INTERESTING TIMES

 Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
- Kahlil Gibran

Work is love made visible.
--Khalil Gibran

 

 “Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in-betweens. I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there to do?”

~ Pablo Neruda

 Your confusion is not pathology, it is path. It has something to show you that clarity could never reveal. The nature of chaos is wisdom, but you must provide a home for it to receive its mysteries.

Your feeling of disconnection is not neurotic, it is intelligent. It has something to show you that oneness could never reveal. If you will practice the yoga of non-abandonment and provide safe passage – it will disclose an unmet doorway.

Your loneliness, your shakiness, and your fear are not mistakes. They are not obstacles on your path. They *are* the path. The freedom you are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the unwanted, but only in the core of the love and information it carries.

There are surges of somatic activity that contain very important information for your journey. If you will offer safe passage for the unknown aliveness, you will meet the messengers of illumination. Nothing is missing, nothing is out of place, and nothing need be sent away.

Yes, you may burn until you are translucent, but it is by way of this burning that your wholeness will be revealed.

~ Matt Licata

Just finished this novel last night.  I don't read a lot of novels, but I have a few on my shelf which have always come to me strongly recommended by someone I trust.  I don't remember who gave me this one.  It might have been B.  She is very much into all things native.

The book is excellent.  It also was a 1984 bestseller and got a book critics circle award for fiction.  It was Erdrich's first novel, and I am sure that many of the subplots in it are bits and pieces from her upbringing as a half-Chippewa in North Dakota.

What strikes me about it, first, is the variety of perspectives the author is able to take.  She writes from first and third person perspectives of male and female characters, young and old.  She takes a hard look at alcoholism, and PTSD, at our legal system, at the rivalries and drama of siblings and marriages and humanity.  In the end I was lifted by her compassion, by knowing that there is a person out there who sees the love inside of troubled people and can write about it.

The book tells tales on Lulu Lamartine throughout the book, but you don't get to hear about the world from her point of view until the very end.  I liked Lulu, and many of the other characters.  Lulu took pleasure in life, in men, in her many sons.  She saw the beauty in things.  She forgave.  She kept her secrets.  There are those who would judge her for her sexuality, but there were many in the tribe that didn't, because they participated in it.

Another striking thing about this book is the way the stories unfold over time as each chapter tells another point of view.  The stories gradually work from long past to present, but sometimes in the present the truth is buried, instead of revealed.  Other stories come to light and make a difference for someone.  One of the most basic stories is that of a person's origins.  Who are your parents?  Where did you come from?  Do you know?  In a world full of illegitimate children, it's not a given.

I have a copy here to give away.  I recommend it.  

Radical self love

In the tantric tradition it is said that chaos is 'extremely good news.' When you are willing to enter into your neurosis, your confusion, and your hopelessness, you approach the threshold of the sacred world. No matter where you look, all you see is path. Nothing is out of place and every state of mind is shown to be valid and workable. Even your most disturbing emotions are revealed to be of the nature of light, sent to magically evoke the infinite qualities of love buried within the darkness.

It is risky to let in the possibility that you are not broken, are not a mistake, and are not in need of fixing; that you could actually fully step into this world and participate right here and right now – that you need not wait until certain feelings are present or absent, for the right 'partner' or groovy spiritual career to show up, or for things to look quite the way you thought they were supposed to. If you will let her, the beloved will come in at once and remove all of this, leaving you naked before the truth of your illuminated presence.

Here, you will no longer be able to hide out from your unique natural perfection, pretending you are unworthy. You will no longer be able to assert your unlovability as you discover that what you are is love itself. You see so clearly that there is no 'you' here and 'love' over there; this old idea has been burned up in the fires of transmutation. When you are no longer able to conclude that a mistake has been made, you will see that even your neurotic spinning is weaved of particles of luminosity, brilliance, and intelligence.

Please do not postpone your participation here until things look the way you thought they would. Love is here now. And is burning up in its longing to move through you to set this world on fire.

~Matt Licata

In the end, only three things matter:
how much you loved, how gently you lived,
and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

--attributed to the Buddha,
and paraphrased by many

American men have a variety of handicaps, not the least of which is that ruggedly independent badass image they try so hard to live up to. But it does them a disservice when it prevents them from really being close to others. There's no guarantee that they'll have or develop the ability to really connect deep down .... so it's something to celebrate when it happens. It turns out that age 80 is not too late to develop emotional intelligence. =-]

WORTH READING:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/brooks-the-heart-grows-smarter.html?smid=fb-share&_r=2&

I hold the most archaic values on earth; the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.
--Gary Snyder

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free to abandon it.
-The Talmud