Category Archives: Inspired Poetry & Words

love is the field

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loveistheField

earlier today i was thinking of a man i’ve loved deeply since the day we met. today is his birthday and even after all this time, i don’t love him any less than the instant i melted into loving him completely. for a moment it felt bittersweet, as if he was “the love of my life” or that love like that is something singular and no longer available to my open heart, soft gaze or tender palms…

then i realized love is not an experience nor was my past lover a place that love was found and lost. love is not a contraction – something to hold onto or release…

love is a field of awareness that expands out to touch all that is – interconnected with everything else…

collected moments of rapture, a particular lover, all serve to touch into a pre-cellular memory of timelessness. they are a keyhole to glimpse into the landscape of the infinite that we so often blind ourselves to by so many distractions, contractions, the naming of things, regurgitation and re-stimulation of past hurts…

i want to be a storybook floor-to ceiling window, a highway to the infinite. i want that any seeker can wander through the broadway of my heart and land in the arms of the beloved, sweetly embraced by the entire cosmos, held unconditionally. whole. complete. loved entirely. viscerally at home.

love is the field. thinking (even for the briefest of moments) that it is lost with my past lover is like saying a mountain is no more because of the displacement of a single grain of sand. i have love. it is what i’m made of, where i come from and where i seek to forever return. heart emoticon

happy birthday beating heart of the collective consciousness. with you i will always remain

ps. i love you

pss. YOU.

YES! You.

♥,

~ artemisia shine

We Have Come to be Danced

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We Have Come to be Danced by Jewel Mathieson
Read during savasana: Candlelight Hot Stone Yoga 8/15/2014

cometobedanced

We have come to be danced
Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced

WE HAVE COME.

~ by Jewel Mathieson

Tired of Speaking Sweetly

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Seems appropriate for 4th of July.  Happy “independence day.”
heart-shaped-tornadoes
Tired of Speaking Sweetly
by: Hafiz

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
From: ‘The Gift’
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Maybe together we can shake some of the nonsense out:
http://artemisiashine.com/healing-arts
707.234.5411

Called to the Dance Floor

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photo

This made me laugh. The uninsured motorist who slammed into my car and gave me two forms of fake insurance is now filing an injury and vehicle damage claim against me thru my insurance company. Hahahahahaha! I really feel for him. On some level I feel angered by this and have a desire for more integrity and accountability. In a larger sense, I am grateful that I am in relationship with the universe in a way that inspires me to make different choices. I sent him a sweet picture of my painted car with a Hafitz poem last week. I still stand by it.

Ultimately, this is a big gift. I get to actively choose to respond from a place of rigorous honesty, compassion, forgiveness and love. This senario is absolutely calling me to be in integrity and look at the places within myself where I am not. I humbly state that I don’t need to learn these lessons like this in the future (listen up universe! I’m receptive already! I’m receptive! hehe!) but thank you for this opportunity now.  I get to actively unravel my own karmic samskara bit by bit.

Even as a look at my broken car, feel my (temporarily) injured body and experience small wisps of fear cross my mind about what else this man may be capable of, I get to CHOOSE to TRUST.  It’s like this whole experience is the universe tenderly calling me onto the dance floor. I get to be led by the most skillful dance partner! I get to surrender into the warmest strongest embrace I’ve ever known and discover what it is to be truly held. I am so open to and already receiving support in limitless ways I have yet to imagine.

I forgive this man. I wish him well. I hope whatever place in his heart that inspires such unconscious action is filled with sweet tender warmth. Really. This is frustrating me still but I won’t judge myself as the waves of frustration move through me. The love is bigger and carries more weight. 

~ artemisia shine

Courage to Marry Forgiveness

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Before and after. Ahhh, feels so much sweeter.
PicMonkey Collage

My inner response to the driver who was uninsured and provided two forms of false insurance after plowing into my car: I am calling in the support I need to fix this. My insurance does not cover my car but I am holding hands with the universe and she has me in the most tender embrace. I forgive you. May you be cared for, live with peace in your heart and have all that you need.

love,
~ artemisia shine

—

The moon starts singing
When everyone is asleep
And the planets throw a bright robe
Around their shoulders and whirl up
Close to her side.

Once I asked the moon,
Why do you and your sweet friends
Not perform so romantically like that
To a larger crowd?

And the whole sky chorus resounded,

“The admission price to hear
The lofty minstrels
Speak of love

Is affordable only to those
Who have not exhausted themselves
Dividing God all day
And thus need rest.

The thrilled Tavern fiddlers
Who are perched on the roof

Do not want their notes to intrude
Upon the ears
Where an accountant lives
With a sharp pencil
Keeping score of words
Another
In their great sorrow or sad anger
May have once said
To you.”

Hafiz knows:
The sun will stand as your best man
And whistle
When you have found the courage
To marry forgiveness

When you have found the courage
to marry
Love.

~ Hafiz

—

I sent this to the driver as an offering along with an invitation to choose to act with accountability and provide financial support to help us acquire a vehicle.

However he responds (or not) is perfect. In the face of so much community feedback to hire a lawer, this feels so much more in alignment with me.

Most importantly: It was SO FUN to do!

~ artemisia shine

Prelude

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preludetodance

Prelude

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

What if it truly doesn’t matter what you do but how you do whatever you do?

How would this change what you choose to do with your life?

What if you could be more present and openhearted with each person you met if you were working as a cashier in a corner store, or as a parking lot attendant, than you could if you were doing a job you think is more important?

How would this change how you spend your precious time on this earth?

What if your contribution to the world and the fulfillment of your own happiness is not dependent upon discovering a better method of prayer or technique of meditation, not dependent upon reading the right book or attending the right seminar, but upon really seeing and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?

How would this affect your search for spiritual development?

What if there is no need to change, no need to try to transform yourself into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving or wise?

How would this affect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better?

What if the task is simply to unfold, to become who you already are in your essential nature — gentle, compassionate, and capable of living fully and passionately present?

How would this affect how you feel when you wake up in the morning?

What if who you essentially are right now is all that you are ever going to be?

How would this affect how you feel about your future?

What if the essence of who you are and always have been is enough?

How would this affect how you see and feel about your past?

What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?

How would this change what you think you have to learn?

What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices that offer us the warmth of encouragement we need to unfold?

How would this shape the choices you make about how to spend today?

What if you knew that the impulse to move in a way that creates beauty in the world will arise from deep within and guide you every time you simply pay attention and wait?

How would this shape your stillness, your movement, your willingness to follow this impulse, to just let go and dance?

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
from her book, The Dance
Copyright © 2001 Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Soulstice

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soulstice
~ by drew dellinger

every ounce of matter is frozen light
roses, clouds, bones, tears
all slowly moving light

everything is shining in glory
everything
singing a story

every second in the universe a supernova is
exploding
every second a star is shattering

and flames leaping off the moon
last night

like binary stars we
circle
each other

and the more I
see of you
the more I love the view

let me be a fierce clear mirror
in a cosmos made of passions….

If love is a language
then I am still
learning to spell
while there’s a story
that the stars
have been
burning to tell.

Radiance Sutras – Sutra 26

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aorta There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there?Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon, listen to the song that is always resonating there.Quiet ecstasy is there — and a steady, regal sense of resting in a perfect spot.Once you know the way the nature of attention will call you to return, again and again, and be saturated with knowing, “I belong here, I am at home here.”From sutra 26 of The Radiance Sutras translated by Lorin Roche hṛdyākāśe nilīnākṣaḥ padmasampuṭamadhyagaḥ | ananyacetāḥ subhage paraṃ saubhāgyam āpnuyāt || 49 || hridaya akaashe nileen aakshah padma samputa madhyagah ananya chetaah subhage param saubhaag-yam aapnu-yaat (for Stephen.)

September 11th, Violence and Love

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September 11th, Violence and Love

lovemakeslifeI was pregnant with my love child just weeks after September 11th. I remember protesting US government violence in the middle east with a swollen belly and a broken heart. I’ve often wondered about the “American” children en utero at that time. How was it for them to grow cells, develop organs, to feel the collective fear, anger, morning and horror of that moment in history? My womb did not protect my son from the chemical warfare of my sympathetic nervous system.

And then I think of all the pregnant mamas and babies living in the world who wake up to the sounds of warfare every morning — for generations. Places where every child born develops alongside that fear, that violence, that despair – except that it is unrelenting. And it’s next-door, or worse it’s where your house and family used to stand.

I seek to uncover the violence, the anger, the repulsion, the fear within me that keeps me from acting in love. This morning I am grateful that my young son is still asleep in his bed. He is sick and it’s 10:00am. He has a warm bed in a quiet neighborhood where he can take the time to recover. We have privilege beyond our own awareness.

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self, is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns…” — Ramana Maharshi

I love you this morning. I love you yesterday. I love you tomorrow, and it starts from within.

pregnantHobbit

2001/2002 – Growin’ a Bodhi Shine in my belly.

Love!

~ artemisia shine

Shots Of Awe

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Awe: by Jason Silva

Take a moment to remember that child-like quality of wonder that lives in you.  When’s the last time you let awe out to play?  Check out this short (0:2:45) inspiring video by Jason Silva on awe.

If you love this (as I did) you can subscribe to Jason’s weekly Shots of Awe: where science, philosophy, and inspiration collide.

awe-struck

Transcript of video:

Awe: “an experience of such perceptual vastness you literally have to reconfigure your mental models of the world to assimilate it.”

So I think a lot about the contrast between banality and wonder,
between disengagement and radiant ecstasy,
between being unaffected by the here and now,
and being absolutely ravished emotionally by it.
And I think one of the problems for human beings is mental habits.

Once we create a comfort zone, we rarely step outside of that comfort zone, but the consequence of that is a phenomenon known hedonic adaptation.

Over stimulation to the same kind of thing, the same stimuli again and again and again renders said stimuli invisible. Your brain has already mapped it in it’s own head and you no longer literally have to be engaged by that. We have eyes, yet see naught, ears that hear naught and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

There’s a great book called The Wondering Brain*.
It says that one of the ways that we elicit wonder is by scrambling the self temporarily so that the world can seep in.

You know Henry Miller says, “even a blade of grass when given proper attention becomes an infinitely magnificent world in itself.”** You know, Darwin said “attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.“

That’s what rapture is.
That’s what illumination is.
That’s what that sort of infinite comprehending awe that human beings love so much. And so how we do that? How do we mess with our perceptual apparatus in order to have the kind of emotional and esthetic experience from life that we render most meaningful? ‘Cause we all know those moments are there. Those are the moments that will make final cut.

Only in these moments, we experience afresh, the hardly bearable ecstasy of direct energy exploding on our nerve endings.This is the
rhapsodic,
ecstatic,
bursting forth of awe that expands our perceptual parameters beyond all previous limits, and we literally  have to reconfigure our mental models of the world in order to assimilate the beauty of that download!

That is what it means to be inspired! The Greek root of the term means “to breath in.” (aaaaahhhhh!)To take-it-in!

We fit the universe through our brains and it comes out in the form of nothing less than poetry. We have a responsibility to awe.

* Bulkeley, Kelly. The Wondering Brain: Thinking about Religion with and beyond Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.

** Miller, Henry. Henry Miller on Writing. [New York]: New Directions, 1964. 37. Print.

*** Darwin, Charles. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York: D. Appleton, 1886. 278. Print.