InnerVentures

Tag: soul

  • Beauty, Light and Truth

    ‘We can’t be reminded enough of how much beauty there is all around us—we who are so often too rushed or numbed or worried to see it and to feel the ease that it brings, in beauty, the Invisible Embrace.’ –  John O’Donohue 

    “Beauty is made to seem naïve and romantic (but) much of the stress and emptiness that haunts us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. The Beautiful offers us an invitation to order, coherence and unity… we feel most alive in it’s presence for it meets the needs of our soul.” – Susan Enrich

    Lyrics by INDIA ARIE  – “I Am Light”
    I am light, I am light [x4]
    I am not the things my family did
I am not the voices in my head
. I am not the pieces of the brokenness inside
    I am light, I am light [x4]
    I’m not the mistakes that I have made or any of the things that caused me pain. 
I am not the pieces of the dream I left behind
    I am light, I am light [x4]
    I am not the color of my eyes. 
I am not the skin on the outside
. I am not my age, I am not my race, my soul inside is all light
    All light, all light [x2]
I am light, I am light [x2]
    I am divinity defined
, I am the God on the inside
, I am a star, a piece of it all
, I am light

    “The vastness that is seen by the mind is not true,
    But the vastness of the mind that is seen, that is true…………..

    “Behind the field of efforts is a space of effortless silence. Any effort to be silent becomes merely a cloud passing. The silence is already inherent as the Self and a natural space of ‘Isness’ or pure Being – undisturbed and undisturbable as the True Self. You are here, it is our true place. Sometimes in front is the effort to become, but this is watched and watchable. When this is observed, don’t go with the pull towards thoughts, this is the habit of the mind. Stay as you are – silent and empty.

    There is no tension in the Self because there is no effort . If the feeling of effort is coming, that is OK. What is making effort? See if effort can be found. Don’t identify.

    There is a space within us where nothing changes, Because it is always present the changeful can be observed. You are the undisturbed Self.

    But the habit is to doubt this. Watch both the doubt and the habit without becoming involved. Remain in the natural state” [Silent, Still and Unchanging].

    Sri Mooji.

  • Aging is Humbling

    These days I frequently  find myself sitting in wonder and confusion as to where my life has gone. My logical mind tells me that I have now lived three score years and seven; I have memories and momentos that help to inform the reality of this, along with the wear and tear on my body and the changes in my appearance that mark the passage of the years. From that reality it does seem a long time. The advancement of so many technologies and the changes in cultural norms that I have witnessed throughout my life also provide a perspective that supports that whole view.

    Yet here I am, temporarily but frequently lost in an alternative reality in which I still feel like a young person whose life is not finite; destined to certain death, yes, and yet strangely outside of time, living in an eternal now that gives an illusion of unchanging youth. In this way I catch myself feeling about 18, in ageless, unblemished.

    I know I am not alone in having these experiences. Perhaps we all feel this way when we drop into a particular kind of inner reality. (When I reflect on my dreams, for example, I seem ageless in them). I know it as an awareness that springs from deep inside me, as though my soul hasn’t aged along with my body, and a realisation comes to me, even as I am writing this, it seems to me that our souls do not age in the way our bodies do.

    People talk about ‘old souls’ when they witness young children expressing wisdom beyond their mental age, but my sense is that our souls are outside of time in the linear sense, and rather than ageing, they mature according to each person’s particular life experiences, or, in the case of young children, their experiences in previous lives. (Where else could such precocious wisdom come from? But that is a debate for another time.)

    I can see how my life has provided a series of lessons, some of which have enabled me to learn and grow, others have left me none the wiser and therefore needing to repeat a pattern until I reach a new level of awareness. This growth process is happening through strivings to achieve, through the challenges of pain and loss, through the affairs of the heart, through service and importantly through grace.

    When I experience my life from this meta perspective I feel held and at peace with myself through a level of acceptance of what is. But when I am faced with the stark limitations of my ever-aging body and mind, I find myself struggling to accept the inevitable decline in stamina and strength, in mental agility and in memory. I am frustrated daily by the restrictions and limitations on my activities and achievements. It requires a level of humility, patience and self-acceptance that do not come easily. Life becomes a practice in mindfulness, setting appropriate boundaries and allowing time for rest, which can lead to a refining and maturing of the soul. Paradoxically, we become more child-like and free. The Dalai Lama is a wonderful example of this. In the absence of the disciplines which enable this process we can so easily become negative, bitter and cantankerous – the archetypal grumpy old man or woman.

    I am trying to age gracefully and experience life from my soul’s reality, while honouring my aging body’s truth. I appreciate that, as a man, I do not face the same cultural pressures imposed on older women for their looks and appearance, but it is still a challenge and a big lesson in humility.

  • A Winter of Words

    In a winter of words
    the verbal garden hibernates.
    The streams dry up
    in a drought of expression,
    a writer’s depression.
    It is pencil down-time
    where poetry lies fallow;
    barren silence on a blank page.

    It’s a waiting time,
    a frustrating time,
    without metaphor or rhyme.
    The voice deprived of ways
    to map an inner path.
    No light to shine on truths,
    no eyes to see beyond
    and penetrate the dark.

    Spring’s sap will surely come
    to fuel an inspiration
    for fresh communication,
    bursting through earth’s crust
    like lava flow or geyser steam
    enriching inner landscapes
    with those rare minerals
    from the archetypal depths.

    Skillful words that can unmask
    the previously unseen,
    purposefully drawing us
    closer to our soul,
    to meet a subtle promise
    that we barely knew
    was waiting – so patiently
    inside our broken heart.

    – Ardhan Swatridge, Feb 2018

  • What does the Universe want from me?

    A poem by Erica Sarzin-Borillo   (http://www.mythichealingarts.com/)

    To hold a candle in the dark and illuminate what could not be seen
    And often what would not be seen

    To hold hold a pic in the minds of men to get to soul…
    To get to Truth…

    To chisel away at the Rock of Ages
    Containing the living Beauty within

    To crack the nut of Life
    Of mine and of yours

    I guess I don’t care how dirty
    I get in the process
    If trouble is what it takes
    to get to the Center
    Then I am an advocate for trouble
    If chaos has to be entered into
    In order to find order
    Then you will find me there
    Hanging by a single thread
    Over the abyss…

    I may be a sensitive
    In the light of day
    But there is much to life
    that needs the inner goods
    And I guess I was born to this work

    I am coming back
    with a piece of Eternity
    A chunk of World Soul
    that time and again
    Gets forgotten
    by the puppet world

    Oh I know the game
    I’m no different than you
    You will find me well dressed
    In my Sunday best
    Gorging on this mock up life
    (You know , we want and we want
    But we don’t know
    what we really want)
    So we buy it all and we buy it up
    But there’s never enough
    of this puppet stuff

    I’ve had my fill of what cannot fulfill
    So weary as I am
    and nearing “the end”
    I’m going in one more time
    I’m heading in for the Immortal Soul
    The One with whom I fell
    Deeply and eternally in love
    The One who partnered
    with Eros himself
    And birthed the child called Joy

    This is how the story goes
    Such love cannot be bought or sold
    Such joy cannot be measured

    When I die my fellow man
    I pray I will walk hand in hand
    With my authentic Soul
    And with my last breath
    Thank God for the true life I led!

    ESB
    from “The House of Gathering”

  • A Map to the Next World – by Joy Harjo

    In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map
    for those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

    My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged from the killing fields,
    from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

    For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

    The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light.
    It must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

    In the legend are instructions on the language of the land,
    how it was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

    Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the altars of money.
    They best describe the detour from grace.

    Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; a fog steals our children while we sleep.

    Flowers of rage spring up in the depression, the monsters are born there of nuclear anger.

    Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to disappear.

    IMG_0003

    We no longer know the names of the birds here,
    how to speak to them by their personal names.

    Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

    What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the map.
    Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us,
    leaving a trail of paper diapers, needles and wasted blood.

    An imperfect map will have to do little one.

    The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood,
    your father’s small death as he longs to know himself in another.

    There is no exit.

    The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine —
    a spiral on the road of knowledge.

    You will travel through the membrane of death,
    smell cooking from the encampment where our relatives make a feast
    of fresh deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

    They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

    And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world there will be no X,
    no guide book with words you can carry.

    You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song she is singing.

    Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

    And lights the map printed with the blood of history,
    a map you will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

    When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers
    where they entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

    You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

    A white deer will come to greet you when the last human climbs from the destruction.

    Remember the hole of our shame marking the act of abandoning our tribal grounds.

    We were never perfect.

    Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth
    who was once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

    We might make them again, she said.

    Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

    You must make your own map.

    ~ Joy Harjo ~

  • Sometimes

    mymandalasmall‘Mandala of life’ by Paul Swatridge

    Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
    Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
    Or a dog howls in a far off farm,
    I hold still and listen a long time.

    My soul turns and goes back to the place
    Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
    The bird and the blowing wind
    Were like me, and were my brothers.

    My soul turns into a tree,
    And an animal, and a cloud bank.
    Then changed and odd it comes home
    And asks me questions. What should I reply?

    —Hermann Hesse