path

"How's your spiritual path...what is your spiritual path, anyway? I don't know." He's a good friend, and we've covered a lot of conversational ground. I welcome his thoughtful queries into my life. But we've only skirted this subject. And even that's more than I've done with most anybody else, for a long time. I tell him, "I don't know what my path is". He's considerate toward my uneasy edges, and we move on to something else.

Later, I wish I would've said this: "It's the path that I'm on". But I don't want to be misunderstood, as obtuse or combative. It might've taken more time and mental energy than I had at that moment to explain what I mean by that.

But then, as many times before, Life offers a helpful series of visual aids. Covering the gaps that words won't stretch across. The next morning, still weighing this question, I pick up the Sufi Book of Life. I'm thinking, heavy-hearted, of the box of things I still need to gather up and return to my former companion. You know, that last odd, very tangible, box of stuff. The act that ensures you're really confronting your pain, and letting it go. The book falls open to this, in the list of the 99 Beautiful Names: Al-Afuw, "Blowing Away the Ashes". The short meditation describes a burning and clearing of accumulated impressions and energies, to return to what's truly needed. It quotes Rumi, "grief cleans you out/like a good fast" (I just asked my friend, the night before, about fasting practices). It suggests releasing "anything you don't need that is sitting on the surface of your heart". This confirms my intention to deliver the stuff, simple but symbolic, by the 31st. As I read these lines, a new CD is playing behind me: "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter", which I just got a chance to buy. Over this Sufi wisdom on clearing, on passing through the fire and becoming whole again, Josh sings, "Don't let me into this year with an empty heart..."

Also this morning, there's a phone message from my younger-older magical-oracle-Buddhist friend. We haven't spoken in a couple months, and I've been thinking of calling her but haven't yet. She says she's always open to talking. I call her that night. Here is one of her astonishing and completely offhand remarks, which I shamelessly transcribe: "I think that the next two decades are going to be completely occupied by love, and loving. The old system is cracking apart, and people are hard-pressed to find something that works...(so) they are having to look inside themselves..." She attributes a large share of humanity's current anxiety simply to this, the new and unfamiliar process of "looking inside" for strength, for ideas. For passion and compassion. Not everybody would buy it, but I think it's fair enough as a share of the explanation. Especially if you assume that, whatever aspect of reality they're working with - spiritual, political, material - this is uncharted territory for many. That'd be cause for some anxiety, right?

Then, before I know it, she is gifting me with her customary flood of affirmations. Spoken as by-the-way and habitual as are her jewels of insight. She has no doubt, she says, that I'll be ready for such transitions of thinking and being, since I'm such a "kind and loving and beautiful - and scholarly! - person." She concludes that "this kind of commitment to love is what will enable humanity's future..." How I'd like to believe that. In any case, what can it hurt to try? I'm humbled by her words. To tears, in fact. I've felt far and away from any of those things lately. But she reminds me, in most every conversation we have, that not only do I want to become such a being, I am capable.

Then, a rare night of sleep and dreams offers more sustenance. In a series of dreams, I try out the same scenario (a trip to a place of authority, with some unnamed request), in two very different episodes. One in which I'm disoriented, sluggish, and have to encounter my mother as one of the figures in uniform. The other with a recent immigrant as a travelling companion, whose joy and gratitude for the abundance he perceives all around is contagious, restorative, liberating. I wake again and reach for a another bit of insight: today, it's friend Brian's "Bite-Size Mantra" cards (http://www.qtnrg.org/BITE.HTML). The one I draw begins "Cleaning up old business makes room for new -- a process of sifting, sorting and releasing. Unburdened by the old, you are lighter and more able." Yes, I am. And I will be more so, after I deliver that box of stuff.

But, all of that to say: this is my path. I can't define it, more than to say that I have surrendered - yes! even when I have given up - to the One All Love that has known me. And it returns the giving, in every and any inexplicable gesture. I said I'd travel wherever the way led. And it sure enough led. And still does. Though it's not smooth or level ground much of the time. Or even visible. But it's there to be walked. I don't know how else to describe it. Except as it opens, again and again right in front of my barely-waking eyes.

lyric

Mother, can you hold me together
it's so dark and I'm losing my way
I took all of these detours to find love
but when I did, it just faded away

Now what do I do
with the sweet love of mine
do I give it away and
hope someday I'll find
someone half as awake
as the moon and the stars
Mother, teach me to love
with a paper-thin heart

Mother, your words are so healing
you speak of love and of light and of peace
but I've made it my course to avoid you
just to hide from these feelings of grief

Now what do I do...

-- Sheryl Crow, "Detours"

fellow traveller blessing

"The Sufi opens his hands to the universe and gives away each moment, free. Unlike someone who begs on the street for money to survive, a dervish begs to give you his life."
-- attributed to Rumi

One of my favorite places to sit at the Baking Co. in Santa Fe is also sometimes one of the least comfortable. It's a tall stool at a counter, which faces right up to a table for three. Being near a walkway, people often brush against me as they pass. And being immediately adjacent to the table - seated at it, practically - I sometimes end up unintentionally sharing a conversation with strangers. But I sit there because there's a skylight directly overhead, and the light's best for reading and writing. And, going there alone, I don't like to take up a whole window table. And sometimes, too, I like finding myself in conversation with strangers.

At this table today sit a man and woman, he 50ish, she 40ish. They seem to be old friends who haven't talked in a while. Their conversation is a swift current of honest and open-hearted sharing. They talk of travels, searches, synchronicities, blessings, relationships. The man speaks of what he's learned from the Sufi path, and from others walking it. The woman describes her relationship, challenging but precious to her, with a man who is Muslim (she says he's 'not at all fanatic, just full of prayer.') I'm trying to tune them out, not for lack of interest but because they're being so real with each other. And also because I'm interested in the book I happen to be reading, a gorgeously artistic presentation of Muslim prayer practice, from a Sufi perspective. Yeah really. Its text flows with the insights of ones who have known Love with a capital L. And the book itself - weaving in poetry, painting, photos, fractals - is a work of beauty. It's called The Illuminated Prayer, by Coleman Barks (prolific Rumi translator) and Michael Green.

We've all been there awhile, when the man looks up at me. Says pardon me, but I just had to say that the book you're reading is one of the most powerful things that I've come across. I agree with him, observing that it seems to be arranged so that its information reaches you via left brain, right brain, heart, each at just the right moment. The woman is intrigued, and asks to see the book. They remark on how funny that we're all on the same page here. "Look at this triangle!" the man exclaims, drawing a glowing line between the three of us. They both introduce themselves, shake my hand. He leaves a moment later, wishing me peace as he goes.

After a moment, the woman gathers her things as well. I tell her that, although I was really trying not to overhear, I have been blessed by what I caught of their conversation. Especially by its openness: to life, to ideas, to each other. Since we've already spoken like we have, I tell her simply that I've just suffered a loss, and am working to keep my heart open to Life and trust and provision. And because of that, to hear of her journey gives me hope. She responds with the same translucent joy and affirmation that I've been hearing from her over the past hour. She calls me "beautiful" and "sister". Gives me a hug and also wishes me peace. There's nothing gushy or sentimental about this whole exchange. We're all found in a bright shaft of light, recognizing each other as fellow travellers. No more, no less. "It's such a path...", she says, as she turns to leave, smiling.

grief

capricious wind direction shifts
cold spirit gusts inward
on soul fire embers sparking hope
so ready to warm and cheer yet
body flames up bright to burn so beautiful
to crumbling ash in a body shape
of weightless silver feathers
holding solidity because
for now there is neither fire nor wind
but maybe empty space is light enough
for flight to another mystery
or maybe ash sinks earthward, germinates
fuel for another's fire

pebble in the water

This is one of several visualizations offered by Reshad Feild at the end of his book which I just finished. I thought it was a great practice, simple and spacious, and wanted to share it. The last two sentences also expand into some wider mystery I don't fathom, but I like their drift. They seem to support what I get from various sources, and from the occasional gift of experience: if we can ever be truly present in the moment, we get free from time's weight, and also connected with all of its current, past-present-future, simultaneously.

"Close your eyes slowly and carefully, without withdrawing your senses from the outer world. Imagine that you are sitting by the side of a perfectly still lake. There is no wind to ruffle the surface of the water and everything is completely still and quiet. Chose a smooth, round pebble from the side of the lake. Feel it in your hands. Polish it with your fingers and your palms. Weigh it, know every portion of it. Become very fond of it.

The next thing you will be asked to do is to throw your pebble into the lake in such a way as to cause the least possible commotion. There should be scarcely the sound of a splash. Get yourself ready, poised and balanced. When the time is right, throw the pebble at the angle you choose, watch its flight as it arcs up and then down into the lake. Now sit quietly and follow the rings that emanate out from the centre until the lake is quite still again. You will see how they get wider and wider, yet the memory remains at the point where the pebble touched the water. The memory remains because you choose it to, otherwise it would be forgotten forever."

-- Reshad Feild, Here to Heal

((( )))

earnest luna moth ungrounded
battering this luminous pane
dreaming only oneness with the brilliance shut within
shattering off the shards of lightness that would let me fly
against reflection of you unreachable
come regenerating sun
rise behind my weary wings
release me into light unlimited

emptied salmon swimming rivermouth
battling outrushing waves
swept again again to vibrant depths already once abandoned
now only seek to sift myself in soft and silted home waters
and pass on to new being
come calm gravitating moon
reverse the drowning tide
admit me to primordial flow again

exhausted bird-imposter in precarious flight
begging fragile wings to lift
much more air than substance in my paper skeleton
yet more above me than below no matter how I climb
come everchanging two-life spirit
wind-jeweled one of feather and of earth
gatherer of the precious bones
journeyer to underworld's oblivion for our rebirth
and then to heavens for our morning starlight
Ipalnemohuani
rare birds have risen from your ashes
and even I in dreams have seen you
with the light above your head
and your feet on humble earth to battle darkness
now here to reincarnate as the dance
where I – if through my fall upheld -
will come at last to ground

*(Ipalnemohuani: Nahuatl title reserved for the anima directly involved in creation, translated "by whom we live")