Ive been collaborating with a local musician, putting my words to music. We have 6 songs completed from some of my older poetry. This has me writing again, for first time in months, and it feels incredible to tap into that creative flow again. Wrote this the other day and thought I would share.. This is the first time I have written with a song in mind. The chorus we usually do together, so that is unfinished. Hope to meet some other musicians along the way as well. This is a series of questions from the journey.

Deep in the Mystery

I am looking for a path that
stays hidden. Although the sun is shinning,
I am enticed into unconsciousness by interesting tidbits.
Waking from the spell of distraction, I search
with focused attention, and
turn to gain new perspective.

Straight ahead there is a break in the trees
with blue sky spilling into a path.
Was it there all this time?

Seeds of Hope

Henri Frederich Aniel said “You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering. I was meditating this morning on how the tightness continues to open onto greater joy. After the retreat in Seattle, I experienced a lot of this tightness but have learned to embrace it. Grateful that I found OpenHand as a lot of mainstream identification had led me to try to avoid it or to quickly heal it away.. This writing flowed out this morning after meditating on this.

The Price of the Kingdom

I'm so grateful to find this community as I was feeling somewhat alienated by mainstream spirituality and, as Open says, their tendency to want to 'drop the hot coals' before they teach us their lesson and we recovery the fragments of Self hidden within. As a society it seems that we have become obsessed with avoiding discomfort and the gifts within suffering. To surrender and fall into the heart of it all, with its inherent terror and uncertainty, is the only secure path I have found and it seems that the soul has such a natural, self-healing process guiding it, if I am open to it.

This poem is meant to be accompanied by a picture of a marble statue of David. Fiona shared the quote "Seek not for love,
Rather to remove the blocks to the awareness of love's presence". The poem is about how the beauty is there within the marble block of stone and that it is what is removed that results in the beauty. What remains. I wrote this about gift within the suffering- which is always greater than anything that I appear to be losing - and the beautiful remains.

Beautiful Remains

A massive slab of stone
Conceals a great unknown

Shared this via email with the group from Seattle but was encouraged to post on site as well. One of the main lessons that resonated with me from 5gateways movie and at the retreat also was that we will be drawn into tightness during the unfolding and that I must feel my way through. Recovering the fragments of soul requires persistence and courage but it is well worth it. There is no other way for me.

The cage was comfortable at first.
She tried hard to fit in and comply.
Besides, change was hard.
From the safety of her cage,
she marveled at the sunset as
multicolored rays touched her skin.
At night, she watched shades of the moon
danced across the sky.
Wind caressed the days and brought her
smells of the changing seasons.
Letting nature flow through her
seemed like enough, and for awhile, it was.

The ground awakens the moment
your feet touch the earth.
Receive flow and allow.
So often, we look for fulfillment where
it can’t be found.
Subconscious underlying assumptions
seem to work even when they don’t.
Unhappy irritations are just thoughts,
adding up until you are stuck.
By noticing and shifting even a bit,
Those thoughts don’t take over.
Each moment counts.

“So I stare into the soul of my greatest fears as they come for me in the night, in the in-between, and what I find is my broken and fragmented self-staring back at me. It leads to the complete realisation that it was always me tormenting myself and others again and again.

I open myself in the face this total annihilation, to being burned to the ground, and in doing so my false self, the scared self, the ego, is burned and freed from its prison.