blank blank fullness

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don’t hesitate.  Give into it.  There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be.  We are not wise, and not very often

kind.  And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left.  Perhaps this

is its way of fighting back, that sometimes

something happens better than all the riches

or power in the world.  It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant

when love begins.  Anyway, that’s often the

case.  Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid

of its plenty.  Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver

money has replaced commitment
has replaced giving from the heart,
from our gifts,
those special things that only we have to give
like fireflies lighting up a July night
or the owl humming from darkness,
some wisdom and steady light
now we've flipped the script
and we chase the pages desperate to get
and yet,
when money is not the lens
how clearly we can see the world as a sacred dance
and our step
by step
is the only payment truly worth anything
and each movement is laid with 'how can I share?'
the life within me
instead of
how can I earn a life already mine to keep
for this short time, anyway
for this material game
is so temporary
so make your mind a blank slate
forget money ever mattered anyway
and look to see
how can I support what's already in front of me
and trust
trust sweet child
that we are held
by a hand of grace
made most happy
by your gifts made illuminated
when that hunger for having
is fed by giving, sharing, serving

what would your days look like
if you gave up your life
that is to say
the force animating you this way
and that
what if you gave it up to
the things you love the most
the people who stirred
and stole that precious secret you once hoarded
against your higher wisdom to share
and grow more for it
yes what if you were that kind
of person for another
a thief in the night catching moments with a glass jar
and then setting them free to the eastern winds
an offering so seemingly small
and ridiculous
that God
like a proud mother
a softened father
chuckled
with creases around His eyes,
sparkling in the way that only joy
only tenderness
could evoke
because you tried, dammit
to live a life the 4 year old you
would catch and release

March 21, 2018

As awareness increases, so too does the responsibility to hold compassion. You will see, both in yourself and in others, the natural and regular occurrence of misunderstanding, subjective projecting, apparent injustice, subtle karma, power plays, conscience hinting at true honesty, integrity-building, as well as a muffled desperation — the grip of an ego still desiring triumph, superiority. Yes indeed, you will see the unseen, the inner politics of ego, intelligence, and heart quietly driving our human interplay like a guiding force with ultimately all good intentions and frequently misguided impulses stemming from the common wound, the local carrier.

Where is the truth, the power, the place where satisfaction and enough-ness -- enough being, doing, owning, releasing -- where do they cross and create a clearing for ideals to subside and their living, breathing embodiment shine?

If taken into your heart deeply, if acted on sincerely, these 17 principles and practices will change your life for the better:

Quoted from Spiritual Warrior 2, Excerpt from Chapter 6, Hari Nama Press, by Bhakti Tirtha Swami:

Seventeen Practices for Attaining Success in the School of Love

To develop meaningful relationships with members of the opposite sex, we must become whole human beings who have no need to look outside of ourselves for solutions. Instead we must learn to turn within ourselves and connect with higher spiritual realities. How do we make such connections? The following 17 points and practices, offer guidelines for attaining the wholeness that can serve as a foundation for a strong, enduring relationship with a partner.

1. Love is necessary for good physical and spiritual health. Someone who is not part of a loving relationship is ten times more likely to experience chronic disease, and five times more likely to have a mental breakdown.

2. Love is not a business arrangement or a contract with an escape clause for difficult circumstances. We should not have this attitude or mood with our partner and surely not with God. We cannot approach the Lord in a mood of bargaining, and we should not begin our meditations and prayers with a long shopping list. Prayers of this nature are not based on unmotivated, unconditional love, and do not help us to develop the higher consciousness necessary to make us whole.

3. Love is a decision that we can personally make at any time and under any circumstance. No one has the power to make someone else love him or her, but each person can always give away love.

4. Love is learning to love our true selves. Those who do not care for themselves cannot love others deeply. The first love affair we must consummate must be with ourselves. One aspect of self-love is to observe four basic principles: no drugs or intoxication, no gambling, no illicit sex, and no meat eating. All these indulgences can weaken our basic constitution. The more we allow ourselves to live according to natural laws, the more we will become surrendered to the will of God. If we lack self esteem, we are refusing to see ourselves as children of God and do not have sufficient love and devotion to share with anyone else.

5. Love is about a quest for wholeness, and if necessary, having a partner to share one's wholeness with. People who think that some other person will make them complete, or people who are waiting for love to come their way will remain impoverished and waiting. The more we become loving and whole, the more we will draw similar connections from the universe.

6. Love is not about two desperate people, who are only trying to find fulfillment for themselves, coming together to rob each other. Two extremely needy, selfish people coming together cannot make each other happy. They are too busy trying to take and get something for themselves at the expense of the other.

7. Love is a holy relationship in which partners come together to serve and reveal their weaknesses and strengths for betterment. In an unholy relationship, everyone especially hides their weaknesses. Such people are normally interested in erotic love (lust) rather than responsible, selfless love.

8. Love is really the energy and hunger of the soul. When we are asking for love, we are asking for a connection with the soul, which is part and parcel of God. We should not expect love to descend on us like an attack of epilepsy. It must be rediscovered at every moment by transforming lust into love, thus connecting us with our own soul and the souls of others. We are all starving for true unconditional love.

9. Love is seeing our partner as a gift from God. We must go beyond merely loving our neighbors as ourselves. We should actually love others – especially our mates – even more than we love ourselves. When we love our partners that much, we realize that they have been given to us as gifts from God and that we do not own them. We are merely caretakers on behalf of the Lord, and our responsibility is to fulfill the Lords wishes concerning them. Any attempt to dominate them becomes distasteful. Instead we should make efforts to bring out their higher qualities – a practice that will bring out our own higher nature.

10. Love is seeing our mates as a pathway through which we can return our love to God. The love we receive from our mate actually comes from the Lord, and our job is to send it back. Others channel God's love to us, and we channel God's love to others. The Lord is engaging us in play to see what we will do with His love. We can reciprocate God's love by caring for our partners with great devotion, as if God Himself were present.

11. Love is sharing your realizations with your mate, which will help raise their consciousness as well as your own. Then your relationship will become one of growth and acceleration. If you and your partner are not growing together spiritually, there will eventually be a breakdown in the relationship. Sometimes we fear surrender in spiritual life, afraid of having to give up our identity or afraid of losing our partner. But we should understand that surrender to the Supreme is an opportunity to regain our full identity. Without a spiritual dimension to our lives, we are not integrated and cannot experience deep love.

12. Love is a relationship with your mate in which you visualize a triangle with points A, B and C. You are point A, your partner is B and the Lord is C – all of your activities are God centered. Make an agreement with your partner to form this triangle as a permanent bond between you, so that whenever you meditate, chant or pray, you are in connection with your partner and with the Lord. You do not necessarily have to meditate together or think about the connection simultaneously. Your agreement will work anytime and anyplace. In this way, you always keep God in the center of the relationship in all reflections and activities.

13. Love is always viewing ourselves as love in action and carrying love wherever we go. We want to be so filled with love that it naturally overflows to everyone we meet. In this frame of mind, we serve as representatives of the Divine in every aspect of our lives, consequently functioning as vigilant spiritual warriors. We can practice love in action through the breath. As we inhale we visualize ourselves absorbing the pain and frustration of our loved ones; as we exhale we send happiness, joy, love and peace back to them. Actually this is not just a practice to help those close to us, but also the entire world. We inhale; we are concerned. We exhale; we are breathing out love, compassion and healing. This is not just an idle exercise. It has a powerful impact, and if we monitor the process over time, we will witness the beneficial effects on others.

14. Love is about developing competitive, selfless relationships. At first this may sound strange and contradictory. How can we talk about cooperation, sharing and selflessness, and then advocate competition? But, actually, no contradiction exists. In a spiritual context, competition means that we strive to be more selfless than our partner, seeing who can give more. We compete in reminding our mate about the Supreme and encouraging that person to move faster toward the Lord. The purpose of the competition is to assist one another in spiritual growth. This process is only for people who want to be spiritual, who seek higher experiences beyond the flickering pleasures of material life. Such a competition in selflessness encourages partners to remember why they are in this body – to become once again loving entities devoted to the Lord.

15. Love is about offering the same quality of love you feel for your mate to everyone – but without the sexual component. In other words, to extend to others the love you have for the most loveable being in your life. We may wonder how to subtract the sexual element. Just remember that sex and love are not necessarily synonymous. Our love for our children can be extremely intense without any sexual overtones. No matter what the circumstances, try to develop that same kind of love in each of your relationships. We all know the sweetness of loving just one person. Can you imagine how much sweeter it would be to have those feelings for everyone? Think of the loving exchanges that could develop, the reciprocation that would enrich our own lives and the lives of others. Unimaginable happiness, joy, and satisfaction would be our daily quota. We would no longer rely on particular individuals to give us this experience, because we would understand that we are really seeking God. The more we understand that God is in each person, the more we experience the Divine, and the more the Divine will make us whole.

16. Love is having or looking for a partner to heal the world – not escape it. Normally many people seek out a partner to escape the world. They are miserable with life, and they feel that everything else can be tolerated or fixed if they somehow or other find that special person. We cannot heal the world if we are too wounded ourselves.

17. Love is about treating all relationships as practice in preparation for the ultimate relationship in the kingdom of God. We should see all our relationships as God sending us a partner to fix whatever has to be fixed before we join up with Him eternally. This means that we should practice seeing our mate as an agent of God, recognizing our own divine nature, and remembering that we are children of God for whom great realizations and pleasures are available. Only in the kingdom of God will we find the love and the eternal relationships we long for so deeply.

This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time
Just to grasp your precious feet
This wretch calls out your name
Trapped in the circle of time
From my own past created
For what fault was I plunged
Into the cycle of becoming?
From my own fiber created
For what fault have I been thrown
Into the ocean of time?
Why brought to this world
Guru, o guru
Why brought to this world
In such an abject state that I forgot
Your compassionate name?
Just to attain your holy feet
This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time
You bear the name of wish-fulfilling tree
So the clan of ascetics told me
You bear the name of wish-fulfilling tree
So the clan of ascetics told me
Why be renowned as compassionate
If you can't help me be free?
Of what use is your fame as compassionate
If you can't help me be free?
Just to grab your precious feet
This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time
I fail to remember Heeruchand's feet
Heedless Panjushah says
O Master...
I fail to remember Heeruchand's feet
Unmindful Panjushah says
Is this your famed compassion
That you don't let me near your feet
Just to attain your holy feet
This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time

Relationships are like plants, you can't just water them once and expect them to survive. 

You'd think this one is obvious. It is. But it always surprises me that it's still a weak spot, and how quickly we forget; how easy it is to take people for granted. Other things become more important. We forget to check in on a genuine, human level. The agenda of self and selfish creeps back to first place, where it's always been, perhaps. We get comfortable and expect people to always meet us where we are. We forget that relationships, that *people* who make up the relationships, are like plants, needing regular care, tending to:
Reevaluating the size of the pot as it grows, changing the soil, letting it hang out outside on a sunny or a rainy day, talking to the plant because you know it thrives off CO2, trimming dead leaves, and watering it just as it needs -- some plants need a lot of water, other plants need very little. And with the desire to grow and sustain each plant, we take the time to learn what each one needs.

Man! How simple we actually can be.

Love to your heart and light on your mind,
Alexandra

these great dis-united states have poisoned the well of the world

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman.
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.
If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…
beyond all of your striving for greatness,
beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.
If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.
-Lisa Citore

I planted the creeper of love
And silently watered it with my tears
Now it has grown and overspread my dwelling
You offered me a cup of poison
Which I drank with joy.

- Mirabai

In the midst of an immersive time
here and now, I feel the call to come and spill, a little something I've picked up along the way, this way that's been stretching on for years,
what's so special about this day?
Well, nothing
And yet,
Everything...
I miss writing
I miss it
And yet I won't do it.
Well here I am
stealing a little time from the stolen
to just do it.
A simple call...
Mostly, I miss that emotion
pouring through finger tips that makes you want to go go go and say it with words
like a swift river current, electrifying my body
setting fire to my mind and all the little shells and stones its collected to string together when some decorating is due
I wish I could share everything I've been taking in with you
Like a magnifying glass, the expression back illuminates when the taste is shared
and when it lands.
We're all in a band, old familiar friends
just looking for the bass to your drum to my guitar
to your cymbals to His keys
the key to harmony
is taking stock,
look how much we've hoarded and consumed
how clear is your palette?
there's no undo
on that computer of your mind
so be a little selective
of what goes inside
and whatever it may be,
may it match the tune of your heart
so your whole life
is a symphony in step,
a wonderful outstretched hand
offering gifts no man can't understand

If you have everything minus one, you really have nothing.
It only takes one
To make everything truly whole.
But we're still seeking that everything -1
One glance,
One step,
One clap, clap, clap
One wish
One love
Is all it takes

Someone to have complete faith in
But who's not to be trusted
and it's ok -- let me tell you why, how....

This weekend. Went away, off the grid. Read books, ate meals with other people, all the time, where we actually spoke; no phones, no distractions. Walked in the wilderness, saw fluffy white deer tails swishing back and forth as they scampered up hillsides upon hearing our steps, our voices. Marveled at the weather, skipped class, bonded. Broke into an abandoned cabin from the 1800s where someone special to all of us used to live and work, serve, and inspire from afar; where he built up a catalog of stories and experiences, austerities and hardships that would inform so much wisdom and sweetness. For us, yet unbeknownst to him, for a future of wisdom and sweetness. Walked through rusted old gates up a long paved brick drive, now engulfed by rich and vibrant moss, its majesty robbed by nature's insistence to grow around, through and over man's hubris. We covered our mouths and noses with scarves we barely needed because it was in the 60's in December. Because the jewel at the end of the brick road was a condemned house, the ceiling plummeting towards the ground, decaying insulation suspended behind plastic, on a precipice menacingly pressing towards gravity as we tiptoed around, so as not to disturb, and towards, through to the door at the other end of the room which was leading, leading, leading to the past, still alive in some places -- in the color of the stained glass, in the detail of the hand-made inlay, the gold and silver, the cloudy mirrors, and clouds painted over a blue-sky dome. A jewel box forgotten and falling apart. You could still feel the grace and import of the space. It hung thick in the cool, damp air. Haunted but bittersweet. All the work of building and painting and paving and staining was done by those with hearts of faith and hands that insisted, paged through books to figure it all out -- how to make that faith into something you can see, touch, taste. And then the altar, a ghostly remanent robbed of that Someone who inspired it all. The One we can have complete faith in, but can never trust. The tides of time turned and trust was... reframed, rehoused...

We wound back out and down, made it to a sun-soaked gazebo far off from these never lands of decades past, to sit around an elder, he'd been there too; gentle and still. He contained so much depth I can't yet comprehend... We sat, waited, absorbed the silence and let his calm and good demeanor inform this thing called life, happening live in technicolor before us. He spoke. Deliberate, meandering. And through the stories and memories, revealed that this gift and burden we all carry can't be trusted. We're dependent, totally vulnerable to the twists and turns, surprises and slights of hand moved by the Source of it all, unfolding a Master Plan we have little (but very little) part in determining.

When I was young I used to tape pages from my favorite fairy tales to the window, over which I'd lay a blank sheet. And I'd trace, imitating the seeming perfection of the original, so that I could have a taste of perfectly satisfying creation. As adults, we're tracing. Drawing our master plans based on what's already here... already perfect. But God is tricky, capable of anything and everything to drag us, lift us, push us, pull us to where we need to go, into who we're meant to be. Our heart's deepest desires, they will be fulfilled. But if we knew in advance how we'd have to get there, what we'd have to go through, we might not insist as much. Even for those who know this truth, there's a blind-side crafted... And so this elder, saying just enough and not too much, revealed his realization that we can and should have full faith in that Ultimate, but not for a minute trust that He doesn't have something up His sleeve; the perfect dose for turning things around -- or upside down, just as we need. 

the capacity for love 

in your heart, a hollow drum,

can stretch on and on

one ocean into another

filling endless beats

the guacamole of love

is always free