from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Wednesday 11 September 2013

slipping the leash




When you have dug down far enough to find the bones under the bones and then further again to bedrock and the deep core that is as close to certainty as anything

when you have overthrown the totems of your life and started to slip the leash we learn to accept by the act of naming

when you have seen that at the hub of love is a pulse that has more to do with everything and nothing than something and someone

and when you know that happiness might have more to do with letting go to fly or fall than holding on, or comfort

then you also know that the 'I' who sees all this is approaching the Well at the Edge of the Earth where all the rivers start, over and over


5 comments:

  1. Wow - that made me stop and think. I'm going to sit with it a while when I have quiet time. Thanks Roselle
    Angie

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  2. Gobsmacked - with shivers to boot!

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  3. David, how kind of you. I wasn't sure it worked - a kind of distillation of the whole of the journey of my own adult life and my observations as group leader and mentor, including in the counselling field; but I felt it was a bit obscure, and thought the ending weak and probably too arcane. So your words, and Angie's above, were very affirmative.

    And David I really liked your latest post on Snow Branches. Made me realise that, although I do practise mindfulness in as many situations as I can (my Zen teacher always says the real work starts once one gets off the meditation cushion) - I'm quite off-centre in my life at the moment, and am not doing enough 'on the cushion'. Thank you for ringing the bell :-). Rx

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Roselle. I need to spend more time on the cushion too - definitely one of the fleeting thoughts that I often studiously ignore ...

      Your poem just totally resonated with me, or as they say, rang my bell :) x

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