become supple as a newborn child

.

Nurture the darkness of your soul

until you become whole.

Can you do this and not fail?

Can you focus your life-breath until you become

supple as a newborn child?

While you cleanse your inner vision

will you be found without fault?

Can you love people and lead them

without forcing your will on them?

When Heaven gives and takes away

can you be content with the outcome?

When you understand all things

can you step back from your own understanding?

.

Giving birth and nourishing,

making without possessing,

expecting nothing in return.

To grow, yet not to control:

This is the mysterious virtue.

.

~ Tao Te Ching

translation by j. h. mcdonald

art by Colleen Wallace Nungari 

from Utopia Central Australia

.

from the owners manual

 

Connectedness is a biological imperative,

and at the top of the autonomic hierarchy is pathway

that supports feelings of safety and connection.

The ventral vagus (sometimes called the “smart vagus” or “social vagus”)

provides the neurobiological foundation for health, growth, and restoration.

When the ventral vagus is active, our attention is toward connection.

We seek opportunities for co-regulation.

The ability to soothe and be soothed, to talk and listen,

to offer and receive, to fluidly move in and out of connection

is centered in this newest part of the autonomic nervous system.

Reciprocity, the mutual ebb and flow that defines nourishing relationships,

is a function of the ventral vagus. As a result of its myelinated pathways,

the ventral vagus provides rapid and organized responses.

In a ventral vagal state,

we have access to a range of responses including calm, happy,

meditative, engaged, attentive, active, interested, excited, passionate,

alert, ready, relaxed, savoring, and joyful.

Co-regulation is at the heart of positive relationships…

If we miss opportunities to co-regulate in childhood,

we feel that loss in our adult relationships.

Trauma, either in experiences of commission (acts of harm)

or omission (absence of care), makes co-regulation dangerous

and interrupts the development of our co-regulatory skills.

Out of necessity, the autonomic nervous system is shaped to independently regulate.

People will often say that they needed connection but there was no one

in their life who was safe, so after a while they stopped looking.

Through a polyvagal perspective, we know that although they stopped explicitly looking

and found ways to navigate on their own, their autonomic nervous system never

stopped needing, and longing for, co-regulation.

Reciprocity is a connection between people that is created

in the back-and-forth communication between two autonomic nervous systems.

It is the experience of heartfelt listening and responding.

We are nourished in experiences of reciprocity,

feeling the ebb and flow, giving and receiving,

attunement, and resonance.

~ Deb Dana

from The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy:

 Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation

with thanks to The Marginalian by Maria Popova

a well told story

 

~Nancy Rynes

concentration and equanimity

 

As a stone mountain, one solid mass, is not stirred by the wind,

so no forms and tastes, sounds, odors, and tactile objects,

and phenomena desirable or undesireable stir the stable

one's mind. His mind is steady and freed.

.

~ Anguttara Nikaya

The development and practice of concentration

leads to equanimity. 

Enhancing qualities of faith, (or confidence), mindfulness,

 self-respect, a spirit of generosity and openess, and pliancy. 

All of which are included in a "neutrality of mind,"

a sense of being "there in the middleness."

The disipline of mindfulness together with concentration

can be very helpful in keeping our minds from habitual

occupation with unhealthy states.

A sense of ease, peace and balance equip us to deal with

the gain and loss, fame and disrepute, pleasure and pain 

that may come to us.

~ from the teaching of Buddha as

expressed by Joseph Goldstein in

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide of Awakening

everything taken away

.

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, 

which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. 

Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; 

because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us;

 because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

 That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us,

 the presence that has been added, has entered our heart,

 has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there,

 is already in our bloodstream.

 And we don’t know what it was. We could easily be made to believe

 that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, 

as a house that a guest has entered changes. 

We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, 

but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way 

in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.

 And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad:

 because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment 

when our future steps into us is so much closer to life

 than that other loud and accidental point of time

when it happens to us as if from outside. 

The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, 

the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, 

and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate;

 and later on, when it “happens” (that is, steps forth out of us to other people),

 we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being.

 And that is necessary. It is necessary – and toward this point our development

 will move, little by little – that nothing alien happen to us, 

but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink

 so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize

 that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, 

but emerges from us. 

It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed 

their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized

what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, 

in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them 

at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never

 before found anything like that inside them. just as people for a long time

 had a wrong idea about the sun’s motion, they are even now wrong

 about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still,

 dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letters to a Young Poet 

The Eighth Letter

photo by Eliot Porter

abandon ourselves

When we are hyper-vigilant, 

we fear everything and everything offends us.  

We don't dare to move forward,

 as if we could reach the ultimate dwelling 

by leaving it to others to make the journey for us. 

 

Since that is impossible, 

why don't we exert ourselves, 

my friends, for love of our Beloved?

 Let's abandon our reason and fear into his hands. 

Forget about the weakness in our nature

 that we worry about so much. 

 

Let our families look after the safekeeping 

of our physical form; that's their concern.

 All we should focus on is getting to see

 this Beloved of ours as soon as possible.

Even if there is not much comfort on this path,

 we would be making a big mistake to fret about our health.

 Anxiety over our health does not improve it one bit; 

this I know.... The journey I'm talking about requires great humility... 

 

Unless we abandon ourselves, 

this state is arduous and burdensome. 

 We would be trudging under the load of our egos,

like mud clinging to our boots and dragging us down. 

 Those who reach the ultimate dwelling

 bear no such baggage.

~ St. Teresa of Avila

from The Interior Castle

translation by Mirabai Starr

art by Julio Anaya Cabanding

a point of nothingness

 

There is no way of telling people that

 they are all walking around shining like the sun.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness

 which is untouched by sin and by illusion, 

a point of pure truth, 

a point or spark which belongs entirely to God,

 which is never at our disposal, 

from which God disposes of our lives, 

which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind

 or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness

 and of absolute poverty

 is the pure glory of God in us.

It is, so to speak, his name written in us …

 like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.

It is in everybody, and if we could see it 

we would see these billions of points of light 

coming together in the face and blaze of a sun 

that would make all the darkness 

and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. 

It is only given.

But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

~ Thomas Merton

aspects of the incomprehensible

 

 

 

The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects

 of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived be the finite human mind.

 

 They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize

their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation

 from the miseries of phenomenal life.

 

The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone

 from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound

 by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms.

 He must use human symbols. Therefore, Hinduism asks the devotees

 to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son,

 or the ideal friend.

 

But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless,

the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace

 in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

 

The gods gradually merge in the one God, but until that realization is achieved,

 the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore,

 the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep.

 He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites

 connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity,

the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind

 and the sense organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship

 against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water.

 

He awakens the different spiritual centers of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart.

Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image,

 regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit,

throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled

 from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest.

~ from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

by Mahendranath Gupta

to witness our own limits transgressed

 

 

We need the tonic of wildness, 

to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, 

and hear the booming of the snipe; 

to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, 

and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.  

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, 

we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, 

that land and sea be infinitely wild, 

unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable,

we can never have enough of nature.  

We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, 

vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, 

the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, 

the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. 
.

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, 

and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

 

 

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, 'Spring,' 1854

photos by Eliot Porter from:

Wilderness Is the Preservation of the World 

 

wildly in love

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are always kissing, they can't
control themselves.

It is not possible
that any creature can have greater instincts
and perceptions than the
mature human
mind.

God
ripened me.
So I see it is true:
all objects in existence are
wildly in
love. 

 

 

 

~ Meister Eckhart

.

kin to everything

When we try to pick out anything by itself, 

we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. 

One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell,

 and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals

 as friendly fellow mountaineers. 

Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman,

 becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; 

for the mountains are fountains — 

beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.


One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature —

 inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. 

And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds,

 we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. 

It is eternally flowing from use to use, 

beauty to yet higher beauty;

 and we soon cease to lament waste and death, 

and  rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, 

unspendable wealth of the universe,

 and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance

 of everything that melts and fades and dies about us,

 feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.


More and more, in a place like this, 

we feel ourselves part of wild Nature, 

kin to everything.

~ John Muir

from  John Muir: Nature Writings

a leaf says

 

 

 

 




A leaf says,

“Sweethearts—don’t pick me,
For I am busy doing
God’s work.

I am lowering my veins and roots
Like ropes
With buckets tied to them
Into the earth’s deep
Lake.

I am drawing water
That I offer like a rose to
The sky.

I am a singing cleaning woman
Dusting all the shelves in
The air
With my elegant green
Rags.

I have a heart.
I can know happiness like
You.



~ Hafiz

from The Subject Tonight is Love:

Sixty Wild and Sweet Poem of Hafiz

photo of Daisugi pruning technique

 

 

 

 

wildly and dangerously free

It is a strange and magical fact to be here, 

walking around in a body, 

to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. 

It is an immense privilege, 

and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here … 

It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us 

so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. 

We are here. 

We are wildly and dangerously free.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

in the wild places

 

True solitude is found in the wild places, 

where one is without human obligation. 

One’s inner voices become audible. 

One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. 

In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. 

The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, 

the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.

 One returns from solitude laden with the gifts of circumstance.

~ Wendell Berry

from "Healing" 

found in What Are People For?

our invisible prisons

…. We do have a deadening desire to reduce the mystery, the uncertainty of our lives…. 

We bind our lives in solid chains of forced connections that block and fixate us. …. 

Our sense of uncertainty and our need for security nail our world down. …. 

 

Each time we go out, the world is open and free;

 it offers itself so graciously to our hearts, to create something new and wholesome

 from it each day. It is a travesty of possibility and freedom to think

 we have no choice, that things are the way they are and that the one street,

 the one right way is all that is allotted to us. 

Certainty is a subtle destroyer.

We confine our mystery within the prison of routine and repetition. 

One of the most deadening forces of all is repetition. 

Your response to the invitation and edge of your life becomes reduced 

to a series of automatic reflexes. For example, you are so used to getting up

 in the morning and observing the morning rituals of washing and dressing.

 You are still somewhat sleepy, your mind is thinking of things you have to do

 in the day that lies ahead. You go through these first gestures of the morning

 often without even noticing that you are doing them. This is a disturbing

 little image, because it suggests that you live so much of your one life

with the same automatic blindness of adaptation.

… Habit is a strong invisible prison.

 Habits are styles of feeling, perception, 

or action that have now become second nature to us.

 A habit is a sure cell of predictability; it can close you off from the unknown,

 the new, and the unexpected. You were sent to the earth to become a receiver

 of the unknown. From ancient times, these gifts were prepared for you; 

now they come towards you across eternal distances. 

Their destination is the altar of your heart. 

~ John O’Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

.