The Sirens Song

The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard.
-Katha Upanishad

We’re a curious bunch, our thirst for knowledge is unlimited. This is especially true when talking about enlightenment which is sure to bring many to the discussion. But if we’ve learned anything we must keep in mind that those who seek will not find it, for it comes as a thief in the night, completely unexpected… that is the paradox. But still, we’re curious. What is it that drives one on this quest seeking illumination and transcendence.

In Greek mythology, The Song of the Sirens provoked many a sailor to fall into song-of-the-sirens, the sea to their death, so alluring was their song. It wasn’t until Jason and the Argonauts played a counter melody that the Sirens were destroyed. We also have a tendency to lose ourselves in our quest for answers in the deep oceans of life. We need our own counter melody to balance ourselves in the event we fall for the false sounds our own egocentric self.

In his short story, The Silence… of the Sirens, Franz Kafka wrote that a more fatal weapon than the song of the Sirens might be their silence. Indeed, where would we be without our wonder, our inquisitive nature, our song we hear in the deep recesses of our soul.

But all is not lost for the seeker on the spiritual road, for it’s said that one who travels this path and seeks an answer to life as we know it, is as a “dreamer of a beautiful dream where the dream is worth it, even if it doesn’t come true.”

Humanity has a need for metaphysical belief. Is this enough to imply its existence? Some say that because it’s contemplated to such a degree throughout the ages that this questioning is proof enough. But we can’t help but ask the questions. It’s in our nature. Thus there are more questions than answers or so it seems. Just look at the multitude of beliefs. And what of the questions… the existence and silence of God? Why are we here? What is the purpose?

What would life be if from the beginning we knew all the answers? Void of wonder, the end of seeking, of life itself. For it’s the experience of being alive and the enchantment of the ordinary that fills our days and our dreams at night.

©jc2021-9

*Photo’s courtesy of Pixabay

In Silent Lucidity

Deeper issues of a sudden moment seated deep within my soul…quiet… can you hear the stillness? Quiet… can you see it moving? Where? If you have to ask, then you haven’t seen or heard.

Into the abyss of situations shedding light on concerns about life itself. There is emptiness, an unsettling knot that tells me there is much more to life than times movement of the hands-on a clock. The things of what I was taught in college, I don’t believe anymore. Or in the catholic church, I don’t trust anymore. In reality, we are ever passionate about all there is and all there is not… the 10,000 things. While waiting for the rhapsody, just as stuck as ever, much too foolish to realize that we are the composer in secret lucidity, ready to begin our personal symphony. Life can seem like one situation after another that comes and goes where one feels unfulfilled to the point of being bored. Material things can’t control me as some may feel relief in inanimate objects. From the Buddha’s 3rd eye’, I learn many things and the first lesson, “unto oneself, be a light.”. But despite this or because of it, still, there is a peacefulness that I witnessed in people, a look of serenity and tranquility. Something that glows from deep within; a look I’ve longed for all of my life. I know that such people discover a deeper sense of being beyond time while living in the mystery of time, in perpetuity. In Silent Lucidity…

*copyright-2020-9-jc *images by pixabay…

In A Dark Wood…Shunngmanitu Thanka

The Lakota say that it is not uncommon
To hear something calling your name
In the stillness of a dark moonless night.
This is ‘shungmanitu thanka‘, the Great Wolf.

One night our pilgrim found himself walking deep in a dark wood; overhead a new moon disguised as its shadow self-juxtaposed to an array of stars, as the sound of spent leaves crushed underfoot sounded in the autumnal air. It seemed as though the wind was guiding him towards an expected destination as he found himself facing Sirius, the Dog Star. At this moment, his vision caught sight of a light moving swiftly in front of him in the shadows of an oak grove. Like a slow waxing moon, a white wolf appeared before his eyes lending a radiant glow to the maze of yellow, red, and green on the forest floor.

In silence, it’s believed
As though shouted
From the highest mountain
That this seer has witnessed
A vision and is in store
For a special kind of teaching.

“Through an open window in a thicket of shrubs, I saw his head turn up toward the dark velvet sky, and howl into the thin air, moving his head from left to right and back again. It was mournful and very moving like he was self-contained in a certain kind of grief reserved for a departed lover. We both sat there at a distance, careful not to startle the other, a meeting of heart and soul… a revival. And on the 3rd day, we took leave of each other, disappearing as suddenly as he came, I walked away embracing a deeper understanding of life, love, and compassion.”

The White Wolf, a native to Tibet is a spiritual presence in the Himalayas. Native Americans call on him as a teacher and pathfinders to unmapped territories of the forest and uncharted areas of the soul. Sirius, the dog star of the constellation Canis Major, home of the ancients, is his symbol, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is, in reality, two stars seen as one from its proximity to the Earth. Because of its binary nature, it represents the paradoxical nature of life.

The Pilgrim on his path is like a Lone Wolf, he’s not of a pack, he seeks knowledge for knowledge sake. It is not important to the wolf or the pilgrim if one or a thousand hear his meditations in the night. In his indifference to fame and fortune, only a few may hear his prayers, but as a pebble splash on the surface of a pond, vibrations will echo in these waters until the end of time.

©jc2019-9… Images by Pixabay

The Artist Soul

Artistic expression in its many forms, be it the painter, the writer and so on to the musician, the actor is an undertaking of reverence toward the soulfulness of human creativity. We create to satisfy a need to explain life and all its wonders to ourselves. And self-expression on the road to creativity is one avenue in which to tell our story of things hidden in broad daylight which will simultaneously expand and unlock its secrets to the advantage of self-knowledge and wisdom.

Indeed this taproot of creativeness can be sublime, hidden within from the masses to bathe in its own truths until one day an epiphany of ideas rush forth and for one brief moment, all seems to make sense in the universe. and as soon as it arrives it dissipates until the next flicker of lucidity.

I often wonder how Vincent felt when the epiphany arrived and it was soon followed by despair and caught up in a free fall of depression.

©jc2019-9… Image courtesy of Pixabay

Ode to Joy… cheerful again

The joyful state, the combined results all states of being bringing laughter to the soul, empathy to the heart and compassion to the mind. ‘Joy’ that comes from the mindful observation of nature and how it’s triggered by the slightest of phenomenon.. positive and negative, right and wrong, joy and sadness; for you can’t know one without its other. Such feelings can come from a variety of stimulus. For me, it’s more often than not, music. Music that captivates me and brings me deep within the confines of life, only to lift me to heights unimaginable by the confines of life.

Dreams, the River and You

Sacred River, A Meditation  
The sun settling silently on the big muddy, grandfather of all rivers as thoughts come and go and we mourn and celebrate all that life offers. My sacred river, churning and turning the secrets of all born to its code. But someone forgot to tell the river that it’s secrets were not to be entrusted with the likes of ordinary men. So the Mississippi flows south on the compass of life, an open oyster for all the world to behold the failures and successes of untold thousands waiting to be witnessed… all in good time… all in good time.

///////////////////There Was To Be A Wedding

“Go on and break you crazy heart” -Hank Williams 

It seems like ages since I lived this one particular life and year after year it grew a little fainter leveling parts of my soul in total darkness. But always with lessons in tow,  This should have been a day of joy and happiness… a celebration; but I chose not to attend and thus ruined the party for all concerned. Well, maybe not all concerned as some were glad the party didn’t take place at all and for them that was the real party.

But what do I feel and doesn’t it count for anything? That little intuition inside me kept saying, “no way, you can’t go through with this” even though I fought it tooth and nail out of fear that I was destroying a life. Better to ruin my life than another. Isn’t that the chivalrous thing to do?

What nonsense, cried our Pilgrim. Be true to thyself and that will bring you to a higher truth. Hide behind erroneous thinking and that will leave us as a naysayer of depressed energy longing for a life it thought it knew.

Yes, whispered the heart, fingers crossed, bowing slightly to the head. Likewise exclaimed the head winking back to the heart.

©jc2021-9courtesy of Pixabay

Oceans

And at the end of the day
When the oceans kiss the sky
And the sky turning the deepest blue
Where the vast array of stars in the night sky
Give sight to the moon holding ancient secrets 
The meeting of an endless ocean to an endless horizon.
It is here that one can embrace the vastness of the universe. And it is here I shall stay... jc

Oh blue ocean seize the day
For the sea will survive when all else fades away
And with our courage, we’ll rise again
In the promise of a new day
For the sea is where we hail from
And where we long to be
And to henceforth, we shall return.

So blue ocean lead the way
And show us what mystery you hath today
For when the ocean swells with surface waves
I will see your name as the north wind lays claim
Tranquil in your deepest blues
Born from the sea.

And when the winds seek to divide
As Poseidon’s trident stirs his great oceans
The gust swells into walls of blue
But I ask, am I not the same as you,
For the sea flows through my veins too
So great ocean I swallow my pride
For we need each other to survive

I sit here in the middle of an ocean, Atlantic it is
You are in the very air that I breathe
Your winds purify the breath and energy I need

A blue ocean is in the mystics eye at ocean’s end
Lead me to a single breath of the wind on the water.

©jc2018-9 … for Little Bird

*Image courtesy of Pixabey

Solitude

“Solitude is not found so much by looking outside the boundaries of your dwelling but by staying within. Solitude is a deepening of the present and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.” -Thomas Merton

The Student (again)

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. -Carl Jung