blessing the space between us

as we journey into mystery

the pilgrimage to our one heart

~

how I love meeting you daily in the deep spaciousness of the river below the river of creativity where we come alive to the embodied knowing of love is all there is and where we celebrate a season of peace when we open our one heart, deeply listen and witness the unfolding of great mystery:

“This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.“

~ David Whyte ~

~

thank you for walking home with me to the home of belonging, the temple of alloneness … this moon as in month also brings an especially touching poignancy to the space between us as this journey into mystery, this pilgrimage into the tiny space of our one heart, the void, the sacred space of emptiness is such a deep dive into the stillpoint of creation…

surrendering to the beloved and trusting in the tenemos of great mother to support and nourish us, we summon the courage to leap into the unknown and relax into the organic, rhythmic flow of the mysterious dance of life…

holding hands in the dark, feeling the waves of our one beating heart, we witness the birth of the new, the promise of every inbreath followed by the re-joy-sing of every outbreath… for in our coming together in the sacred space of our cosmic heart, we change everything, we are transformation dancing to the tune of el canto hondo, the deep soul song… all is well for out in this river of creativity, we weave a world where peace prevails…

welcome, welcome to day 29 of a season of peace on this twenty-seventh day of fleeting february; it’s one more day of being able to choose, even in these challenging moments of eternity with the world collapsing all around, gathering the quintessence, the energy of love and light with the sun still shining on the energy of  tenderness, the crucible of our interconnectedness calling us to journey into the dream cave of grace and rest in love…

~

“Journeys bring power and love back into you. If you can’t go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self. They are like shafts of light, always changing, and you change when you explore them.”

~ Rumi ~

~

seven years ago today, i traveled to an outer graceland for a beautiful gathering with soul family, a re-treat of tuning into the frequency of opening the heart… my first spoken words of the day in the “love is all there is” temenos were the same words as the image of today – everything is grace –  spoken nine months previously when a dogstar trying to open my third eye ruptured  my second eye as well which led to a dream of being in a temple just like the one i lived in that weekend seven years ago that now feels several lifetimes ago… this dream of so many moons ago, of opening the door into the heart, of home being graceland, is birthed right now and just as alive in this moment, this beautiful moment as we breathe in through our one heart and deep down into our core, inner navel of the universe, and, deeper down into our mother earth and breathe out love, sweet love into the multiverse’s harmony re-joy-sing in our coming more and more alive as we open our ever expanding cosmic heart wider and wider and deeper and deeper…

in this moment, simply rest in being and imagine that you are just the way you are, and you are totally loved… you are loved, you are accepted, you are acknowledged simply as you are…

bring to mind other beings with whom you are close and see them with that same single eye that looks through the veils and sees another being of love…

breathing deeply and slowly through the heart, let it soften and form the sweetest, most gentle flow with each breath opening your heart just a little bit more… if there’s sadness, let the sadness come out, if there’s joy, let the joy bubble over, if there’s a quiet, deep space of love, let it rest in its deep silence...

resting in love… resting in love… softer, just a bit softer… open your heart just a bit more… a little bit more… ah, the grace of being together in love right now with each breath, so sweet…

we can live life, moment to moment, with our heart this open being the mother of the universe, and everybody you look upon is your child…

how much i needed this reminder tonight and to live this practice…

may all of us harvest the potential of this sacred day seeing every moment is grace when we look through the eyes of unconditional love…

welcome, welcome to day 28 of a season of peace on this twenty-sixth day of fleeting february, the day of celebrating the astonishing light of being on this day with the sun shining on the energy of  tenderness, the crucible of our interconnectedness with the courage to say yes to creator, creation, creativity, the creative process…  with all the turbulence in the outer world, i’m so called by source to come into the dream cave, the grand canyon of stillness to be chanting shanti, shanti, shantihi awakening us all to the peace that passeth all understanding especially the ones in power who must be tuned into justice for all and thank you for all our relations who always see and be the sun shining to light the way… let us take this moment of eternity to cleanse and purify the Inner Temple…

see in the center of our being, a large fireball radiating like a sun… into the center of the fireball, we place anything on the physical plane that is needing to be transformed, that no longer serves… as it goes into the center of the fireball, it is transformed, and the energy of life is released like the rays of the sun…

see this fireball turn into a blazing yellow sun… place into the center of the sun any emotions, desires, energies, ways of running energy that no longer serve… these energies are transformed into radiant rainbow spokes of pure energy…

now the sun turns into a deep indigo blue and we place into the center of the indigo sun any separative thoughtforms, ideas, concepts… as they enter into the sun, these thoughtforms are transformed into radiant spokes of pure energy and are being released into the temple of being in all the colors of the rainbow…

see the soul itself appear in the center of the temple of being… all of the love and the light that’s been released, we offer to the soul’s plan and purpose… this energy rises merging with the group soul quantum field infusing the greater plan…

from our soul quantum field, see and feel an energy of golden light come down through us all descending into our crown center all the way through all our vehicles clean-sing and purifying us for the engoldenment cycle to come when we real-eyes the astonishing luminosity of our interbeing… a la la ho!

thank you for walking home with me … this moonth also brings an especially touching poignancy to the space between us as this journey into mystery, this pilgrimage into the tiny space of our one heart, the void, the sacred space of emptiness is such a deep dive into the stillpoint of creation…

surrendering to and suspending in the beloved and trusting in the tenemos of great mother to support and nourish us, we summon the courage to leap into the unknown and relax into the organic, rhythmic flow of the mysterious dance of life…

holding hands in the dark, feeling the waves of our one beating heart, we witness the birth of the new, the promise of every inbreath followed by the re-joy-sing of every outbreath… for in our coming together in the sacred space of our cosmic heart, we change everything, we are transformation dancing to the tune of el canto hondo, the deep soul song… stillness flowing, singing, re-joy-sing… be love, be loved; be peace, be peaced…

 thousand fold thanks for being an astonishing light of being… seeing the best in others, spreading lovingkindness virally which is the most impactful peace work there is…

deepest bows, co-hearts…

~

welcome to day 27 of a season of peace, how “just right” it is that while we are going through such turbulence, we have this organizing matrix of a season re- minding and re-heartening us to come into the stillpoint, slow down and be an instrument of peace, a harmony frequency raising all in our ever widening orbital circle to the vibration of compassion as we awaken to the true reality that we all belong to each other, that no being is free until all beings are free and that when each of us awakens, it is a tremendous gift and catalyzer for the awakening of the whole…

“I have the intention to become free and I’m using everything in my life to do it. At first you just have practices like meditation or prayer. And then you go to work, or you do your stuff, or whatever. And after a while all of it becomes your practice, every bit of it. You tell me something that can’t be practiced. Tell me something that you can’t convert into becoming one with spirit.

So you keep working on yourself to cultivate the Witness, which becomes, in your way, a gift to everybody around you. Because they come in thinking they’re somebody, just like you do most of the time. And you’re creating an environment where they can if they want to, but they don’t have to.

So intention to awaken, finding the part of your mind that is not caught. Even though immediately after you’ve noticed it gets caught and then you come back again. The predicament is the clinging of mind. The predicament is that awareness clings to thought. I’ll just read you the first paragraph of ‘Extracting the Quintessence of Accomplishment.’ And it comes from Dudjom Rinpoche who was an extraordinarily beautiful Tibetan Lama who passed on a few years ago I guess.

The nature of our mind. The nature of our mind is the nature of absolute reality. Try to think of it now as the sky as opposed to the clouds. Divested of all conditional and artificial characteristics fabricated by the intellect. This nature, this mind, is established with certainty in awareness. Awareness arises, naked, as the self-originated primordial wisdom. It just is. This awareness cannot be expressed in words, nor shown by examples. It is neither corrupted in samsara nor improved in nirvana. It is neither born nor ceases to be. It is neither liberated nor confused. It is neither existent nor nonexistent. It is neither delimited nor falling to either side. In brief, from the beginning, awareness has never existed as a substantial entity with elaborated characteristics. Its nature is primarily pure, void, vast, and all pervasive.

Now take the stages. You’re caught in experience. Then you cultivate the Witness, which is that little part of your mind that sees the rest of it. After a while the witness gets stronger and stronger and stronger until most of the time you are ‘Ah, so.’ And even though the dramas of desires, fears, aging, life, crisis, are all coming and going, coming and going, they’re all undulating within you, there’s a part of you that is strong, that is clear, that is saying, ‘Ah, so.’ And then, in this particular technique, you become aware of that in you which is saying, ‘Ah, so.’

And you go through, into pure mind. Which is neither the witness, nor not the witness. It is neither the experience, nor not the experience. It’s not looking, but it knows everything because it is everything. I am describing to you a very disciplined technique of using the mind to beat the mind. Stand back from experience into the witness, not denying the experience, this isn’t dissociation, this isn’t a defense mechanism. Stand back so that you’re feeling the pain of it all and at the same moment, seeing it. And when you’re resting in the awareness, the seeing of it broadly, then you start to note the seer. The witness.

And there’s a flick that occurs. And no longer are you experiencing the universe, the universe just is. It includes you but it’s nothing special. It’s really the process of dying as a separate entity into pure mind. And the moment you do that, a moment later you’re fully there as a separate entity but you’re also not there as a separate entity. It’s all there all at once. You’re a star and you’re also the heavens.”

~ Ram Dass ~

as we dance the via transformativa, the way of rebirth, of awakening, i find myself being in dark, unknown spaces, uncertain moments which open into portals leading home as i return to the breath and the magical blessing of thanks transporting me into the  deep earth of our being, the wisdom place in the core where we float in the sea of love energy, the most powerful healing, wholeing medicine that gives birth to dancing stars… with the dangers of this moment so intense, i must match that intensity with being a living prayer of peace – thank you for standing in solidarity as a huge orchestra of instruments of peace – i love envisioning us all encircling and encircling and encircling this third rock from the sun where we dwell committed to living in peace and harmony with every breath…

as we close this circle, let’s conspire, breathe together and feel the golden light we are pouring into every one of our trillions of cells illuminating the pathless path of the deep self and hear the music of the celestial spheres ringing through our ears transforming us into seers of the beloved community that is our birthright… 

welcome, well come to day 26 of a season of peace on this twenty-fourth day of fleeting february and the year anniversary of the escalation of the US/NATO/EU Proxy War against Russia in Ukraine, a day spent in subtle activism sitting in silence and solidarity with circles of co-hearts across the planet being peace in ourselves and in the world…

In Silence

“Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them
When all their silence
Is on fire?”

~ Thomas Merton ~

~

with the outer world on fire, thanks be for the continuation of peacemakers like Merton’s and Thay’s work and wisdom so needed in our world today as we witness the unraveling before our eyes… breakdown to breakthrough in this moment of emerge-n-see, this moment of both danger and opportunity of bringing lasting peace for all beings…

the following prayer was used throughout South Vietnam in 1965 in the “Don’t Shoot Your Own Brother” campaign to rouse the willingness to work for peace… during meetings of young people, they chanted this poem, uniting our hearts and our efforts to continue to work for peace:

“In beauty, sitting on a lotus flower,
is Lord Buddha, quiet and solid.
Your humble disciple,
calm and pure of heart,
forms a lotus flower with his hands,
faces you with deep respect,
and offers this heartfelt prayer:

Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions.
Please have compassion for our suffering.
Our land has been at war for two decades.
Divided, it is a land of tears
and blood and bones of young and old.
Mothers weep till their tears are dry
while sons on distant fields decay.
Its beauty torn apart,
only blood and tears now flow.
Brothers killing brothers
for promises from outsiders.
Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions.
Because of your love for all people,
have compassion on us.
Help us remember we are just one family,
North and South.
Help us rekindle our compassion and brotherhood,
and transform our separate interests
into loving acceptance for all.
May your compassion help us overcome our hatred.
May Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva’s love
help the flowers bloom again in the soil of our country.
Humbly, we open our hearts to you,
so you may help us transform our karma
and water the flowers of our spirits.
With your deep understanding,
help our hearts grow light.

Homage to Shakyamuni Buddha
whose great vows and compassion inspire us.
I am determined to cultivate only thoughts
that increase trust and love,
to use my hands to perform only deeds
that build community,
to speak only words of harmony and aid.

May the merit of this prayer
be transformed into peace in [the world]
May each of us realize this,
our deep aspiration.”

shanti shanti shantihi…

welcome, well come to day 25 of a season of peace on this twenty-third day of fleeting february, may we all leap as one, letting go to flow with oceanic imagination into the field of rainbow mystery where only love is real and everything is possible… feel the great turning upon and within us supporting us to let go of fear and anchor in truth, wisdom and love as we swim in these mystical waters of pisces together…

for this sacred moment of eternity when we are aware of many grievous losses, let us beam our attention to facing our mortality and the opportunity we each get with such reflection to intend how we live… when Dr. Oliver Sacks learned he had only months remaining, he chose to live in the deepest, richest, most productive way he could real-eye-sing he is ocean. in his own words before he died:

~

“Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.

On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.

This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.

I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.“

~

such an interesting experience as hours later i read what i wrote and thought Oliver’s words were mine… and they are and maybe yours as well as we continue this seemingly never ending moment of sheltering in and wintering as a seed riotously germinating in the deep earth with the mycélium network of imaginal cells deepening in the experience of dissolving from somebody to nobody to everybody, from the ocean in a drop to a drop in the ocean to being the ocean… thank you for walking home along the pathless path with me…

welcome, welcome to day 24 of a season of peace on this twenty-second day of fleeting february and it is the day following Losar Tashi Delek! Happy Tibetan New Year! and the second of 15 days leading to the day of miracles on the full moon… even with all the turbulence in the outer world, today i’m so being sung in every cell the soul song of our graceful free and easy wanderer true nature on this day of snowflakes which moves me to the familiar tale of hamsa or humso, the beautiful swan embodying grace while chanting so hum, i am that… light and love…

once upon a time, little swan was resting in a pool in dreamtime… she looked up and saw a swirling black hole, the biggest one ever… in that moment, dragonfly appeared in the sky and swan inquired about the black hole to which dragonfly told her it is the doorway to the great beyond and to enter you must ask permission and earn the right…

little swan wasn’t sure she wanted to enter the black hole so she asked dragonfly what’s necessary to cross the portal and dragonfly told her she must accept whatever comes just as it is presenced without editing one iota of great spirit’s design…

little swan looked down at her ugly duckling body and replied that she’d graciously accept great spirit’s design and would not resist the currents of the black hole… she affirmed she would surrender to divine flow trusting in the present moment… her answer pleased dragonfly who began to spin a spell of magic engulfing little swan in a whirlpool in the center of the pond…

when swan reappeared days later, she was transformed into a beautiful being of grace… dragonfly was shocked and wanted to know what had happened to which swan replied that she learned how to surrender to the power of great mystery, to soften into the grace of the rhythm of the universe…

may we all let go and undam flow opening into the great beyond’s pathless path of illumination and the infinite field of gracious synchronisiddhis…

so hum…

Happy 65th Birthday, Peace Symbol!

welcome, well come to day 23 of a season of peace on this twenty-first day of fleeting february, the sixty-fifth birthday of the peace symbol and another day of gathering the quintessence with the sun shining on the energy of  freedom… i learned late in the day it is mardi gras, the day to go wild before the lenten season of sacrifice begins… on a somber note, it is the fifty-eighth anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination… on a historical note, it is the 175th anniversary of the publishing of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. this pamphlet was the first of its kind to present a history of class struggle from feudalism to industrial capitalism; while the Communist vision did not work in practice and the worldwide revolution did not come to pass, the Manifesto inspired and inspires increased worker protections, pay, and power in the 20th century and continues to ignite revolutionaries the world over…

whew, now, back to the peace sign…

 “Children of today easily identify it. They may not know its original meaning, but they know it stands for good things – be nice to friends, be kind to animals, no fighting. This is a marvelous achievement for Gerald Holtom’s simple design. Peoples around the world have marched with it, worn it, displayed it during combat, held it high on banners, and been arrested in its name. Ask any man, woman or child, ‘What one thing would everyone in the world want more than anything else?’ The answer would surely be world peace.’”

~ Ken Kolsbun, Peace: The Biography of a Symbol ~

on this day of walking into the unknown through a field of  impermanence, a day when peace is so called for, it is a beautiful synchrony that it’s the re-birthday of the symbol for peace…

Gerald Holtom, an artist and conscientious objector, created the Peace Symbol on February 21,1958. According to Christopher Driver, author of The Disarmers: A Study in Protest, Holtom created the design and then brought it to an organizer of a local British peace group. After several revisions, it was unveiled publicly on Good Friday of that year, by anti-nuclear demonstrators — the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) — who marched 50 miles from London’s Trafalgar Square to the weapons factory at Aldermaston. It was the first Ban-the-Bomb March.

When Gerald Holtom sat down at his drawing board sixty-five years ago, he was in almost total despair. He later told the editor of Peace News: ‘I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it symbolizing Earth.”

Welcome “International Peace Symbol Day.”  May we hoist peace everywhere waving the remedy for despair…  Peace Out!

“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things

Thus, constantly free of desire
One observes its wonders
Constantly filled with desire
One observes its manifestations

These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders”

~ Lao Tzu ~

welcome, welcome to day 22 of a season of peace, on this 20th day of fleeting february so that we have a day pulsing at the quintessential frequency of grace, wisdom, clarity and a day also known as world social justice day – may it be so, may we roll up our sleeves, come home to our heart, set our eyes within and in thought, word and deed be in balance with all our relatives… and, it’s the moment of eternity of celebrating the astonishing light of our interbeing with all our relatives who vaya con gaia en paz with the sun shining through the clouds radiating the liberating energy of  freedom…

and, there’s more as today is a day of rainmaking, of holy synchronicity… do you know the rainmaker story? it is a favorite of mine and has been for decades, this story of restoring circulation between the inner and outer flow of life which is the central story of my life…

during a time of great drought, a rainmaker was asked by villagers of a neighboring province if he could help bring rain to their dry fields… they had tried many other approaches without success before reaching out to him… the rainmaker agreed to come and asked for a small hut with a garden that he could tend… for three days, he simply tended the garden… on the fourth day, rain began to fall on the parched earth… when asked how he had achieved such a miracle, the master answered that when he came to the village, he had sensed disharmony within himself and the village… each day, as he tended the garden, he returned a little more to himself… when he returned to balance, the rain came naturally…

yes, it has long been known by indigenous gaiians that it takes three days for the body to settle when on retreat, for the rainmaker, the rainbowmaker  to come into harmony and for the re-joy-sing to flow…

we rise up singing kissed by sun

on the banks of the river of joy dreaming the magic to come

gliding over stones, nothing impedes the flow

wind whispers softly to lean in and let all go

trusting in the rhythm of eternal ebb and flow…

welcome to day 21 of a season of peace, a day in my neighborhood when the new moon in pisces is exact at 11:08 PM impelling my diving so deeply into the oceanic depths of lunar consciousness of this dreaming moon whispering to us to be creative cosmic beings of the peace and love we are in our core leaping into the unknown with our one cosmic heart open re-membering birth is often messy and painful as we let go of what no longer serves to revolve/revolute into a more sustainable way…

in addition to this being the new moon of dreaming in the world we want i must note the ongoing tragedies currently ongoing in our inner and outer worlds and that on this day in 1942, the usa decided to arrest and imprison all citizens of Japanese ancestry – even as little as 1/16  percent and including orphaned infants – all of these beings were subject to mass incarceration with over 130,000 Japanese Americans – many full citizens and the children of citizens – forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942 and jailed for up to three years without a trial…

on this day of being peace and in re-membrance of the inhumane ways we act when fear leads us to reacting blindly, i dive deeply chanting om namah sivaratri 108 times with co-hearts knowing our dreamweaving a cosmos of peace in this sacred moment of eternity is amplified 10,000 fold…

let’s all circle around the still waters now for an invocation to the pisces new moon…

in these sacred waters, we revel in the luminosity of this new moon…
here and now our third eye is expanded through love ,
and we speak truth,
reverberating beyond all timelines, spaces, and dimensions…
 
I AM SEERESS.
Whole and Holy.
Wild and Free.
A Gatekeeper of the Divinity.
 
the sacred waters of our wombspace reveal
the dreams we carry, the dreams forgotten,
the dreams long remembered…
 
as vessels of heaven on earth, we are
available for these dreams to be heard, felt, called forth,
womanifested for the good of all beings…
 
we vow to live in the field of devocean  
dreaming the world awake in the rhythm of the waves…
 
this is our sacred destiny.
 
{INTO THE WATERS, SPEAK A DREAM ALOUD THAT YOU ARE ACTIVELY TENDING}
breathe and feel into the energies present…

{INTO THE WATERS, SPEAK A DREAM ALOUD THAT YOU ARE ACTIVELY TENDING FOR OUR PLANET}
breathe and feel into the energies present…
 
listen to the way Nature responds…
 
as Spirit and Matter merge,
and the Mythic and Mundane weave, 
IT IS DONE.
IT IS DONE.
IT IS DONE.

I AM SEERESS. 
Dreaming the World Awake.
Here and Now.
Always and Forever.

And so it is (3 times)
Blessed be (3 times) 

breathing in peace and compassion, join with me in being the world we all want… for me, it is a world of peace and harmony and wisdom and generosity built on justice and balance guided by love and compassion surrendered into great mystery…

we come alive in this wild and precious moment

dreaming in a new world

we hear her whispering down under the sea

now is the moment for the dream to fully be

a world where we live and let be, all of us re-joy-sing in harmony…