the
lost Buddhas of Cambodia. Or the box-
cars with no exit. They get off. I wait to
get on. It doesn’t matter where we’re going.
I want to stop the old man shuffling. He
seems to carry a secret. It weighs him
down. It makes him search the floor
for the crack to the underworld he
was told would be here. We are
coming and going. Born. Dying.
In and out of life. Only no one
knows whether getting on or getting
off is the better way to go. The old man
pushes through the revolving door. He’s
looking for his baggage. Here’s another
with a limp in her heart. It makes me
want to stand and simply hum the
one true thing I know, hum it till
it starts to ring. And what if I could
sing it till it undresses all our cries?
Would anyone recognize it, know
it as their own? Would some join
in? I’m asked to board. To get on
with it. She looks at my passport
to see if it’s me. As if to say, Are
you you? I think she understands.
Follow Us