Taken

First, you must let your heart
be broken open
in a way you have never
felt before,
cannot imagine.

You will
not know if what you are
feeling
is anguish or joy,
something predestined
or merely old wounds
flowing once more,
reminders of all that is
unfinished in your life.

Something will flood into
your chest
like air sweetened by
desert honeysuckle,
love that is too
strong.

You will stand there,
very still,
not seeing what this is.
Later, you will not remember
any of this
until the next time
when you will say,
yes, yes, I have known this before,
it has come again,
just as your eyes fold under
once more.

Dorothy Walters 2006

Soul And The Old Woman

What is the soul? Consciousness.

The more awareness, the deeper the soul, and when such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around.

It's so simple to tell one who puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real thing.

We know the taste of pure water.

Words can sound like a poem but not have any juice, no flavor to relish.

How long do you look at pictures on a bathhouse wall?

Soul is what draws you away from those pictures to talk with the old woman who sits outside by the door in the sun.

She's half blind, but she has what soul loves to flow into.

She's kind; she weeps.
She makes quick personal decisions, and laughs so easily.

-- Mathnawi: VI: 148-50 Version by Coleman Barks "The Soul of Rumi" HarperSanFrancisco, 2001

Waking

Even the man who is happy
glimpses something
or a hair of sound touches him

and his heart overflows with a longing
he does not recognize

then it must be that he is remembering
in a place out of reach
shapes he has loved

in a life before this

the print of them still there in him waiting

Kalidasa (350? - 430?)

When the Day came --
The Day I had lived and died for --
The Day that is not in any calendar --
Clouds heavy with love
Showered me with wild abundance.
Inside me, my soul was drenched.
Around me, even the desert grew green.

~Kabir

Happy Valentines Day.

Today I woke up. Instead of saying to myself "I am going to meditate" I said "I am going to breath."

For all the cures, inspirations and affirmations that may help on our journey, I found this one to be most helpful: be here now. Rather than worry about the day, the week, the month, I vow to stay (as best as I can) in the present moment.

May all beings be free of anxiety and may the Gods bless New Mexico with no more snow.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~Rumi