NAKED GRACE BREATH "...give our death away." January 28, 2020

Again this morning, too rainy/windy for sunrise beach. 
All photos for sunrise below from a series of OceanSpeaks re:
​ Womb Wisdom..
this date 1/28/15... five years ago... is titled
WOMB WISDOM-BLACK LIGHT
https://dorotheamills.weebly.com/oceanspeak-youthanasia-sanctarii/2-womb-wisdom-black-light-sunriseafternoon-january-28-2015

ONLY THE GREAT EMPTINESS
OF
​ ORIGINAL SILENCE SUFFICETH
ALL ELSE IS TRAGIC, LIFE-SNUFFING CACOPHONY
(INCLUDING THIS JUDGMENT OF THE MINDING-MIND)
*********
NAKED GRACE BREATH KEEPS ONE HOME
ew
4:32 AM-1/28/20

I have been a seeker and still am,
but I stopped asking books and the stars.
I started listening to the teaching of my soul. 
~Rumi
https://makebelieveboutique.com/2020/01/27/31579/

Let the rest 
in this rested place 
rest for you.
Let the birds sing 
and the geese call
and the sky race
from west to east 
when you cannot raise 
a wing to fly. 

Let evening
trace your loss 
in the stonework
of a fading sky.
So that 
you can give up
and give in
and be given back to.

So that you can let
winter
come and live
fully inside you,
so that
you can
retrace
the loving path
of heartbreak 
that brought you here. ​

So you can cry alone
and be alone
so you can let 
yourself alone
to be lost,
so you can
let the one 
you have lost
alone, 
so that
you can let
the one 
you have lost 
have their 
own life 
and even
their own 
death
without you.

So the world
and everyone 
who has ever lived 
and ever died
can come and go 
as they please. 

So you can
let yourself 
not know, what 
not knowing 
means. 

So that
you can be
even more generous 
in your letting go
than they 
were 
in their leaving.

 So that you can
let winter be winter.

So that you can let 
the world alone
to think of spring.
~David Whyte
​https://makebelieveboutique.com/2020/01/10/31455/

​AFTERNOON

Rivers to the Sea

We hear people speak of having a 'bucket list',
a list of experiences or things they feel
are so important they must do them
or have them before they die.

Recently a priest who is also a chaplain at a hospital,
​ gave a homily on this subject.
He spoke of what it is like to talk to people
lives are nearing the end,
how they express that feeling of incompleteness.
He said he also feels it,
that their lives need some completion,
one more good deed,
more confession to their brother or sister,
in order to come to a peaceful end. 

Monday's quote from Ecclesiastes
makes the point that our life, like a river,
does not come to an end
​but rather flows into the greater sea.

This means we can relax and let go of the idea
that we must be 'enlightened' or in the unitive state,
if not the ‘no-self’, before the end.

Your life and mine are like a river
flowing inevitably to the sea,
coming from God and returning to It.
Remembering our beginning and our ending
is good preparation for that return.

For those of us (myself included)
who have reached their ‘senior years’,
I would like to recommend another book by
Father Ron Rolheiser;
this one is called The Sacred Fire.

The book, in his words, is about what he calls
the 3 stages of adult life,
 first: the struggle to get our lives together, 
second: the struggle to give our lives away, and
 third: the final stage,
the struggle to
​ give our death away.

This final stage is largely foreign to us;
after a life of activity, then comes the opportunity to learn passivity, as in the “Passion of Jesus Christ”
– remembering that the word ‘passion’
comes from the Latin ‘passio’,
​ meaning ‘passivity’.
There are deep ideas in this book
if you are ready to hear them
​ and need to hear them. 
https://contemplativedaybook.blogspot.com/2020/01/rivers-to-sea.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ContemplativeDayBook+%28Contemplative+Day+Book%29

Mother with Sleeping Babe

Instead of getting rid of ego,
the idea is to become very conscious of ego
and how it works.
Only by getting to know ego intimately
will it lose its power to keep us spinning.

The heart of practice is to notice all of this
and rest in the middle of it all,
not trying to fix or alter anything.

Whatever arises,
we can practice just being there
with as much ease, curiosity,
and openness as possible.

We can work on noticing and experiencing
all this activity of our minds-
doing nothing with it
beyond simply noticing.

Our journey toward living without ego
is to learn how to let go,
relax, take a chance, wait and see,
and never sum ourselves up.
~Pema Chodron
https://makebelieveboutique.com/2020/01/27/31579/