physical metaphors
Mar. 30th, 2005 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonSpring is really here. The sun has come out, spreading its radiance across the receptive earth, and it feels so deliciously good, warming my face, my heart, my soul, melting the frozen places, as the sap rises, rises, flows in the trees once again.
The logjam of ice covering the stream burst last night with the overflowing waters of the rains and the melting of the remaining snow, which now fades, fades away, back into the earth, like a sad, wistful memory. Now that the warmth of the sun is back, the ice which was so exquisitely beautiful in its frozen forms is transformed into free-flowing water once again -- water which is just as beautiful, only different, and even more life-sustaining than the sparkling ice could ever have been.
A winter's worth of ice on the roof slid suddenly to the ground in the middle of the night before last with a enormous rumble like an earthquake or a passing freight train, and when I went outside to look, it seemed as if the house had collided with some North Sea iceberg --big blocks of frozen ice lay tumbled about everywhere, signaling endings and beginnings in their nighttime glittering. The next day I tossed the blocks of ice aside from the ground at the front entrance to the house so I could let in the contractor who is going to help me build a combination office/greenhouse/root and wine cellar onto the front of the existing house in the coming few months. I'll have to try to move the rowan, white pine and Japanese maple trees now in front of the house to make room for the addition, but if they don't survive the trip, and even if they do, I'll plant more, and I'll get to watch the seedlings through my office window, growing as I write. In a similar way, the big old maple which broke under the weight of the ice and snow and fell across the paddock fence last month will become firewood to heat us next year.
Every birth requires a death, nothing stays the same, the only constant is change. It's been a long hard winter, but they're all long and hard in some way. And as written in John Crowley's Little, Big, one of my favorite books, Brother North-wind's secret is just that: while in Winter, Spring is a myth, a rumor, not to be believed, Spring does come, it does, and it will, and it has. And when it does, it is Winter that will seem like a myth, a distant memory, a rumor, not to be believed. Both Winter and Spring have their own purpose, their own necessities, their own place in the Tale.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed, just moved and transformed. The ice melts, the water flows. The old Norse concept of community wealth as being composed of the movement of energy and substance is so wise. Wealth which stays in one place too long, which doesn't move, which doesn't flow freely, becomes a stagnant hoard, useless, unhealthy. Life-energy, time, love, passion, desire, are all sources of wealth. Yesterday I got an email which contained the quote from William Blake, "He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." Yes. It's good to be aware of those places in your life where energy pools, stagnates, doesn't flow freely. Break the dams, smash the vessels, open the lids, let it all flow where it will and then be truly wealthy.
I'm working on compassion, for others, and particularly, for myself. There's a key difference between knowing what is right or wrong for you, and being bitter that the world isn't what you want it to be. The former is empowering, the latter constricts the life-force in you and weakens you, takes away from your ability to change the world. Hope is terribly dangerous, and absolutely essential, because it is the source of both self-delusion and intentional change. Better the least preferred reality than the prettiest illusion, and there are no illusions more powerful than the ones you build yourself, nor does it ever seem darker than when you've pulled the wool over your own eyes. If we have hope, if we are truly open to deep desire and believe in its ability to be made manifest in the world, then disappointment -- with the universe, with our lives, with ourselves, with others, is inevitable. Our response to that disappointment, whether to open more fully, or to close down again, is what makes that experience of disappointment and disillusionment something that holds us back, or something that propels us forward.
Since you can only experience joy as fully as you are open to experiencing pain, choosing to open oneself up is always a dangerous, unsafe act, but like hope, the choice of openness is completely essential. You will feel enormous ecstasy, and you will feel great pain, and when you feel either one you can choose to respond by opening more, or closing more. The more open you are, the more life flows through you. And the more life flows through you. the more wealth you have, the more wealth you can be, the more fully you will inhabit and experience this one wild and precious life you are living right here and right now. The more you live, the more fully human you can be. Live wildly and freely, love wildly and freely, and know in your heart and soul the difference between compromise and stagnation, between what feeds you and what drains you. After harvest-time is when the fruit left on the tree withers and rots, when the grain in the field is unfit for humans and ripe only for plowing under into fertilizer. A hard lesson. But every moment, every event, every choice and its consequence is a lesson, waiting to be taken in gratitude for the chance to learn and grow.
I gave myself the needed and precious gift of going to bed at the unbelievable hour of 9pm last night, had the unaccustomed luxury of falling asleep at the same time as my partner, got a full 8 hours of sleep for the first time in a long time, spent an extra half-hour with my son this morning helping rebuild his Lego pirate ship, took extra time walking back from dropping my son at the school bus to watch the stream flow under my bridge -- not, this time, with the critical eye of a land-tender checking to see how the bridge and the road are holding up from the spring thaw, but just to soak it in, to let it feed me, to be filled by beauty, and respond with gratitude for all of the delight, wonder, joy, pain, sorrow, ecstasy, disappointment, celebration, grief, camaraderie, solitude, despair and hope the world holds in store for me, if only I choose to open to it and experience it fully.
May I be present, aware and open, manifest will, intent and desire in my life, and dare to live in beauty, balance, delight, and love beyond all reason.
The logjam of ice covering the stream burst last night with the overflowing waters of the rains and the melting of the remaining snow, which now fades, fades away, back into the earth, like a sad, wistful memory. Now that the warmth of the sun is back, the ice which was so exquisitely beautiful in its frozen forms is transformed into free-flowing water once again -- water which is just as beautiful, only different, and even more life-sustaining than the sparkling ice could ever have been.
A winter's worth of ice on the roof slid suddenly to the ground in the middle of the night before last with a enormous rumble like an earthquake or a passing freight train, and when I went outside to look, it seemed as if the house had collided with some North Sea iceberg --big blocks of frozen ice lay tumbled about everywhere, signaling endings and beginnings in their nighttime glittering. The next day I tossed the blocks of ice aside from the ground at the front entrance to the house so I could let in the contractor who is going to help me build a combination office/greenhouse/root and wine cellar onto the front of the existing house in the coming few months. I'll have to try to move the rowan, white pine and Japanese maple trees now in front of the house to make room for the addition, but if they don't survive the trip, and even if they do, I'll plant more, and I'll get to watch the seedlings through my office window, growing as I write. In a similar way, the big old maple which broke under the weight of the ice and snow and fell across the paddock fence last month will become firewood to heat us next year.
Every birth requires a death, nothing stays the same, the only constant is change. It's been a long hard winter, but they're all long and hard in some way. And as written in John Crowley's Little, Big, one of my favorite books, Brother North-wind's secret is just that: while in Winter, Spring is a myth, a rumor, not to be believed, Spring does come, it does, and it will, and it has. And when it does, it is Winter that will seem like a myth, a distant memory, a rumor, not to be believed. Both Winter and Spring have their own purpose, their own necessities, their own place in the Tale.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed, just moved and transformed. The ice melts, the water flows. The old Norse concept of community wealth as being composed of the movement of energy and substance is so wise. Wealth which stays in one place too long, which doesn't move, which doesn't flow freely, becomes a stagnant hoard, useless, unhealthy. Life-energy, time, love, passion, desire, are all sources of wealth. Yesterday I got an email which contained the quote from William Blake, "He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." Yes. It's good to be aware of those places in your life where energy pools, stagnates, doesn't flow freely. Break the dams, smash the vessels, open the lids, let it all flow where it will and then be truly wealthy.
I'm working on compassion, for others, and particularly, for myself. There's a key difference between knowing what is right or wrong for you, and being bitter that the world isn't what you want it to be. The former is empowering, the latter constricts the life-force in you and weakens you, takes away from your ability to change the world. Hope is terribly dangerous, and absolutely essential, because it is the source of both self-delusion and intentional change. Better the least preferred reality than the prettiest illusion, and there are no illusions more powerful than the ones you build yourself, nor does it ever seem darker than when you've pulled the wool over your own eyes. If we have hope, if we are truly open to deep desire and believe in its ability to be made manifest in the world, then disappointment -- with the universe, with our lives, with ourselves, with others, is inevitable. Our response to that disappointment, whether to open more fully, or to close down again, is what makes that experience of disappointment and disillusionment something that holds us back, or something that propels us forward.
Since you can only experience joy as fully as you are open to experiencing pain, choosing to open oneself up is always a dangerous, unsafe act, but like hope, the choice of openness is completely essential. You will feel enormous ecstasy, and you will feel great pain, and when you feel either one you can choose to respond by opening more, or closing more. The more open you are, the more life flows through you. And the more life flows through you. the more wealth you have, the more wealth you can be, the more fully you will inhabit and experience this one wild and precious life you are living right here and right now. The more you live, the more fully human you can be. Live wildly and freely, love wildly and freely, and know in your heart and soul the difference between compromise and stagnation, between what feeds you and what drains you. After harvest-time is when the fruit left on the tree withers and rots, when the grain in the field is unfit for humans and ripe only for plowing under into fertilizer. A hard lesson. But every moment, every event, every choice and its consequence is a lesson, waiting to be taken in gratitude for the chance to learn and grow.
I gave myself the needed and precious gift of going to bed at the unbelievable hour of 9pm last night, had the unaccustomed luxury of falling asleep at the same time as my partner, got a full 8 hours of sleep for the first time in a long time, spent an extra half-hour with my son this morning helping rebuild his Lego pirate ship, took extra time walking back from dropping my son at the school bus to watch the stream flow under my bridge -- not, this time, with the critical eye of a land-tender checking to see how the bridge and the road are holding up from the spring thaw, but just to soak it in, to let it feed me, to be filled by beauty, and respond with gratitude for all of the delight, wonder, joy, pain, sorrow, ecstasy, disappointment, celebration, grief, camaraderie, solitude, despair and hope the world holds in store for me, if only I choose to open to it and experience it fully.
May I be present, aware and open, manifest will, intent and desire in my life, and dare to live in beauty, balance, delight, and love beyond all reason.
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Date: 2005-03-30 04:30 pm (UTC)wonderful.
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Date: 2005-03-30 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-30 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-30 06:12 pm (UTC)