The world is one
especially when it wakens in the dew
and the Lord takes a stroll
among the foliage
of human and animal dreams
~ Anna Kamienska ~
(Excerpt from Two Darknesses, trans. by T. P. Krzeszowski and D. Graham)
Monday, January 31, 2011
Kathmandu~An Offering
Sunday, January 30, 2011
“Wordfly”
Hoping for continued Inspiration ~
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
Zora Neale Hurston
Friday, January 28, 2011
No Sharp Objects (Documentary UNRWA)
source: Johann Eriksson
Because this is part of my thesis work, I felt good about blogging it this one time and sharing it with you. I was so fascinated and pleased to find this film. I am looking for the entire documentary and have so far just found this 4 minutes of it. Please enlarge the screen to get a real sense of it. I will do some research to find the entire work this weekend. I may share other amazing finds with you from time to time in the context of research only at this time. UNRWA does some amazing work with the people of Gaza. Bringing these 15 Gazan boys to America for a visit is just one of their many efforts. Here is the full story from The Guardian.
Coming to America: Gaza boys take trip of a lifetime
Film documents experience of 15 students who were taken on an eye-opening journey to New York arranged by a UN agency
- Harriet Sherwood in Gaza City
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 December 2010 17.16 GMT
The distance from Gaza to New York is 9,150km, but for 15-year-old Motaz Al-Jamal the gulf between the rubble of his hometown of Rafah and the neon glitz of Times Square could have been inter-planetary.
"It was wonderful, words can't help me," he said. "I have seen it in the movies but I never imagined myself actually being there."
Al-Jamal was one of 15 Gazan boys who left their besieged home, most for the first time, to visit the US earlier this year on a trip organised by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Since Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza after Hamas took control in June 2007, it has been almost impossible for ordinary people to leave the territory. Even with the easing of the siege over the past few months, there has been almost no relaxation of the restrictions on the free movement of people.
But the top Gazan students on human rights courses taught in UN schools were lucky. They were instructed to pack for freezing weather, advised on how to use hotel key-cards and tutored on how to order a burger in a fast food joint.
Their trip was documented in a remarkable and moving film, No Sharp Objects by Johan Eriksson, which was shown in Jerusalem for the first time last night. The aim was not just for the teenagers to learn about the world beyond the Gaza Strip, but for the world – or a bit of it, at least – to learn about the boys' lives, the conditions in which they live, their demands for human rights and dreams of change.
Samer Manaa, whose dying father told him before leaving to show that Gazans "are people who have principles and values, of freedom for humans and freedom of thought", saw for the first time "all this greenery" in Israel en route to Amman. The only Israelis he had seen before were soldiers. "We drove into the heart of Israel ... It was my first time to see Israelis as they are in their community. Of course they seemed to be enjoying all their rights," Manaa said.
Once in the US, the boys visited the Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King centres in Atlanta, Georgia; the US Congress in Washington DC; and the UNheadquarters in New York. In the US capital, Al-Jamal spoke to congressman Keith Ellison, in hesitant English. "Me as a kid, I want to live in peace. I want to see a brightful morning. I don't want to wake to the shower of bombs that fall down on our areas. I have a home but it was absolutely ruined. My father works hard to save every penny for my life, for a brightful future ... I'm a kid, he's a kid, all of us are kids. But some day we are all going to be men. We'll make a future with our hands."
During a visit to an American home, the boys discovered "some things we didn't even know about," said Al-Jamal in the film. "They had PlayStations and this device called Wii. I was able to enjoy that ... and it's not going to happen again."
Amid other first encounters with snow, skyscrapers and six-lane highways – as well as astonishment at finding a Palestinian from Tulkarem in the West Bank serving their burgers in Atlanta – the group paused before a Holocaust exhibition at the UN headquarters.
As the boys considered the terrible images from the death camps, their teacher, Rafiq Murad, spoke of the significance of what they were seeing. "And so, guys," he concluded, "because we faced suffering and injustice we have to appreciate and understand the suffering of others, regardless of their religion and race."
A human rights curriculum is taught in UNRWA schools in Gaza, from six-year-olds learning about gender equality through roleplay involving rabbits and birds, to teenagers discussing US civil rights, apartheid and the second world war.
"There's a competition for influence here [in Gaza]," said John Ging, UNRWA's director of operations in Gaza after last night's screening. "We have to rise to that challenge. The competition comes from the physical environment, what we might call the rhetoric environment and the sense of confinement. You have to have a very effective programme to counter that."
UNRWA's human rights and gender equality programmes have come under attack by what Ging describes as extremists in Gaza. "We have to deal with that. But thankfully they are in a small minority."
UNRWA has organised several tours, of both boys and girls, to the US, Norway, the Netherlands and South Africa. Trips to Northern Ireland and Geneva are planned for next year.
The boys commented in the film on the contrast between their lives and those of their US counterparts. "Any normal kid dreams, and this dream might come true because they live in an open society. But when we dream we wake up in a painful reality," said Manaa.
Al-Jamal found America beautiful. "I didn't think I'm going to say that. But when I saw America, I thought ... the whole world should be like that."
Manaa found it strange to be back in Gaza, but said: "Despite everything that is happening in my country and the way it is, it will still be my country, with my people and my family living in it. I was really happy to come home."
- guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
~God Be With The Children Of Gaza~
Noelle Renee
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Vision (Hiatus)
Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you.
David Whyte
Taking a Hiatus from blogging for a while. I shall miss everyone. I have academic work to do and it can no longer wait. I will be back when I have actually handed in a draft of my thesis! I hope to see you then. And if I do not, it has been wonderful taking this journey with you. I may from time to time drop a post but it will be much more infrequent during this period. Thank you for your kind following.
~Noelle Renee
Stumbling Toward Ecstasy: Stairways to Heaven
“The Stairs are Your Mentor of Things to Come.”
~David Whyte
"Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits."
— John O'Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)
Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence."
— Milan Kundera
"Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual."
— Ernest Hemingway
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. ~Song of Solomon 2:14
"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines."
— Walt Whitman
For More Stumbling Toward Ecstasy Please Click Here.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Haiku My Heart: The Silent Evolution of An Underwater Exhibition : Jason Decaires Taylor
Below the Surface
Of the Sea, Art like Life is
Eternally Changed.
~Noelle Renee 2011
The Silent Evolution by Jason Decaires Taylor www.underwatersculpture.com/index.asp
These sculptures are not so much New Wave art as Under Wave as they have been placed 25m (82ft) down on the seabed.
Artist Jason Decaires Taylor combined his talent for sculpting with his passion for diving to create the plaster and wire framed works with galvanised steel shells, on the Caribbean seabed off Grenada.
'The sculptures will be an ever changing exhibition as nature colonizes the surface and the sea and tidal movement shapes the texture,' said Mr Taylor, 33, who studied art at Camberwell College in London.
'Each one reveals some of the history of Grenada,' he added. 'It creates a whole new perspective on the world.
'Objects appear 25 per cent larger and closer, and colours are changed as light is absorbed differently by the water.'
Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/53773-artist-going-through-a-deep-blue-period#ixzz1BeaamDTU
Underwater Sculptures and Statues by Jason deCaires Taylor
Latest Marine Development of Underwater Sculptures and Statues by Jason Decaires Taylor
Grenada is now home to a unique exhibition - the Caribbean's first sculpture gallery located entirely under the sea.
The gallery is the brainchild of British-born sculpture, Jason Decaires Taylor.
He took over a year to create the underwater "park". But why put some of your best displays under the sea?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/images/furniture/bbc_banner_simplified_page.gif
Mexico to Debut the World’s Largest Underwater Museum with Installations by Jason Decaires Taylor
Artist : Biography
Jason deCaires Taylor is a man of many identities whose work resonates with the influences of his eclectic life. Growing up in Europe and Asia with his English father and Guyanese mother nurtured his passion for exploration and discovery. Much of his childhood was spent on the coral reefs of Malaysia where he developed a profound love of the sea and a fascination with the natural world. This would later lead him to spend several years working as a scuba diving instructor in various parts of the globe, developing a strong interest in conservation, underwater naturalism and photography. His bond with the sea remains a constant throughout Taylor's life though other key influences are found far from the oceans. During his teenage years, work as a graffiti artist fired his interest in the relationship between art and the environment, fostering an ambition to produce art in public spaces and directing the focus of his formal art training. He graduated in 1998 from the London Institute of Arts, with a B.A. Honours in Sculpture and Ceramics. Later, experience in Canterbury Cathedral taught him traditional stone carving techniques whilst five years working in set design and concert installations exposed him to cranes, lifting, logistics and completing projects on a grand scale.
With this range of experiences he was equipping himself with the skills required to execute the ambitious underwater projects that have made his name. Carving cement instead of stone and supervising cranes while in full scuba gear to create artificial reefs submerged below the surface of the Caribbean Sea, the various strands of his diverse life resolve themselves convincingly in the development of his underwater sculptures. These ambitious, public works have a practical, functional aspect, facilitating positive interactions between people and fragile underwater habitats.
Jason deCaires Taylor has gained significant interest and recognition for his unique work, with features in over 1000 publications around the world, including National Geographic, Vogue, USA today, the BBC, and CNN and he has made several TV appearances. His international reputation was established in May 2006, when he created the world's first underwater sculpture park in Grenada, West Indies, leading to both private and public commissions. Taylor is currently founder and Artistic Director of the Museo Subacuático del Arte (MUSA) in Cancun, Mexico.
For More Haiku My Heart Please Click Here
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Murmuration of Gretna Green Starlings
© Joan Thirlaway “Ring Around the Moon”
Starlings in Winter
Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
© Joan Thirlaway Starling Murmuration with a long exposure. (I wept after reading this poem and watching this film. I am not afraid to admit it. I hope that you enjoy it. Peace and Light ~ Noelle)Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I wantto think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.~ Mary Oliver ~(Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays)About the photographer: These photos are used with the kind permission of Joan Thirlaway, a very talented amateur photographer living in Gilsland, one of the Hadrian's Wall villages, in the UK.
Film--Immense magical murmuration of Spectacular Starlings and a single falcon over Gretna, Scotland
Murmuration of Gretna Green Starlings
Monday, January 17, 2011
The World Within
"No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest."
— John O'Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Stumbling Toward Ecstasy: Swandive
Enough
These few words are enough, if not these words,this breath...
If not this breath, this sitting
This opening to the life we have refused
again and again until now. Until now.
In this moment of epiphany
This opening to the life we have refused
again and again
until NOW
~David Whyte
For more Stumbling Toward Ecstasy click Here.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Haiku My Heart: Tiny Dancer ~ In Memory of Christina Taylor Green
The Heart of the Dance
Is Childlike Awe and Delight,
Wrapped in One Glance
~Noelle Renee 1/13/11
Christina Taylor Green was a top student, dancer and athlete
"I want us to live up to her expectations” President Barack Obama
For More Haiku My Heart please click HERE
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
In Memory of those We Lost
Diana VarnerWe are bound together in an inescapable network of mutuality and tied to a single garment of destiny ~Martin Luther King
Christina Taylor Green, 9, had recently elected to the student council at her school, and went to the event with a neighbor who thought the young girl may enjoy it, Greg Segalini, the girl's uncle told The Arizona Republic. (Christina had been born on 9/11/2001 and was one of the “faces of hope” in that grim year of our history.)
Federal Judge John Roll, appointed to the bench by former President George Bush in 1991.
John Roll won wide acclaim for a career as a respected jurist and leader who had pushed to beef up the court's strained bench to handle a growing number of border-related crime cases. "I have never met a more sincere..fair-minded, brilliant federal judge or any judge for that matter in my whole life," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnick said.
Gabe Zimmerman, 30, a former social worker who served as Giffords' director of community outreach. Zimmerman was engaged to be married, C.J. Karamargin, Giffords’ communication director, told Fox News. “He truly loved to help people,” she said. Zimmerman has a degree in social work and focused on a plethora of issues like immigration and veteran’s services.
Dorwan Stoddard, 76, was a pastor of Mountain Ave. Church of Christ in the area. He performed maintenance work at the church and spent his summers traveling, according to the Arizona Daily Star. Friends said they visited all 50 states and 28 foreign countries during their trips. Mike Nowak, a minister at the church, told the paper that Stoddard was "a terrific guy, a jack-of-all-trades." Stoddard was with his wife during the shooting. She was also hit by a bullet, but is expected to survive.
Dorothy Morris, 76~ Dorothy Morris, 76, and her husband George went to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's (D-AZ) Congress on the Corner event in Tucson, only to be caught in the line of fire. Dorothy Morris was declared dead on the scene, while her husband remains in critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson. The couple were Reno High School sweethearts, according to the Gazette-Journal, and have two daughters, Kim Hardy and Tori Nelson, who live in Las Vegas. George, who was shot in the shoulder, is a former pilot for United Airlines and the Marine Corps.
♦ Phyllis Schneck, 79, (housewife and mother) ~Though she was a Republican, she had recently listened to Giffords on a conference call — mostly likely during her recent campaign, her daughter said — and was hoping to shake her hand. A homemaker for much of her life, she centered her world on her three children, seven grandchildren, her 2-year-old great-grandchild, and her husband, Ernie Schneck Sr., who was the brother of her childhood best friend.
PS22 Chorus Let there Be Peace on Earth
Monday, January 10, 2011
The Mists of Time
From "The Mist-Filled Path: Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers, and Seekers" by Frank MacEowen
Posted by: DailyOM
Some mornings I went outside to see the mist, up close and personal, and just as I would arrive at its edge, it would suddenly disappear from view, almost as if it had never been there. A strange shadowy afterimage would remain. At other times, I would look on with astonished eyes as the mist changed directions and moved away from me, visibly retreating from my presence. It would glide along the tree line, withdrawing itself from my overly analytical stare. In truth, my precocious and unrefined piercing gaze was exiling me from the teachings of the mist. I am reminded of the words of the beloved Irish mystic, Connemara poet, and nature-priest John O’Donohue, who states:
"There is an unprecedented spiritual hunger in our times. More and more people are awakening to the inner world. A thirst and hunger for the eternal is coming alive in their souls; this is a new form of consciousness. Yet one of the damaging aspects of this spiritual hunger is the way it sees everything in such a severe and insistent light. The light of modern consciousness is not gentle or reverent; it lacks graciousness in the presence of mystery....When the spiritual search is too intense and hungry, the soul stays hidden. The soul was never meant to be seen completely."1
The soul possesses an ineffable intelligence that cannot be controlled. Like the mist, the soul, we might say, has a mind of its own. It cannot be forced, directed, or squeezed into a box where it does not belong. It cannot even be fully seen or perceived, for the soul is a timeless, feathered thing that flies in more worlds than one.
We can see, in tangible ways, the choices that the soul makes in service of itself. When a person is treated horribly, physically or emotionally assaulted, for instance, a fragment of his or her soul may slink off to a hidden unseen place where it cannot be harmed. In shamanist traditions this phenomenon is called soul loss. The soul knows what is needed for survival and returns, again, only when conditions are right or when someone engages in the work of inviting its fullness home. In this way the soul preserves itself. The soul’s brilliance has allowed for this useful mechanism to ensure the continuity of the consciousness of the living person during his or her life, and sometimes even between lives.
All too often, however, when the soul elects to hide part of itself, it does not return very easily. When this happens we can say that although some external survival has been ensured, a condition of exile has also been created. It is an exile from the flowing awareness of peace that is our birthright. Our lives are meant to be steeped in peace, yet when we are living within a state of soul loss our destined unfoldment toward a life of peace is postponed until we have become whole again. We feel “beside ourselves” until we are reintegrated after a harsh experience or trauma. This is as true for whole groups that have survived a trauma as it is for individuals.
A Word about Exile
Exile is that undeniable sensation of being cordoned off from what is most essential to our souls. Perhaps we have become exiled from our childhood memories because of things that happened when we were young. We may be exiles from a basic sense of joy in our lives. Sometimes our exile is characterized by our sense of being a stranger in our own families, not able truly to share who and what we are without being criticized or judged. Family, in the Celtic sense, is meant to feel like a warm hearth fire, a downy nest of repose, and yet all too often our families contain the fiercest of blades that slash at the peace of our souls.
For many of us a kind of exile may lie at the very heart of our lives. It is an exile many people feel in the twenty-first century.
It may express itself as an exile from nature, from ancestral traditions, from cultural homelands, or from spiritual lineages. Sometimes these lineages and traditions appear to be lost forever without the potential of reclamation, so the exile feels even more poignant.
In a very similar fashion, many people feel a dynamic sense of exile from an even closer domain than cultural homelands. They feel that they have been exiled from the interior lands and borderlands of their own spirit. No longer knowing the entrance to this realm or the routes of navigation once inside, they become exiled from the holy realm of the inner worlds. This is a profoundly sacred world in the Celtic tradition, one that those on Celtic spiritual paths actively seek to work with daily, because it is understood that our inner landscape is one entryway to the spiritscape of the Otherworld.
An old therapeutic axiom in Gestalt psychology, which also lies at the very heart of shamanism and contemplative mysticism worldwide, suggests that the healing of a wound must come from the blood of the wound itself. In other words, the healing of an emotional or psychospiritual wound is brought about precisely by entering into its terrain, not by avoiding it. In this way, healing our exile from our inner world comes from entering that inner world in search of the healing life force we need (the blood within the wound).
The healing of our exile from the life-affirming expressions of our ancestral traditions comes from opening ourselves to these traditions of primacy in the same way that our ancestors did, whoever our particular ancestors were and whatever unique spiritual traditions may have shaped and sculpted them. And, last but not least, the healing of our exile from the natural world is linked with the practice of entering into a full and loving embrace of her and, once again, acknowledging the healing power of the primal land.
The healing of the soul of the earth and our relationship with her does not come about by closing ourselves off or by separating ourselves through our definitions, categorizations, and Latin nomenclature but rather by opening ourselves, dynamically, to the mysteries of the spiritscape of nature in a soulful and experiential way. To rediscover the sacred world we must reenter it, with wakeful physical and spiritual senses.
I sometimes think that when we experience soul loss or soul exile it is as if we have had our ancient citizenship revoked. We no longer have diplomatic status to travel freely into the inner sanctum of our own deeper senses or our deepest levels of knowing about the world around us. When we are in this condition, we sometimes need to do what friend and African shaman Malidoma Somé calls “setting up a squawk.” We must set up a squawk and call the soul parts home.
A Note from Noelle Renee: I offer you this amazing film in time lapse photography now of Mists over San Francisco. You must click on it and watch it in full-screen HD to get the full benefit of this masterpiece of what I feel is “spiritual filmmaking”.
“The Unseen Sea” by Simon Christen.
The Unseen Sea from Simon Christen on Vimeo.
The Unseen Sea from Simon Christen on Vimeo Must see in full screen on HD. click on film to do this.
I won’t be posting for a few days. I will be working on my thesis. I was inspired to do this post by a comment on my last post from a blogger friend, Meri from Meri’s Musings. She was remarking about the significance of mists in celtic spirituality and legend. I couldn’t let it go. This post is what resulted. Thank you Meri.
~Noelle Renee
Mists
"This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale."
— Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Stumbling Toward Ecstasy: Winter Dusk
The winter of Listening
No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.
All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,
what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.
What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.
Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.
All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.
All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.
All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.
And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.
let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.
~by David Whyte
From 'House of Belonging'
For More Stumbling Toward Ecstasy Posts please click HERE.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
“Dance When You’re Broken Open”
Dance when You’re broken open,
Dance if you’ve torn the bandage off,
Dance in the middle of the fighting,
Dance in your Blood,
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
~Rumi
Note From Noelle Renee:
I took this photo when I was in Tesuque, five miles out of Santa Fe at Shidoni Gallery and Bronze Foundry. Just looking at it gave me a feeling of lightness and freedom. As I drew closer, I read the word written above that are inscribed on the shirt of the statue. They are, in fact, the opposite of what one would expect from such a joyful pose. And so it goes. The tension of the opposites prevails and all creativity, all transcendence, all love and ultimately rebirth of the Self flows from the holding of that tension. May all of our lives be an amazing, a phenomenal act of balancing. The following is an article by Jacquelyn Small that I found online regarding the Tension of the opposites. I hope you enjoy it.
Namaste.
DUALITY
by Jacquelyn Small, Eupsychia Institute
••••••••••
(the following excerpts are from the unpublished, unedited manuscript of, Psyche's Seeds, Tarcher Putnam, April 2001).
To get beyond this duality of the ego and the soul -- to avoid feeling pulled apart by these opposing drives -- we can learn to be in both places at once: unified and unique. (p. 14, Part II)
Certain factors in nature are ordered in ways that remain a mystery to us. But as we move closer to our Source, into the depths of our psyches, we gain a knowing sense that all apparent dualities are really part of a greater whole. And we see that our job, at least right now, is to be a "walker in both worlds" and bridge the gap as much as we can, holding the two together. Then, we'll create that pathway for the Self to enter and take us to a third and higher way. (page 107, Part II)
As hybrid "spirit-matter" beings, we must realize it is appropriate for us to be living in two worlds at once -- the world of the ego and the world of the soul. They do not become one watered-down nondescript composite: they each bring forth their entire way of being -- which is a very rich and inviting way to live. Just as a reminder: we have an antinomous nature - two complementary opposites living together harmoniously, making up the whole. In this manner, neither part gets lost: the ego's passionate response to the physical life lives alongside the soul's spiritual purpose and sacred intent. The individual as well as the collective life is honored and cherished. Or you can think of it as the masculine and feminine principles residing side by side, with no warring nor competition, in deepest respect for each other's differences and opposite function. (p. 106-107, Part II)
In being a walker in two worlds, you do not try to escape into the higher regions of the Self and shirk your responsibilities here. You walk the ways of the ordinary life, doing your daily routines with the people you're in relationship with. Some are karmic duties, such as caring for children you're responsible for, or helping the elderly in your family. And you never avoid serving others in ways that are meaningful to them, when these people come upon your path. You take responsibility in this world for all that you've taken on. And you do it with love and compassion.
Then, together with all this, you hold within yourself that "secret place" no one needs to know exists but you. In this numinous inner life of dreams, symbolic images, inner beings, other-dimensional places, and messages of direct knowing, you document your larger life in your spiritual diary or through some artistic expression. You protect this inner chamber with all your spiritual might by surrounding it with a deep sense of silent reverence. You walk in the overlap between these two worlds, drawing first from this one, then from that one. Sometimes you move into just one or the other reality and give it your full intention so you can know it fully. (p. 107, Part II)
Before we can know the light, we must recognize and meet the dark on its own terms. Then, it can all come into the balance of completion in the center. We learn to hold these tensions of the opposites within us as the way all spiritual warriors travel through life. Arriving at this stage of our awakening, we are required to face every dualism we're caught up in every opposition that lives within our psyches. It's a very difficult task. The path gets harder as we come closer to our destination: coming fully into ourselves with absolute authenticity. We must understand that we live as both these sides of ourselves, for this is our nature.
The Forces of Love
"Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being"
Teilhard de Chardin
French geologist, priest, philosopher and mystic, 1881-1955
Eva Cassidy Songbird
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Haiku My Heart: When Spirits Fly
Feathered Spirits Fly
Spreading Wings of Childlike Faith
The World Falls Silent.
~Noelle Renee
~For More Haiku My Heart Posts, Please Click Here
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Share the Joy: Tenderness
There is no Charm Equal to the Tenderness of the Heart ~Jane Austen
A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.
Victor Hugo
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully. ~ Kahlil Gibran
Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution ~Kahlil Gibran
For More Share the Joy Thursday Posts Please Click Here
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Jingle Dancer : My House is the Red Earth by Joy Harjo
My House is the Red Earth
BY JOY HARJO
My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world. I’ve heard New York, Paris, or Tokyo called the center of the world, but I say it is magnificently humble. You could drive by and miss it. Radio waves can obscure it. Words cannot construct it, for there are some sounds left to sacred wordless form. For instance, that fool crow, picking through trash near the corral, understands the center of the world as greasy strips of fat. Just ask him. He doesn’t have to say that the earth has turned scarlet through fierce belief, after centuries of heartbreak and laughter—he perches on the blue bowl of the sky, and laughs.
Source: My House is the Red Earth (The University of Arizona Press, 1989)
I took this photo near Santa Fe , N.M. in October in Shidoni Gallery and Bronze Foundry in Tesuque. I have another picture of it on my blog but it is not the full statue. I love this figure. She speaks to me in many ways, healing and peaceful.~ Noelle Renee
Monday, January 3, 2011
White Bride
by: Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
HERE was a man who watched the river flow - Past the huge town, one gray November day.
Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play
The boys made merry as they saw him go,
Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream,
The immortal screed he held within his hand.
For he was walking in an April land
With Faust and Helen. Shadowy as a dream
Was the prose-world, the river and the town.
Wild joy possessed him; through enchanted skies
He saw the cranes of Ibycus swoop down.
He closed the page, he lifted up his eyes,
Lo--a black line of birds in wavering thread
Bore him the greetings of the deathless dead!- Past the huge town, one gray November day.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Stumbling Towards Ecstasy: Warm, Cuddling Love
The Ancient Art of Cuddling On a Cold and Icy Day in Midwinter….
May Lead to Other Things…
But if We Throw Caution to the Wind and Fully Embrace Life with all Its Ups and “Down”…
We May Find Ourselves Stumbling Slowly and Happily…
Into Spring with all its Flowering Beauty…
If you wish to Rush in where Angels Love to Tread for more Stumbling Towards Ecstasy Posts Please Click Here…
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Angel’s Touch
"If you want to identify me,ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."
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