feeling the thinly veiled presence of the ancestors and the beings

blessing and protecting.

I pray and feel each of you here.

There is a grace approaching

that we shun as much as death,

it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,

but in timelessness

when the mind sinks into the heart

and we remember.

It is an insistent grace that draws us

to the edge and beckons us surrender

safe territory and enter our enormity.

                                      ~ Stephen Levine ~

balancing beauteous barge

awaiting the rapids

merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

a bell, a feather, a prayer

the tides turn~the dreams churn~the limbs burn

the heart knows balance

witnessing from the edge

thai river meets the nooksack

falling laughter

pondering the opening

stones smile back

crossing the line

peeling away vision

ravenously bejeweled

light shadow outside in

a welcoming quartet emerges at the dream shrine entry

one calls for intimate witnessing

leading my eyes to the appearance of leaf woman blowing in an ever so gentle breeze

I circle the great cottonwood to see leaf filled alcoves that will host our dreaming

journeying from this mystery to another

“…Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed…”

John O’Donohue

I offer gratitude for the continued  flow of wonder,

Jillian

nest inside nest...cracked open...holy water

soft floating belly

touches

firmly planted belly

rising to meet

vulnerability unharnessed

beneath the waiting moon

enlightening, softening, coloring

what was once dangerously sharp

as we find matter, mater, material

knowing when to hold on in faith

trusting when to let go in faith

weaving the fullness and simplicity

of what spins on its axis

vertical, horizontal

loaves and fishes mysteriously

feed our hunger

a feast of dreams

St. Francis blessings

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Francis, the wonderful mystic who saw the wonder of the Divine in all of creation.  He is perhaps best known for his Canticl of the Sun where Francis expresses deep kinship with nature by regarding sun and moon, the four sacred elements, and even death as siblings.  On this day, many churches offer blessings to our companion animals as a way of honoring how integral they are to our lives, sharing their daily wisdom in learning how to simply be present to the truth of this moment. Part of the wisdom of creatures is in their sheer otherness and willingness to enter our lives with such authenticity.

pointed communion of light and dark

The fullness of our time together is held.

The experience of linear time declares the culturally encouraged,

“MORE…NOT ENOUGH.”

May we continue to discover how to balance

the arrivals and the leave taking with grace

as this flower holds the light and the shadow

of the afternoon sun.

OUR BELLS WILL RING AT THE DREAM SHRINE IN NOVEMBER…

a poem and more

Who Is Responsible?

by: Craig Wiesner on May 17th, 2010

I’ve been watching the nightmare of thousands of barrels of oil and gas pouring into the ocean and the spectacle of pundits and lawmakers trying to decide whom to blame for the mess. In the midst of that, I happened to pick up a book of poetry by Abraham Joshua Heschel, written before he was 26 years old in 1933. This particular poem, Forgiveness,  struck me as one of the ways that I am different from many other people. I resonated with it strongly and I would guess that others, who think quite differently from me, would think it utterly absurd. Read on and let’s discuss it!

Forgiveness by Abraham Joshua Heschel – from The Ineffable Name of God: Man

When I wash myself with water I shudder, thinking:
“This is the sweat of millions of laborers.”

Street-walkers are my bastard sisters,
and sinister criminals – souls perhaps transmigrated from me.

Concerning those murdered, I think
that I encouraged the assassin.

Perhaps I insulted
the disgraced people in my town.

Something in me confesses
“I’m guilty a thousand times for your distress.”

I want to throw my head at your doorsteps –
prisons, hospitals — and beg forgiveness.

****************************************************

Am I to blame for the oil spill? Is my overuse of gas one of the reasons there is drilling going on off our coasts? Are my desires for all types of goods, my enjoyment of relatively inexpensive energy, my living in a bigger house than I need that takes more energy to heat… did these in even a tiny way lead to this disaster?

When I see tragedy I do often ask myself what role, if any, my life might have played in it. I do try to look at how I live, the decisions I make, the policies I support – protest – ignore, believing that I do play a part in co-creating the world we live in and how it operates. I believe I consider and act on these thoughts in a healthy way, while some people I’ve known suffer too much because they take on too many of the world’s problems as their own. And, a few, are so obsessed by blaming themselves and everyone around them that they are annoying to be near! And, as any rape or molestation survivor should know, blaming the victim is a horrible crime so let’s never go there.

But then there are the many who would look at a poem like this and dismiss it as complete nonsense. Their use of gas had nothing to do with the oil spill. Stupid people caused the spill, or a natural disaster no one could have prevented must be to blame. Or liberals, who make it too hard for oil companies to make a profit because of all their needless regulations, they’re to blame.

If someone is murdered only the killer is to blame, not the absence of reasonable gun laws, the lack of decent mental health care, enough tax money to pay for better community policing,  or crushing poverty.

Civil wars in Africa, Asia, or Central America have nothing to do with me… Do they?

Old spirit, in and beyond me,
keep and extend me. Amid strangers,
friends, great trees and big seas breaking,
let love move me. Let me hear the whole music,
see clear, reach deep. Open me to find due words,
that I may shape them to ploughshares of my own making.
After such luck, however late, give me to give to
the oldest dance…. Then to good sleep,
and – if it happens – glad waking.

~ Philip Booth ~

a blessed day of gathering images, visiting the land, feeling your continued presence, and deeply knowing the many treasures of our beloved Dream Tribe…

three become two

the pair preparing for flight

This is what children of God look like, as the wise ones accompany Michelle in the night and await our morning return, tending the space, whispering tales as yet untold, inspiring playtime, tossing with abandon and landing in this trusted space.

beeing on light on dark amidst pods of pairs

one shoe in...one shoe out...dreaming a perfect pairing

dream shrine tree rooted in heavenly dedication

one shoe out...one shoe in...dreaming of each other

thing hanging, big wad pairing!

nine become one

old and young in blue

HM direct...MB unconcealed

tail to head...head to tail

hair lock unlocked

dream catcher received

dream catcher given

homeward bound

discovering nesting in our dream nest

grater, bell and candle...today's visit to the dream shrine

9 becomes 6

Luka and the beloved dream tree wondering WHERE YOU ARE!

prayers for the fullness of endings and beginnings blessed by love and gratitude from you to me to the beyond...

initiating and enlightening your woven prayers

loving the shared attitude of gratitude....another song?!

Sunday, May 23, "Rescue the Turtles Day"...truly...in the NET!

What to Remember When Waking

by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk?

Of all the single digit numbers, nine (9) may be the most profound.  Composed of three trinities (3 times 3 equals 9), nine represents the principles of the sacred Triad taken to their utmost expression.  The Chaldeans believed 9 to be sacred, and kept it apart in their numerology from the other numbers. Nine has been and in some cases still is considered thrice sacred and represents perfection, balance, order — in effect, the supreme superlative.

FAR AWAY IN THE HEAVENLY ABODE OF THE GREAT GOD INDRA, THERE IS A WONDERFUL NET WHICH HAS BEEN HUNG BY SOME CUNNING ARTIFICER IN SUCH A MANNER THAT IT STRETCHES OUT INDEFINITELY IN ALL DIRECTIONS. IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EXTRAVAGANT TASTES OF DEITIES, THE ARTIFICER HAS HUNG A SINGLE GLITTERING JEWEL AT THE NET’S EVERY NODE, AND SINCE THE NET ITSELF IS INFINITE IN DIMENSION, THE JEWELS ARE INFINITE IN NUMBER. THERE HANG THE JEWELS, GLITTERING LIKE STARS OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE, A WONDERFUL SIGHT TO BEHOLD. IF WE NOW ARBITRARILY SELECT ONE OF THESE JEWELS FOR INSPECTION AND LOOK CLOSELY AT IT, WE WILL DISCOVER THAT IN ITS POLISHED SURFACE THERE ARE REFLECTED ALL THE OTHER JEWELS IN THE NET, INFINITE IN NUMBER. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT EACH OF THE JEWELS REFLECTED IN THIS ONE JEWEL IS ALSO REFLECTING ALL THE OTHER JEWELS, SO THAT THE PROCESS OF REFLECTION IS INFINITE.

Wholeness experienced first hand cannot be tyrannical, for it is infinite in its diversity and finds itself mirrored and embedded in each particular, like the Hindu goddess Indra’s net, a symbol of the universe, which has jewels at all the vertices, each one capturing the reflections of the entire net and so containing the whole. Some would have us worship, uniformly, at the alter of oneness, using the idea of unity rather than an ongoing encounter with it to steamroller-like, flatten out all differences. But it is in the unique qualities of this and that, their particular individuality and properties – in their eachness and their suchness, if you will – that all poetry and art, science and life, wonder, grace, and richness reside.

All faces resemble each other, yet how easily we see in each uniqueness, individuality, an identity. How deeply we value these differences. The ocean is a whole, but it has countless waves, every one different from all the others; it has currents, each unique, ever-changing; the bottom is a landscape all its own, different everywhere; similarly the shoreline. The atmosphere is whole, but its currents have unique signatures, even though they are just wind. Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living. So there can be no one place to be. There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known. The particulars count.

from “Wherever You Go There You Are” by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Earth Verse

Wide enough to keep you looking

Open enough to keep you moving

Dry enough to keep you honest

Prickly enough to make you tough

Green enough to go on living

Old enough to give you dreams
~ Gary Snyder ~

The Gardener of Eden

I am the old dreamer who never sleeps
I am timekeeper of the timeless dance
I preserve the long rhythms of the earth
and fertilize the rounds of desire

In my evergreen arboretum
I raise flowering hopes for the world
I plant seeds of perennial affection
and wait for their passionate bloom

Would you welcome that sight if you saw it?
Revalue the view you have lost?
Could you wake to the innocent morning
and follow the risks of your heart?

Every day I grow a dream in my garden
where the beds are laid out for love
When will you come to embrace it
and join in the joy of the dance?

~ James Broughton ~

Dearest Dream Sisters,

After a glorious day of listening to the rushing Nooksack and contemplating the many frozen, interior places I have just witnessed as I traveled on the personal river of my own life, I came inside to receive this article from a sister I met in Italy last summer.  I feel such gratitude for our shared commitment to listening to symbolic language through our waking and sleeping dreams, for our mutual respect for the balance between the rational and the intuitive ways of knowing, for our deep and fluid dance in these waters as we “reconnect with this ancient language of the sacred, where the divine and human meet.”

I hope you will read this article, find inspiration and recognize your own reflection.  There will be a time to discuss it when we next gather.

Sending flowing blessings and love,

Jillian

What Happens When the Ice Melts

The River of Life and the Need for a Symbolic Consciousness

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

a frozen surface

While in deep meditation I am drawn into awareness. Rather than dissolving deeper into the emptiness of inner silence I am asked to listen for a sound, the specific sound of ice cracking. But I can hear nothing, no sound of ice cracking. Then I am shown the image of a river which has been frozen so deeply that it is like solid ground, and it has been frozen for so long that it has been forgotten that it is a river of water. On the banks of the river there is a village or town, and I am left with the thought of what would happen to this town if the ice melted. Would the river rise and flood the houses?

There is no sound of ice cracking, no sign of the river beginning to melt. But the very question, the very suggestion of a frozen river and cracking ice, brings into consciousness a predicament that belongs to life as we know it. This river is the river of life, which has been frozen for so long that we think of life as something solid, rather than fluid, which is its natural state. We have forgotten the normal properties of water, how it flows, how it moves and carries us along with it. We are divorced from any natural understanding that we have constructed our lives, our whole civilization, on a misconception, unaware of the danger that the ice could melt and the river begin to flow again.

Since the seventeenth century when Newtonian physics gave us the basic laws of the physical world, we have developed a scientific understanding and a mechanical view of life as something that can be defined and quantified.¹ Rationalism was elevated over symbolism and we created an approach to life based upon logic and deduction. Recently, the development of computers has generated ever more sophisticated models upon which to base our understanding of our environment and how to plan for the future. They offer the illusion of security, the notion that we can predict what might happen—though the recent banking crisis illustrated their limitations, such as the fact that they can lack basic common sense! In complete contrast stands the ancient Chinese wisdom of the Tao, which taught how to be a part of the flow of life rather than how to protect oneself against unexpected changes. From the same culture come the teachings of the I Ching which explore the dynamics of change, with the understanding that change is a fundamental part of life. This primordial wisdom images life as a constantly changing interrelationship of possibilities, similar to the proposition in particle physics that even the forms of the physical world are just a probability rather than a definable fact.

But today we are living upon a river than has been frozen for centuries, whose ice is solid and deep. There is no natural flow, or even a memory of a time when it was so different. As long as the ice remains frozen we can remain with our image of life as something we can define and plan for, believing we can protect ourself by buying insurance against anything unexpected. We feel secure with what appears permanent.² The cities we inhabit are designed to last like the concrete of which they are constructed, rather than to constantly adapt and change. We are not prepared for what is fluid. We are taught how to live with facts rather than possibilities.

Part of the problem comes from the very way we think and are educated to think, and in particular how we have banned symbolic consciousness. We are taught to think in an analytic, linear manner, using words to explain ourself. Symbolic consciousness is holistic rather than analytic, and rather than thinking in words it thinks in symbols and images. It was prevalent in our Western consciousness as recently as the medieval period, as expressed in the sacred geometry and iconography of the gothic cathedrals.³ Symbols connect us to the interior world of the soul, and symbolic consciousness enables us to realize the sacred meaning that underlies our physical existence. In symbolic consciousness everything is part of a pattern of interrelationship connecting the visible and invisible worlds; and, as anyone knows who has worked with dreams and their symbols, this is a very fluid, amorphous language, in which images change and evolve, giving us possibilities of meaning rather than definable facts.

Symbolic consciousness was central to human consciousness for thousands of years.⁴ We lived in both the inner and outer worlds without any contradiction. Shamanic wisdom carried the understanding of how these worlds interrelate, how they reflect and flow into one another; and the destiny of a tribe could depend upon a dream. Symbolic consciousness presents a worldview so different from our present model that it is difficult for contemporary consciousness to grasp how much it was once a part of everyday life. We do not realize the limitations of our rational consciousness, or how we have become caught in its constrictions without even knowing that we have lost part of our natural awareness. We believe the facts with which we are presented, without fully recognizing that they are only a probability, and that nothing is fixed or definite. We have become strangers to the symbolic world, and we have lost the fluidity of consciousness that belongs to this more primal awareness.

Symbolic consciousness is a part of our natural relationship with the soul and the sacred that is present in all of creation. It connects us to a world full of meaning and wonder. Rational consciousness instead imposes its vision of reality, instructing us with the laws and scientific principles that now define our life. Initially rational consciousness was seen as an “enlightened view” that could free humanity from the “darkness” and fears that had imprisoned us in superstition.⁵ But it has been imposed so successfully that we are no longer aware of what it is excluding, of the sacrifice of the symbolic and our connection to the sacred. It has cut our consciousness off at the roots so that we no longer have any natural connection to the mystery and joy of life.

The question that then needs to be asked is whether the icebound river is just part of the flow of the ages: a time of winter that has lasted for centuries. Or has the development of rational, analytic consciousness itself produced this frozen landscape? Particle physics has proven what Buddhist teachings have long known, that mind and matter are not separate but influence each other. If the reality we inhabit is created by our consciousness, then we could have frozen the flow of life with our vision of a solid, definable world. We would then be like the ice queen who has turned the world to winter. And now we inhabit this desolate landscape where joy and symbolic meaning lie hidden beneath the ice.

Symbolic consciousness allows for a deeper understanding of life with all its patterns of interrelationship than does a purely rational approach. Symbolic consciousness gave me an image of the river of life as frozen, and asked me to listen to the sound of the ice cracking. But there was no sound, nothing. All I was left with was the thought of what would happen to the town on the banks of the river if the ice were to melt. In this symbolic picture there is no solution. It just gives an image suggesting that something so fundamental to our existence as the river of life is no longer flowing, and that we do not remember that the real nature of the ground upon which we live is not solid. Maybe we have based our whole civilization upon mistaking a temporary state for something permanent. And we have not begun to question this self-imposed belief.

movement in the depths

But the river itself remains alive. It may be frozen, waiting for a thaw, but it still carries the energy of life. We exist so much on the surface of life that we have little understanding of its depths and the currents that run there. Our lack of a symbolic consciousness has not only isolated us from the flow of life, but also cut us off from its depths—the primal, archetypal depths of life that have always communicated to us through images rather than words. And even though the ice is not yet even cracking, there are changes taking place deep under the surface. The energy of life is beginning to flow in a new way, to follow different patterns. Carl Jung described these archetypal patterns as the riverbeds through which the waters of life flow. And the archetypes are shifting, some awakening from a long slumber. They are beginning to move in new ways: a new energy grid is constellating.

Our knowledge of history is so recent and so censored that we cannot imagine what might happen if these energy patterns of the deep change. We live so much on the surface that we have lost any knowledge of the depths of life, of the energies that underlie our existence and how they affect us. We also live with the illusion that we determine our own future, create our own destiny. We may feel that something fundamental in our lives is shifting, experience an unexplained insecurity. We may look for predictions and even prophecies to comfort us. But the movement in the depths of the river of life is real, even if it is still hidden under the ice. And when the ice breaks the river will carry us along however much we resist. We are a part of life, even if we have tried to separate ourself from its primal energies, built our cities and towns to protect ourself from the forces of nature.

For those of us who are awake to the symbolic world, our work is simple: to listen and watch with a consciousness attuned to the depths. There are signs all around us, and in our dreams there are messages of meaning. We do not yet need to “interpret” what they say, because what is more important is that we listen to this symbolic language, be receptive to its images, and in so doing attune ourself to the energy that underlies life. The symbols themselves will reconnect us, because this is a part of their function. And through this reconnection we will come to know what is happening in the core of existence, in the sacred depths of our being. Life itself will tell us what we need to know, just as it has communed with human consciousness for millennia. We just need to be attentive and listen: then we will feel how the currents are changing and what this will mean to our surface lives.

Only if we reconnect to the sacred core of our being will we have any understanding of what is happening. Because it is here, where the divine energy comes into manifestation, that the real changes are taking place. All energy, all real change, comes from within, from the divine of which outer life is a manifestation. It is partly our collective separation from this center that has caused the river to freeze. It is our denial of the divine that has isolated us on the surface of life. The changes taking place are a reawakening to what is real, to the sacred of which all of creation is an expression. But in order to read the signs of this reawakening we need to relearn the language of the sacred. This is of primary importance. Only then can we play our part and welcome the waters as they start to flow.

Our hesitation will come from our holding on to the image of life as frozen, as something solid. Sadly, many of the skills we have learned and technologies we have developed belong to this image of life, and will be as useless as a car without gas. We will have to relearn many skills, change many of our attitudes. We will have to relinquish many of our patterns of control, our images of power. We will also have to learn again how to live with the divine not as some transcendent being but as a real presence and energy that is central to our existence. And we will have to learn what it means when the waters of life start to move.

Many things that we thought valuable may be lost in this flood. Maybe even the towns upon the banks of the river will have to be sacrificed to the water. They were built without any understanding of the real, volatile nature of the river. We cannot afford to spend too much energy protecting our property and possessions, because then we will miss the opportunity of movement, of where the water can take us. We will get caught in a toxic backwater slowly dying. Life is about change and learning how to be with the energy of change. It is not about protecting ourself from the future. The changes will bring possibilities we cannot imagine, and also bring their own dangers. How we adapt to the awakening flow of life will determine the future of humanity.

But at present the work is to learn to listen to the signs, even if as yet there is no sound of the ice cracking. We need to regain our symbolic understanding, because it is in these images that the book of life is being written around and within us—“We will show them Our signs on the horizons and in themselves.”⁶ This is the first step to take: to reconnect with this ancient language of the sacred, where the divine and human meet. Only then can we begin to understand what is happening.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a sheikh in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujadidiyya Sufi Order. Born in London in 1953, he has followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path since he was 19. In 1991 he moved to Northern California and became the successor of Irina Tweedie, author of Chasm of Fire and Daughter of Fire. In recent years, the focus of his writing and teaching has been on spiritual responsibility in our present time of transition, and the emerging global consciousness of oneness. He has also specialized in the area of dreamwork, integrating the ancient Sufi approach to dreams with the insights of modern psychology. Llewellyn is the founder of The Golden Sufi Center and author of several books.