Author Archive for Robert McDowell
Press Release: The More We Get Together
Robert McDowell’s new book, The More We Get Together, is now available!
Do you believe, as the song says, that the more we get together the happier we’ll be? Whether you do or not, you may wonder how such a thing can happen. Our paths to equanimity and happiness depend on spiritual practice and our capacity to love. How well we walk these paths depends on our communication skills—the words we choose and share, and our evolved, wholly present sexual unions.
Just as Robert McDowell’s Poetry as Spiritual Practice has become a beloved inspirational companion, The More We Get Together: The Sexual and Spiritual Language of Love offers an original practice of poetry, journaling, and storytelling that makes all of the connections between sex, language, love, and spirituality.
By discovering our own unique stories through each other, spiritual practice, and the heroic act of writing, we can take our relationships and the work we do to new levels of evolved and healing consciousness.
Would you like to communicate in writing and conversation with honesty and accuracy? Would you like to discover greater self-confidence? Would you like to connect more deeply with family, friends, colleagues, and your sexual partners? Do you want to deepen your spiritual practice? If your answer is Yes to any or all of these, then you’ll want to take advantage of my special offer today at http://www.poetrymentor.com/together.html If you want to take your relationships and your spiritual practice to new levels, if you want to connect with a compelling, compassionate guide for the work of hear change, order The More We Get Together today.
“In the torrent of self-help books on relationship, sex and intimacy, The More We Get Together offers a key to be found nowhere else: the power of language to carry us into the core of what we most yearn for with another. Archaeologists tell us that humankind first used words to learn to communicate the matters of the heart. We are still learning, and McDowell shows us the way.”
—Kim Rosen, author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words“Poetry exposes me to a different way of experiencing the world. I instantly translate the poems into pictures. I can see fields of grain or rain in Autumn. It is fascinating to see all the patterns and rhythms that can be woven into language. I always enjoy learning about the different ways that other people think of and experience the world.”
—Dr. Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Purchase The More We Get Together, and do it today to enjoy the benefits of bonus gifts from dozens of your favorite authors and teachers.
All That You Can Do
It seems one can’t look at the news without reeling from the shock of a fresh atrocity. The tragedy in Norway staggers the imagination. In Texas a man kills five people and himself at a skate party. In my hometown a man kills his children, their mother, and himself.
In the wake of such news, at first it seems almost trivial to put together a few words for this weekly blog. What can one say? Isn’t this a moment in which silence better serves us?
Then I remember the healing power of meditation, and I sit with it so. I cannot take away the hurt of untold millions just by wishing it. I can be present, feeling some of the pain, and rising when I can to the lure of understanding, revelation, and transformation. With millions of others, I am witnessing and praying, abiding, and sending as much good intention as I possibly can into the world.
What else can one do? Tap into the grief that slowly moves like molten emotion deep inside. I am one with the blade of grass, the fly I release through the screen in the bathroom window, and the young man blown to pieces by an insane, random act of violence. I am the killer and the dead. I feel the rage of the survivor and I hear the cry for vengeance welling up inside me. I also hear my fellows the dead, who in an instant move far beyond the desire for vengeance.
What can one do? Be present. Be the healing power of equanimity and love. My activist-friend Jeff Golden’s sign-off on radio and TV is “Thanks for doing all that you can do.” That’s it, really. Do that much. Just so.
Die Before You Die
I had the good fortune this week to attend a benefit lunch and auction for the Jean Houston Foundation, which supports Social Artistry around the world.
After a superb meal prepared and served by the staff at Blue Greek, a restaurant I recommend to anyone who visits Ashland, Oregon, the highlight of the day was Jean’s forty-minute talk about ancient Greece.
Jean Houston is a time traveler, a psychic, celestial guide to the past and the world next to this one. With Jean as our leader and storyteller, we let go of our anxieties and obstacles and journeyed through 1,500 years of Greek history. The point? It was no pleasure cruise, though the going was delightful and delicious in every way.
Jean, as she does better than anyone, was calling us to action, to arms if you will. She charged us to wake up to and develop our highest selves, and to be active in the world. She calls this Social Artistry, and practitioners are active in places like Nepal, Zambia, and Oakland, California, supporting women, children at risk, and underserved communities that need help.
Everywhere you turn, there is work that needs to be done if we’re to survive on this planet. Embrace social artistry. Find out what you can do and do it. This life is precious. Don’t leave anything on the table. Plumb the depths of your being and emerge confident and capable. Your models, colleagues, and allies are all around you.
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Poet Jane Hirshfield has available a Kindle Single called “The Heart of Haiku” for only 99 cents. It’s wonderful listening to one of our most beloved poets guide us through the magical world of Haiku. Treat yourself to a listen and see why this has quickly become Number One in Poetry at Amazon.com.
Half the Sky
This weekend I watched a short video of Sheryl WuDunn, who coauthored Half the Sky with Nicholas Kristof, speaking to an audience in England.
WuDunn’s bold pronouncement is that the best way to defeat poverty and extremism is to educate and empower women and girls. I believe she’s right to say that the prime issue of this twenty-first century is gender inequity.
When you have a moment, take a look at this clip and see if you agree. This seems to be a call to action that women and men can truly answer, collaborating with one another to end atrocious behaviors that our evolving collective conscience cannot condone.
Women are the well and fountain keepers, the community teachers. Women all over the world are leading the consciousness revolution, and evolved men are willingly and enthusiastically partnering with them to bring about compassionate change.
So, I look in the mirror and ask: How can I help? My answers will greatly define the man I become, the human I must be.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For Jane, Branden & Eoghan on their graduations
Imagine being the players who
Five thousand years ago
Banged on the giant boulders
At Wadi Abu Dom
What were you playing
What message were you sending
Out of the mountains echoing
Through the foothills
Reverberating across the valley
Then there was water
In the valley and underground falls
Gushing out of the hills
There were people close knit
And carping keeping tabs around the fires
There was intrigue and unspeakable behavior
There was beauty and restorative grace
Your people lived, loved, and died
And the boulders kept saying and sounding
Until the last of you laid down
Going back to the mountain you came from
Imagine that mountain sleep the hills
And valley sleeping and always changing
The coming and going the casting
And remolding heroic deeds and dust
The desert covers every story when it’s
Old enough the desert the preservationist
The desert remembers every player
Every season of drought and water
Every son and daughter gets the chance
To play in this the oldest of human stories
How to reach someone how to touch
And feel and hear so that it lasts
Even in the seasons of forgetting
Folded into the envelope of dust you become
Becoming is a long delicious story
And you are in it now so strike the rock
What Is Spiritual Healing?
For days I’ve been walking around town astonished over and over by the humming and industry of the bees that have returned in inspiring numbers to bless our honeysuckle, lavender, and hummingbird bushes with their ceaseless activity.
Walking among them, I think of the builders of roads and monuments, the makers of song and paintings, the organizers of shelters and picnics, the teachers and students, makers all.
In reverie I imagine walking again in Sligo, or meditating across the water from the lake isle of Innisfree. or gazing at the rooftops of Florence after sleeping deeply on a hillside studded with olive trees.
What is spiritual healing? I believe it feels like all of this.
One asks “What is spiritual healing?”
The sound of hazel wood making music
In the wind, or crackling
In the aromatic warmth of morning fire.
It’s waking up to a golden mist on the fields,
Feeling joy at standing up in the light
That pours through open windows.
Healing comes from making bread and cakes
For someone hungry you’ve never met.
It’s extending your hand in friendship
And saying your common name—Peace.
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