Inspiring video, movies, quotes, divine poetry, spiritual humour, recommended reading and anything else. What floats your boat?

Mini Gallery

Hello. I hope this is okay to post art here. I've been waking up a lot with urges to paint and not really knowing what I'm doing but my friends think that I'm actually telling a story without realising it. This morning I got up at 5 and [I think] completed the 'story' and it's only now coming together. As it forms a sequence I thought I'd share them. It only makes sense now that it's completed!

First off was the world we live in, it's rampant chaos swirling with so little to anchor it.

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That led me to my own interior strife

New Song/Poem

Ive been collaborating with a local musician, putting my words to music. We have 6 songs completed from some of my older poetry. This has me writing again, for first time in months, and it feels incredible to tap into that creative flow again. Wrote this the other day and thought I would share.. This is the first time I have written with a song in mind. The chorus we usually do together, so that is unfinished. Hope to meet some other musicians along the way as well. This is a series of questions from the journey.

Deep in the Mystery

After Surrender The Path Least Taken

I am looking for a path that
stays hidden. Although the sun is shinning,
I am enticed into unconsciousness by interesting tidbits.
Waking from the spell of distraction, I search
with focused attention, and
turn to gain new perspective.

Straight ahead there is a break in the trees
with blue sky spilling into a path.
Was it there all this time?

Make use of suffering - Price of the Soul

Henri Frederich Aniel said “You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering. I was meditating this morning on how the tightness continues to open onto greater joy. After the retreat in Seattle, I experienced a lot of this tightness but have learned to embrace it. Grateful that I found OpenHand as a lot of mainstream identification had led me to try to avoid it or to quickly heal it away.. This writing flowed out this morning after meditating on this.

The Price of the Kingdom

Gifts within tightness - vs what some in spiritual mainstream talk about

I'm so grateful to find this community as I was feeling somewhat alienated by mainstream spirituality and, as Open says, their tendency to want to 'drop the hot coals' before they teach us their lesson and we recovery the fragments of Self hidden within. As a society it seems that we have become obsessed with avoiding discomfort and the gifts within suffering. To surrender and fall into the heart of it all, with its inherent terror and uncertainty, is the only secure path I have found and it seems that the soul has such a natural, self-healing process guiding it, if I am open to it.

Beautiful Remains - removing blocks = Thanks Fiona

This poem is meant to be accompanied by a picture of a marble statue of David. Fiona shared the quote "Seek not for love,
Rather to remove the blocks to the awareness of love's presence". The poem is about how the beauty is there within the marble block of stone and that it is what is removed that results in the beauty. What remains. I wrote this about gift within the suffering- which is always greater than anything that I appear to be losing - and the beautiful remains.

Beautiful Remains

A massive slab of stone
Conceals a great unknown

Writing inspired by retreat

Shared this via email with the group from Seattle but was encouraged to post on site as well. One of the main lessons that resonated with me from 5gateways movie and at the retreat also was that we will be drawn into tightness during the unfolding and that I must feel my way through. Recovering the fragments of soul requires persistence and courage but it is well worth it. There is no other way for me.

I wish you heaven

Prince died. Did he inspire my soul - oh BIG yes. Maybe it's not cool to mention him in spiritual communities, not sure. Maybe too sexual, too religious, I don't know but for me he was/is an uber sensitive beautiful soul, vegan, light beam - so I'm sharing one of his older songs that I used to listen to over and over. RIP dear one.

'Do I believe in God, do I believe in me. (?)'

The Woman Who Grew Out of Her Cage

The cage was comfortable at first.
She tried hard to fit in and comply.
Besides, change was hard.
From the safety of her cage,
she marveled at the sunset as
multicolored rays touched her skin.
At night, she watched shades of the moon
danced across the sky.
Wind caressed the days and brought her
smells of the changing seasons.
Letting nature flow through her
seemed like enough, and for awhile, it was.

Magic Moments

The ground awakens the moment
your feet touch the earth.
Receive flow and allow.
So often, we look for fulfillment where
it can’t be found.
Subconscious underlying assumptions
seem to work even when they don’t.
Unhappy irritations are just thoughts,
adding up until you are stuck.
By noticing and shifting even a bit,
Those thoughts don’t take over.
Each moment counts.

Something I just wanted to Share :)

“So I stare into the soul of my greatest fears as they come for me in the night, in the in-between, and what I find is my broken and fragmented self-staring back at me. It leads to the complete realisation that it was always me tormenting myself and others again and again.

I open myself in the face this total annihilation, to being burned to the ground, and in doing so my false self, the scared self, the ego, is burned and freed from its prison.