The Dweller Within

We can only reach the end of a difficult road or a dark night of the soul by accepting that we must grow according to our own rhythm, our own nature - seriously and calmly; when we try to embrace the questions without forcing the answers. This means, that to receive the Divine Voice - the Dweller Within - we have to make ourselves the interpretor of her silence, lending her our own breath when hers is no more then an inaudible and weak sigh.

The Essence of Desire

I did not

have to ask my heart what it wanted,

because of all desires I have ever known

just one did I cling to

for it was the essence of

all desire:

To hold beauty

in my soul's

arms.

*

John of the Cross

Painting by Kahlil Gibran

The Art of Peace

Two and a half millennia ago in China a military strategist called Sun Tzu wrote a book about such martial matters. Sun Tzu called his book The Art of War, and he intended it as a guidebook for those who wished to learn and to put into practice the ways of war outlined in his text. The universe is all about balance, and if there exists such an idea as war being an art and an apparently worthy subject for study, should there not also somewhere exist an ‘Art of Peace’; a martial study that is equally committed to practicing techniques whose intention is to ensure that peace and the pursuit of peace has at least as much of a voice as more warlike actions?

Two of my children, brother and sister, have practiced the Japanese martial art of Aikido. I must admit that, had I been younger and enjoying better health, I would have liked to have practiced with them! Frequently enough we might find ourselves in situations which make demands upon us, upon our sense of focus and concentration, and we might feel that our inner peace has been taken from us. It is in such situations that Aikido could come to our aid. Aikido is relatively modern, and was developed over the period between the 1920’s and the 1960’s by Morihei Uyeshiba, who is often referred to by his title of O-Sensei, meaning ‘Great Teacher’. In practice it places an emphasis on dynamically using one’s own energy to resist any potential attacks from others. In its essence it is therefore a strategy for defence rather than one of competitive aggression, but Aikido offers us more than simple self-defence techniques.

In evolving Aikido, O-Sensei employed a spiritual fusion originating from his interaction with the Oomoto-kyo (‘Great Source’) religion, whose leaders have been predominantly female. To this O-Sensei added streams of spiritual teaching stemming from both Shinto and Buddhism. ‘Aikido’ can be translated as "the way to union with universal energy" or "the way of unified energy". Another common interpretation of the Japanese characters is “harmony, spirit and way”, so Aikido can also be taken to mean "the way of spiritual harmony" or "the art of peace". And so in O-Sensei’s Aikido we have found our countering martial equivalent for Sun Tzu’s The Art of War! And there is one more layer to add to this spiritual mix.

The Japanese word for "love" also happens to be pronounced ‘ai’. In later life, O-Sensei emphasized this interpretation of ‘ai’. In his quest for a less aggressive approach, O-Sensei received a divine inspiration that led him away from the violent nature of his previous martial training, and took him instead towards a "spirit of peace". O-Sensei ultimately said that the way of the warrior is the "way of divine love that nurtures and protects all things", and this surely is the ultimate meaning of such a practice: that the way of a true warrior can as equally, and perhaps even more significantly, be one which practices peace.

Painting by Matsubayashi Keigetsu

Beauty and the Beast

I remember at a film festival watching Jean Cocteau’s classic version of this famous fairy tale and being unexpectedly disappointed at the end when, transformed through Beauty’s love, the monstrous but endearing Beast became the tiresomely-handsome prince! The tale endures because the lessons which it contains are so readily accessible: true love sees beyond outward appearances, and love is about acceptance of the other for who that person really is. These truths weave their way through the story, and we recognise and respond to them, and so keep the tale fresh and alive through the generations. But is it still possible to discover new truths in the tale?

Some 40 years ago, a deranged Hungarian stood in front of one of the most beautiful works of the spirit which art has created. Without warning, he leapt at the marble statue and dealt it repeated blows with a hammer, smashing off the left arm, and leaving the face severely damaged. Shattered fragments of Michelangelo’s Pieta lay strewn across the floor of the Vatican before staff and shocked onlookers could react. It took more than five months just to collect and identify the various fragments – one tiny chipping being identified as the eyelid of Mary, who in the statue holds the body of the crucified Christ, her son.

Why did this man commit such a terrible act of destruction? Even given his apparent mental instability, why destroy such beauty? The principal damage to the marble was directed, not at the crucified body which she supports, but at the figure of Mary. But Michelangelo does not show us Mary’s features contorted with grief, as was customary with a portrayal of the Pieta. Instead, her features seem to embody a transcendence which lifts both her and us beyond the greatest pain of the soul which a mother – and specifically this mother – has to endure: a manifestation of beauty which for one man apparently proved unbearable.

It seems that it is not just the acceptance by Beauty of the Beast which should concern us, but the reverse. We are at times the Beast who needs to accept a transcendent and confronting Beauty. In Afghanistan the Taliban, driven by religious fanaticism, reduced with dynamite the millennia-old serene statues of the Buddhas of Bamiyan to broken rubble. Many other examples of such destruction of created beauty are provided by history. What is beautiful must, it seems, be destroyed for one reason or another. And such destruction is not limited to the created works of artists both known and unknown. An idyllic valley is flooded to make way for a giant dam. Whole forests are cut down and reduced to waste land, or for housing development. The natural world around us, the most beautiful treasure which we have in our care, is ransacked, either for its resources or in the name of a dubious progress.

It is as if the human soul is torn between that soul’s need for the experience of beauty and an equal need to destroy it. In the story of Beauty and the Beast we all recognise the inner work to which Beauty has to commit herself before she is able to accept the appearance of the Beast. But what tends to be overlooked is the equal commitment which the Beast needs to make in order to accept – and to allow to exist – the soul-healing appearance of Beauty.

Photograph courtesy of the Palace Theatre in Devon, UK

Sculpture of Michelangelos Pieta

Aho Willow, Tree of Love

Aho Sacred Tree of Life,

The root of every tree,

Thank you for giving

The gifts you give to me.

Aho Standing People,

From you I will learn,

To keep my roots well planted,

Yet reach for Grandfather Sun.

Aho Willow, Tree of Love,

Teach me to bend,

Till I come full circle,

Each relation as my friend.

*

 From The Sacred Path Cards, Standing People, by Jamie Sams

*

Standing by my Weeping Willow October 2017,

shortly before I became ill.

And God Be With You

Power of raven be yours, 

Power of eagle be yours, 

Power of the Fiann. 

Power of storm be yours, 

Power of moon be yours, 

Power of sun. 

Power of sea be yours, 

Power of land be yours, 

Power of heaven. 

Goodness of sea be yours, 

Goodness of earth be yours, 

Goodness of heaven. 

Each day be joyous to you, 

No day be grievous to you, 

Honor and compassion. 

Love of each face be yours, 

Death on pillow be yours, 

And God be with you.

*

This prayer comes from the Highlands of Scotland, 

recorded (in Gaelic) more than one hundred years ago.

Uprising

They are coming to life,

They are coming!

They are singing back to us.

And they are dancing!

Mama mia!

The Venus of Willendorf has 

hip rocked open the entrance doors

of Vienna’s Natural History Museum.

She’s waltzing down the Strasse,

pendulous breasts swinging.

Her hands which have rested on them

for millennia are arcing

through the air

like two ecstatic love birds.

Meanwhile in Malta’s Hypogeum, 

The Sleeping Lady is waking from labyrinthine dreams, 
pregnant with power for healing.

She is opening her eyes, 
rolling her vast thighs over

the platform sides. 
Snakes are spiraling from her ankles to the ceiling.

In every corner of the planet, they are breaking out of their prisons -

archaeological sites where there are no sacred rites,

vaults and glass boxes in temperature controlled rooms

where they are seldom seen and there is no touching.

They are growing back their missing limbs,

repainting themselves in the colour of life.

And they are dancing.

It is harvest time. 

The moon is full and fat and buttery.

She is spreading her liminal light along the pathways

where hundreds of them are streaming -

cavorting, cackling and mischieving.

Every woman who has a besom has snatched it from the closet

And is flying out the back door to greet them.

And now the Venus of Laussel and Dolni Vestonice

have joined to make an archway.

With a shimmy and a shindig, Sheila-Na-Gig

(dauntless icon of fecundity and pleasure)

jostles through first, snapping her purse

revealing and concealing her treasure.

They are all here.

Grain goddesses, crowned snake goddesses,

uterine egg-shaped goddesses,

bird-faced goddesses, birth-giving goddesses.

Dancing for our lives. 
Dancing for our future.

Dancing for the Earth. 

Dancing for the Great Mother.

*

Debra Hall

*

Images: 

Venus of Tan-Tan (between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago)

Venus of Willendorf  (25.000 BCE - 22.000 BCE)

Venus of Laussel (c. 23.000 BCE)

The Sweet Taste of Grief

I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow

and called out: "It tastes sweet, does it not?"

"You have caught me",  grief answered, 

"and you have ruined my business.

How can I sell sorrow,

when you know it's a blessing?"

*

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Painting by Cesare Laurenti

A Wordless Song

In the depth of my soul there is a wordless song 

A song that lives in the seed of my heart. 

It refuses to melt with ink on parchment; 

It engulfs my affection 

In a transparent cloak and flows, 

But not upon my lips. 

How can I sigh it? 

I fear it may mingle with earthly ether; 

To whom shall I sing it? 

It dwells in the house of my soul, 
In fear of harsh ears. 

When I look into my inner eyes 

I see the shadow of its shadow; 

When I touch my fingertips 
I feel its vibrations. 

The deeds of my hands heed its presence 

As a lake must reflect the glittering stars; 

My tears reveal it, as bright drops of dew 

Reveal the secret of a withering rose. 

It is a song composed by contemplation, 

And published by silence, 

And shunned by clamor, 

And folded by truth, 

And repeated by dreams, 

And understood by love, 

And hidden by awakening, 

And sung by the soul. 

It is the song of love; 

What Cain or Esau could sing it? 

It is more fragrant than jasmine; 

What voice could enslave it? 

It is heart bound, as a virgin's secret; 

What string could quiver it? 

Who dares unite the roar of the sea 

And the singing of the nightingale? 

Who dares compare the shrieking tempest 

To the sigh of an infant? 

Who dares speak aloud the words 

Intended for the heart to speak? 

What human dares sing in voice 

The Song of God? 

*

Poem and Painting

by

Khalil Gibran

A Prayer to the Shekhinah

Come be our mother we are your young ones

Come be our bride we are your lover

Come be our dwelling we are your inhabitants

Come be our game we are your players

Come be our punishment we are your sinners

Come be our ocean we are your swimmers

Come be our victory we are your army

Come be our laughter we are your story

Come be our Shekhinah we are your glory

We believe that you live

though you delay we believe you will certainly come....

When the transformation happens as it must

When we remember

When she wakes from her long repose in us

When she wipes the nightmare 

of history from her eyes

When she returns from exile

When she utters her voice in the streets

In the opening of the gates

How long, you simple ones, will you

Love simplicity, and the scorners delight

In their scorning, and fools hate knowledge

When she enters the modern world

When she crosses the land

Shaking her breasts and hips

With timbrels and with dances

magnified and sanctified

Exalted and honored

Blessed and glorified

When she causes tyranny

To vanish

When she and he meet

When they behold each other face to face

when they become naked and not ashamed

On that day will our God be One

and their name One

Shekhinah bless us and keep us

Shekhinah shine your face on us

Shekhinah turn your countenance

To us and give us peace

From Nakedness of the Fathers. Alicia Ostriker is a renowned poet, essayist, and midrashist, and the author of many books of midrash, prose and poetry, including Nakedness of the Fathers and The Volcano Sequence.

Image found on Pinterest

La Loba, the Wolf Woman

There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows in their souls but few have ever seen. As in the fairy tales of Eastern Europe, she seems to wait for lost or wandering people and seekers to come to her place. She calls herself many names: ‘La Huesera’, Bone Woman; ‘La Trapera’, The Gatherer; and ‘La Loba’, Wolf Woman. The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She collects and preserves that which is in danger of being lost to the world.

La Loba parallels world myths in which the dead are brought back to life. In Egyptian mythos, Isis accomplishes this service for her dead brother Osiris, who is dismembered by his evil brother Set. Isis works from dusk to dawn each night to piece her brother back together again before morning, else the sun will not rise. The Christ raised Lazarus, who had been dead so long he ‘stinketh’. Demeter calls forth her pale daughter Persephone from the Land of the Dead once a year. And La Loba sings over the bones.

When La Loba sings, she sings from the knowing of ‘los ovarios’, a knowing deep within the body, deep within the mind, deep within the soul. The symbols of seed and bone are very similar. If one has the root stock, the basis, the original part, if one has the seed of corn, any havoc can be repaired, devastations can be resewn, fields can be rested, hard seed can be soaked to soften it, to help it break open and thrive. To have the seed means to have the key to life. To be with the cycle of the seed means to dance with life, dance with death, dance into life again. This embodies the Life and Death Goddess in her most ancient and principled form. Because she turns in these constant cycles, I call her the Life/Death/Life Mother.

If something has been lost, it is she to whom one must appeal, speak with, listen to. Her psychic advice is sometimes harsh or difficult to put into practice but always transformative and restorative.
La Loba. the old one in the desert, is a collector of bones. In archetypal symbology, bones represent the indestructible force. They do not lend themselves to easy reduction. They are by their structure hard to burn, nearly impossible to pulverize. In myth and story they represent the indestructible soul-spirit. We know the soul-spirit can be injured, even maimed, but it is nearly impossible to kill.
You can dent the soul and bend it. You can hurt it and scar it. You can leave the marks of illness upon it, and the scorch marks of fear. But it does not die, for it is protected by La Loba in the underworld. She is both the finder and the incubator of bones.

~ Excerpt from ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves’ by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

I Am In Love With God’s Daughter

I am in love with God’s daughter.

She smiles at me in the glancing sunlight through the trees

She smiles at me in the tender thrust of an opening bud

She whispers to me from within the perfect singing of the small birds.

She loves me always.

I whisper: why does no one know your name?

I whisper: why are your tales not told?

Why are the stories forgotten?

Why are there no songs?

She sits with me, cross legged

And opens her eyes for me

My heart beating as I gaze into those eyes so soft, so true, so lovely, so loving

She answers me only with her open eyes and says:

You know the tales so true, 

you know the songs so lovely, 

you know the tunes so simple, 

so delicate so precious, 

they are not lost they are not lost, 

they are safe within your unspoken heart. 

Safe within the unspoken night, 

the unspoken moon, 

the unspoken dawn,

we await the unspoken love of man.

Do not worry my brave son, my beautiful son, do not worry ..

The unspoken night is upon us and tomorrow dawns the newly spoken day.

*

from: Song of the Second Wind by Samuel Stillmore

Image: Princess Angelina, "Kikisoblu" 

Daughter of Chief Seattle, 

photograph by Edward S. Curtis

Woman is a Ray of God

The Prophet said that women hold dominion

Over sages and over men of heart,

But that fools, again, hold the upper hand over women,

Because fools are violent and exceedingly forward.

They have no tenderness or gentleness or amity,

Because the animal nature sways their temperament.

Love and tenderness are qualities of humanity,

Passion and lust are qualities of animality.

Woman is a ray of God, not a mere mistress,

The Creator’s self, as it were, not a mere creature!

- Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Rumi looked upon women as the most perfect example of God’s creative power on earth. In Masnavi-I Ma'navi (spiritual couplets), his monumental mystical work, Rumi calls woman, “a ray of God”. “She is not just the earthly beloved, She is creative, not created”. Rumi is one of those rare spiritual masters who, like Jesus, had female disciples. (Masnavi, I:2437)

Persephone Speaks

I knew

from my dreams of stone temples, death, and

a dark potent God,

that I would go. 

Slipping away from my mother,

I gathered my bridal bouquet from her fragrant fields

and sat alone

where Narcissus blooms,

watching,

waiting

for the earth to crack. 

Nothing….

Nothing moved but the wind on the grasses

and Apollo’s watchful eye.

So I reached for a blossom

and firmly pulled its roots from the soil.

Then,

something. 

Something...

came from beneath

and violently pulled me down...

down through a dark passage

of moist blackness,

and tangled roots,

until I lay beside the underground river, silent and deep. 

He waited for me there in the dim light...

Hades, dreadful Lord of the Underworld.

My mind, racing with fear, voicelessly cried out,

“Oh Gods!  will I die here?”

In the frozen silence

his powerful horses stamped and pulled at their reins,

their hot breath steaming the cold air,

but his eyes were steady and piercing,

formidable,

yet patiently asking,

“Are you willing?  Are you ready?” 

Something….

something made my blood run hot

and I reached up.

He pulled me close with one great arm,

and with the other

drove the chariot

hard into the river

beneath the murky waters. 

I cannot tell what happened in the depths,

you must go there yourself,

but I will say this:

I emerged completely changed.

Pregnant with new wisdom and new life. 

And so, I came into the Land of the Dead as their Queen.

The pitiful shadows there,

rejected and feared by the world above,

moved my heart.

Long I looked upon each one,

that I might understand

the pain of neglected children

wanting only to be seen and heard. 

I looked,

and I listened. 

It seemed only a moment had passed since my descent

when a messenger arrived from Zeus.

Thinking I had been abducted,

Demeter refused to tend the Earth.

Hermes had come to take me home...

a place I’d almost forgotten. 

Knowing I had to go, my dark God did not rage...

as some have reported..

but asked for my return, and in truth,

I had no wish to leave.

But, for the love of my Mother, and Life, I began my ascent.

For the love of my Husband, and Death,

I took the sacred pomegranate from his hand,

ate of it,

and promised him a part of every year. 

I came into the world through a sacred spring,

where the river rises to nourish the earth. 

All was desolate, barren, and cold.

Horrified, I ran to find my mother,

to show her I was safe,

to tell her what I saw.

With each step,

flowers burst forth,

and grass greened.

Demeter had felt my presence

and released the world from Winter.  

I am now a Goddess in my own right

and the world will no longer have eternal Summer,

I will not allow it.

There must be a dying off...

a descent into the shadowlands

to honor what has been lost

or killed...

and a rebirth from the seed of that

dark, moist realm. 

This is the Sacred Marriage of Life and Death.

This is the Secret of Creation.

This is the Eternal Mystery. 

*

by © Marilyn J. Meyer Owen

Painting: The Return of Persephone by Frederick Lord Layton

Soul-Light

There are many things happening in the world which seem to be moving directly against what we might have hoped for: a more peaceful, more enlightened world. And it can be so easy to feel overwhelmed by events, to feel that we are powerless against such a tidal flow of negative forces. 
We are not.

Our personal power is something which can never be taken from us. It is our personal power that gives us the ability to transform. To realize this is to empower ourselves, and this is when our individual transformation becomes a light to those around us, and in turn to those around them, and the power of this ripple effect expands outwards and transforms the greater world. Yes, these times are difficult, but that is exactly why we are here now. This is the time and this is the place, wherever that place may be, to make our stand and let our soul-light shine, for the darker the shadows, the more fiercely this soul-light will burn. We, all of us, are made for these times.

Wishing all my readers the trust and soul-power to shine brightly throughout the coming year.

Painting by Wil Lof