Old Men And Disrupted Sleep

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Old Men And Disrupted Sleep

Old men pee in the middle of the night,
Oh yes, and go mad. That, too.
There is no kingly howling to their visit to the loo.
Just a shuffle, groping for a light, then back to bed.
Perchance to dream, but probably not.
A fleeting thought escapes: Is this it?
Is this all there is to life?
A turn into the pillows carries them back to a land of sleep
Where daughters never betray them and
Glory fills the mountains with the sound of their name.
Souls grow weary of this mortal coil that binds.
Time to slip off that thread, hopefully, without too much madness.


–Leslie Anneliese 

 

Poetry And Creativity

This poem was born out of an on-line chat with fellow meditators on the topic of waking up in the middle of the night. I offer it with a bow to the powerful poem, Old Men Go Mad At Night, written by Tennessee Williams in 1972 with references to Shakespeare and King Lear.

 
“Old men go mad at night
but are not Lears”
— Tennessee Williams
 
 

The Bamboo And The Sky

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The Bamboo And The Sky

If I were to tell you, your essence is that which is held
inside the hollow bamboo.

If you lift that bamboo up and behold the sky,
where is the division between the vastness
and that which is you?

It is always One.

It is just that you begin
to perceive only the bamboo case.
You think that outer shell is you.

You need to move back to the hollowness,
to the emptiness, and in that moment,

You are the entire vast sky itself.

–Leslie Anneliese

 

Stones On Fire

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Stones Are Burning

Here is a poem of burning stones and silence by Thomas Merton.

In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try to speak your

name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?

Thomas Merton had quite the wide-ranging life from agnostic to priest. His background covered a lot of physical ground as well from France to New York, to England, Rome and Thailand.

This poem evokes an inner fire that burns within all that is. Everything that comes into existence springs forth from an inner fire of God or the whole of existence.

Burning Stones On Fire

“The whole world is secretly on fire...”

Merton asks how a man can be still and listen to all things burning.

We are numbed to the point of deafness by the never-ending noise of this planet.

The man-made cacophony created by every type of machinery known-to-man is out of balance with nature and our natural rhythms. We keep slipping away from anything that is natural, all the while insisting it is "normal."

To hear the burning, you have to listen with care.

The Radiance Technique® And Poetry

Students of The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) can meditate with this poem. 

You could also apply TRT® hands-on as you read the poem and see what meaning it holds for you. You could apply your TRT® at the throat center as you read this poem. Or, perhaps with your hands in your heart.

“Listen to the living walls...”
 

The Way To Do Is To Be

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The Way To Do Is To Be

“Always we hope someone else has the answer, some other place will be better, some other time it will turn out.

This is it. No one else has the answer, no other place will be better, and it has already turned out.

At the center of your being, you have the answer: you know who you are and you know what you want. There is no need to run outside for better seeing, nor to peer from a window.

Rather abide at the center of your being: for the more you leave it, the less you learn. Search your heart and see the way to do is to be.”
— Lao Tzu
 

Presented in this poem by Lao Tzu is a koan for us to ponder between "to do" and "to be" – as they are both movement and stillness, each in their own way.

 

Doing And Being

Do you ever find yourself running after a better place as mentioned in this poem?

Do you find yourself searching for something else out there, not even sure what it is?

It's tricky, because we want to plan and prepare for things, such as going to school, working on a project, planning a trip. These are all with a future event in mind – school graduation, project completion, a place experienced. These are good and lofty goals.

Yet, our planning and projects co-exist with our challenge of being present while we're doing all of that.

In this very moment.

So easily said, and not so easily done.

Inner Heart Guidance

He writes: "At the center of your being, you have the answer."

Perhaps this center is our Inner Heart. When we are guided by our Inner Heart, our steps of doing are taken from an interior reference point. But how do we "hear" the guidance of our Inner Heart?

Students of The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) have a simple way to support themselves to access their intuition. Use of the TRT® hands-on connects us consciously to universal, supportive energy that allows us to better "hear" our inner heart.

When we are guided from within, and not from outside of ourselves, our doing reflects our being; the two are in alignment.

 

A Butterfly In Your Radiant Hand

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The Fluttering Of A Butterfly's Wings

 
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which,
if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
— unknown
 

Sharmon Davidson, artist

 

Butterflies Inspire Our Imagination

The metamorphose from wiggly caterpillar to cocoon to "flying flower" enchants us. 

Butterflies flit about our gardens, sipping from flower centers, in the intricate dance of pollination. 

Is that a smoldering tango that we see between butterfly and flower? Or an airy waltz?

Our hearts smile as we watch a butterfly's crooked flight path on the warm air. These tiny creatures fill our sense of sight, but what if we could perceive them at a micro-cosmos level?

What if we could actually hear their feathered wings in flight, beating upon the air, just as we can hear a bird's wings?

What if we could hear the siren song of a flower as it calls, coaxing the butterfly to take a delicate sip?

What a melodious mini-duet that would be.

A Butterfly In Your Radiant Hand

To enjoy a butterfly, stomping and yelling are not terribly effective. Rather, focus on moving gently or holding still. "BE the flower," I can hear the Zen teacher intoning.

Imagine yourself sitting in a meditation. You radiate such stillness and peace that even a butterfly feels safe to rest gently in your Radiant Hand – like the first image above.

You may not actually have butterflies landing in your hand (although you never know), yet this is a lovely image for our meditations. It supports us to remember the energy of stillness and goodwill to all creatures of this Earth.

 
“Only your surface is disturbed; in your deepness there is stillness and total tranquility.”
— Bryant McGill
 

Butterfly Spiral In Your Heart

In this artwork a thread comes from another level and then turns in a counterclockwise spiral within the heart – imagery that reminds me how The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) gives us access to universal energy. The use of TRT® hands-on allows us to go deeper, to become more aware of the loving energy in our hearts and in existence.

Stillness Within Us

Exploring the energy of stillness we see that it can be found within us. The world spins ever faster, we, ourselves, are running madly sometimes, yet this stillness continues to bear silent witness.

Are we aware of it?

 
“When you gaze out on a quiet, peaceful meadow, next to a still pond, under a motionless blue sky, you wonder how the noisy, busy cacophony of life could have arisen from such silent, motionless beginning. ”
— M..
 
 

Meditative Stillness In A Galloping World

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Meditative Stillness

 
“Meditation is the journey from movement to stillness,
sound to silence.”
— Sri Sri
 

A lovely meme from the The Art of Living organization reminds us of the meditative process of movement to stillness.

However, because our lives are not a straight line, but rather an ongoing spiral – meditation also takes us back again from stillness to movement.

We are always in motion, but the balance between stillness and movement often becomes askew.

Our Modern To-Do List

Our modern lives are stuffed full of activities all the time. I'll bet you noticed. Upload a photo on Facebook, make sure you tweet something, email, text, call someone, watch a video. In the meantime you should also follow everyone else's Facebook posts, tweets, emails and texts.

Go to the workplace: work, work, work. 

Go back home: sleep, sleep, sleep.

Go out, go in, go to, go from... go, go, go.

Hurry up and work. Hurry up and sleep. Get up and do it again.

Stillness does not rank high on the to-do list.

Do More With Less

In the workplace, the dreaded phrase "do more with less" is used to justify squeezing more work out of you with less staff and resources to support the workload. Instead of being a terrible thing that should be corrected, "do more with less" has become a workplace badge of honor.

"I work 16 hours a day!" co-workers yell as a battle-cry, "Look at me, that must mean I'm important!"

It's incredible how skilled we are at turning things inside-out and backwards.

Caught in the dusty whirlwind of outer activity, I picture myself galloping like a horse from activity to activity, to yet another activity, and on and on, ad nauseum. Never stopping long enough to catch my breath, to gather my thoughts, or to look up at the bigger picture.

Galloping, galloping, galloping...

Have you noticed in our fast-paced world, there is never a lack of things to be galloping to or from?

Wild Horses Galloping

But we are not herds of wild horses thundering on the Great Plains; we are humans in search of our awakening. Part of that process involves stopping, sitting with stillness and holding space for awareness in our breath.

If we could master stillness, we could then learn to bring greater awareness to our "galloping."

Galloping with awareness. In motion with consciousness.

All this galloping made me think of a popular song from my youth – Wildfire. In 1975, in the days of driving down country backroads in my 3-on-the-column Rambler, I listened to the AM radio. Wildfire was a top hit.

For a little blast from the past – I created my own video version of this song:


Michael Martin Murphey, the songwriter, tells us much of this song blossomed from a dream. In his Story Behind The Song 'Wildfire' he shares:

 
“The song came from deep down in my subconsciousness.
My grandfather told me a story when I was a little boy about a legendary ghost horse that the Indians talked about.
In 1936, author J. Frank Dobie identified this ghost horse story as the most prominent one in the lore of the Southwest.”
— Michael Martin Murphey
 

You can weave the verses of this song into the context of your personal life. Murphey recognizes the fluidity of the symbolism in the verses and wisely resists trying to limit its interpretation, leaving it instead to each listener.

For me, some of the deeper meaning in this song has to do with cycles – how we come and go from this planet. The hoot owl can be a harbinger not just of death, but of a great transition.

I picture this aging, weathered farmer coming to the end of his life, setting aside the harshness of these outer planes and riding freely in the wind with Wildfire. Naming the horse Wildfire harkens to the inner fire burning brightly inside all of us.

What ideas and feelings does it evoke for you?

Finding Meditative Stillness

Mornings without time-constraints are the ones I cherish – when I have time to do a full TRT® hands-on session of The Radiance Technique® (TRT®).

What a healing gift.

For the many days when time is limited, however, I can still use TRT® hands-on while I'm on the move. We are able to use TRT® any time, not just when we are meditating.

As we bring more radiant light to everything we do, our awareness of wholeness expands to both our stillness and movement.

 

Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

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All Our Comings And Goings

They say we're tripping the light fantastic, but maybe it's more akin to stumbling.

Our arrival on this planet is often marked with a bounce-landing.

Our Bodies Betray Us

With no lack of dysfunctional body parts, broken emotions, or minds lost along the way, we try our best to manage a slew of struggles. Betrayal awaits our bodies at every turn.

 

To add insult to injury, the flesh of this world mocks us. Hovering over us at all times is the ultimate trump card marked Death. Given that our bodies hold the upper hand, you'd think they could be a bit more gracious.

Those who are strong today can just as easily be shattered tomorrow.

No one, nothing, escapes impermanence.

This Tarot Soprafino Death Card was created by Johann Elias Ridinger and engraved by Johann Jacob Ridinger about 1760.

Impermanence Is Raw

The word "impermanence" has a soft connotation to it. What's here today will not be here tomorrow.

"Oh, impermanence," intoned a bored lady in the room where the women come and go talking of Michelangelo (hat tip to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot).

"Yes, I am quite familiar with it," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, as if impermanence were only a damp wisp of fog easily brushed away.

All Things Shall Pass

It's a cerebral topic of discussion in Buddhist philosophy. Like the sand mandala in the photo, Buddhism teaches us that all things will pass.

We get the impression that events are calm, even well-prepared, and then disappear.

In reality, impermanence is raw and visceral. It crashes down around us.

Impermanence screams in fear, whimpers in a corner, and rips our hearts out.

The serenity of a Buddha statue belies the stark reality of beginnings and endings that are violent and painful.

Perhaps You Think We Exaggerate

The National Geographic movie documentary, "Journey to the Edge of the Universe,"  catapults us into a wild and wooly cosmos.

When the ending credits roll, our eyes are wide with amazement and, if we're honest, a bit of fright. We're left with nothing to hang on to as we careen across inter-galactic space.

Nuclear Fusion And Black Holes

Nuclear fusion reactions are common and explode across space. Galactic energies collide and then coalesce. Deadly quasars of breath-taking beauty blast out jets of radiation from their cores.

Entire galaxies are destroyed. Vast universes are reborn. 

The hypernova reigns supreme in lawlessness and destruction as the most violent star-death of all. Its core becomes a black hole that destroys and consumes everything, even light, that enters it.

All rules of physics collapse within the vortex of a black hole.

What exists when there is no matter, no time, no space?

Are we destined to become emptiness and nothingness?

At The Edge Of The Universe

Where do we go from here?

When we reach the edge of our known universe – what or where, is our consciousness?

In humans, hope springs eternal. We stubbornly cling to a shard of light. We clutch our chests even as the universe flings us into the far reaches of the cosmos.

In stillness and meditation, we sit, willing our hearts to beat even within the dark matter of the galaxy.

Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

Meanwhile, back on Earth. 

A great roar of noise is taking place all around us.

Do we hear it?

  • A bullet sears through flesh.

  • Bones are splintered in a car crash.

  • Trapped in a sudden cardiac arrest, a heart slams to a halt.

Every last dying breath of all-that-is calls out to – what?

 

But, do we hear it?

T.S. Eliot continues in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

“When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through half-deserted streets...”
 

We move through our lives as if we, too, were etherized. We're aware of only a fraction of existence. We're smothered under multiple layers of veils. This numbed state keeps us blind and deaf.

It's Time To Lift The Veils

It's time to see again. Time to hear the many vibrations swirling around us.

We'll lift the veils, slowly and surely, with our meditation.

Eliot poses the question: Do I dare disturb the universe?

In one word... Yes.