Spring Awakening

Up early this morning to walk dogs in the exquisite morning light. An errand took me near fields above a hanging wood above Chicksgrove I once visited a lot.
While the dogs scuttled about I was sadly reminded of a poem I wrote 10 years ago. Poor old Lakshme, now 14, runs about gamely, but has a slightly dicky back leg - tho it seems to grow stronger the longer she exercises.

But my reason for writing these reflexions here is that I stood for ages listening to the birdsong in the holly trees set around the edge of the hill like a fortress. At first I kept decoding their song into notation, quantizing it into an octave, because that's the way the mind /literacy works; but then I began to simply listen to the energy in it as praise, rejoicing in nothing more than being alive.

I felt tremendously sorry for people who cannot see the metaphysical coherence of creation, cannot see how this bird is unconsciously honouring the life-spirit in all matter, the same way that your or I do with our conscious intention.
It made me reflect that the tiresome words about God & Christ & Mohammed or whoever are mere quantizations in the infinite octave of reality. We humans must approximate these hugely entities into our little linguistic semitones because of the paucity of moral capacity to comprehend the vastness of the energy available to us.

The Luminous Darkness

Into the echoing darkness I make my prayer,
knowing the dark itself is unanswerable.
All learned behaviour here’s unserviceable:
nakedness alone reveals what’s there.

The darkness that surrounds us is the fear
of ultimate non-existence: thus like child
with candle challenging the west wind wild
we can be nothing other than what appears.

Each black sun is a time of revelation
wherein we touch primordial power: the night
where, after wrestling with angels, light
brings permanent scarring bound up with transformation.

It's not enough to glimpse this mighty force,
we have to clasp its alienation
and wrestle with the pain of penetration
until we integrate the altered discourse.

Only afterwards we see the gift:
the pain arising from tectonic pressure
as old perspectives die to yield a fresher
deeper, larger, more abundant heart shift.

Gong

The chinese word means 'true tone' and denotes a sound whose authenticity makes it a tonic or grounding note. The issue in life is not merely to find one's authentic note, but to play it at the exact juncture where it fits with the spirit ensemble, and with an appropriate timbre so that it creates an organic whole with the world's gamelan.

Letter to a student

Anyone who follows a creative path knows these times of stress.
    You simply have to trust your inner life dynamic – whatever name you choose to give it – for it is throu these times of stress that you grow and mature spiritually, and ultimately come into your true nature. Suffering comes into our lives because that is the mechanism by which we are changed and deepened as individuals. In the process what we discover is that individually we do not control the bigger picture, but need to collaborate with this ‘inner life dynamic’ in order to reach a position where our impulses, our heredity and the needs of others can combine to create a beneficial interaction. Only when we reach that position can we give fully what others can receive fully.
    Everyone experiences these things, and always has done since the dawn of consciousness. What distinguishes the dedicated artist, and indeed any human committed to their own growth, is their willingness to allow themselves to be transformed by the experience and to incorporate the lessons so that their lives become richer and more multi-dimensional.