Working Together.

March 4th, 2010

WinterMountains (Photo by Chris Royer)

Working Together

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

-David Whyte

I am moved by the thoughts of gathering, of how this time next week I will be on my way to the mountain, the shared space of Heroes. How the shape of sitting in a circle easily holds my weight, like the wing that David Whyte speaks of. How I am able to trust elements that I have yet to see. How when I am with this circle of Heroes I know for sure that I have seen – “the visible and the invisible working together in common cause”. Yes I know I have been present to that, have witnessed it and let it run through me, to become a part of me. And I will gather with others in common cause. We break bread, we break ground, we gather, we retreat. We work.

We live our own Hero’s Journey together for a weekend, so that others may arrive on the threshold of their Journey later this summer, and next summer, and on into the future.

Something’s Happening Here…

February 23rd, 2010

Joseph's Tree

Welcome the gathering presence of the sun’s deep gladness,

this burning, this loving,

the purifying cleanse of snow and meltwater,

the upward call.

Seeds and sap

soon to stir

and soon, too, our own uprising

fed by the dark of the soul’s deep rest.


We have just passed through what many earth-based cultures refer to as the “cross-quarter day of winter”.  Early February marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  The depth of darkness has passed.  The light takes on a new tenor, color and frequency, in addition to a lengthening presence.  It is a time, in the earth’s the northern hemisphere, of a generative stirring as the life force begins to make its moving presence felt in all life forms, including our own.

This past week, in the forest adjacent to my home, I have been serenaded by the passionate barks and screeches of red foxes mating.  Great horned owls are likewise vocalizing their claim to nest sites and are incubating eggs, even as nighttime temperatures occasionally still plummet into single digits.  The waterfall moves back and forth from a frozen and silent solid to an exuberant liquid– in concert with the wildly fluctuating temperature.  Not all altitudes  and latitudes are expressing such dramatic outer fluctuation, but the changing relationship of light and darkness is stimulating an inner activation within all things and all beings at this time.

I notice, within my own depths, a resonant fluctuation.  There are nights when I feel I might sleep forever, lingering in the final moments of restorative hibernation.  And, there are mornings when I awake before dawn, eager to write the next book, prepare the next garden, learn to keep bees, rekindle tired relationships… all by the end of the week.

Deeper yet, there is a ground of being that is both on fire and quiet at the same time.  A part of me that feels ancient, slow, and as potent as the ground is potent.  No rush to get things done.  No need to source my energy and focus in deadlines and to-do lists.  I relax that desperate attempt to out-run God, to force things into existence.  Yet things get done, spring comes, because of me but not by me.

There is a fire in the soil that I want to know intimately.

Joseph

One Winter’s Night: Now I Awake, Down There, in the Depths

January 29th, 2010

I awoke to this day, suddenly realizing “I am now awake”. Feeling my dream world recede, my senses attuning to this world. I felt myself lying in the deep, dark silence of a still winter’s night.

My mind was as empty and quiet as the pre-dawn hour. I turned to glance at the time, letting the clock inform as to how I should feel – time to be awake and start the day, or time to remain drowsy, and fall back into slumber. 4:40am. Hmmm. What is that time telling my internal clock?

In days past, it meant “back to sleep, fool”, you can’t feel rested at this hour! But just for today, a new perspective, a new way of looking. Time to follow my internal depth cues, not the clock face. So – then I am awake. I lie motionless, mindless…timeless… making a space for no immediate meaning making, no thing to think, just my own experience of lying still. Quiet. Now.

The Spanish poet, Juan Jimenez, comes to me. “I have a feeling that, down there in the depths, my boat has struck against a great thing. And nothing happens. Nothing…Silence… Waves…. Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and we are standing, quietly, in the new life?”

Making no projection from the past onto this new moment, no mind to conjure immediately pressing concerns or worries… I lie here, with nothing happening. I am, quietly, in the new life, of a new day. Very simple. I am new. I get up, get dressed, and head out into the pre-dawn night, an early arrival to my morning routine at the gym, awakened – in more ways than one.

Winter’s Promise

January 9th, 2010

What is laid to rest,
silenced beneath the shroud of winter’s snow,
and folded into the forgiveness of these extended nights,
becomes the ground
from which the new
life begins.

*  *  *

Paradox lies at the heart of nature.  It governs the expression of any living being,
any living landscape.  And it is the heartʼs fluidity of perception that allows
paradox to reveal its deepest mysteries and liberating inconsistencies.

The meeting of paradoxical expression with fluid awareness brings vitality and
meaning to our living, whether we encounter that living in an outer snowfield or
an innermost expanse of the soul.  When nature is free to be itself, no longer
forced into a corner that the mind can control, then our life unfolds into the
magnificent symphony it is intended to be.

We find ourselves now in what we consider to be the first movement of the solar
yearʼs symphony that we call “winter”.  Its particular tenor comes from its
rhythmical kinship with what has come before.  Its expression takes on yet
deeper resonance as it is intimately connected with all that follows.  Yet in truth,
all of the “coming before” and all of the “coming after” are present now in this
crystalline moment.  We give the season a concrete name; we give winter a
distinct frame on the calendar, because that is what the mind is able to grasp.
But we risk loosing the music of an entity, once a thing or a being is held so firmly
in hand.

A winter is an autumn fully matured.  A winter is an unborn spring.
A tree is an opportunity for soil to live its way into the vulnerable strength of
limbs, and into the bitter-sweetness of fruit.  And a human being?  Perhaps, an
opportunity for demons to be released from their spells and live again as angels
on earth?

Look at any living being, including those you love and those you hate, including
yourself in both regards.  And see what lives before and what plays beyond the
note of attraction or repulsion.  And tell me, then, if you cannot hear the music of
the living thing, the living being, folded once again to the continuum of forever
becoming.  Can you not feel, there, in the soil of any being, the hidden wholeness
made of broken pieces?

Forgiveness… of all that has come before.  Acceptance… of all that is and shall
be.  Under the unconditional peace that these governances of heart provide, we
shall see a new world born.  And we will no longer get stuck on a particular tone
of grief or joy, or sadness or elation.  The larger symphony that has given rise to
these notes will be much more interesting to our heartʼs perception.  And
paradoxical occurrences as, letʼs say, a Christ child born in a stable, shall be
returned to our lives as commonplace.

The new world is already here, now.  It just needs someone like you and me to
host it. And so, the delightful challenge is to imagine ourselves and the world no
longer from the crisis of the moment, but from the invitation of a lifetime.  I wish
us all a well-imagined new year.

Joseph

New Year, New Life Unfolding: Following Your Bliss

January 2nd, 2010

Michael-on-Via-Summit-Sept-07-150x150

“Follow your bliss.
If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn’t know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

- Joseph Campbell

It has been a dozen or so years since I have embraced the teachings of Joseph Campbell; time and time again I find myself returning to the invitation and mystery of this passage. As I have had a recent opportunity to reflect back on this past year, and the unfolding of my adult life, it is easier for me to see in retrospect how this mystery and myth rings true as ever for me.

So, for this new year in which we launch a new website, a new Hero’s Journey organization, and a new vision of community that can share in the essence of living a vital inner life, I have committed myself once more, to following my bliss.

I was recently being interviewed, and a man was asking me about how I have come to do what I am doing in my present life. As I began to respond to his inquiry, I was struck by how many doors open when I simply say “Yes” to what is unfolding before me, and place myself in a position for a new possibility or outcome to come into play – and then allow it to happen, without killing off this potential unfolding reality. It has the feeling of both making something happen with a singleminded point of focus, and not really doing anything at all to “make sure” it happens. It just….unfolds, it seems, in a particular way. The unfolding is sometimes in ways I see clearly, and sometimes in ways I could have never seen coming, or in fact, the opposite of what I felt would surely take place.

But one thing is consistent: I have to be with a feeling of opening that happens on the inside of me, first, before anything actually takes place in the world around me. I have learned to pay attention and regard this subtle and unignorable lightness of being that I feel. It is a certain kind of inner buoyancy that simply happens in my interior world. This is my primary sign that life is unfolding itself in my direction, and a confirmation that I am indeed on track, and in fact, I am on a track that is my own unique track, that only I can walk, and look out from, and feel. And it is within me, right now, as I write this to you. A new year, a new life, unfolding within me. Nothing else to do, but to follow this feeling with my close attention, taking me where it will.

Solstice – Meeting The Dark to Welcome the Light.

December 21st, 2009

Dawn in Indiana

Today in the Northern Hemisphere, we marked the shortest day of the year- the Winter Solstice. That moment of deep darkness that cannot hold back the tilt toward new light…

I welcome that moment as I witness it, and I welcome that moment in my own life, owning that point of darkness that welcomes fresh light. I lit a candle to welcome new light today. May this Solstice honor your dark, and tilt you toward new and fresh light.