hello, little teacher II

**Update to one of my personally favorite posts from 2011,
as the lessons from this little teacher continue to deepen ....

Karmapa Dream Flag via Wikimedia Commons

The American primitive painter Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) reported watching an inch-worm crawl up a twig and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach. “That’s me,” he said, “I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing.”
- Robert Genn

_______________________Original post below______________________

As I was waking up with my unsettled, loose-end'ish feeling self and starting the day today, I was sitting at this desk when I noticed this tiny little worm. 

I noticed as s/he/'it' moved along that at times the surface of the desk seemed slippery and it

struggled for traction.

Sometimes the cracks made it turn and

go another way.

Sometimes it would topple over and get back up.

It went over the cracks, down the tiers of the edge of the desk and back up again several times.

What is going on here?

I curiously wondered.

belonging. be.

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING

I awoke

this morning 

in the gold light 

turning this way

and that

thinking for 

a moment 

it was one 

day

like any other.

But 

the veil had gone 

from my 

darkened heart 

and 

I thought

it must have been the quiet 

candlelight 

that filled my room,

it must have been 

the first 

easy rhythm 

with which I breathed 

myself to sleep,

it must have been 

the prayer I said 

speaking to the otherness 

of the night.

And 

I thought 

this is the good day 

you could 

meet your love,

this is the gray day 

someone close 

to you could die.

This is the day 

you realize 

how easily the thread 

is broken 

between this world 

and the next

and I found myself 

sitting up 

in the quiet pathway 

of light,

the tawny close 

grained cedar 

burning round 

me like fire 

and all the angels 

of this housely 

heaven ascending 

through the first 

roof of light 

the sun had made.

This is the bright home 

in which I live, 

this is where 

I ask

my friends 

to come, 

this is where I want 

to love all the things 

it has taken me so long 

to learn to love.

This is the temple 

of my adult aloneness 

and I belong 

to that aloneness 

as I belong to my life.

There is no house 

like the house of belonging.

…

'The House of Belonging'

From The House of Belonging

Poems by David Whyte

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

play-in-progress

Today I Rise: The Invitation

http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/today-i-rise/

☀︎

the rEVOLution is love

♥︎

listening beneath the noise

Notes from the universe

I understand that you must wonder, sometimes to the point of bewilderment, at what you're truly capable of doing. Yet, therein lies the "problem," because living the life of your dreams is far more about what I'm capable of doing.

Surrender - 

The Universe

you see, all I need's a whisper in a world that only shouts...

and an attitude of gratitude....

(Also found at https://vimeo.com/44131171)

_/|\_ listen, what is beneath the noise _/|\_

we are startust

....He told me he had journeyed all over the world

trying to find himself,

and that wasn't enough to feed his restless heart.

So he journeyed into outer space,

still seeking something he couldn't quite pinpoint. 

...no outer journey will ever fulfill you.

It took going into outer space for him to realize that

we must all

make this inner space journey

back to Oneness.

~ Lissa Rankin sharing about a conversation she had with Edgar Mitchell

outside the box

Cultivating Harmony in Nature ~ Inner and Outer

Designing systems which demonstrate the naturalness of self-sustaining physical spaces and species

and also with economic structures, encouraging individuals

to become enterprising, with consciousness,

further sustaining the earth and all its inhabitants.

~ ~ ~ 

We are individuals

and we are unquestionably inter-connected.

Many of us have become

disconnected from ourselves and each other.

May these two videos inspire a change, a shift toward deeper, broader connections.

Never underestimate the power of the

Ripple Effect....

It begins with YoU.

My definition of INNATURE:

Honouring ones’ own innate qualities while cultivating harmonious relationships with the broader community and all its inhabitants. Magic ensues.

belonging

"....the moment you've uttered the exact dimensionality of your exile,

you're already taking the path back to the Way,

back to the place you should be,

you're already on your way home"

How.

How to stop time: kiss.

How to travel in time: read.

How to escape time: music.

How to feel time: write.

How to release time: breathe.

~ Matt Haig ~

    

          

            

David Whyte COURAGE

is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstance, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to do it in public, to show courage; to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade: but a look at its linguistic origins leads us in a more interior direction and toward its original template, the old Norman French, Coeur, or heart. 

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made…

"This tiny, ruined, monastic fishing house in Cong, County Mayo, has been a place where, over the years, I have found the needed courage to both make and break promises: promises that have emboldened and promises that have imprisoned. The river flows strongly under its four square solidity, and three of its walls form a private shelter for necessary thought, the fourth wall is gone and looks down stream, where all our promises must flow. It is a structure that, all of its own, holds the courageous conversation between what is actually here and what has already gone." DW

dimmer switch of life

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason

or doesn't have a purpose.

In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do

except perhaps making music and dancing.

When we make music we don't do it in order to

reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition.

If that were the purpose of music then obviously

the fastest players would be the best.

Also, when we are dancing

we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor

as in a journey.

When we dance, the journey itself is the point,

as when we play music the playing itself is the point.

And exactly the same thing is true in meditation.

Meditation is the discovery

that the point of life is always arrived at

in the immediate moment.

- Alan Watts

The Bottom Line ~ Mooji.....

❤︎

enough

Sonlight and Summer, doing what they graciously did, grazing (being).

I WISH YOU ENOUGH

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.

I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.

~ Author Unknown

walkabout

helloooooo...

this pic is inspired by a talk I recently heard from Pema Chödrön

where she gave the image of intense emotion as the water raging in a river.

becoming swept along *in* the water is a form of distraction,

while observing the water (emotion) from the riverbank

actually allows us to connect and *be with* it.

many of us are conditioned to believe it's the other way 'round.

as if we're not truly feeling an emotion if its intensity doesn't envelop our whole being.

we are human, we slip into the river from time to time

and get bounced around on the river rocks.

in simply becoming aware of this

we see that we have the choice to come ashore

and in doing so, allow ourselves

to also see and possibly release whatever is drawing or holding us in the water,

be it fear of the emotion itself, guilt, unhealthy habit, beliefs, etc.,

and see the whole of the situation more fully and compassionately.

(my interpretation)

a wish for us all.

☀

in and out.

like a bird

on the wire...

sea-ing

shortly before this, he was not too keen on playing in the water,

or on being apart from mommy...

amazing what we are capable of when given the space

to stretch the limits of our comfort zones,

and the gentle encouragement to try new experiences...

☀

we learn to tap into our true potential

and from that, infinite possibilities arise...

 uncle ray helped him to fly

an experience that is a little frightening, but thrilling at the same time
(fear and excitement bring about physiologically similar responses in our bodies)

conquering fear,

we feel good, feel accomplished.

  going a little too far is often how we find our edge.
finding our outer limits that each moment brings is the larger practice.
if we embrace these limits and *sea* them for what they are,
we allow our edges to become less solidified...

running in water is an adjustment
legs don't move as fast as they do on land but the first time we encounter this
it is natural for our mind to still think they will carry us in the same way...
we can only see that our legs didn't fail us, the sea is not a bad place,
when we give ourselves the space
to be imperfect
we are not meant to get things right on the first try, every time,
nor to be perfect...

 we can always just pause, shift gears, retreat for a while...
know that it is enough for now

and still feel good, feel accomplished.

like horses after an exciting experience, going back to grazing.
this is the part most of us are not trained to do in our culture,
we are not taught the value of grazing!
if we are constantly pushing ourselves, we are only learning to push more,
we are literally

~ training in never be-ing enough ~

*just be-ing*
is the only way true awareness and wisdom about our experiences arises.

(he embraced getting sandy which he also wasn't keen on at first!)

sharing what we have learned by helping others to also face their fears
we are marking our progress, building confidence
and reassuring loved ones that we are okay, we are learning, this is all a part of living.

mentors and teachers come in all sizes, even (especially) at a year and a half young...

this now 3 year-old continues to splash, and play, stumble, and graze

in a loving, supportive container

every day he is learning more about himself
and to trust his own experience with the world.

what's more important in life than that...

☀

may we all practice *sea-ing* the seeds of possibility

that have been planted in our own lives.

some may need more cultivation than others,

but trust that they are there...

☀☀☀

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

~Isak Dinesen

☀☀☀☀☀☀

new day dawning

the natural source of radiance and brilliance in this world

sojourner

temporarily residing

Nature's music is never over;
her silences are pauses, not conclusions.
- Mary Webb
 

magnifique!

“Many of Danielle Richard’s paintings feature a vista, a clearing,

a door, or a window through which a feminine gaze appears to flee,

but what it truly seeks is to delve into its most intimate being.”

♥

even though I don't understand French, I love listening to it.

this looks like a lovely presentation in Danielle's honour...

A bit of history about the origin of the word 'empathy' in Art that doesn't seem to be commonly known: In 1873, the art historian and philosopher Robert Vischer was the first person credited with using the German term Einfühlung to explain how we  'feel into' or the 'in-feeling of' works of arts and nature. His father, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, had previously used a similar term Einfühlen in explorations of Idealism relative to architectural form.

In the late 1800s the Father of Experimental Psychology William Wundt used empathy in terms of human relationships but still from an art-based position, saying 'when empathizing with a work of art, the beholder physically imitates the object and imaginatively projects himself into the object.'

A student of Wundt's, Theodor Lipps, transfered empathy to psychology in an attempt to explain how we discover that other people have selves, though he presented many examples from the visual arts, including 'when I observe a circus performer on a hanging wire, I feel I am inside him'.

Freud got in there then with 'putting oneself in another person's position', and in 1909, a psychologist named Edward Titchener translated Einfühlung into the adjective 'empathic' which he defined as the appreciation of another person's feelings, or the process of humanizing objects,

of reading or feeling ourselves into them.

From then on it seems like the art/aesthetic origin was no longer referred to, and around 1929 it started to get confusing when philosophers began arguing that empathy was more cognitive than emotional, and ever since then the lines between empathy and sympathy have been blurred, empathy commonly referring to cognitive function and sympathy to feeling, though they are often used interchangeably in today's society (this confusion clearly illustrated especially in the comments here). It also became a political tool; it can be very politically incorrect to be non-empathetic, and to be sympathetic has its own weakness/negative connotations as well.

I would like to see the downfalls of this confusion around

the word empathy and how it is being used as a distraction illustrated more clearly and spoken of more often,

as Edwin Friedman does in the fascinating book

A Failure of Nerve, where he says that the increased popularity of empathy is largely a symptom of the 'herding/togetherness forced characteristic of an

anxious society'.

I personally align with the earlier meaning of empathy in which I see the roots being represented aesthetically

('the science of feelings') through the arts as early (and likely even earlier) as the mid-1700's when Johann Georg Sulzer said that 'art is the expression of a psychological state of man; it imitates human nature in that it expresses nature through the representation of an object.'

Going with this version of empathy and distinguishing it from sympathy by defining it simply as having loyalty, support, or favor with, ultimately paves the way for less semantic confusion and more opportunity to...

throw all of this out the window!

and just be compassionate.

that is, recognize our shared humanity.

♥

Feel life.

Be life.

Accept life.

oh twelve

budding flower

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone.

I think that's what I get from these older black women,

that every soul is to be cherished,

that every flower Is to bloom.
~Alice Walker

 

sand... close up

Be master of your petty annoyances

and conserve your energies

for the big, worthwhile things.

It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out,

it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
~Robert Service

♥

hai.

Lost



Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.
Listen.
It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.
Stand still.
The forest knows
Where you are.
You must let it find you.


This poem is David Wagoner's rendering into modern English the answer a Northwest Native American elder would give to a young girl or boy who asked the question,

"What do I do when I am lost in the forest?"

David Whyte relates further... "In other words,

'What do I do when I've lost my creative fire?'

which is really

'What do l do when I forget who I am?'

At the very core of creativity there seems to be an admonition that says,

'Your own way is essential.'

This is true even in a traditional master-student relationship. The word 'expert' seems to be like a fog in which we lose ourselves. We feel our lack before we have done the essential work of

touching our own inner longing.

Creativity has much more to do with giving ourselves over to our deepest longings than it does with giving ourselves over to any kind of strategy.
The great poetic and mythic traditions say that creativity has to do with unburdening, with giving yourself a break, with letting fresh air in through the windows, with allowing yourself to be

lost...

profoundly lost,

deeply lost.

This cannot be taught, it must be lived.

In the beginning,
along with the joy of possibility,
you also have to enter this deep well of grief
connected to what you have missed by
refusing to open in the past."


The Well of Grief
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source
from which we drink
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for
something else.
~David Whyte 

hai.

(yes)