Letting Go

Dear Brave Souls

To let go 

Some have a hard time 

letting go of what is no longer, 

what cannot be, what is not,

what has never been. 

People say 

'just let go, 

just let go, 

just let go' 

scattering the platitude like confetti 

immediately swept away by any wind. 

What is it exactly, this letting go? 

No longer allowing the eye

to be caught by the hook...

No longer fastening the lock on the door, 

just letting the door swing as it will...

No longer visiting the graves 

where there is no love 

and no blessing in both directions...

No longer reviewing and reviewing the past, 

even the last moment, 

as though there will be a test. 

There will not be a test, dear soul.

What is it exactly, 

this letting go?

Not reading the same chapter over and over

and over and over, futilely attempting 

to make the indelible facts be rewritten… 

Making new memories of quality

to bathe old scars and new life...

Moving into a larger world 

in which the past 

is but a dot on the landscape

rather than the only continent in sight.

We all find our ways… 

letting go is shaking loose,

letting go is turning

in your great coat, into a new wind

forward into new sky and open road

leaving what cannot be,

and taking all treasure

from the wreck. 

Each in her own way.

Each in his own way.

This comes with love. Hang in there. No one deserves to be nailing the hem of their cloak to the crossroad that once was, but that is not now.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Painting by Helene Knoop

Noli Me Tangere

Noli Me Tangere

‘Noli me tangere’, he quietly said

‘Do not touch me.’

But how could I not reach out

for my Dear One?

How could I not long to hold

even the hem of his garment,

gain some measure of substance

for what I had thought was lost to me?

Around us, all was still.

Even the birds had fallen silent

in the still air of that miraculous place

as if in wonder at this marvel.

And I, overcome, reached towards him.

‘Noli me tangere’, he softly said

in caution and in love.

Neither man nor shade,

but part of both these things:

a creature between worlds,

between realms, between kingdoms,

between what has been

and what is still to come.

And I reached out to him.

But ‘noli me tangere’, he said.

And I must stay my hand

And my great longing.

And so I showed him my greatest love

as he intended, and as he already knew.

For what he already knew

was that he would never be lost to me.

And my greatest love, in knowing this,

was to let him go.

   

Painting of Mary Magdalene by Louis Janmot Mirror

The Mothers

The Mothers

They are saying that he is of us all.

If this is true .. and we trust that it is so ..

and he truly is the son

then he also must be our son

and we, his many mothers.

What, then, must we think

when we see him ride between

the waving fronds of palms?

What, then, must we feel

when he passes by us,

almost close enough to touch?

Donkey and colt are enough

to carry him to his destiny.

But we, the mothers

who line these streets

to watch him pass

among the adoring fronds 

do not see a king, triumphant.

We see no crown, no royal robes,

no hem to kiss, no kingly sword. 

We do not see the one

whom those around us

hail as lord.

We, the mothers, only see our son,

and as mothers know these things

we see only the dear son

for whom we soon must mourn.

For the crowd, he leads,

and they will surely follow.

But he himself must follow his own road

And where that road must go

and our grief will be the grief 

only a mother’s heart can know.

Riding the Donkey

Scripture tells us that, just one week before his crucifixion, Jesus rode in triumph into Jerusalem. We also are told that, before this ride of triumph, he was very specific in his instructions to his disciples about the animal that he wished to ride. As we know, it was a donkey. He even told his disciples where they would find the specific donkey that he wished to ride for the purpose. We might ask why such a humble animal was the mount of choice for this moment of supreme acknowledgement and recognition of Jesus’ earthly worth. 

The worldly reason might have been a practical one: a donkey certainly would have been a readily-available animal. And the symbolic reason might seem apparent enough: what more humble animal than a donkey to underscore Jesus’ own humility? What more telling way to demonstrate to the crowd that they might hail him as a king, but that his own trappings of kingship were the very things of their own everyday use? This is as far as explanations usually go. But is it possible to go a little further, to dig a little deeper, to discover that there is more to this tableau of humility and triumph than at first seems apparent?

A carving which was discovered on a pillar in Rome depicts, of all things, a crucified donkey. This rough carving, which dates from the second century, might at first seem mocking: perhaps the equivalent of a political cartoon of its day. But the image points us towards a mystic teaching of Gnosticism, in which the donkey is symbolic of the human ego. And a fitting symbol it is! Like the obstinate and stubborn donkey, the ego can be unruly. We might wish to go in one direction, but the donkey (and the ego) insists on asserting its own will, on telling us that it is the most important thing there is, and its will carries us along with it.

Putting the ego in its place, triumphing over its illusory dominance, is a striving common to various beliefs. In Zen Buddhism it is symbolised by the bull, which in its temperament is seen as being much like the wilful donkey. To ride the bull is therefore the embodiment of subjugating the pompous ego, of achieving a necessary detachment from the forest of illusions which clamour for our attention and insist to us that they are real.

But riding the bull, riding the donkey, is not the final phase of the process. In these mystic teachings we are told that only with the complete defeat of the ego will true transcendence find place. The bull will itself be seen as an illusion and will dissolve and vanish. The donkey will be sacrificed on the cross of worldly pretence - and the man as well. For the supreme triumph is not the ride, but the moment of ultimate transcendence that will surely follow.

Painting Christ's Entry into Jerusalem by Hippolyte Flandrin, 1842

Cherokee basketweave cross by Baskauta

The passage in scripture can be found in Matthew 21:1-7

Rhythm of Life

RHYTHM OF LIFE

Wait, have you not understood?

Feel how the earth now warms you

when night has passed.

Time stands still ..

Sand slips through your fingers,

and in your hand still rests

the crystal glow

that once lit up your day.

You are still connected

to the current of your existence.

When will you understand?

It is not yet too late

to let your spirit fly.

Listen now

to how your wishes and desires

perform their symphonies,

how heavy drumbeats

in your heart's orchestra

shake the ground beneath your feet

to life once more.

Let the strings sing!

And pluck all the chords

of your soul ..

Do you now understand?

Painting Hope by George Frederick Watts, 1886

Touching Empty Ground

Through the lives we lived, I learned the harshest gift-lesson to accept, and the most powerful I know - that is, knowledge, an absolute certainty that life repeats itself, renews itself, no matter how many times it is stabbed, stripped to the bone, hurled to the ground, hurt, ridiculed, ignored, scorned, looked down upon, tortured, or made helpless.

I learned from my dear people as much about the grave, about facing the demons, and about rebirth as I have learned in all my psychoanalytic training and all my twenty-five years of clinical practice. I know that those who are in some ways and for some time shorn of belief in life itself - that they ultimately are the ones who will come to know best that Eden lies underneath the empty field, that the new seed goes first to the empty and open places - even when the open place is a grieving heart, a tortured mind, or a devastated spirit.

What is this faithful process of spirit and seed that touches empty ground and makes it rich again? Its greater workings I cannot claim to understand. But I know this: Whatever we set our days to might be the least of what we do, if we do not also understand that something is waiting for us to make ground for it, something that lingers near us, something that loves, something that waits for the right ground to be made so it can make its full presence known.

I am certain that as we stand in the care of this faithful force, that what has seemed dead is dead no longer, what has seemed lost is no longer lost, that which some have claimed impossible is made clearly possible, and what ground is fallow is only resting - resting and waiting for the blessed seed to arrive on the wind with all Godspeed.

Excerpt from The Faithful Gardener ( 1995, Harper Collins) by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

photo: India Flint, Botanical Alchemist

Psyche and Zephyr

Wind from the west,

with your invitation to fly away with you:

but to what?

Where will you carry me?

High above the world, yes:

but my dreams have already carried me there.

I have seen already

the wonders of the clouds,

I have felt already

the touch of the moon’s dusty face 

as she sails these seas of early summer.

I know well enough

how the world looks from your realm,

the drowsy shepherds of Arcadia,

lovers, lost to all but themselves,

the way the sails of ships

seem like wind-borne feathers

on the sea’s swell and fall far below:

I have seen them all in dreams

and know how small they are

from these celestial heights.

What more can you show me?

You have promised me all and everything

and you continue to make your promises

even as we both rise.

But do you not realise

how thin the air now grows?

And how fierce the heat of the approaching sun?

Still you continue to make your promises

even as we both rise.

But do you not understand

that in the thin air of these heights

I now can hardly hear you?

And if you carry me higher

into this sky-borne silence

I will not hear your promises at all?

Detail of Night and Sleep by Evelyn de Morgan

Spring - The Tipping Point from Darkness to Light

"I plant a little seed in the cold, cold ground. 

Out comes the yellow sun, big and round. 

Down come the raindrops soft and slow 

Up comes the flower, grow, grow, grow!"

 ~ A Kindergarten Song ~

How full of wonder is this childhood Spring experience! All seems to go without effort. But when we grow older, this inner blossoming, this tipping point from darkness to light, tends to come with some struggle.

In a renewed encounter with the outside world I see how the seemingly-dead wood of the trees and bushes are showered with a filigree patchwork of light green leaves, and I am amazed. I watch how every new little leaf struggles out of the bud. To grow, also as an inner growth, is not without effort, and at times that inner growth journeys along a path of tears. Inner resistance must be overcome in order to make it possible for a true freedom of life to awaken. Can we, like nature, open ourselves to this freeing light?

In many ancient cultures, and in our present culture, it is the egg which is a symbol of new life. In the cosmology of all lands on earth the egg was and still is considered to be a sacred symbol, and revered for its form as well as for its inner mystery. The egg represents the visible manifestation of a world or a being in the state of becoming. It hints at the origin and the secret of existence. The imperceptible seed develops within its enclosed space. It grows without any intervening power from outside, bringing, out of a slumbering nothing, an active something forth, and all that is needed is warmth. And after developed into a living being, it breaks out of its shell to come into the world.

If, as the mystics tell us, our Earth is a living being, then all which is upon it must also in some form be alive, and have this potential for growth. We might imagine that there is a clear difference between what is ‘alive’ and what is ‘non-living’, but the line between the two can be far less defined than we think. We break open a geode, and there inside a magical little world of crystals is growing in a silent beauty which otherwise would pass unseen. Are the crystals alive? They are certainly growing – and growth is a quality that we tend to attribute to life. Perhaps this is why in mystic thought the crystals are said to have their own consciousness: a primitive mineral consciousness which is on a level of awareness below the organic world.

We know that we are alive. But what defines this essence? We grow and develop from a tiny seed of life – but the very atoms and molecules which make up our entire bodies, and which contribute to this process of growth, are themselves non-living! So it seems that this threshold between living and non-living is more vague than we might imagine. What is certainly not imaginary is this shared potential for growth – not just physical growth, but growth of consciousness.

All natural growth and life processes begin with some form of consciousness. It is a rhythmic, self-perpetuating cycle. When these powers which serve the natural growth and nurturing of life are released, then our inner life has access to them, and they become a vital subsoil. This is the realm where the life powers feel at home. It is also the place from where love and compassion well forth. It radiates warmth, as in nature the sun gives warmth. On this level there exists a continuous dying and living again, as in the realm of plants. 

On the tipping point of bud towards leave, from darkness to light, rises - behind the sensory world - the sun of springtime, and fresh green leaves come into being. These revitalizing signs in nature give us trust and joy. Unconsciously we know that they represent a human ideal:  to grow towards the light.

Hearing Secret Harmonies

All existence is energy, and all energy emits vibrations. If we attune ourselves we become aware of these vibrations, perhaps very subtly or in a more obvious way. But to which of these ‘transmissions’ do we choose to attune ourselves?

We live in restless times, with distractions on every side. Even when on vacation in some far-from-home place, we probably have checked the booking brochure beforehand (online, of course!) to make sure that wifi is available for our laptop, tablet, smartphone or whatever mobile device we might take with us. These are the energies of the technology with which we have chosen to surround ourselves: energies which we ourselves have created, and which we tune in to. They might be the energies of our contemporary material existence - but these are not the energies to which our soul listens.

The explorer Marco Polo travelled along the Silk Road far from his native Venice to reach China and discover foreign wonders then unknown to the West. We ourselves might not travel to the court of Kubla Khan, but we can be ‘far from home’ even when we are sitting at home in our own familiar surroundings. It is our soul that seeks for and recognizes something beyond these things: a song which radiates on a higher, more pure frequency, a resonance which, when we hear it, tugs our being towards it, perhaps subtly but always very surely. This resonance awakens a longing: the longing of the soul for home, for its original state.

We in our turn transmit what we receive, what we are open for. If we only attune ourselves to the unrest around us, then unrest is what we ourselves transmit – and that just creates even more unrest, both in ourselves and in our surroundings. It is when with our being we sing the song of the soul that a harmony is created: a harmony that is both new and as old as the earth. The song might be silent, even secretive, but it is still heard on many different levels in many different ways: a harmonic chord to which all that hears it responds and vibrates in sympathy, an ever-growing song of the soul that draws us towards our true home.

Silk Road by Tang Wei Ming

The Church of Love

The following text is a fragment from a Cathar text from 1148.

It does not exist in a fixed form,
but only by the mutual agreement of persons.
It has no members except for those who feel that they belong to it.
It has no rivals because it does not nourish the spirit of competition.
It has no ambition because it only wishes to serve.
It does not have any national boundaries because love does not act this way.
It does not close itself off, as it tries to enrich all groups and religions.
It respects all the great teachers of all times who revealed the truth of love.

All who belong to it, practice the truth of love with their whole being.
He, who belongs to it, knows that.

It does not try to teach other; but only tries to be and by being to give.
It lives in the knowledge that the whole earth is a living being and that we are part of it.
It knows that the time of the last return has arrived; the way of self-surrender, in free will to return to unity.
It does not make itself known by loud words, but works in the free domain of being.
It salutes all those who have enlightened the path of love and gave their lives for it.
It does not create any ranks in its midst and no elevation of anybody, because the one is no greater than the other.
It does not promise reward neither in this or in another life, yet only the joy of being in that love.

Its members recognise each other by their behaviour, their way of being, by the look in their eyes and by no other external act than to embrace each other in a brotherly and sisterly way.
They know neither fear nor shame
and their witness will always be truthful in good as in bad times.

The church of love has no secret,
has neither mystery nor initiation except for the deep knowledge of the power of love, 
as the world must change, if we as persons wish it so;
but only if firstly we change ourselves.

All those who feel that they belong to it do indeed belong.
They belong to the church of love.

Top image by Victoria Pettella

A Dream of Birds

I wander over the ways, while all around me people turn the rich ochre soil, planting row upon row of new young trees with the greatest care and attention. I walk on, leaving the silently-absorbed people behind me still busy with their devoted task. Now I notice something lying on the ground ahead of me: a large and apparently lifeless young female bird with its neck bent in a strange, unnatural curve.

Next to this creature is a second bird, evidently a larger female, for she is giving birth while standing, splaying her legs as a giraffe does – and also like a giraffe, but certainly not like a bird, she is giving birth, not to an egg, but to a live young one. The new-born baby bird drops to the ground next to the first, who until now has remained unmoving. As if sensing the presence of the new-born next to her, the first bird now suddenly comes to life. She shakes her head, shakes her feathers, straightens her neck, rises up to stand on her two legs, and begins to prod the baby with her beak, encouraging it to do the same.

Seeing this, and apparently aware that her own task is now fulfilled, the mother trots away, the splendid radiance of her iridescent feathers leaving a trail of rainbows in her wake. The new-born and the one now standing over it, who seems to be barely older, also have this same radiant plumage. Lapis blues, turquoises, even raven-blacks: all are shining with the brilliance of butterflies’ wings. 

My feet carry me onwards, as if I am forbidden to linger for too long at any one place. Perhaps that is so, for footsteps are always footsteps in time, and the way we see things now is not as they will appear to us tomorrow, or as they seemed yesterday. And so I leave the two birds behind me, with the new-born still being encouraged to stand by her companion, her identical other.

Did the new-born also manage to struggle to her feet? I am sure that she did. The struggle to stand up is inherent, instinctual. We make the effort even though it is so much easier simply to stay lying on the ground. Farther behind me, new trees are already growing. And I who must walk on, follow the path which the mother has taken, walking in the trail of rainbows which she has left for me to follow. 

  Search for the Soul by Kamil Vojnar