 | It's that lovely time of year, High Summer, when the quality of light leaves me breathless at the kitchen sink gazing out at the pasture. |
I have spent the last few months spiraling around some central theme or understanding that has yet to be fully revealed. It involves feminine mystics, mindfulness, neuroscience, and a horse on a lead rope.
How can I describe this swirling mass of experience in a string of words that I can share with you and leave tracks for myself so that I can rediscover it in moments of confusion?
I guess I'll just start somewhere….hang in there with me and let’s see where it goes.
I’ve been listening to an on-line seminar about feminine mystics with Mirabai Starr. The gist of it is that these women (Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Rabia) had a direct experience of the Divine, the Beloved, without the need for a religious structure, or permission from a male-dominated priesthood. They experienced Love, with a capital “L”. That sense of being outside of one’s small, personal story of woe, what Eckhart Tolle calls “the little ‘me’.”
Instead, they experienced this (from Hildegard):
I guess I'll just start somewhere….hang in there with me and let’s see where it goes.
I’ve been listening to an on-line seminar about feminine mystics with Mirabai Starr. The gist of it is that these women (Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Rabia) had a direct experience of the Divine, the Beloved, without the need for a religious structure, or permission from a male-dominated priesthood. They experienced Love, with a capital “L”. That sense of being outside of one’s small, personal story of woe, what Eckhart Tolle calls “the little ‘me’.”
Instead, they experienced this (from Hildegard):
| I am likewise the fiery life of the substance of divinity. I am the flame over the beauty of the fields and sparkles in the water, and I burn in sun, moon, and stars … |
This sings to me. I see and feel it when the pasture glows in the evening light. Oneness with nature. It’s where we came from, who we are—but too often we forget.
I came across this D.H. Lawrence quote:
This sings to me. I see and feel it when the pasture glows in the evening light. Oneness with nature. It’s where we came from, who we are—but too often we forget.
I came across this D.H. Lawrence quote:
| Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table. |
What does it mean to be magically connected to the earth, to experience the Divine? I keep searching for it, believing it to be “out there” or in the next good book. But these women mystics experienced it from the inside out. It was already theirs. However it happened, they got out of their own way, they let go and voila!—they merged with All That Is. John O’Dononue called it “a radical letting-alone of yourself.”
I heard a story recently about a teacher who drew a small “V” on a big piece of white paper and asked his students what they saw. “A bird!” they all said. “No,” he responded. “It’s the sky with a bird in it.”
I heard a story recently about a teacher who drew a small “V” on a big piece of white paper and asked his students what they saw. “A bird!” they all said. “No,” he responded. “It’s the sky with a bird in it.”
| Shift your perspective just a wee bit and remember who you are. Take a deep breath and allow for the possibility that you are not just the bird, but you are also the sky with the bird in it. Go sit outside in the evening light and watch the stars come out. Try leaving your personal story of woe behind. See what magic happens. Horsemanship, neuroscience and mindfulness will have to wait until next time…. Donna |  |
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