The Ring of Fire

Tonight, June 20th, 2020, we have the solstice new moon and a solar eclipse called "The Ring of Fire."  It is said this is an opportunity to burn away all that you no longer need or want....and perhaps some things the Universe has decided that you no longer need or want but which you're still desperately holding onto.

May you lose all that hinders, obstructs and obscures your true purpose in life.

May you lose the many masks and disguises by which you alter who you really are.

May the walls around your heart be torn down forever.

May streams of love and pure spirit begin to flow from within you, nourishing the world around you and all that lives.

May anything that is not simple, honest and true be burnt to a crisp.

Amen.

In the dark of night, I believe in the light of the coming day.

The beginning of a poem...

Cro-Magnon caves of half-light, Chauvet and Lascaux, squeezed by wheat into Occitania and the Pyrenees, your Basque home, Moors to the south, Andalusian poetry and song, fountains and gardens, tiles of colored calligraphic design, arabesques flying into the air. Troubadours and Trouveres, song, dance, romance, learning love at long last, Cathar men and women of Light, reincarnate, obliterated by the blood and fire of the Albigensian Crusade. The world does not tolerate beauty well.

Ambiguity of Life

You can’t tell anyone where you’re going, you just have to go alone and unrecognized. To let old relationships die. It’s all a kind of death. “Die before you die,” the Prophet Muhammad said. 

I choose anxiety and ambiguity over certainty. This means to act in the tension of not-knowing rather than to wait for or expect a sign, or an imagined certainty. To not act out of fear is a paralysis that leads to depression. But where a directional signal? Writing, to be sure, but not for mere self-aggrandizement of publication. Not merely to sound an opinion. Not merely to amuse or entertain. Not for flash or trickery. To discover – write to discover what is within you. Only through the fiery furnace of creative friction can you forge a metal – mettle? – tempered, incisive, and serviceable. Bring forth what is within you in the crucible of cognition. The act of writing is the translation of the unconscious into consciousness. Then act according to your own inner tenets, complete the circle and close the loop. 

Forget “sin” – harness your energies but choose Life. To live is to act, to feel, to think, to love, to grow – don’t choose shrinking in the guise of morality. Whose morality? Yours? 

I choose life and the ambiguity of life.

Betrayal and Hope

Ah, betrayal, that universal human experience. Either we betray others or are betrayed by them. It’s difficult not to let the bile and acid of bitterness eat away one’s innards and substance, but it’s also important not to become a Pollyanna of pretense, pretend to an assumed “rising above,” or strike the pose of spirituality. Use the anger you feel to change yourself and your world instead of wasting it in aimless angst or pointless recriminations. 

Take the disappointment, disillusionment and disgust and use it to fuel a reshaping of your life, your mind, your heart, and your sense of purpose. Anger can be an effective spur to action. Not vengeance so much as a clear statement – a solid stance against the hypocrisy of the world and religion, including the faux assumption of idealized behavior that passes for spiritual maturity. It’s all an act, a bending of one’s natural self to a false ideal of perfection. 

Find your own path and have the courage to walk it without the supposed support of others. Quit looking for affirmation outside yourself. Learn to stand on your own two feet and trust your own mind, heart, instincts, intuition, and judgement.