hafiz

during this time that i am immersed in editing the words of another author and meeting manuscript deadlines, my own writing sits by waiting patiently, knowing i will return. in my absence, i submit a favorite from hafiz, a poem that feeds me now.


Light
Will someday split you open
Even if your life is now a cage.

Little by little,
You will turn into stars.

Little by little,
You will turn into
The whole, sweet, amorous Universe.

Love will surely burst you wide open
Into an unfettered, booming new galaxy.

You will become so free
In a wonderful, secret
And pure Love
That flows
From a conscious,
One-pointed,
Infinite Light.

Even then, my dear,
The Beloved will have fulfilled
Just a fraction,
Just a fraction!
Of a promise
He wrote upon your heart.

For a divine seed, the crown of destiny,
Is hidden and sown on an ancient, fertile plain
You hold the title to.

O look again within yourself,
For I know you were once the elegant host
To all the marvels in creation.

When your soul begins
To ever bloom and laugh
And spin in Eternal Ecstasy-

O little by little,
You will turn into God.

you are holy

you sometimes wonder many things of your own self. you try to be right. you want to be beautiful. you wonder if you are good, or at least as good as you believe you ought to be. you are truly and deeply all of these things. even more than right and beautiful and good, you are holy. you are holy. you are holy.

last year I explored the meaning of holy and of being holy (here) and found the definition to be "sacred, belonging to or coming from God." today i searched a little more and found the definition to be "set apart for the worship or service of God." dear one, you are holy, and i am holy. we are sacred, coming from and belonging to God. too, we are set apart for the worship or service of God. our work is holy. someone once said to me "cleaning bathrooms is holy work and cleaning the temple is holy work; either all of it is holy or none of it is holy." this is true, the work that is placed in our hands is holy work, and we are holy. the challenge, though, is in our becoming aware of and living up to our own holiness.

a treasured friend suggested holy means "being whole and bringing all the unloved parts of oneself into Oneness" and expressed his desire to become so. i asked that he take a closer look. we are in the sight of God a whole and complete being, even in our brokenness. perhaps, even, because of our brokenness. (God sees us as we Are; only we see the perceived imperfection.)

a friend of mine, an author of several books, often uses a metaphor from an experience of her own. she once had a car accident that gave her an injury, an injury that later led to her growing and deepening. in the accident a valuable vessel on the seat next to her was also injured (although the crack in the vessel and the crack in her shoulder did not become apparent to her until some time later.) she uses the illustration of the cracked vessel as one that without its crack cannot let the light in or let the light flow outward. where we are broken is where our Light can shine. our brokenness is for a purpose, and our being not whole (or perceiving that we are not whole, for in truth we are whole but not conscious of it) is a gift to God and the Universe and to our own selves. we do not "become" holy by becoming whole, we become whole because we re-cognize we are already holy. i feel it so clearly yet i am sometimes uncertain if the deep things i feel are expressed in a way that others can feel them too.

you are deeply, wonderfully holy, set apart for and emanating from God. holy is your state of being. holiness is your Truth.

one could suggest that believing in being already holy would lead to one no longer making an effort to live a holy life. however, recognizing one's self is Holy does not bring careless attention to living a pure life, but rather, the more deeply we recognize our own holiness, the more deeply it is reflected in our compassion and in our purity of living. true knowing that we are Holy brings its true reflection. this has unfolded beautifully for me. as i come from the belief in a separate authoritarian God and a fire-and-brimstone hell and come to recognize my Holiness, i discover greater depths of integrity. i have been surprised to discover greater devotion to integrity now that it comes from within rather than its being to avoid something without. our work is to come to see our own Holiness.

please know you are beautifully and wonderfully holy.

you are holy.

storms

it used to be
i found myself in storms
and in their passing
devastation was my lot

i buoyed myself
built my strength
sought to find a way
that i may persevere
and remain intact

when storms arrived
i fought
only to find
wrestling with the winds
even with newfound strength
left me spent, beaten
broken inside

time passed
(as she so eloquently does)
and today i noted
storms come and go
and raging winds
seem no bigger than whispers
and in fact
what once were gales
tearing through my soul
now seem but friends
who join me from time to time
on my own path

i looked inside
at how life has changed
and wondered for a moment
what might have made the difference
and i saw
it was not greater resistance
that has changed the way things are
for bracing myself against the storms
didn't bring about this change
but instead
this new way
of no longer breaking from the wind
came from my finally recognizing
that i
am the storm

photography by permission cindy lee jones

returned home

i have been traveling and am now safely returned home. my travels were lovely, truly so.

some of you wrote inquiring about my absence, and i thank you for the care, for the concern, for this reflection of your friendship. you are deeply meaningful to me and i love that you are part of my world. thank you, too, for letting me know you long for my writing. you are my blessing. you are my joy.

in the same love you have shown me, i pray you are blessed with safety, with peace, and with much happiness.

diana christine

i cry for the beauty of my own deepening; i am humbled by grace given me. that i, who understood so little, who was so deeply unaware, should come to drink of such rich waters, i weep for so great a gift.

it often grieves me that i am bereft of sufficient voice, that i struggle to convey in my writing even a shadow of the Light provided my path. like an artist whose attempts to draw the majesty of a mountain fall so short of its grandeur, i capture barely a hint of Truths opening to me. i taste, i feel, i sense a thing and struggle to find words that adequately represent it, and yet for its need in the world i will spend my days (and many of my nights) working toward this end. better a shadow of Truth than no representation at all.

my previous humble words attempting to describe the flow of life, of our need to become emptied to be filled, have lingered with me for days, taking me into greater depths. how quickly, how desperately we seek to fill any sense of emptiness, be it with alcohol or nicotine or sugar or sex or any number of satisfactions and illusions and opinions. yet touching that emptiness is perhaps our greatest opening to the Universe. and our path to being the most pure vessel possible for the Universe to flow through us calls for our ability to continue to become emptied, calls for our courage to touch this.

even now i know not all that i know but i seek to live true to that i do.

my commitment to eating mindfully is bleeding into other parts of my life. perhaps it is that one practice lived deeply and fully builds a bridge to deepening every other one. my increasing ability to be fully with my food is taking me to greater ability to be fully with the rest of life. and so it should be so.

my commitment to you is to bring to you as fully as possible, as much as lieth within me, the gifts that are given me. and i submit to you the best i have to give...

where to find

i believed i had wounds
that would never be healed
thought redemption
carried prices
i was unable to pay

i felt knowing held spaces
outside of my reach
thought resurrection
came out of darkness
impossible to endure

and so i continued
in seeking to find
the holder of the answers
the warden of the light

i longed
for my capacity to awaken
i struggled
for my potential to live

only to discover
in my awakening

all during my struggle
i had held the answers
to the questions that beckoned
i had the balm
for the healing i sought
i was the fulfillment
for the longing in my heart
i held the redemption
provided my soul

and the Universe in Her Wisdom
has already ensured
our questions are the answer
our longing is the cure

photography by permission cindy lee jones

mindful eating

one of my spiritual practices is that of mindfulness in relationship with food, mindfulness in my personal relationship with food as well as observation of our cultural habits. this has become a deep study for me, an important work in my life.

what i put into my mouth becomes part of me, and in truth becomes me, and calls for my most loving attention not only in what i choose to eat but in how i receive it. many in our american culture, if not most, are nearly completely disconnected from the food we eat. most of us do not plant or tend or harvest our food, do not carefully preserve it or store it. some of us do not prepare our food, do not feel it in our hands in cleaning and chopping and cooking it, do not lovingly serve it. much of our food bears little resemblance to its whole nature. an even more surprising tragedy, many of us are not present with our food when we eat it. we give about as little care in how we put food into our mouths as we do in feeding paper to our printers. our tendency to overeat, our constant craving, are in large part due to our inability to be present with our food. we are not in relationship with our food and do not deeply receive it, thereby always needing more.

that which becomes my own body calls for my greatest attention, begs my deepest love.

my relationship with my food begins with mindfulness and gratitude as i touch it and prepare it, continues as i put it into my mouth and participate in every texture and taste of it. even before i swallow, i have already begun to merge with what will become part of my body. i am, quite directly so, loving my own self when i treat my food with my deepest love. only in my appreciation and my mindfulness in eating is my food fully prepared to be taken into my body.

one aspect of my mindful eating practice is to eat without distraction, eating with only me and my food present. when i began my practice, at first the idea of eating without any other activity was daunting. how could i eat without reading the newspaper or a book, without watching television or opening my mail or sitting at the computer or perhaps indulging in a conversation? i struggled at first so instead of every meal of eating without distraction, i committed to one meal a day, something that appeared to be more manageable. what i discovered was far more than i ever could have imagined. mindful eating became a wonder of experience, deeply spiritual and deeply sensual, and with significant health benefits.

i am now in the middle of a study/writing/practice experiment for one full month of every meal being mindfully consumed, without any other presence or distraction during eating. the writing of this experience is too large for posting (it is part of a book manuscript) but because the practice is such an important part of my life, i want to introduce it here.

if we want our bodies to serve us well, we must serve our bodies well. we must be one with our bodies, and to be one with our bodies, we must also be one with our food.

touch it, taste it, take it in, but do so with the care, the presence, the attention we give to a lover. and we will discover our fulfillment returned unto us...

photography by permission graham jeffrey

more on being filled

in the early morning hours today i came to deeper understanding of the short poem on becoming emptied. at the time of the writing i felt the significance of the empty vessel being a pitcher, for this kind of vessel is not only filled but also poured out. my being a vessel is not for holding but for receiving and for pouring out.

during the early morning hours i felt deeper understanding.

our world is about "flow through"--breathing in and breathing out, receiving and releasing, holding and letting go. the rhythm of life moves like an ocean and flows like a breeze. we, too, are part of this same life and we are vessels for flowing through, not for holding.

if we do not allow ourselves to become emptied, if we have not this courage or this strength, what pours from us will be contaminated by what we have been holding, possibly even coming only from stagnant waters and none from Source and flow-through.

my work is to allow the Spirit to flow through me as clearly as possible from Source without being compromised by my attachment to something in the past, by my judgments, my opinions, my holding. listening and responding to someone without making it my own story, receiving and delivering truth without giving it my own spin. life, flowing through me.

may it be ever so.

empty me of my pretensions
empty me of all my pride
empty me of my objections
empty me of fears inside

make of me an open vessel
create of me a pitcher true
for only in my courage to be empty
can i know the fullness of you

photography by permission cindy lee jones

emptied to become full

empty me of my pretensions
empty me of all my pride
empty me of my objections
empty me of fears inside

make of me an open vessel
create of me a pitcher true
for only in my courage to be empty
can i know the fullness of you

equal truth

in being without desires,
you experience the wonder;
but by having desires,
you experience the journey.

yet both spring
from the same source and
differ mostly in name.

tao te ching

walking in this place calls for my greatest care. i worried that yesterday’s posting could have been misleading. i deeply honor the choice of another to seek enlightenment and in truth make every effort in my own life to live Spirit First. however, i do seek to encourage awareness of pursuing Spirit from a place of seeking greater depth rather than from a place of feeling inadequate. i deeply honor the life chosen to seek enlightenment.

those who choose to live a life separate and immersed in Spirit are not only beautiful but are needed in our world. those who choose to live a life in exploration of the physical experience are in equal beauty, equal truth…