Tag: words
sacred spaces sacred prayer
The figure symbolizes my spiritual nature or God life This means that a wonderful pose of life has been shown me The beautiful poise of life assumes a unique pattern as my love enshrined in a rhythm of spiritual beauty moves and sweeps through mountains deserts rocks water birds and animals Everything God created everywhere at one time This my life has wholeness of meaning because of my inner most experience I have come face to face with those – beautiful life principles Jesus spoke of and which are
The light of the world, William Ricketts 1898-1993
today
find me where you know i need to be
The Call, ORIAH
I have heard it all my life, A voice calling a name I recognised as my own.
Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper. Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency.
But always it says: Wake up, my love. You are walking asleep. Theres no safety in that!
Remember what you are, and let this knowing take you home to the Beloved with every breath.
Hold tenderly who you are, and let a deeper knowing colour the shape of your humanness.
There is nowhere to go. What you are looking for is right here. Open the fist clenched in wanting and see what you already hold in your hand.
There is no waiting for something to happen, no point in the future to get to. All you have ever longed for is here in this moment, right now.
You are wearing yourself out with all this searching.
Come home and rest.
How much longer can you live like this? Your hungry spirit is gaunt, your heart stumbles. All this trying. Give it up!
Let yourself be one of the God-Mad, faithful only to the Beauty you are.
Let the Lover pull you to your feet and hold you close, dancing even when fear urges you to sit this one out.
Remember, there is one word you are here to say with your whole being. When it finds you, give your life to it. Don’t be tight-lipped and stingy.
Spend yourself completely on the saying. Be one word in this great love poem we are writing together.
ORIAH
Being
When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you are free from the psychological need, neither your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so there is freedom from fear. You don’t seek permanency where it cannot be found: in the world of form, of gain and loss, birth and death. You don’t demand that the situations, conditions, places or people should make you happy, and then suffer when they don’t live up to your expectations.
Everything is honored, but nothing matters. Forms are born and die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms. You know that”nothing real can be threatened.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
I can see now that in small ways I have always been on this journey, the one towards truth, life, the essence of what Is. I have at times paused, challenged, denied, become lost, held great doubt, regathered, left and come back many times to this path, i now find myself back on. Maybe it is that i am only now really ready. That i have searched long enough and i have finally come to the understanding that the truth of what i am seeking is not out there at all. I am beginning to understand the depths to which our intricate beings travel, far beyond this thought or that, far beyond this world and that world. We are so very lost, within our minds, within the stories that we hold with so much faith and so much pain, and really they are only just stories. We are not our minds, we are not the stories we shape our lives with. We are so very much more than that. On some level I have always deeply understood this to be true, maybe that is why i have never been able to just settle into anything. And i have always been able to walk away in the end and continue the search, for what truly matters. I understand that really there are no endings, we are just all in some way trying to find our way back towards understanding the vast depths within ourselves and was it is exactly we are meant to know.
I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; who remains calm and silent while I talk, and forgives, gently, when I hate, who walks where I am not, who will remain standing when I die.
By Juan Ramón Jiménez
She is searching now, although not outside of her self any longer. She has gone within, deep within to the core where she knows all of the answers she so desires to know about herself are. She asks now,in quiet whispers,and out loud for the help and the direction she needs,she understands that she is not alone, that the one she speaks to resides within her, this is something she has always known. She is unafraid now, and with each breath she feels her own strength growing and she is aware of the strength that has no name, or maybe does but feels has her back as she moves forward and away from the familiarities of the way she has been moving through this life and begins working towards a more truthful idea of herself. She is beginning to feel the tips of her own worthiness. She knows the further she travels, the greater the love will be, for herself, for you, for this life. She believes all is as it should be, and understands that it is in the hardest moments that life offers, that are the greatest blessings, it’s what keeps us moving, keep us asking the questions, striving for something else maybe, something more, real, closer to our own truth. She is paying attention now, to herself, to what she is feeling in each and every moment and she finds herself holding back from reacting in ways she always has, and pausing for just a moment, just enough time to create a space, a gap within herself where she can decide what choice to make in that particular moment. She is moving through life purposely and intentionally now, and understands that this is the way it should have always have been.
begin again.
im reading Something More at the moment, a book that has travelled many years beside me, it was at one time in my life well read and again now. As im reading im finding the stories are familiar, and i say with immense heartache are just as familiar once again. Sarah writes, ‘if it’s true that sometimes we marry for the wrong reasons, we convince ourselves to stay for even worse ones. We stay to be kind. We stay for the kids. We stay because we think we can’t afford to leave and wont calculate the psychic cost of remaining. We stay because we put loyalty to others above loyalty to our own truth. We stay because we are genuinely good and decent people. Good people do not walk out on marriages that are congenial enough to get through a dinner party, school conferences, a childs learning disability, a father-in-laws stroke, family holiday gatherings…’ Some women can do this and they seem to do it well, on the outside. They go about their lives, allowing themselves to slip away and they settle, settle for what they have, for what ever nourishment is offered if any is offered at all, they talk themselves into the belief that what they have is enough, that they can make do, they are even grateful, it might not be the complete story, but its a story and its good enough.. I’m not one of them. I have always wanted my children to live in their truth, what ever that entails, even if they are to find themselves lost in their lives over and over again, even if my children have children, be brave and follow your truth. They were my words and up until now, had only been for them. Until now, they have mattered more. All the ones i love have mattered more. I love well, somewhere and sometime ago, i stopped loving well the one who i needed the most, i stopped mattering to myself. Now, im listening to the honest words iv’e always held out for my children and offering them up for my own taking. I’m moving into my truth. i know it will come with resistance from others, even ones i love, that is alright. i understand that they don’t recognise me this way. It will take time to adjust, for understanding that now i am as important as they are, that now i may not always abide by the rules they have set for me. And some wont come around at all, it simply will no longer fit, maybe it will be too confronting for them, of their own stories, but that too cannot concern me now. i can let go with love the ones who are not meant to stay. What matters most now, in this moment is that I matter.
the literature of women’s lives is a tradition of escapees, women who have lived to tell the tale.. They resist captivity. They get up and go. They seek better worlds.
-Phyllis Rose
I have been quiet here lately, away, for quite sometime now, I know. There has really been nothing that has been ready to say. No truth that needed to be revealed, not until now, anyway. I’m in the in-between. Moving slowly and allowing myself to build in strength. I have let go of all that my story entailed and will leave the pages blank for a while. There are deep hard questions that I need to ask myself now. Ponderings that only arise when all the children are asleep, when the house is still and there’s nowhere to hide, from myself. What was it I believed about myself that would allow another to come in and ever so slowly and carefully dismantle me, my worth? What belief is it I must hold that would say, you are undeserving beside the ones you love, the ones you care for and give your life to? Where did the deep value and love for myself go? I didn’t notice it leave. For so long I didn’t fight for myself. I allowed whatever expectations I had about what I deserved, to slowly fall to such a place that I began to believe and hold on to what was happening as if it was my truth, a devastating portrayal of myself. I would catch myself sending silent whispers off into the world, wondering if this was to continue to be my story. While travelling in the car with my children and my husband, my own reflection caught me in the car window and in that very inconvenient moment I was hit hard with a deafening sadness, where I had to fight with great strength to hold back the tears that were begging to fall but in such way that I knew if I am to begin now I may never stop crying. I may never be able to escape the depths of this grief, grief for the loss of myself. This is the moment it became so very clear to me, if I stay in this, I simply would not survive.
“The pages are still blank but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible”
-Vladimir Nabokov
and what you do not know is the only thing you know
and what you do not know is the only thing you know
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by a way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets,East Coker quartet 2
a moment of grace
creative endeavours and healing
I have been slowing down, sifting through, and clearing out on purpose. Life has presented me with an abundance of challenges over the past few months, with children, family, finances and grand life decisions. I keep reassuring myself there is no wrong here, just different paths to take, i keep reminding myself that i am only one person, and all will be well. Friends are important right now, at least one in particular. I think without this friend, my challenges would have been inevitably harder. She has been my breath when i have found it impossible to breathe, she is the one who listens as worlds fall apart, makes the tea and wipes away the endless tears without trying to change or move me into feeling better. She is alright sitting beside the hurts knowing only too well that they must be felt and really is powerless to change them anyway. It is with this hand, of this friend, that things are able to rise to the surface and be felt at the very depths that they require, without holding them in judgment or with regret. It is with this, that things are ever so slowing changing form, making room for new ideas, new beginnings, creating space, honouring growth. She is the one who reminds me to be more gentle with myself, to nurture my soul and more importantly forgiving myself for the minor infractions I so harshly hold myself accountable for. She reminds me that All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
what if..
what if..this is it, never anymore or any less than the way things are right now, can you be alright with that?
what if..It was never meant to be the ‘everything’ it was always only meant to be life, unfolding into itself.
..there is a possibility that we already are the ‘everything’ we search for. What if it was never life’s intention that we reach that place of absolute completeness in our essential being.
What if, we already are ‘that’ essential being and ‘the all’ that it encompasses and instead we find ourselves momentarily pausing from our true essence to feel and be in this life for a while. What if the only way we are to really know ourselves is by having access to the all that we are not as well.
Is it possible, that we are meant to feel the magnitude of life’s pain and devastations, joy and blessings, truths and untruths, loves and losses, beginnings and endings..What if at some time, some place we chose this plan, we decided upon this story for reasons that may not always be clear in the process as it is unfolding.
Is it possible that we simply have forgotten what we have decided?
What if, it doesn’t really matter which direction you take. Can you for a moment consider that there are really no wrongs here just different choices and paths, does this alter your perception on things a little?
What if, today, tomorrow, yesterday you are and have always been complete. That really you are just moving through life experiencing your ‘self’ in many shades much the same as every one else. Maybe if we really understood this, we wouldn’t find it necessary to be so hard on ourselves or each other. Maybe we could forgive more easily.
What if, we decide it is enough. What we have in this life, the story we are living, the people we love the ones we care for, the way we move though our days, accepting equally our wonderous gifts and our misgivings, our faithful promises and failures to keep them, honouring ourselves when things are good and even more so in harder times.
What if, acceptance is what is needed, acceptance of all that is and all that will be, is it possible that happiness and contentment can still be found here?
words and lemon thyme butter biscuits
‘It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wonder about lost for a while and looking for a psychic and soulful kinship one requires. It is never a mistake to search for what one requires. Never.’
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes
She has up until this point tried to go without her soul life. That was never going to be enough. There comes a time when beginning again is necessary. Stripping back the layers of any delusions she has built up around herself over the years, revealing what lies beneath. This will take sometime, many moments requiring patients and the deepest of commitment to herself. She will begin the decent, travelling the road into the depths of her own intricate self. It could possibly be the most important journey she is ever going to take. For some, this time never comes, for others it comes with great fears attached, tremendous risks or copious hurts. The beginning of the decent usually comes without choice, it presents with a sense of urgency, it is a matter of survival, not of the hungry kind, we are talking about something much deeper than that. One where she knows, if she allows things to remain the same, that she most definitely will not survive. That any truth of her own will be lost, that she will lose her ‘self’ in this life she is moving through. There is a part in the back of her mind that is all-consuming with a terrifying fear, one that she has never before experienced, one that says don’t do it, stay here, safe and hidden in this story you have created for yourself. It is here in this moment that she must gather all that she knows to be true about herself, draw deeply on her faith and instinctual self and go, in a way that she knows she must. It is here, where she let’s go, of all that she knows to be true, of any safe haven she had, leaving her only with her own vulnerability in the palms of her hands. She does ‘this in order to learn her way, in order to clear her way, to the true and wild self.’
lemon thyme butter biscuits
ingredients:125 g butter,softened,100g caster sugar,1 free-range egg,200g plain flour,zest of 2 lemons,¼ teaspoon baking powder,1 pinch sea salt,3 tablespoons demerara sugar, juice of a lemon, 1/3cup icing sugar, Few sprigs of thyme
method: Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and creamy. Add the egg and beat until light and fluffy. Add the flour, lemon zest, baking powder and salt and mix until you have a ball of dough. Cover and place in the fridge for 1 hour, or until firm.
Preheat your oven to 180°C. Roll out the dough on a floured surface until ½cm thick. Using a cookie cutter, cut the dough into desired shape and place onto a lined baking tray. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the edges are light brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before icing. Mix the icing sugar and add the juice of a lemon slowly until the desired consistency is reached, aim for thick pouring cream consistency, too thin and it will run off the biscuits. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and tiny sprigs of thyme. Set in the fridge for an hour before serving. Place in a jar or air tight container in the fridge to keep.
Slightly varied butter biscuit recipe, Jamie Oliver, Ref -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women who run with the wolves
St GEORGIA & Boo 