Oneness within

You who want knowledge,
seek the Oneness within

There you will find
the clear mirror already waiting.

Hadewijch II of Antwerp 13th ct

From Women in Praise of the Sacred
ed Jane Hirshfield

Words of Peace

An ageless message, a timeless quest
something old, something new

what you are looking for is inside of you

check out www.wordsofpeace.ca

or www.wordsofpeace.com

for heart-opening news for the current century :)

nameste
musemother

Poem for Spring

Listen to the birds

The prodigious wind doth blow and heartily.

Something is about to happen.
Listen, it calls you…
bright from within the shining …
glistens, whispers, wet, alive.

Speak, but from the wordless place.

This wind outspeaks the loud roadways
outvoices birds, bells,
the ubiquitious
chrome chimes.

The open sky above the field
echoes dump trucks’ rattle.
Overhead
high clouds line up,
booming by.

Dark over the lake, coming fast,
see the red-winged black-bird
hear the willow breathe –

all that roaring wind
punching branches up and down.
This is the week, the day
it may happen,
the first leaves.

Listen to the birds, robins, crows
They speak from the wordless place.
Something is about to…

No Place Like Home

Yoga, breathing, relaxation and meditation are all ways of coming home to the place where the true you resides.

1. Come into proper sitting alignment with eyes closed. allow your spine to be long and naturally erect.

2. Take several full, deep, long breaths.

3. Inhale through your nose and exhale with an audible sigh, singing or saying 'Hoooh" on a single note until you are comfortably out of air. Repeat this several times. Allow yourself to become absorbed in the sound as you feel it resonate in your belly and vibrate in your heart.

4. Now inhale, then exhale, sighing, "Mmmmm" on the same note, mouth closed., Repeat several timmes. Allow this vibration to resonate in your heard.

5.Next, inhale through the nose. Combine the two sounds on the next exhalation with an open mouth, saying "Hooooh" and then "Mmmm" with a closed mouth. Feel your spine vibrate with this healing and soothing sound.

6. Practice this combination several times. Then simply sit in silence and listen to the sound of 'home' as if it were an echo singing back to you. Feel the effects of sound vibration on your body and mind.

Welcome home,
musemother

excerpted from Yoga for Your Spiritual Muscles, Rachel Schaeffer

How might your life have been different?

from I sit Listening to the wind:

"How might your life have been different, once, long ago, when you had worked very hard to know what you knew inside, and were ready to bring it forth....but were suddenly filled with fear and guilt and unable to express yourself...and you felt utterly alone?

If there had been a circle of women waiting to receive you, eager to listen to your understanding of life.

If the women had known, from their own lives, that whenever a woman dares to bring forth the deepest meaning from within, she will be attacked by an old force inside, whose only purpose is to keep things as they are

...and the fact that those women existed made you feel less lonely. And if the women had helped you, supported you with their warmth...and by the wisdom and daring of their lives, given you the courage to speak,

how might your life be different?

by Judith Duerk

On Grief

There are some griefs so loud
They could bring down the sky,
And there are griefs so still
None knows how deep they lie,
Endured, never expended.
There are old griefs so proud
They never speak a word;
They never can be mended.
And these nourish the will
And keep it iron-hard.

May Sarton, "On Grief"
Selected Poems of May Sarton

Sunrise by Mary Oliver

You can
die for it --
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India

and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.