UBC Day 11 - Rumi - When I Die

When I die 

When my coffin 

is being taken out 

You must never think 

I am missing this world

Don’t shed any tears 

Don’t lament or 

Feel sorry 

I’m not falling 

into a monster’s abyss

When you see 

My corpse is being carried 

Don’t cry for my leaving 

I’m not leaving 

I’m arriving at eternal love

When you leave me 

in the grave 

Don’t say goodbye 

Remember a grave is 

only a curtain 

for the paradise behind

You’ll only see me 

Descending into a grave 

Now watch me rise 

How can there be an end 

When the sun sets or 

the moon goes down

It looks like the end 

It seems like a sunset 

But in reality it is a dawn 

When the grave locks you up 

that is when your soul is freed

Have you ever seen 

a seed fallen to earth 

not rise with a new life 

Why should you doubt the rise 

of a seed named human

Have you ever seen 

a bucket lowered into a well 

coming back empty 

Why lament for a soul 

When it can come back 

like Joseph from the well

When for the last time 

you close your mouth 

Your words and soul 

will belong to the world of 

no place no time.

On Twelfth Night and Epiphany

I took the Christmas Decorations down yesterday, twelfth night. It's strange how I like to follow some traditions and make some kind of meaning through my own rituals. Strange as I am usually not one for tradition just for the sake of it and like to welcome change.

I wrote yesterday's Small Stone about the packing away of my little treasures with much more care than I usual give. Many of these have special meaning or memories attached. In my small family, we added to our decorations by buying or adding one small tree decoration each year. Many were passed onto me when my Dad died 11 years ago this month. They had belonged to our family and I remember hanging them on the tree in my own childhood. In amongst them is a bell made out of play dough made by my childminder's daughter Francis, who must be in her early twenties now. When I see it each December, I remember their family and send my thoughts. We are no longer in touch. Also there, is a cracker made our of a toiler roll holder, and pink crepe paper, made by my son at nursery. It is adorned with a fish, hence we call it the "fish cracker". It goes on the tree every year and makes me smile each time I remember.

Given to me by the children I looked after when I was age 20 - I still have the little note that they wrote to me.

Francis's dough bell, a pineapple and strawberry from my own childhood.

More recent additions - this one bought by Mr Stayingawake on our USA holiday.

She is my favourite angel and goes at the top of our tree always looking a little bit unruly.

From childhood - rests amongst the branches due to a broken hook.

Many in this box are from a Fair Trade shop near where we lived when my son was small.

This morning I've been thinking and reading a little about the season of Epiphany which in the Western Christian Church starts today. Whilst I am not a Christian, or have any religious beliefs,  I do find that readings from many different traditions do help me as I think about how I live my life. 

I enjoyed reading this epiphany blog from New Orleans  , particularly it's focus on joy:

"Epiphany is the night we welcome collective joy, in the form of Carnival, back onto center stage in our lives.

Carnival offers us an opportunity to take a break from taking ourselves so seriously, from our expectations about how the world should be, and gives us a chance to engage in the healing joy of communal celebration. The work of transforming ourselves and the world is on-going.  And it is through seasonally and repeatedly choosing joy that we can find the energy we need to continually commit to this work.

“I think that the energy to do all those things [to help make the world a better place] comes from choosing joy,” writes the Church of the Larger Fellowship’s Lynn Ungar.  “You can inspire people to a certain degree by sheer terror…However, if we’re going to keep those changes going, if we’re going to find new and creative ways to build better lives, then I think we’re going to have to draw on some deep wells of joy.”

 *

The more you praise and celebrate your life,
the more there is in life to celebrate.
- Oprah Winfrey

 *

I have Gratitude for Everything
that has brought me to this moment.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

 *

 "Joy lives concealed in grief."

- Rumi♥

 *

I am hoping I can create more joy this year.

"Hope...is not a feeling; it is something you do."

- Katherine Paterson

*

 

This one also had me thinking about doorways and thresholds. During January I am taking part in I Accept via The Art Journaller. Today is day one, every day is day one; I am taking each step very slowly and very deliberately right now. The guidance for "I accept" talks about doorways and portals:

"We are enough. We are more than enough and
we are no longer waiting for some day. Today is
{some day} … let’s take one step. Today.
Let’s seek out doorways — portals to our Next.
Let’s capture images of those doorways and the
secret messages we discover along the way..."

- I Accept via The Art Journaller.

 *

" … often we look so long at the closed door
that we do not see the one which has been
opened for us."

~Helen Keller

*

"COME let's fall in love again let's turn all the dirt in this world to shiny gold."

~ Rumi♥ 

*

I am thinking about what I am creating as I take each small step, and as I step across thresholds.

I am considering how I can create more hopeful action in 2013. 

 

Monday Meditation - Sufi Whirling

"Grounding ourselves..., we repeatedly reestablish the still point, the clean slate from which we can encounter ourselves and the world afresh."

John Daido Loori, Riding the Ox Home

"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
    Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
      Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
              where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
          Don't go back to sleep."

Rumi

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

NB: Warning - I tried this yesterday for a short time and felt terribly dizzy and sick afterwards!  ;)

I remember doing this as a child and feeling the same, but continuing to whirl around anyways. The Whirling Dervishes spin for an hour or so, I believe! Just amazing but I don't think I'll be doing this again. Quite meditative to watch however. ;)

Be watchful when the moon is full

Full Moon - looked for and found by me on 19th March 2011

Search the Darkness

Rumi 

Translated by  Kabir Helminski

Sit with your friends; don't go back to sleep.
Don't sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.

Surge like an ocean,
don't scatter yourself like a storm.

Life's waters flow from darkness.
Search the darkness, don't run from it.

Night travelers are full of light,
and you are, too; don't leave this companionship.

Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,
don't slip into the dirt like quicksilver.

The moon appears for night travelers,
be watchful when the moon is full.

 ---------------

I've been feeling very sorry for myself indeed just lately. When I went out to look at the full moon last weekend I wanted a flash of inspiration - something that would enable me to move forward. It was almost the eve of spring and I wanted to feel that sense of hope and wonder. Nothing! 

I am being my own worst enemy of late, preventing myself from living fully, just when I had been wakening again to life's wonder. There is still much going on in our lives, there having been a few years of major and minor happenings that I have been just swallowing down, and the effects started to show up in my health big time, just after I came home from China. Perhaps it started when I was there.

Due to my habitual method of dealing with emotional distress and exhaustion, I just carried on as normal, thinking that I could push through it as I always do. The difference was that this time, thanks to a really helpful counsellor, I was at a point where I just wasn't prepared to sacrifice parts of myself any longer. I could carry on in the same way but I was heading for a big fall healthwise and needed to stop.

The stopping has been harder than the carrying on. Hence my emotional and creative shut down. It's like a punishment for not measuring up. I don't stop, that's not what I do. I'm like a fish out of water. The danger is that whilst I am being so hard on myself, there is no room for growth and change to take place. The same patterns will be repeated.

It was only today when I found this conversation between Pema Chodron and Alice Walker that some light began to shine on where and why I am stuck. 

Pema Chödrön: There is a kind of unstuckness that starts to happen. You develop lovingkindness and compassion for this self that is stuck, which is called maitri. And since you have a sense of all the other sentient beings stuck just like you, it also awakens compassion.

Alice Walker: I remember the day I really got it that we’re not connected as human beings because of our perfection, but because of our flaws. That was such a relief.

Pema Chödrön: Rumi wrote a poem called "Night Travelers," It's about how all the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time, and how understanding that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. Rather than depressing you, it makes you feel part of the whole.

So I wrote a post and a bit of a poem here today, and with both am being as honest and as compassionate with myself as I can be. Although today I know that I can become unstuck again, I also know that there is a long way to go. As ever, I continue to revisit these lessons.

The moon sits above my house tonight.

  Her silent, solemn gaze,

Reflects the light back to us here on earth. 

I am here below, silent also.

Seeking answers from her.

Is there still hope? 

Are there still dreams worth dreaming?

No sudden answers come.

Just a secret, silent something,

Lodges in the crack in my stagnant heart.

Where a stinking pool of shame, before had gathered,

To shut it down.

 Something so tiny it could go unnoticed,

But if found could be immense.