Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 360 – 12/11/2019

in addition to being the last full moon of this turn around the sun, it is also the last full moon of the decade and in many time zones around the planet it is exact on 12.12.12 at 12:121212121212/33333… the angels have really outdone themselves with the orchestration of this portal which calls for trust and surrender to deepen and descend into our innermost chambers to release the past andrise in celebration for all the blessings and lessons of the past year, and entire decade…

this full moon also known as the shaman’s moon and global community moon is a powerful portal of expressing, amending, releasing, forgiving and transforming through the heart activating birthing into being our real-eye-sing the beautiful sacred vessel cosmos we all truly live in… so, what a delight to gather tonight in global common unity sangha knowing that beings across the planet are joining in the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness meditation in celebration of the full moon… how i love this song, this prayer flowing through with every breath…

simple and profound, lovingkindness or metta or maitri starts by blessing oneself and gradually expanding outward, eventually wishing good intentions for the entire world and all beings including our enemies… there are many variations and translations of this prayer, what follows is the essence of it; if we all said this prayer with sincerity at least once per week, the world could be a very different place:

My heart fills with with loving kindness. I love myself. May I be happy. May I be well. May I be peaceful. May I be free.

May all beings in my vicinity be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all beings in my city be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all beings in my state be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all beings in my country be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all beings on my continent be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all beings in my hemisphere be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all beings on planet Earth be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May my parents be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all my friends be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all my enemies be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

May all beings in the Universe be happy. May they be well. May they be peaceful. May they be free.

If I have hurt anyone, knowingly or unknowingly in thought, word or deed, I ask for their forgiveness.

If anyone has hurt me, knowingly or unknowingly in thought, word or deed, I extend my forgiveness.

may all beings everywhere, whether near or far, whether known or unknown, be happy

may we all be at peace

may our one heart remain open

may we all realize the beauty of our true nature

may we all know the astonishing light of our being

may we all be a source of healing for all

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 359 – 12/10/2019

seventy-one years ago today, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt—the principle architect of the declaration—understood and personified the power of wise leadership… she knew that the most effective way to lead is by example—by living our values…  when we live up to its ideals, more people can live in freedom, with dignity and agency, and share their gifts with the world… we know that respect for human rights is the foundation of peace, justice, and security…

may the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights continue to be a global beacon – shining a light for dignity, equality & well-being for all…

~

All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

~ Hafiz ~

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 358 – 12/9/2019

ah yes, grandmother and as we are now in the radiation of the almost full moon in gemini, air sign of the twins. perhaps you feel the restless mind more strongly inviting our taking a few moments to gather and collect our attention through the art of inquiry, asking repeatedly the same question ( a la A H Almaas) leaving empty space for us to write down or record our reflections as our deep breaths through the core of our being take us more and more into the stillpoint, the great silence, birthing circle of creation…

~

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you...

tell me a way you experience the deep radiance of the present moment…. thank you…

~

as we rest in the vast spaciousness of this moment, the only moment, may we look through the eyes of the stillpoint of creation seeing the beauty and wonder before us behind us beside us below us above us encircling us in an ever-widening ring of compassion radiating out and in in rhythm with the breath

deep bows to all our relations…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 357 – 12/8/2019

holy synchronicity! today’s pilgrimage, like so many, is a trifecta of riches, actually, it’s more than a trifecta as it’s Bodhi Day, Imagine Day, Astonishing Light of Being Day and the end of a twenty-four hour vigil with one world in dialogue bearing witness to the state of our home which is such a synchronous way to move into the thirty-ninth anniversary of John Lennon’s death when i love spending the day imagining and being peace

in his honor, in honor of all our relatives, all twenty-four hours of this  day i am imagining… everyone living in the moment… letting it be… looking from our real eyes and real-eye-sing we are one…. all our relations living in peace… all of us dreaming the same dream into reality… sharing the world freely and generously… knowing no one is free, happy, healthy until we all are…

what a legacy! how fully you served in your four short decades on this planet before being cut down so abruptly thirty-nine years ago… thousandfold thanks, dear poet rebel with a cause… thousandfold thanks, cosmic ambassador of peace…

blessed be!

~

Imagine

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, youYou may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as oneImagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, youYou may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

~

may we all awaken as Buddha did on this day to a new understanding of reality and the meaning of life and real- eyes what we’ve been seeking has been here all along, right in front of us, in our own backyard, in the core of our being… as simple as it is to meet each moment, it’s not so easy to meet each moment openly, with beginner mind, without preconception and what a joy to experience this liberation…

may we all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 356 – 12/7/2019

Bearing Witness to the Living Earth

WE ARE EARTH.
JUST LIKE EARTH, OUR BODIES ARE 70% WATER,
WITH THE SAME PROPORTION OF SALT AS THE OCEANS.
OUR BONES ARE MADE STRONG BY LIMESTONE
THAT COMES FROM PREHISTORIC SHELLFISH.
EVERY ATOM OF OUR BODY
HAS BEEN A ROCK OR A BUTTERFLY OR A DAISY OR A LION.
WHAT WE CALL MOUNTAIN, AIR, AND OCEAN
ARE THE BONES, THE BREATH, AND THE BLOOD
OF OUR MOST ANCIENT ANCESTORS
AND OUR FUTURE DESCENDANTS.
WE BELONG TO EARTH.

we come together today from across the planet, our island home for a twemty-four hour vigil to bear witness and take action for our earthmother, our one body, our home…

may we open to the complexity and mystery of our relationship to Earth and develop our humanity so that we can hold more of the whole and respond to life from that wholeness by connecting with the truth that we are one body…

our earth mother’s heartbeat echoes through all our relations… feel the momentum building as more and more of us hear her call to rise up and stand together as one large orchestra playing a seamless symphony and re-joy-sing in the harmony we embody as a beautiful wave now encircling the cosmos – peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is…

join with me now in breathing deeply in to the womb of being while placing a hand on your heart and with each deep breath, feel your heart, our one heart, opening a little wider re-membering we all belong to each other, each of our individual destinies is tied with our one collective destiny… to journey to the core of our being, to our heart of gold to be our original face of radiant love, dancing with rainbow mystery…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 355 – 12/6/2019

as the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 25) meets in Madrid, activist, Greta Thunberg, arrived on the scene to march with the 500,000 strong in Spain and more across the planet raising one voice calling for action now for climate justice to put out the fire burning down our one home…

“I sincerely hope that the COP 25 will lead to something concrete and that will lead to also an increase in awareness among people in general and that those in power grasp the urgency of the climate crisis… with the global Fridays for Future movement continuing to sound the alarm, I know that we will do everything we can to make sure that this is something that cannot be ignored anymore, that they cannot just hide away anymore,” Thunberg said.

may we all act to stand for our beautiful planet and stop the raping… in so doing, we must put an end to war and imperialism which literally and in every way fuels the fires of destruction…

one voice for climate justice, one voice for peace on earth…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 354 – 12/5/2019

right now, it’s like this… an inner journey of  re-membering the dream of the beautiful world we are… thanks to all the beautiful beings walking this path of heart, inspiring me and all others… let us listen deeply to the wisdom of the keeper of the sacred white buffalo calf pipe…

~

I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, what we call “Turtle Island.” My words seek to unite the global community through a message from our sacred ceremonies to unite spiritually, each in our ways of beliefs in the Creator.

We have been warned from ancient prophecies of these times we live in today, but have also been given a vital message about a solution to turn these terrible times.

To understand the depth of this message, you must recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today, in the reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas.

I have been learning about these important issues since the age of 12 when I received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and its teachings. Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.

Look around you. Our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations, and we are on the brink of destroying the possibility of a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children’s children.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site called the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, “Heart of Everything That Is,” from continued violations. Our ancestors never saw a satellite view of this site, but now that those pictures are available, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and, when fast-forwarded, it looks like a heart pumping.

The Diné have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver of the earth, and we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal there and the poisoning processes used in doing so.

The Aborigines have warned of the contaminating effects of global warming on the Coral Reefs, which they see as Mother Earth’s blood purifier.

The indigenous people of the rainforest say that the rainforests are the lungs of the planet and need protection.

The Gwich’in Nation in Alaska has had to face oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich’in as “Where life begins.”

The coastal plain is the birthplace of many life forms of the animal nations. The death of these animal nations will destroy indigenous nations in this territory.

As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness much more extinct animal, plant, and human nations, because of humankind’s misuse of power and their lack of understanding of the “balance of life.”

The Indigenous people warn that these negative developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more original teachings and knowledge about Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites, her chakras, and connections to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations.

There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all Nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the types of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole global community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.

Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. This Prophecy was hard to believe! The water was plentiful, pure,  full of energy, nutrition, and spirit. Today we have to buy clean water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just clear liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford.

Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honor our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the source of life itself.

Attacking nations and using more resources to carry out destruction in the name of peace is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affect the global nation; we will not be immune to its repercussions. Allowing continual contamination of our food and land is affecting the way we think.

A “disease of the mind” has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring peace.

In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unites spiritually as a global nation or faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives’ eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land. Using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me in this endeavor. Our vision is for the peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.

As each day passes, I ask all nations to begin a global effort and remember to give thanks for the pure food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony, or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the vast myth of progress and development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You are the one who must decide.

You alone – and only you – can make this crucial choice, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you are essential to this world. Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You are desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 353 – 12/4/2019

somehow, Oregon’s state logo, She Flies with Her Own Wings, seems  a perfect turn of phrase for  this moment… this moment of slowing down, turning inward and descending into the watery depths to take this moment to bathe in the illumination of the central sun within, and luxuriate in her nourishing radiance…

like my state, this moment i’m flying on inner wings across a timeless landscape drawing down and up the energy of the self organizing intelligence of the cosmos, of the implicate order to open our heart circle ever wider to the flow of compassion and lovingkindness that is the very air we breathe…

will everyone join in a moment of gathering the quintessence and our attention and intention in a moment of silent metta, lovingkindness emanating and radiating from the deep inner ground of being?

may we return to this mantra in sync with our ultradian rhythms which occur every ninety minutes or so and harmonize our nervous system with its natural healing cycle…

~

may we all be filled with lovingkindness

may we all feel safe and at ease

may we all accept ourselves just as we are

may we all be deep peace

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 352 – 12/3/2019

the awakening of the rainbow light of awareness is the beautiful moment when the central sun breaks free within illuminating the soul’s journey on the pathless path…

today begins in a soulful space of re-membering dreams/waking reality of buddhic beings filling life so richly with their unbounded, joyful exuberance, yes, i’m talking about the four legged dog people and as i muse upon my longing to live as simply and as in the moment as they, a little jingle arises like the sun…

~

live simply, live free, live in open, spacious reality

die to the old, birth in the new

enter the cave of dreaming womb, transmuting seed into radiant bloom

flowering now in a garden of delight, greeting this day of joyous light

~

i so love dwelling in this spacious field of gold and receiving this gift of a golden key of life – to live simply, to live free, to live in open, spacious reality – has been re-joy-sing me all day long and now i re-member an old shaker song arising from the same open source…

~

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right.

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 351 – 12/2/2019

ah/awe, descending december… already i feel the pull of the sun coming to a standstill, soulstice, and like the sun, feel my rhythms coming to a standstill, a slowing down into the stillpoint, a season of getting down to bare bones and nourishing the roots, the essence at the core of being in the deep inner ground…

yes, may we all travel awakened, lightened, flowing with the wisdom of the deep dark earth where we transform, go beyond the form, the pattern, to be and become our, as yet, unknown self, a dancing star…

For the Unknown Self


So much of what delights and troubles you
Happens on a surface
You take for ground.
Your mind thinks your life alone,
Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
Yet it seems that a little below your heart
There houses in you an unknown self
Who prefers the patterns of the dark
And is not persuaded by the eye’s affection
Or caught by the flash of thought.

It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
With all your unfolding expression,
Is never drawn to break into light
Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
And misjudge what you do and who you are.

It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,
It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do and say and think is fostered
Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment;
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.

Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind,
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid,

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discrete glimpses
Of how you construct your life.

At times, it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.

It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors,
Decorated with pictures of your hunger;

It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.

~ John O’Donohue ~