Muses of Deep and Settling Waters
The phrase, "settling the waters" comes from a personal growth workshop I took once. It has become now part of my personal lexicon and names for me the unique phase or frame of time after personal blooming and expansion of energy.
The origins of the phrase, however, were originally borrowed from an indigenous practice (of which particular nation-I am not sure) after one returns from a vision quest or battle. It refers to the period of time one needs when coming off of an intense experience to re-calibrate and reflect so that literally all that has been stirred within, has a chance to reconfigure to a higher state of consciousness.
It has been serveral day since I've come off of my first experience of coaching at the Women's Leadership Seminar and from my time at Harbin Hotsprings. I am home now in Hawaii and have been writing intensely about what happens on the downside of a personal peak experience.
Two things provide guidance and solace.
1) The first is Jack Kornfield's book: After the Ectasy, the Laundry. How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spirtual Path which I have gone to often. This passage in paticular, reminds me of my own cycles of awakening and contraction:
For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and newfound love are often overtaken by periods of loss, by closing up, fear, or the discovery of betrayal, only to be followed again by equanimity or joy. In mysterious ways the heart reveals itself to be like a flower that opens and closes. This is our nature.
The only surprising thing is how unexpected this truth can be. It is as if deep down we all hope that some experience, some great realization, enough years of dedicated practice, might finally lift us beyond the touch of life, beyond the mundane struggles of the world. We cling to some hope that in spiritual life we can rise above the wounds of our human pain, never to have to suffer them again. We expect some experience to last. But permanence is not true freedom, not the sure heart's release
2) The second, is a renewed return to my writing practice which has been there faithfully during time of life transition. I wrote this poem this morning, to give myself solace and to remember how choosing this mindfulness practice can deliver and transform dark thought to free open space of possibility in any moment.
On the other side of deep and settling waters
There is poetry
to carry you through
A gentle metaphor to
float and hold you
A similie to give shape and name
Before
what you did not even know how to utter
what you did not know how to hear
will now effortlessly appear
Pen. Page. Mornings
will serve as attendants
This triad of faithful muses
await on baited breath
Not juding the to do lists, tales of woe,
just...witnessing
fragements of intensely gentle dialouge
Descriptions of yearning sound
Projections of hope and longing
The writing muses- your faithful
lovers-will go with you wherever you want to go
On this other side, they catch you
give you a way out-
Recieving you fully in the sweet nectar of yourself
They reflect the bitter waters that churn inside,
They mirror each moan, each tortured release with precise detail
Muses, what would one do without you-dear loves?
There just would be no words
The origins of the phrase, however, were originally borrowed from an indigenous practice (of which particular nation-I am not sure) after one returns from a vision quest or battle. It refers to the period of time one needs when coming off of an intense experience to re-calibrate and reflect so that literally all that has been stirred within, has a chance to reconfigure to a higher state of consciousness.
It has been serveral day since I've come off of my first experience of coaching at the Women's Leadership Seminar and from my time at Harbin Hotsprings. I am home now in Hawaii and have been writing intensely about what happens on the downside of a personal peak experience.
Two things provide guidance and solace.
1) The first is Jack Kornfield's book: After the Ectasy, the Laundry. How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spirtual Path which I have gone to often. This passage in paticular, reminds me of my own cycles of awakening and contraction:
For almost everyone who practices, cycles of awakening and openness are followed by periods of fear and contraction. Times of profound peace and newfound love are often overtaken by periods of loss, by closing up, fear, or the discovery of betrayal, only to be followed again by equanimity or joy. In mysterious ways the heart reveals itself to be like a flower that opens and closes. This is our nature.
The only surprising thing is how unexpected this truth can be. It is as if deep down we all hope that some experience, some great realization, enough years of dedicated practice, might finally lift us beyond the touch of life, beyond the mundane struggles of the world. We cling to some hope that in spiritual life we can rise above the wounds of our human pain, never to have to suffer them again. We expect some experience to last. But permanence is not true freedom, not the sure heart's release
2) The second, is a renewed return to my writing practice which has been there faithfully during time of life transition. I wrote this poem this morning, to give myself solace and to remember how choosing this mindfulness practice can deliver and transform dark thought to free open space of possibility in any moment.
On the other side of deep and settling waters
There is poetry
to carry you through
A gentle metaphor to
float and hold you
A similie to give shape and name
Before
what you did not even know how to utter
what you did not know how to hear
will now effortlessly appear
Pen. Page. Mornings
will serve as attendants
This triad of faithful muses
await on baited breath
Not juding the to do lists, tales of woe,
just...witnessing
fragements of intensely gentle dialouge
Descriptions of yearning sound
Projections of hope and longing
The writing muses- your faithful
lovers-will go with you wherever you want to go
On this other side, they catch you
give you a way out-
Recieving you fully in the sweet nectar of yourself
They reflect the bitter waters that churn inside,
They mirror each moan, each tortured release with precise detail
Muses, what would one do without you-dear loves?
There just would be no words
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