rumorsofme: Books

Visit from another poet

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:45:18 GMT

The Invitation

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Kali Munro, M.Ed., Psychotherapist 416 929-4612
email@KaliMunro.com www.KaliMunro.com

Visiting Poet leaves this...

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:43:52 GMT

VISITING POET

Prelude

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

What if it truly doesn't matter what you do but how you do whatever you do?

How would this change what you choose to do with your life?

What if you could be more present and open-hearted with each person you encounter working as a cashier in the corner store, a parking lot attendant or filing clerk than you could if you were striving to do something you think is more important?

How would this change how you want to spend your precious time on this earth?

What if your contribution to the world and the fulfillment of you own happiness is not dependent upon discovering a better method of prayer or technique of meditation, not dependent upon reading the right book or attending the right seminar, but upon really seeing and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?

How would this effect your search for spiritual development?

What if there is no need to change, no need to try and transform yourself into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving or wise?

How would this effect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better?

What if the task is simply to unfold, to become who you already are in your essential nature - gentle, compassionate and capable of living fully and passionately present?

How would this effect how you feel when you wake up in the morning?

What if who you essentially are right now is all that you are ever going to be?

How would this effect how you feel about your future?

What if the essence of who you are and always have been is enough?

How would this effect how you see and feel about your past?

What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?

How would this change what you think you have to learn?

What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices that offer us the warmth of encouragement we need to unfold?

How would this shape the choices you have to make about how to spend today?

What if you knew that the impulse to move in a way that creates beauty in the world will arise from deep within and guide you every time you simply pay attention and wait?

How would this shape your stillness, your movement, your willingness to follow this impulse, to just let go and dance?

...think about it...

...too late

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:59:25 GMT

...too late

no denying, I was upset

your useless lyings

curled into more regret,

filling the heavy emptiness dying.

what you have never had

is not because you

were a sympathy of life's sad --

no, you were fallen by your own untrue

while our breathing expends itself

through colors hardly squeezed

we search for anything left

of something love would conceive

behind brutal endings

set to blaze

are the torn renderings

of softly unspoken ways.

what was cast in this play?

what cause could be pleased?

by the unmeasured loving of today

suddenly colder and mournfully seized.

there is no absolution

no regret so great

that can bear the breaking confusion

when it all becomes

...too late.

~rumorsofme~

gorillas in the mist

Sun, 25 May 2008 07:32:27 GMT

Oh, I love those Gorillas!

what about now?

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:05:38 GMT

"you're dying," he could speak?

"I mean 'consciously' ", he added gently.

"Not everyone gets this opportunity"

"No....I mean, I don't know. How would I know?" I wondered aloud.

...kind of a waste of time? Wasn't there a better way to go about this. Afterall, this was a lifetime we're talking about here. I could have accomplished so much more. My mind danced like a waterbug -- just all over the place! Just think of what could be learned and used strategically to target those glaring nasty noises that poverty and hunger raise. Why I could have --

"Thinking of what a waste of time your life has been? and he smiled.

My frown deepened and I'd have gotten up and walked away if I could have gotten up. He knew his audience well -- well of course he did. Probably wasn't anything he didn't know. And, what was he doing about it? Just sitting here, relaxed and dissimulating more exciting lifetimes. I wondered why he bothered to --

"It's my task you might say," and he looked at me. "Eventually all the chords get played and who are you to say you could have done it a better way? What would a better way have been? Where in your life would you have chosen differently? Oh, please don't give me the obvious answers to that, especially since we know that it's only the obvious that flags our coffin of 'the untried', the 'undone'. Everybody gets something. Are you really going to sit there and tell me that you know exactly when and where you'd have made your take? Or just what is it that you came in with? What was your gift? You get to satisfy your ego with pointing out to others where they missed the signal or their unknown wealth; and how... You shove it in their bewildered face---how they should have done or what they should now do."

"So give me some direction here. Time is being swallowed up -- it seems now --

"Always been the same amount of time for everybody." came a stern, cold response.

"You seem short on the tag you run on, I said. "Where is the wise, all-knowing, patient seer you've been cast as? Just suddenly on a sabbatical -- my usual luck, huh?" and I pondered the shifting molecules that made up my container. Next time I'm definitely going to be more picky about my container! Forget all that crap about YOU and the being 'INSIDE'that made the difference. I was absolutely going for whatever the time called for, in "beauty, sex appeal, not smart but clever, not praised for what they gave but celebrated for what they took or how they looked" -- if the culture of that time still cared whether or about what color anyone was. Would there actually be a time when HOW one looked and what was "normal" to the human species... still be affecting the lives of millions and millions of people who only knew that they were hungry or had no shelter from the storms. That must take hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of years to weed out. Suddenly I felt bone weary, breathing became tight like a new corset.

"Ok, well, I don't feel like playing anymore right now. I'm feeling tired now. It just seems such a waste that I settled for 'hard won" when there wasn't even a contest! How stupid could I be?" Now choices about what to do with my life seemed to offer little comfort and no excitement -- actually there had been lots of choices and the ones I'd made had brought me to this breaking, this breaking down -- this----

"Doesn't your mind have an 'off' button?" he laughed.

"You know I always thought, or was it that I had been taught to believe, you were of great comfort....you seem more like a smart ass! What did anyone get from you?! Precious little it now seems and it's too late to unearth dirty, moldy, disintegrating dreams. They have less and less relevance. Is that part true?"

"Go ahead with your mind button stuck in the on position. Just what is it that was supposed to have occurred during your reign here on Earth? You're intelligent, compassionate and tightly wired together....so, go ahead and tell me, what great enduring Truth are you leaving behind? What answers did you come up with that can or would make any difference to the hungry bellies of little children who swallow pebbles to keep their bellies from hurting empty, or have you provided shelters, worked at some far flung and casually called Medical Care Facilities...how about just plain old human waste...anything pungent come up there? As I recall you were a very material girl. You wanted the things which money would have given to you. You trailed after Beauty until you became her servant, one of the uncounted hand-maidens. You received what you asked for and yet there is no satisfying you. It is never enough. Did you think the bones in you container and the flesh that carried them would carry you beyond the consequences of all Earthly Beings? Anywhere you went, you were subject to the laws thereof...as you are here and now."

"You give me no room do you?" and I turned to the thunderous Oceans, then to the Desert Silence and the confines of the horizon.

"Even the sumptuously laid possibilities seem to offer you no lasting contentment; always the dissatisfaction returns...even when you have been shown how fragile your Being truly is. Still you are looking beyond....stretching your neck to see beyond that horizon. To fill all the buckets you can with another adventure, another escape -- you want to be here, have it your way...but as the ways of Earth do not last, neither does the fulfillment of all your searching and seeking and piling up. Where is it you are trying to get to? Tell me and perhaps, if I can, I will make it possible for you," his eyes were unyielding.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because that is what I do," and his gentleness seemed full of pain, the deep, searing kind that leaves its brand on your soul.

The silence that surrounded us became so heavy and when the sea splashed the yellow and red rocks with my own image, I wanted to scream. How could he love me? Was I not now old? Hadn't my anchored flesh begun the long ago slide toward the ends of all flesh? Pulling me with it? No. That was the problem. I still was because my mind still was. My Beingness was unimpinged by the growing sight of my passage from youth to the age of blight; and therein I found more questions to add to the already as yet unanswered questions of my youth.

"What is there to care about so much...to love, when I neither care nor love myself?" I was asking quietly.

"Because I know you. Before you became enthralled with the delusions of this enticingly repulsive and cleverly made-up surreal experience, YOU WERE ALREADY. And I miss YOU. THAT YOU. You do not even remember me. I have been waiting longer than any insight or grand wisdom your Memory may feed you with."

"But...why?"

"You have become enslaved by the endless chatter of your Mind! Your mind was something given you to help guide you; but only that. You have let your Mind have YOU. Permanence is not something you get to find and keep. It does not exist yet you have come to believe that it is something that can give you a peace, a security of Bliss that cannot be owned. You already understand that you do not own anything -- regardless of the ritual banter of the world you inhabit. What still keeps you wanting then is not something that any one Earthling can give or have as: IT is a Passage. I desired that you know and experience the Beauty and Wonder of this place but you have been put to sleep by it. Now, you must wake-up. For our Journey waits on You. Waits upon You to take its first breath, first step. There is more than this. If you don't wake-up you will miss it; and you will miss US and the JOURNEY we may yet make. This was your hope and then you got lost here."

He was anguish, threaded with impending peril and I was searching a place for something that did not exist there, Our nature was home in Nature. Though I longed to remember that which he spoke of, I could not ; and my despair was all the greater for my not knowing. The wind was my only relief as it spun slivers of music among strangled weeds that tumbled with wildness in bloom and divided the sands with fans of melody -- a release I knew was there...just hanging in the air waiting for someone to care. And he seemed to be saying he cared for me and for what we could be together. What was known was already gone. The rays of days framed nothing but a myriad of delays.

I sat upon the rocks molded in white and studded with coral shells and alabaster bells. I touched the turquoise and silver strands that warmed my hands and sought ernestly to understand, to let the form or what I knew, come now, intangible and true. Come through the wisps of ideas and beliefs I'd come to see as truth when what was so, was so obvious that I didn't know. The citadel of good-bye descended from sooty black and angry green scorched clouds that boiled in my sight, swelling the seas and the sky crossed itself with bolts of stricken lightning, white hot and cracklin. I now stood under the rosy glass pane that had kept me playing this Earth-Made game and I chose this time, to wake from the lyrics I had been part of and let loose the noose of reasoning around my neck. Turning, I saw now, with yearning, the window of my light, kept in focus by the steady and inspired.

Feeling I was the smile escaping his lips, I lifted away my slippers and raised my hem from the wet sand. I stretched my hand to gather priceless joy that, but for us, would live alone and troubled above and in and out of every seam dreamed.

"What about now?" I heard the words from his smile.

"Where?" I asked.

"The cradle of tomorrow waits in the wealth of your eyes."

And thus we began an always that is by night the light of eternal day.

~rumorsofme~

about dying

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 21:27:30 GMT

There are two kinds of suffering: the suffering that leads to more suffering and the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If you are not willing to face the second kind of suffering, you will surely continue to experience the first.

-Ajahn Chah, "Still Forest Pool"

'DYING GRADUALLY CAN BE PAINFUL FOR ALL"

"We erroneously thought that medical care was the same thing as love."

"We spared no medical extravagance. We tortured him. There was no way to say good-bye."

"End-of-life care that focuses on pain control and patient comfort costs less than half of normal medical interventions for similar patients."

About 6,500 people die in the United States every day; fewer than l,200 die at home, free of pain.

Half of those who die in hospitals endure severe untreated pain.

About 60 percent of dying patients spend l0 days or more on ventilators with no hope of recovery.

Medical care for dying spouses is the fastest-growing cause of improverishment among elderly women.

Only five U.S. medical schools require a course on care of the dying.

More than 70 percent of doctors don't check for end-of-life care instructions.*

WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME ENOUGH FOR A 'GOOD DEATH'

The 85 study participants had no trouble describing a "bad death" --- having inadequately treated pain while receiving aggressive but futile cure-directed therapy.

Patients felt disregarded, family members felt perplexed and concerned about suffering, and providers felt out of control and feared that they were not providing good care.

The study identified six components of a good death, described in The Annals of Internal Medicine of May l6, 2000:

Pain and symptom management. Pain, more so than dying itself, is too often the cause of acute anxiety among patients and their families.
Clear decision making. Patients want to have a say in treatment decisions.
Preparation for death. Patients want to know what to expect as their illness progresses and to plan for what will follow their deaths.
Completion. This includes reviewing one's life, resolving conflicts, spending time with family and friends, and saying goodbye.
Contribution to others. Many people nearing death achieve a clarity as to what is really important in life and want to share that understanding with others.
Affirmation. Study participants emphasized the importance of being seen as a unique and whole person and being understood in the context of their lives, values and preferences.

This study says that dying can, and should, be a much less painful experience for many more people and their loved ones than it now is.**

*"Last Rites: Rescuing the End of Life From the Medical System"

**Jane Brody. "North County Times"

Who I Am Listening To...Today

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:35:53 GMT

Freedom is that triumphant state of consciousness that is beyond the influence of desire. The mind ceases to thirst for anything it has seen or heard of; even what is promised in the scriptures.

And supreme freedom is that complete liberation from the world of change that comes of knowing the unbound Self.

-The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 1:15-16

From "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali," translated by Alistair

"You need chaos in your Soul to give birth to a dancing star."

---Friedech Nietzsche---

"Unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond, don't pursue it." It is too difficult.

---Ramakrishna---

"When you distinguish between good and evil, you've lost the art. Art goes beyond morality. The reach of your compassion is the reach of your art."

---Joseph Campbell---

"But now Love has become a halo whose beginning is its end, and whose end is its beginning. It surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be."

---Kahlil Gibran---

"Now I realize that the trees blossom in Spring and bear fruit in Summer without seeking praise; and they drop their leaves in Autumn and become naked in Winter without fearing blame."

"My soul spoke to me and said, 'The lantern which you carry is not yours, and the song that you sing was not composed within your heart, for even if you bear the light, you are not the light, and even if you are a lute fastened with strings, you are not the lute player.' "

---Kahlil Gibran---

out-takes

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:30:59 GMT

When I'm swinging from one edge of life to the other , I know I must sound raspy, calloused, hardly here at all; and you're trying to understand and I can't make promises i might not be able to keep...this is what disturbs my sleep..for I think you don't know what you want/or you just want me for a season and what kind of thing of reason am i to hang onto. The aspens light up a mountain side, and the carvers' hands make smooth my skin -- I'm just asking for a little more time to find out about me. I don't know, you see, who lives within this shell (that until the past many months have made clear) was only an empty tear. Barely walking, I wanted to run wildly talking -- me who never speaks except to instruct or reach for what i cannot have. Always the purpose driven throb of pieces of heart beat hiding beneath cardboard in the alley off the street. It's been a long, long while since I stood and admitted good. An unexpected fully charted moon broke the sway in the night sky's back and I'm close to the earth seeking some sign of tracks. Surely they can lead me - just matter of fact -- out of the darkness of this wood stained marsh where life and death meet in match and cringing for the devil's delight I'm made to attract. Whether it will be the Lion, the Tiger or a burning icon old, I'm ready to lay me down and let me go. The man of you comes from long ago -- I see you now wherever I go. The charging center of my fate just keeps the burning back, the afforded costumes having lost favor; I wanted just one to catch FIRE where I could savor the touches, rushes, of your mouth ...just a slight movement caught my sight as I leaned in to catch all its sweetness . The supper is a thanksgiving from this good earth, a joyful time where we may shine...even if we should or shouldn't, I want you...again and again. Why not? I ask you and while I wait my eyes cover themselves so as not to see the sight of my passion leaving me.

~rumorsofme~

the lone white sail

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 01:01:50 GMT

the lone white sail

breathing again

afraid of nothing

so ready to begin

lift the anchor

we are present to fly

i hear the wind calling

beyond the witnessing sky

the lone white sail

billows an unrecognizable form

from the safety of death

we are gently torn

the answer in dreams

draws us seduced

in labor we are confused

as all confines are loosed

the lone white sail

declares our Victory won

a tonal quiet

bequeaths new suns spun

ever after we have ...

for too short a season

yet we lean into the wind

without the concern of reason

the lone white sail

defies the powers of sea

while gale set upon gale

sets the course for you and me

the night ripens with the moon

while starlight milks our way

all in good time, none too soon

we feel our dawning day

the lone white sail

pushes off in a virgin gust

nothing to hinder or mistrust

we have our song...we have our story

to tell

may all be well...as

the lone white sail

sails on

carrying the broken

home

where waits for me

all love

and the end

of mystery.

~rumorsofme~

"we"

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:30:14 GMT

We are as timeless as the

Ideals of Truth and Beauty

Lovers and friends

We cannot leave

Until the melodies end.

It is just you and me

For whatever time may be.

Love intertwined a twin

For the shelter of

the bodies we are in.

Where we touch

There ends our grief

At last surrendered

We retreat to

The absolving loneliness

of our lonely belief.

Joined once more

Our Love is the stuff

of ancient stars

and tearing wars.

We are our welcomed ways

The sunrises and sunsets

of our new days.

Where we were once

And then only some

We are now the whole

of rippling currents,

our water's edge undone

We chart a new voyage

Enter a new legend

Trust new directions

As lovers and friends.

Cut from the past

We are Love's simple joy.

From now until then

We are the found

Lovers and most

Compassionate

Impassioned

Friends.

From carved out

Sun-baked beaches

We are of the highest reaches

A man and a woman

Can know.

Never, ever let me go.

~~rumorsofme~

Who Among Us Has Known

Sat, 27 May 2006 00:32:52 GMT

Vincent Van Gogh

"...but there is no reason to lose one's serenity if one realizes that one may have to lead a poor life, even though one has all the qualities, the knowledge, the capacities that make other people rich. I am not indifferent to money, but I do not understand the wolves."

"...but each fit of melancholy brings a little light, a little progress; character develops. Those who seek real simplicity are themselves quite simple, and their view of life is full of good-will and courage, even in hard times."

"...Ought one not to learn patience from nature, learn patience from seeing the corn slowly ripen, seeing things grow? Should one think oneself so absolutely dead as to imagine one will grow no more? Should one deliberately thwart one's own develoopment?"

Taken from DEAR THEO

The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh

Author, Irving Stone

Kahil Gibran

"Whatever the Soul longs for will be attained by Spirit."

"Now I realize that the present moment contains all time and within it is all that can be hoped for, done and realized."

"I do not know, but I feel that there is a great power in the depth of my heart that wishes to come out, and it is going to come out some day with the help of God."

" But I would like to ask you if you wish for this man to remain a stranger whose language no one in the universe speaks. I do not know. But I ask you if you would like to talk to this man in the tongue he speaks, which you can understand better than anyone else. In this world there are many who do not understand the language of my soul. And in this world there are also many who do not understand the language of your soul."

"God has made two bodies in one , and separation could be nothing but agony."

"The sorrowful spirit finds rest when united with a similar one. They join affectionately, as a stranger is cheered when he sees another stranger in a strange land. Hearts that are united through the medium of sorrow will not be separated by the glory of happiness. Love that is cleansed by tears will remain eternally pure and beautiful."

A Second Treasury of Kahil Gibran

and Letters of Kahil Gibran