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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Who really knows if we find words or if words find us. Sometimes I almost feel as though I am made for a moment and in that moment, if I surrender to it, a beauty takes shape. I experience this all the time when I am teaching - as though the words and the lessons just come, flowing out without effort.

When life is like this, we are channelers of sorts. Moved through. Moved with. Moved by. Maybe this explains why I have always loved my river so much. My whole life, it has carried me places, no effort.

Tonight after yoga I felt restored having practiced many poses of surrender. These are my favorite. Where you lay it down on the mat. You be a witness to your conscious mind and possess the unconscious, the failing, the yeilding, the exposing. You let those things that hold you down go with gravity and return to the earth. In the end it makes you lighter. Your eyes clearer. Your heart wiser.

Before I sat to write tonight the verse "you anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over, goodness and mercies follow me and I forever dwell in the house of a most high god" was very strong in me. As though I could not escape it. Earlier today, I was bogged down, having spent the last several days feeling rushed and pulled and trying to catch up.

I'm not sure why we choose the illusions of life. When instead we should acknowledge that our dwelling is a house with a most high god. This god anoints us with oil, a sacred and very personal spiritual practice. In fact, my life cannot contain the goodness, it overflows on every side.

My practice dispels the fear that the world wants me to take on. We can live where we want to live. There are no strong men holding us to one place. We should flow and move. We should graciously give and recive alabastar jars full of precious oils.

*** After just visiting George, I've decided to post a prayer from his new zenbaptist blog that fits nicely here:

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
*
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
*
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
*
Rilke

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful post with much to feel. Co-incidentally a friend just sent me a quote by Rilke in my email this morning, and now I find you posting another beautiful one here.

"I'm not sure why we choose the illusions of life."

I'm not sure either, other than with loads of conditioning and the dense experience of living in a body it is very easy to believe we ARE the things of this world, when really we are experiencers, but we are not what we THINK we are.

I like what you say about surrendering. In so many ways I find surrender to be an aid in dispelling illusion. Whether in yoga or just in a simple moment of acceptance, surrender brings us into presence more easily, to just accept what we are experiencing as what we are experiencing but without the drama or attachment or identification with it.

"dwelling in the house of a most high god"...yes, dwelling in our highest consciousness, being aware, being present...what a peaceful and overflowing place it is to reside.

Anonymous said...

It occurred to me to return and share with you the quote from Rilke that was shared with me as it seems fitting as well to your post....

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."

Angela said...

Joanne, thank you for the comment. I'm rushing out the door for the weekend so can't contribute more but wanted you to know that I had read and enjoyed.

Enjoy the looonnngg weekend!