Poor Blossom

Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox!  This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep looming in our civilized vase on the table.

-DH Lawrence

Lady Chatterly's Lover

Psychic Anchor

"We hold onto childhood memories of certain places as a kind of psychic anchor, reminding us of where we came from, of what we once were, or of how the physical environment perhaps nurtured us when family dynamics were strained or the context of our lives fraught with uncertainty."
-Claire Cooper Marcus "House as Mirror of Self"

The Experience of the Sacred Translated Through Human Memory Patterns

 

"The sacred has a dynamic aspect in that it has a tendency to manifest itself of its own accord.  It tends to come into the world and make itself known.  Further, each incarnate form, each object of matter, has a tendency to realize its archetypal, universal, sacred meaning.  These two tendencies-- that of the sacred to manifest itself and that of each incarnate form to realize its deeper archetype--come together in such a way that any object at any time can incorporate within itself all the power of the holy.  When the sacred manifests itself in the world, something in the human allows it to be immediately recognized.  A part of the human, most often a subconscious part, experiences the sacred and says to the conscious mind, "that is the REAL."  The conscious mind is then made aware of that which is beyond it and that from which it comes, the sacred.

The intrusion of the sacred into human experience represents a direct transmission of the REAL, a transmission of God, Creator, Allah, Great Spirit.  The human who experiences this is made aware of a reality that transcends the human and thus predates the human linguistic and cultural contstructs.  This presents difficulties.  How does one retain the memory and experience of something that predates all things human?  To explain the experience and to retain memory of it, human beings automatically structure the direct experience of the sacred into internalized symbolic constructs.  Thus the sacred comes to be expressed in visions, wondrous feelings, thoughts and sometimes smells and tastes.  This is due to the nature of memory patterning. 

Human memory patterns are constructed of aspects of the five senses; that is, memories are encoded bits of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings.  Thus the experience of the sacred is translated into visions, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings even though the sacred is both all and none of these things.  Examinations of  the written and oral records of those who encountered the sacred show that their experiences were very rich and generally included all of the five senses."
-Stephen Harrod Buhner from "Sacred Plant Medicine"

I Love Mother's Day

The sun shone down on a lovely breezy day.  The air was fresh, the colors around vibrant green and blue, yellow, shades of purple, orange and pink.  A mama who loves mothers day, for having learned the love of motherhood, found herself pleasantly off-grid, snug in a tent, surrounded by love. 

Moments later, a small boy packed his backpack with only the essentials: a set of bey blades and a travel size stadium.  His big sister, curls flowing in the gentle breeze, smiled, spread the sunscreen on exposed skin, and tightened the laces on her well-worn hiking boots.  Their mama packed lunch and her trusty hiking partner/ boyfriend carried it off.

"Shall we go to where we saw the rattle snake, Mama?" the curly, smiley faces urged.  "Or how about where we ran from the cow stampede?  We can go to the cow trough and play with the fish!"

Longing to stretch our legs a bit, we lingered in our hike, and found a colorful meadow of tall grasses and wildflowers.  The boy's curls peeked just above the grasses.  So we spread our blanket, enjoyed a lovely lunch, played bey blades, told stories, played our hiking games, and napped snuggled close together.  No rattlesnakes or cow stampedes this time, but so many more beautiful memories made.

Time to get up; how we all longed not to leave.  But the celebration had not yet ended.  Off went the hiking clothes as we jumped into our city finest.  And down the hill we drove, but just a bit to the lovely Mt. Hamilton Restaurant where we all met with Grandma and Uncle.  The historic restaurant was ready for a new milestone.  After 30 years of family ownership, it was transferring to another family's care.  We are so happy to be part of this lovely place's history.

We watched the sun drop down beneath our view behind the mountains, and the glorious hues of the descending sun were quickly replaced by the sparkling city lights dancing their busy paths down below.  We watched from a distance as we enjoyed one another in a warm and comfortable place and were graciously and well fed by the lovely family of the mountain.

I could not have wanted a better day.  Each moment was delicious and precious and beautiful.  But isn't every moment as a mama delicious and precious and beautiful?  We mama's all are so very fortunate!  When I began my first pregnancy, I had the realization: "Never again shall I ever be alone."  It was a bit frightening for this very independent woman, but so comforting as I became the loving mama.  Yes, we are all connected!

A house that has been experienced

A house that has been experienced is not an inert box.  Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.

-Gaston Bachelard from The Poetics of Space

Hungry

Hungry to feel the fingertips brushing upon my skin.

Touch me, and the body electric melts under it’s own heat.

Penetrate me, slowly.

Awaken all of the delicious tingling that initiates our journey,

And when we arrive, our sacred destination, a moment of enlightenment.

Hungry to taste desire, dripping wet on my tongue,

I will fill my mouth with your mouth, your tongue, your fingers.

This sweet treat, your soul.

Call my name.

No, whisper,

Breathe it,

As if it has just filled you,

And having touched deep inside, you breathe out,

Again to reach out to me.

I hear your voice.

I hear this whisper of my name,

And my heart forgets to take it’s next beat.

I smell you, too.

My bedsheets betray the lusty longing,

Of one embodied soul for another.

Your shirt, worn before lying me down,

Beckons me back to the sweetest moments,

Those that live as desire, not yet fulfilled.

I don’t see you.

My eyes search in the faces of the men passing by.

I watch their bodies move, and I remain unmoved.

But I have appetite…

Radiance Sutras Conclusion

Bhairava said,

Beloved power-permeated one,
When the elements of your being –
the creative mind,
the one who divides things up,
the identification with your limited self –

When all these dissolve into essence,
and are experienced as delightful
manifestations of the true Self,
then that Self is known.

Being established in even one
of these hundred and twelve practices,
you can know from inside
the one who permeates all.

You will have the power to say a word, and
it will be done, the power to bless and unbless.
The one who goes deeply into any of these,
becomes friends with the life-force itself.




The goddess then asked,

If this is the nature of the universal self,
then who is to be worshipped?
To whom do I offer oblations,
To whom do I sacrifice?
If everything is divine,
and consciousness merges with that divine essence,
then what happens to the distinction between worshipper and worshipped?

Bhairava replied,

Oh goddess, the practices you are speaking of
refer only to the externals.
When you enter into the great Self,
then all prayers go on inside you spontaneously
without ceasing.
In reality all songs of gratitude
and ecstatic lovemaking are resonating in
every particle of creation at every moment.
When you are established in mindfulness
you are listening, and you hear them.

Plunging without reservation
into the ocean of being is meditation.
No image, no thoughts, no prop.

Concentrating on the image of a god
with a body, eyes, and a mouth,
is not meditation.


Worship does not mean offering flowers.
It means offering your heart to the vast mystery
of the universe. It means to let your heart pulse with the life
of the universe, without thought and without reservation.
It means being so in love that you are
willing to dissolve and be recreated in every moment.

Being transformed by even one of these practices,
fullness of experience develops day by day.
One day the desire of the self for the great Self
is consummated. Come ready for that day!

To dissolve in the fire of the great void,
senses dissolve, mind dissolves,
the objects of sense dissolve,
even the void is dissolved -
that is worship.

Sacrifice is to let your sins be destroyed
by the vast power of the universe;
It is to live in radiant bliss,
having sacrificed your shame before infinity.


The real purification with water
is to bathe in the essence of eternity.
Stunning autonomy, radiant bliss,
invisible consciousness permeating you
always and in every direction.

The flowers, the candles, the honey
that are offered in worship are
made out of the same divine stuff as you.
Who then is worshipped?

As the breath flows in, and as it flows out,
it travels always the curving path of the goddess.

Breath flows in and out spontaneously of its own will,
thus all breathing beings continually worship the goddess.
Be conscious of this unconscious prayer,
for she is the most holy place of pilgrimage.

The breath flows out with the sound sa,
The breath flows in with the sound ha.
Thus thousands of times a day,
Everyone who breathes is adoring the goddess.

Know this, and be in great joy.
Listen to the ongoing prayer that is breath.
Life shall dance in you
a dance of ever-renewing delight.

Devi said,

Beloved Revealer,
I am suffused with satisfaction.
My questions have led to fullness.

You have sung to me of the ways of union
of the god and the goddess,
space and time, personal and impersonal,
energy and form, infinite and finite.
You have sung the song of being at home in the universe.

Having said that, the goddess,
radiant with delight, embraced her lover.
-excerpt from The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche