Believer in Exile: Jesus or Christ - Persona or Essence

Believer in Exile: Jesus or Christ - Persona or Essence

Spiritual Warriorship - Real Irish Sovereignty

There are times when one opens one’s heart to the magnitude of the suffering in this world and one would weep. This is appropriate to the situation. What is not appropriate to the situation is despair.

One of the greatest workers for the invitation to Love in form was St. Francis of Assisi. The longer this Irish mystic storyteller lives the more he is drawn into this man’s resonance. In my homeland of Northern Ireland he would have been referred to as “a sound man.” This means a man of integrity and a man of Oneness.

He left a prayer. This is a great prayer. Even the politician Margaret Thatcher quoted from it on the steps of 10 Downing Street following her election victory. The sound of her voice when reading it, however, had little of the humility the prayer evokes when rendered from the heart.

Many of you know me as a storyteller. I adapt stories of old for modern times and modern minds. There are storytellers who will tell you stories of old but there is no heart connection to the story. I often resist the call of my heart to some stories. This is because of my conditioned upbringing in the past. I was brought up as a Protestant in Northern Ireland during the period known as the troubles.

Because of this fact I am sometimes reluctant to allow stories connected to what are called the Fianna to enter my heart. Yet I know that what I resist persists. The story of the Fianna is a story that my heart is being drawn to share and to tell in a very different way. It is the way of unity rather than the way of division. It is the way of true sovereignty rather than the way of allegiance to tribal identity.

In this Irish mythic story the Fianna are a band of warriors who it is said will arise from their underground cave when Ireland needs them and her sovereignty is threatened from forces without. Most political parties in the land of Ireland take their name in part from this story of myth and legend. There are the two major political parties, Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael.

Ireland, at this present time of writing, is on the edge of financial bankruptcy. The people have eaten the Celtic Tiger. I suspect this is in a little way a collective response to the trauma of the famine years some centuries earlier. Added to this is the greed promoted by the fear that one needs to get as much of the cake as one can while the going is good.

For this Irish storyteller, however, the Fianna is not simply a band of soldiers willing to protect the sovereignty of a land. They are, as all mythic stories invite you into the realisation of, the spiritual warrior within you. This is the dynamic of the protector of what is sovereign and not that which is separate. This is the true role of the masculine energy in the world of form. It is allegiance of the heart to the protection of that which is the timelessness of Love. This was, and is, the invitation from all warriors of spirit such as Jesus and the Buddha.

The Fianna, for this Irish mystic storyteller, are not nationalistic. They are not one tribe aligned against another. This, however, is not how political parties that bear in part, their name and thus their invitation, promote them.

In Northern Ireland when you say that someone is a Fenian (identified with the Fainna) you are using a term that is a term of hatred. You are, in effect, calling someone a Roman Catholic. Except that it is said in a tone that depersonalises the person and makes them an object. You are making them one of a tribe separate from your tribe that tends to be Protestant. This isn’t just a Northern Ireland issue. It happens all over the world and it happens within your world and my world.

The mythical story of the Fianna is not about Irish Nationalism. It is the story about a state of mind. It is your state of mind just as it is mine. Ireland is in trouble as we are all in trouble. She is not only financially bankrupt but also spiritually bankrupt. She, in part, calls herself a ‘free state’ but her people are enslaved. They are not enslaved by the landlordism of old. It is a new kind of landlordism. It is called the consumer society. It is an insane invitation to death through consuming ourselves to death because we feel spiritually empty.

In the story of the Fianna these warriors are hidden below ground waiting a time when the people of Ireland call to them to rise and free them from tyranny. This is not just a myth. This is not a fairy story of old. This is my story. It is your story whether you are Irish or not. You and I are the Fianna in waiting. That is unless we remain enslaved to a value system of separateness from Love – the consumer society.

The real problem is that you and I in each moment drive the power of the spiritual warrior within us underground. In the mythic story of the Fianna, Ireland isn’t just a symbol for a land that exists between the UK and the USA. Ireland in this story represents the universal sense of Self. That is what is meant by sovereignty. No spiritual warrior of any state serves national boundaries. They serve the Universal. They serve the timeless values of sacred unity and Love.

Irish politicians of all persuasions are tethered to what is called the nation state. This is true of most politicians. The nation state has sovereignty. Only the sovereignty of the nation state does not take, and can never take, precedence over that of the state of the timeless and the universal. Those who align themselves to the nation tend not to be visionaries. When the leaders have no vision the people die.

The Fianna represent that state of mind that is sovereign and whole and holy. It is not aligned to any political or religious affiliation. It has no hierarchy. It is the flow of the spirit of sacred unity through the heart of the individual who has had the courage to surrender to Love. This is spiritual warriorship. Those in power aren’t practicing it. But you and I can.

This sovereignty doesn’t belong to the Irish. It isn’t Roman Catholic. It isn’t nationalistic. It isn’t separate from one who is a Protestant. It isn’t absent from a Democrat or a Republican. Except it is when any one of identifies solely with a separate sense of self and thus absents themselves from such sacred sovereignty.

If you despair about the state of the world then become a spiritual warrior. This doesn’t mean you become a fundamentalist, which is no fun at all. If you are intent on being a spiritual warrior who honours the sovereignty beyond the limits of time and space and all attachment to ideas about who you are and who you think you are, then what will be revealed is true sovereignty. You become, not a revolutionary, but a revelation.

Such sovereignty is the true state of heart and mind. It brings true peace. If this is your intention then you will be called to be one of the Fianna. You do not have to give this invitation to such a call this name. You will be called through your hearts invitation to you own myth that you are intended to live and honour and share. In the USA this could be the symbol of Lady liberty. Each country has its own myths that invite universal consiousness to be the true state.

The Fianna are not interested in rising to save such a limited idea as Irish Nationalism or any nationalism for that matter. The Fianna are the heart energies that know their connection to the universe. They will arise in you (under whatever name) when you are intent in realising the sacred unity within your heart and within your brother and sisters heart.

When you feel this connection to that state of mind and heart then you will have no need of despair. You will be called to serve that which is timeless, that which is sovereign and that which is Love. Anything less means that the spiritual power in you will remain underground in the cave of the separate sense of self.

Choose well because your Life and our life on this beautiful planet depends on it.

© Tony Cuckson 2009

Restless Traveller

Talk to me in a sailors tongue,

I’ll wake you up in the morning.

Truth will run under different skies.

You and me restless travellers.

You and me restless travellers.

Restless Travellers by Raymond Frogget.

From the Album Tramps and Thieves

I have in my life been a restless traveller. I have travelled in different lands seeking the diamond in my pocket. I have travelled under different skies and sometimes, although very rarely, I would awake. Sometimes such awakening would only last a moments but it always felt as if it would last forever.

I have met with sailors who would talk to me in tongues of flame. Often I would become afraid that I would be burned away to nothing – like a moth drawn to a flame. Often these people who have sailed a different kind of ocean stand there with a light in their eyes and a fire in their head.

Sailors who talk to you don’t always appear as sailors. They often appear quite ordinary in many ways. If you meet with them and you are ready then they will set you alight. If you are not ready then they tend to simply pass by on the other side of the street. Maybe they will smile and sometimes they will stand on their heads. One cannot really predict what these voyagers to that other shore might do.

These sailors have sailed, have voyaged under many different skies. You could follow them and learn much from them. However, there is one sky under which they have sailed and it is not for the faint of heart.

There is a sun in this sky. It is brighter than the brightest star in our galaxy. It is a million times brighter than our own Sun. When you sit on this Sun and not want for water once then you can wake up in the morning. When you wake up on that morning you will never quite be such a restless traveller again.

Except that you will leave this tomorrows sky. Most everyone does who has ventured to that ocean beneath the sky where only a few ever go. And then you will come back to this shore. It is the shore we call time and you will be a restless traveller in a very different way. You will want to sit again on the Sun and never want for water once. And when you return from this ocean beneath that vast sky you will be one who sets others afire with the light of one million Suns.

There will come a time when you will ask a stranger, “Talk to me in a sailors tongue.” A certain kind of storyteller has asked that question. I have asked that question of a stranger. Let me tell you this. When you ask a stranger to talk to you in a tongue of a faraway land you will hear something very different. You will not like it because it reminds you of what you have forgotten.

This language of the sailors tongue has not been spoken to you for time out of mind. Be aware of two things. Firstly it will take you out of time and secondly it will take you out of your mind. It will take you into the place that those who have set on the Sun and not wanted water once call no mind. They have no mind at all.

Storytellers talk in funny ways. They talk to you in a sailors tongue. They are and have been and continue to be voyagers under very different skies. They go to lands that are full of magic and fully of mystery. They sail on different rivers. One such river is the mystic river where they travel to a different kind of ocean.

These storytellers who know that secret tongue do not sail in boats. No no that is for those who are afraid of real adventure. The storyteller becomes a wave on the ocean. Not only that but they and the ocean become one. These storytellers walk around with the ocean inside themselves and if you are willing they will pour it into you.

If you listen very quietly then they may talk to you in a sailors tongue. Then you might wake up. This isn’t waking up from sleep. This is where you take a giant leap and you wake up from a giant sleep. It is as if you have been under a spell. It is as if you had been listening to the words of a language that keeps you feeling deeply sleepy.

Then beyond the words of the sailors tongue there is the twixt and in between place. Now you have to get really quiet. I mean so quite that you might think that you have disappeared. An in a magical way you are getting ready to do exactly that. Listen and you will hear the ocean inside. It is singing.

All the songs of this ocean are love songs. They are heart songs. If you listen closely, very closely and you get still and quiet you can hear the ocean call you by your name. This is not the name you were given at birth. Your birth name may be beautiful name but the name that you are given by the Ocean of Love is more beautiful still.

The song you will hear is your song. This is a unique song. It is the song that only you can sing in this world. This does not mean that you must be a good singer. It doesn’t mean that you have to sing at all. It does mean that you have to allow the Ocean of Love to sing this song through your heart.

So remember. There will come a time when you will be aflame with a different kind of wish. You will be wishing that the Ocean of Love would sing a song through you. You will be wishing that any song will do. People will laugh at you. They will think that you might be a little bit crazy. You will think that you are a little bit crazy. But if you trust this well wishing then you will meet with a stranger.

This is the stranger who has been to that other shore and talks in a strange tongue that your heart knows. They will if you allow them to wake you up. You will walk beneath different skies. You will become a wave disappearing into an ocean Love song.

Until that happens to you, you and me are restless travellers, you and me restless travellers.

Stranger to Love

We’re sailing in a strange boat.
We’re heading for a strange shore.
We’re sailing in a strange boat.
We’re heading for a strange shore.
We’re carrying the strangest cargo
Ever hauled on board.

From Strange Boat by Mike Scott
The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues

This is the opening to a wonderful song written by Mike Scott of the Waterboy`s. It is called Strange Boat. I love this song. I have spent many hours reflecting on and trying to write a story based around this songs invitation to my heart. This story is still being written.

For this Irish mystic storyteller this song has level upon level of meaning. It is ultimately, I think, a song about estrangement. It reflects the fact that many of us have become strangers to who we are and thus why we are. On one level the song is about who we think we are and as a consequence how strange this journey of life appears to many of us at some stage on the journey.

At this time of writing this opening verse reminds me that the strange boat we are sailing is the body. They strange shore we are headed to is death and the strangest cargo ever hauled aboard is the sense of separateness from Love that we call ‘Ì’ or ‘me’ and ‘mine.’

Those who have had any kind of mystic revelation will tell you that this is truly a strange way to live in the world. It is the way of estrangement from real life. This estrangement accounts for most of the suffering in the world that has ever been and ever will be.

When the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich says, “All will be well, all manner of things shall be well,” we tend to think, “What kind of planet is she living on.” The answer is the shore of non-estrangement from Love.

For this writer this song is a song of remembrance of that other shore which we will all arrive at because we can never truly leave it. We will all one day arrive home and become Lovers of who we are and why we are. When this happens you will laugh at the very idea that you can ever be a stranger to Love.

The strange cargo we are all carrying is the burden of the individual ‘I.’ We think we have to do it all. We think we are this thinker in a body living a limited time frame within a time space dimension. That is part of who we are but it is not the whole or the holy revelation of what it is to live ones full potential. Those with insight, those who are seers, see beyond this limitation and this estrangement. They invite you into that which is not at all strange but appears to be so only to the ego.

Buddhists use the metaphor of the other shore for the state of enlightenment. Enlightenment is experienced when you expand into awareness beyond this strange cargo called ‘I’ that keeps you apart from the light. It cargo isn’t needed because you are Life living Life and not something apart from Life. This can be known directly but one has to give up the strange cargo called “little me.” Most of us will not give up our sense of separate self for what we consider the strangeness of Love.

Our Children have Wings

You were born with potentialYou were born with goodness and trustYou were born with ideals and dreams

You were born with greatness

You were born with wings

You were not meant for crawling so don't You have wings Learn to use them and fly

-Rumi

At the beginning of many of our storytelling sessions with children we begin with this poem by the mystic poet Jellaludun Rumi. When my partner Bee stands up and begins to recite the above poem sometimes there is giggling when she says the first line. That is until she begins to point to individual children.

When she points directly to a child and says, "You were born with goodness and trust" it is as if they have been suddenly woken up. In the room there is silence and the children begin to pay rapt attention. This is a short story with deep power and vision. It is an invitation and an invocation for our children to remember who they are and why they are.

We have a culture that educates our children by filling them full of information that we say is necessary for them to live full and productive lives. The emphasis, however, tends to be on the productive rather than the full. The emphasis tends to be on the more the better rather than the fullness of living. Rumi invites the children into the fullness of what is potential within them without judgement.

This is the role of a storyteller. It is remind children and others that at the heart of who they are is the ability to fly. What is needed is imagination and the building of confidence in the potential that they as children have arrived with in this world. To invite this confidence to take wing is the true role of a teacher. A teacher is not the same as an educator. A teacher unfolds. An educator often binds the wings so that the child can be safe and not go flying.

Another storyteller who invites such remembrance is the wonderful singer songwriter David Grey when he writes and sings in his song entitled Silver Lining

.

You were born with eyes wide open

so alive outspoken,

Tell me why, down in the darkest deep

Know there`s a light don`t sleep.

In this world where we hear stories of violence, disaster, dispair and fear it is important to remind our children what is at the core of human existance. This is not some fairy tale notion that we find in tales of old. This is the story and language of the heart that is known within all cultures and all traditions which education is supposed to "bring out" rather than to blot out with more and more information that keeps us in form and earth bound unable to take wing.

The Law of Attraction - The Real Secret

The Law of Attraction together with vision boards and goal setting is all the rage. The wonderful Zig Ziglar says, “You must have goals.” Another advocate of goal setting is Brian Tracy who tells us that in order to manifest our goals we must write them down. In the world wide selling book entitled “The Secret” you are told that you should laminate your goals and keep them in your wallet.

According to the writer Jim Merrion in his book “Death of the Mythic God” there are churches where people practice the art of manifestation (The Law of Attraction) for the latest Lexus or the new dream home.

This setting goals and writing them down is a powerful creative act. There is a warning, however, that should come with these Law of Attraction and goal setting techniques. It is this. Beware of what you intend to create because you are likely to get it. Be aware that such techniques can take you up the ladder leaning against a wall that takes you further away from the real attraction of life.

The Buddha said that the cause of suffering was desire. Shri Chimony says much the same thing. However, he does not leave it there (neither did the Buddha) because he calls for one to follow aspiration – meaning an expression of the experience of spirit. This is a very different approach to that advocated by many Law of Attraction adherents. Like many preaching the gospel of Christ they do so without ever having known the Mind of Christ.

Aspiration is creativity aligned to the will of Love that then expresses as Love in action. It isn’t so much that you do it as Love does it through you. This gives you a feeling of real attractiveness but is much larger and more expansive than the dreams of your `little me’ who has desires to manipulate the Law of Attraction in order to get what it thinks is lacking. In focusing on such lack one deepens the sense of separateness that is at the heart of suffering. So be careful what you are intending and from where you are intending. This means be careful what you ask for.

No amount of goal setting or vision boarding will connect with what is truly attractive within you.. Why? The answer is because you are not separate from this attractiveness of Love that others and I speak off. You think you are separate from it and that you have to do something to attract it. But it is more like the wave on the ocean. The wave has never been separate from the ocean. A wave cannot be a wave without the ocean. Neither can you be without the Love that you already are but have forgotten.

Aspiration is a very different focus from goal setting. With aspiration one seeks to do the will of Love. With goal setting there tends to be ego attachment. There tends to be the desire to attain for purposes of self-interest. With aspiration there is the focus on the interest that expresses as Love of Self.

Goal setting can become addictive. You can become the ever-constant achiever. You can become the one who does forever more. This can be the case even when you have goals that focus on doing for others. There can be the subtle, or not so subtle, focus on what “you” are doing.

Goal setting says, “I want.” Aspirations say, “I give.” Aspiration says thank you for what is. Goal setting may say thank you for what will be. Aspiration is the engagement with the present and with presence. Goal setting engages with the future and with the image of what that future will mean to the one who seeks to attain.

Aspiration goes higher. It is a spiral going upward. It is inspiration moving ever higher. This higher doesn’t end because aspiration as spirit in action is eternal. Aspiration is not linear. It is not time bound. It is bound to the heart. Aspiration is heart expansion. Goal setting tends to expand the sense of separateness called, “little me.”

Aspiration is unattached to results because it is focused on surrender that any aspirant knows is a paradox. You cannot will surrender but you can be willing to be surrendered. In this state of allowing, spirit and inspiration flow. This is the real working of the Law of Attraction. It is the movement of inspiration in form. This can be more miraculous, more creative and more expansive within an instant than a lifetime of goal setting.

Aspiration can take you into a life changing space. Goal setting may take you into a “life of little me” change but it won’t be the Life that wisdom teachers invite you into and which is the real invitation of the Law of Attraction. When this happens Attractiveness becomes who you are and now what you do. This is the real Secret that to few are encouraging you to explore.

© Tony Cuckson 2009

Meeting on the Shore

“A child's hand in yours what
tenderness and power arouses.
You are instantly the very touchstone
of wisdom and strength.
~ Marjorie Holmes

She said, “Children are for sharing. Not everyone can have one.”

We never did. So it is a delight to share time with these creatures of being. They are still connected to their original face. They still play in the garden of eternity.

His name sounds as Finn. He has beautiful blue eyes and the blondest of blond hair. He shares his name with Fionn Mac Cumhail. This is frequently anglicised as Finn Mac Cool. Finn Mac Cool is one of the most celebrated heroes in Irish myth.

Little Finn will be tall and beautiful. Now he is small and beautiful. He is learning to talk. He is learning to put distance between his immediacy. There will be a time when he thinks about his life rather than allow it to flow. He will learn to dance rather than be the dance.

Being around children reminds me that they feel their experience moment to moment. When they look they see what is before them. They do not judge their experience. They are their experience. This is why they are so delightful even if sometimes they behave as if this world belonged to them and them alone. They know this world belongs to them until they are told differently. This is their real understanding of this world. It is we who have forgotten. They are there to help us remember.

I am standing at the edge of Lough Allen. I have come to visit Corry Strand.

This is where I meet this giant among toddlers. My partner Barbara has met this child before. His Mum had come to hear a concert or play at the Glen Centre in Manorhamilton. While Mum watched the play Barbara minded child. When he became fractious and upset she walked him down the main street. She held him close in her arms and sang Gershwin. He settled at the sound of this melody sang softly into his shell like ear.

He quickly learned my name. He quickly gave me the gift of his trusting heart. It came as a delightful surprise to find him placing his little hand in mine. He had decided he and I would take a stroll along the sand. We walked and came to sit by the remains of a campfire. He told me stories. These were one-word stories.

These were one word stories facilitated by finger pointing. He reminded me of the old Zen Master who tells his student “I am only the finger pointing at the moon.” Here is my little Zen master teaching me the simplicity of seeing.

One story is “stone.” The other story is “dog.” Each is direct and immediate. There is no sense of fear. There is only the continued pointing of the finger. He makes the stones come alive. He sees them before ever they have labels.

Too soon there will come a time when he lives in labels. Too soon he will think he knows what a “stone” is. Soon he will forget how he once saw the wonder of that “stone” and that “dog.” He will swap wonder for knowledge. He will swap what is partial for what is holy. He will become a rational person rather than the mysterious little being he is.

He reminds me of Yoda in Star Wars. The force is with him. He is a wise little being with a hand that shows art in every gesture. He shows me the gladness of the ever-present moment. He is selfish as all children are. This is their world. However, they love to share it with you. This world is their playground and they want you to play here too.

On this shore of Lough Allen he reminds me of that other shore. This is the one we seekers long to sail for. It takes us to that timeless shore where we are forever young. My work is to do what Finn does best. I spend time patiently allowing myself to enter this mystery of life. He is still held within it. I am the amateur and he is the pro-fessional of presence.

He is a fount of wisdom. He does not have the words. He only has his finger. He uses this to conduct dialogues with this mystery of life. He allows the music of life to play through his little body. I am only a part of the orchestra and too often I feel apart from the music. He plays all parts expertly and is the music.

Time will be when he will forget he is the play of God. Time will wrap around him and he will be taught to “do life.” He will be taught that life has to be earned. He will be advised that it is more important to earn a living rather than be alive to love. He will be taught his creativity does not fit with economics. He will become productive and competitive rather than celebratory and abundant. He will give up his wondrousness for acceptance.

He will forget that he is forever enough. If he is lucky he will meet with other wise men and women who will tell him to risk all for love. He will forget that love is all he needs. He will turn from love in action to love of activity. His is the fall from the grace of being to the non-grace of persona. We are all destined to fall from this grace. He will be loved but he will feel separate from all that is.

When he is older he will, I hope, take another hand. He will stand on another shore.
He will remember to look at the beauty of what is without labels. He will no longer see it the way that we lost in social consciousness see it. He will, I hope, one day see again via his heart. The way he sees now. When this happens he will be a giant among men. He will be Finn. He will be fair of face and fair of hair.

Thank you Finn for your instruction. I am blessed to have shared your wisdom. You are already a giant among men. You are a child of the Universe. Never forget little one. May the force be forever with you and may you stay forever young in that little heart that you are so ready to share.

Heading for a Strange Shore

I am engaged to tell a story at a Tibetan Buddhist Centre for their children’s weekend festival. I have been asked to connect the story to the image of a boat. This is because the children will be helping to build a boat over that weekend.

St Brendan - Edward Reginald Frampton

I tend to write stories for individual occasions rather than tell stories that other people have written and told. Each story I write has to work on various levels. The story has to entertain and invite both children and adults into a remembrance of their multi dimensional nature. This is the purpose of storytelling. It isn’t just entertainment but an invitation and an invocation to what is essential, meaning that which is of the essence.

So I take the theme of a boat and I am drawn to remember the song by the Waterboys called “Strange Boat.” I remember also the lines from a Leonard Cohen song called Suzanne that begins,

“Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river.
You can hear the boats go by you can spend the night beside her.”

I am also reminded that meditation is like sitting on the bank of a river watching the boats go by. The boats are a metaphor for our thoughts. Sometimes, in fact, more times than we care to admit, we climb into the boat and are carried down river and sometimes down the rapids. We get caught up in the drama and the trauma of our lives. In preparing to write this story these are ideas that immediately spring to mind.

Then there is the requirement of the audience to whom the story will be told. The story should include aspects that make the children choose a course of action. This is usually a course between playing safe or following the call of their heart. The call of the heart often takes them into those places of threshold that the rational mind says, “Don’t go there.” Such places are the dark wood, the enchanted forest, and the door in the back of the wardrobe.

So I take the lines from the Waterboy`s song Strange Boat which begins

We’re sailing in a strange boat,
We’re headed for a strange shore.
We’re sailing in a strange boat
We’re headed for a strange shore
Carrying the strangest cargo
Ever hauled aboard.

Here you have a beginning idea for a story. A story about a strange boat going somewhere strange and carrying a strange cargo. Children like strange. This is a metaphor for your life and for my life.

The strange boat can be considered our relationship to our body. The strange shore can be considered the shore of the timeless and our connection to Love. The strange cargo can be the beauty we radiate from within our hearts. For to many of us we have become estranged from our unique heartsong. We call our body strange because it is the wrong shape. We call ourselves strange because our sexuality doesn’t fit. We stay on the shore of time and space and we become alienated from the timeless beauty we are here to share.

A story can be a heartsong. It has to be a story that speaks to your heart and the longing of your heart. It is a kind of story that pulls you deeper than maybe your rational mind wants to go. This is the purpose of parable, riddle and mythic stories. They aren’t simply old stories they are timeless stories related to the journey of consciousness in form.

Such stories inform you but are not more information. They reach in and touch the vastness of your hearts potential to know and feel your connection with your timeless nature. This is, if you will allow it, your holy longing. It is your longing to remember the place where your heart knows its true homeplace. The purpose of the story is to remind you in the lines of the Derek Walcott poem.

You will meet again the one
Who has loved you all your life
The one who you give up for another.


Love after Love.
Derek Walcott.

Storytelling is there to invite you to come home to the one you think is stranger than strange but who has been given up for an image in the mirror that is more acceptable to the world. This is the image you call “little me” and by contrast to the vastness of who you are it really is so little. You are after all Love incarnate.

Close to it All or Any Song will Do

Birdsong brings relief
To my longing.
I am just as ecstatic as they are
But with nothing to say!
Please, universal soul, practice
Some song or something, through me.

Rumi – Birdsong
Translated by Coleman Barks

The singer songwriter Melanie (who is probably best known for the Bicycle song – I rode my bicycle to your window last night, I skated to your door at daylight) sings a song called Close to it All. It includes the words,

If I had my dream I would fill a hall
And tell all the people tear down the wall
That keeps them from being apart of it all
Cause you gotta get close to it all.

If I had my dream I would build halls and have people sing heart songs each morning in circles ranging from twenty and more. I would then prescribe this as an antidote to depression, loneliness, hopelessness and many other experiences of emotional distance that keep us from being apart of it all.

Many of us feel powerless. We feel what we have to say is of little value. We have no energy to say what we value. We have little or no time to find out what it is we value. Thus the universal soul of Love cannot practice some song, or something through us. The result is that we are left to do our life and lose our ability to be Life living as Love.

Even if you cannot go to a hall to sing you can choose to begin each morning with some practice, some something that invites the heart to sing. This does not mean that you choose to sing a song although you might choose to do this. Begin your day with the intention that you will value your unique heart song. Make this a silent invocation. You might not know what that is. Simply begin to invite and trust that you will receive intimations of what is to be sung through you.

Do not immediately rush into the day. Do not turn on the news that invites you into fear, powerlessness and armours you sensitivity to life and to the pain and sorrow in the world. Heartsong will open up your heart. Without your ability to feel heart centred life is lived without the experience of joy. Joy is your birthright. It is felt when anything of the universal soul is sung through you.

Find out what inspires you and aspire to express that feeling. Risk what it takes so that this feeling of inspiration expands and invites others to expand. Expansion is the nature of the Universal song. Do not be afraid to become so expansive that time disappears and all that is left is the singing. This is the direct experience of Love.

You might spend ten minutes in silence; you might put on a CD of music that moves you to dance or to tears. You might read poetry that changes you life. You might pray a prayer for yourself and others. You might practice mystic seeing. You might play a musical instrument. You might sit in your garden and say, “Thank You.”

There are, as Rumi says, hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. What Rumi is saying and asking, “When was the last time you felt like throwing yourself to the ground because you couldn’t believe the wonder of who you are.” This is the invitation to the song of your heart. Make it real for you.

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste

Go is such a small word yet a very powerful one. For many of us in this modern world we are forever on the go. We experience what has been called time poverty. In the very beginning of the poem Desiderata you are requested to GO placidly amidst the noise and haste. This is a request to action. It is a request to take your journey. This is the journey of the hero who is on a quest for the meaning of their life. This going is movement as Love in Action

Go suggests movement. It suggests forward movement. It does not imply sitting on the fence. It suggests motion and emotion. There are all sorts of other questions related to this request to go. These include knowing or having an idea at the beginning of how, when, where why and with whom you intend to go.

Why should you be concerned to go and “make your life matter?” Do you not have enough to do with all the pressures on your time? These pressures are going to increase. In fact these pressures are likely to increase exponentially as was the case over the last century. The result will be increased burnout in mind and body.

This can be avoided. I believe it is important that you learn to understand how you intend to go into the future. This is not something esoteric. This is common sense. At least it used to be common sense. Now very simple techniques that assist well-being and happiness have become uncommon sense.

Making your life matter will bring you to your senses. You are so speeded up in mind and body that sensuality, sexuality and feeling good are something that many of you now find in some form of addiction.

Making your life matter will make you feel more attractive. Your energy will flow in one direction other than several. This is because you will be clearly focused. You will be unafraid to have your own mind rather than be a clone of every opinion that happens to be fashionable at various times. You will become attuned to an intelligence that is beyond time and creates all things out of Love.

You will learn to know what matters beyond simply making a living. You will be unfolding a loving being. This being is YOU. It has always been you. You are merely in disguise. The unfoldment of you will bring beauty and harmony into your life and this will radiate outward into the world.

I can give you many many reasons why you will benefit from making your life matter. When you have read these and considered the option of taking the next step you are still left with taking the next step.


You and I often feel powerless at the events that happen in the outside world. As a result of this we learn to armour your minds and bodies to protect ourself. We feel powerless and so over a period of time we shut down. Our energies cease to flow. We become like a finely tuned six cylinder motorcar that has shut down five of these cylinders.

You are functioning but you are not truly alive. You are not as children are who dance their life’s energy until they have been told enough times NO. This poem Desiderata invites you to a celebration of YES saying. This is to say YES "I matter and I am going to make a difference not only in my life but also in the lives of others."

Do not think that this is arrogance. When you journey through this blog you will make a difference but it will be with a true sense of humility. This is not a popular feeling in a world so full of self-interest.

You have the power to choose. You can choose to ignore the fact that you are unique talented and loving or you can step onto the path of the hero and GO. You may not now feel any passion in taking this step. This is normal. The suggestion that you are important simply for being is not one that you have been taught to embrace.

It is my Work as a writer to encourage you to embrace this extraordinary potential that resides in the mind and body of each and every one of us. There will be those of you who strongly doubt this as a possibility for yourself and others. I believe that you are miraculous and that this is part of your nature.

You are still left with the decision. Do you take the next step or not? If you decide to take it, then what is it to be. That is the question. I am not here to convince you that you SHOULD take the next step. That would be a subtle violence. Rather let me suggest that you test it to see if you get any results. If you find that the information contained herein is not working then you are free to discontinue.

You are free to GO.

Tony Cuckson is disappearing

When I begin to write, as I do most every morning, there is the experience before me of the empty page. Sometimes my hand is running down the lines before I know it is happening. This happens when I am infused with inspiration from the lines of a poem or a heartsong.

At other times I don’t know what to write or I am working with an idea, a dawning that I have not yet turned into full awareness. Such dawning is happening this morning. I have a strange unfolding developing within me. It is an awareness that I am disappearing and to be honest I want to disappear.

Before anyone thinks I am about to run away, be assured this is not the case. What seems to be happening is that what I call “little me” is being seen as a prison and I no longer want to be a prisoner.

Fundamental to our Western idea of who we are is the statement by Descartes, “I think therefore I am.” This heralded the Age of Reason out of what was called the Dark Ages. However, we have become what might be called the people of the head and not what the poet David Whyte refers to as people who live in a body in full presence

One of the keys to peace of mind that I am discovering is the absence of thought. Thought is a wonderful tool but it is for most of us a monkey on the chain that tends to pull us around through all our life’s drama. When I say, “I am disappearing,” I mean I no longer value the constant noise that goes on in my head like a badly tuned radio that cannot be turned off and often takes me into emotional white water.

I am noticing that there is movement toward more silent witnessing of thought. This silent witnessing makes me aware of how unsettled my mind really is. It is on despite my wish that I simply be still and know that the presence within me is Love.

I take more time now not to think. People may then ask, “Then who will you be?” I answer that I will be the experience of no mind. This is an experience that people fear. They think they will disappear and become some mindless creature. Except that no mind is a vast ocean of timeless creativity. There is still experience but I do not need to grasp it and claim it as mine. Such experience is more direct and more glorious. It is less fraught with anxiety about how “my life” should be. This is what I call presence.

Your ability to be present is more fulfilling because there is the experience of presence. You feel lighter, you are more in your body, and you are present to this moment. You are not projecting into the future with your desires to fill any sense of lack. You do not spend time with the past in regret or worry. You learn to enjoy the body in full presence.

The paradox is that you feel a deeper kind of experience because the thought process is still. This stills the emotions, which stills the body. You move closer to the experience of I AM. You move closer to the experience that you are Love beyond any need to be loved. You begin to realise that you are so much more than your thoughts.

This is the invitation of meditation. A practice par excellence that takes you deep into a stillness that is paradoxical. The more empty you become of ideas the fuller you are of inspiration. Reason cannot help you here. The silence of the heart can and does.

When you begin to disappear you become available to the Beloved. The sense of ‘I’ begins to melt into the vastness of I AM beyond the limitation of subject/object duality. Peace begins to descend in and about you and in a mind that only thinks when it chooses too. There is no loss of intelligence here. In fact real intelligence begins to dawn. This is an intelligence that solves problems holistically and not through rational thought alone – ration meaning “in part.”

You think that no thought is something that you should avoid. You might think it is mindlessness but it is the chatter of ones monkey mind that is mindless. Sit and still your mind for ten minutes and unless you are a practiced meditator you are unlikely to be able to do this. You will spend most of the time thinking about everything other than what you intended to practice.

Your mind is central to who you think you are. Would it not be beneficial to be in control of it? You would then find the experience of less thought brings more peace and power. This is because intelligence arises that is beyond thinking in words and concepts. Words and concepts, which are thoughts, are not direct experience but always about experience. In this way you are always one step removed from Life.

This stillness of thought allows I AM to arise from the realm of the invisible out of which all forms and all creation arises. It doesn’t need you to work it out. It created you so it knows exactly what needs to be done better and more completely than your rational mind can ever accomplish.

So I feel I am disappearing. This idea brings me such delight. I feel lighter. It is as if a great burden is being lifted of my shoulders. This burden is this sense of self called “me, mine and myself.” The disappearance of Tony Cuckson is not to be lamented because he is exchanging the nothingness of “his life” for Life but not as most of us know it.

Whatever is written in Your Heart?

Whatever’s written in your heart

That’s all that matters
You’ll find a way to say
It all some day

Gerry Rafferty

Here are lines from a song written by a soul friend. They are point you toward a place you will find what matters. Every song can be an invitation to the Great Song, the song that you alone have come here to sing. This is a metaphor.

You are not required to be a singer, although you might be that. You are, however, required to be a singer although in the sense that you are to sing the Infinite as it plays through your heart.

The heart is not just a physical pump; wonderful as this instrument is that pumps our life’s blood around the body. The heart is a dimension that spans time and the timeless. Without a direct experience of this connection you can have all the things you want but it does not matter that much. The heart is the bridge between the human and the Divine.

Heart work focuses on what matters. What really matters to the heart is beyond person, the mask. What really matters to the heart is the Universal, the timeless qualities of beauty and grace. These are qualities that you cannot buy but that you realise. You don’t make them. They come through what Eckhart Tolle refers to as ‘portals.’ These are place of threshold where the heart engages with its Lover and Creator.

You and I are writers. We write our life’s expression in each thought we think. What we think about we become but what we think about is not necessarily what we are intended to become. This writer was intended to become a teacher of yoga long before this word was the household word it is today. Instead, this writer trained and became engaged in the work of an accountant.

All through this writer’s life people would say, “ Tony, you’re not, you cannot be an accountant!” But I was and that I remained despite their vocal scepticism. However, I found a way to do the work of an accountant with the values that wanted to create a yoga teacher. This did not make me wealthy but it kept me sane.
The heart loves one thing more than any other. It loves to expand. Expansion means breaking boundaries. It means being willing to let go and move into the new. The ego tends to dislike this. It dislikes this because with the heart the ego gets dissolved and becomes at one with the boundless.

We each write a script for the heart. We do this everyday. The script we write has two broad directions. One leads us down a narrow road and the other onto the highway. Each signpost that takes us there looks the same. They have the same words written large on them.

The signpost reads, “This way to heart matters.” Most people follow the road to the highway. When asked why they choose that route they often deny that it was because that was the way most people seemed to be headed. This Irish storyteller headed for the highway of accountancy because, to be honest, he had not the heart strength to go another way.

Actually, what happens is that you will find a way to say it all some day. This ezine, this website, is the way this storyteller’s heart learns to say it all, not someday, but everyday. The heart does not just say what it wants to say on one day. It is saying what it wants to say in every moment. Fear and doubt get in the way.

What really gets in the way is you – your sense of separateness from Love. What gets in the way is that sense of unworthiness.

What matters to the heart is not what matters to you but what matters to Love. You think you are separate from Love but Love is not separate from you. Your heart knows this. Your heart longs to remember this. This is the meaning of yoga – to join together, to re-member.

Whatever is written in your heart will make you sing. You might sing a song of sorrow but still – it is your song of sorrow. It is not to be grudged. It is to be expanded. Your sorrow can be the invitation to deep compassion or bitterness. Usually bitterness is the calcification, the hardening over past hurts that are being said but not being owned.

The writer and creation spirituality teacher Matthew Fox says in Radical Prayer (available from Sounds True that ultimately there is no protection for the heart. There are boundaries but no protection. The greatest protection is a paradox. It is to trust the process and allow Love to write and play the universal song through you.

Picture - Writing on the Sand - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A short History of Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly
and listen to others.
Even the dull and ignorant: they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.


This poem is wrongly ascribed as having been found in old St Paul’s Church dated 1692. The year 1692 is in fact the founding date of St. Paul’s Church and has nothing to do with the poem.

Max Ehrmann wrote the poem in 1927.

This poem represents a philosophy that he developed throughout his life. He wrote in his diary in 1921

“I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift – a bit of haste prose that had caught up some noble moods.”

He sent out Christmas cards including the text of Desiderata in 1933.

When Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, a guest in his home found a copy of Desiderata near his bedside and discovered that Stevenson too had planned to use it in his Christmas cards. I am also reminded that Adlai Stevenson was a man who my mother always said inspired her.

This is a poem rife with applicability in today’s world. I remember it from my own childhood. My twin brother has a copy prominent above his workstation. I recall it from my time in the sixties. This poem found a foothold with those who embraced the philosophy of love and peace.

It seems to me that we need to remind ourselves of it perennial truths.

“Be Cheerful” or Be Careful”

There is some dispute regarding this phrase near the end of the poem. One of the publishers states that Ehrmann himself changed the wording. Another story is that an errant publisher accidentally changed it from “cheerful” to careful.”

I will during the development of this poem look at each option.

Picture - Coming from Evening Church - Samuel Palmer

Her Place by the River

One of my favorite heartsongs is Suzanne by the wonderful Leonard Cohen. The opening verse has the beautiful invitation

Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river.
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
and you know that she`s half crazy but then that`s why you want to be there
and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
and just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength and she lets the river answer
that you`ve always been her lover.

I don`t know the personal Suzanne who invites and takes you down by the river. I do know the woman who takes me down by the river and who feeds me on the exotic. People say that it is I who am crazy to go anywhere near her place.

Have you ever gone down to the place by the river? This is the place called Life. It flows. It flows inside me and you. Or do you claim that in your life there is no water - no well spring of joy that makes you seem half crazy. Do you claim, like so many of us, that you have no Love to give her. Or do you know. Do you know within that deep inner solitude that begins to open you up and you get tuned into a different wavelength.

This river is your Source. It isn`t separate from you. It cannot ever be separate from you. It is the river of Being and to the ego it looks absolutely crazy. Most of us are more like a pond that has little flow through it. We are tuned out of the wavelength of the flow of the ever new. That is until we meet with the half crazy woman.

This Suzanne, for this writer is a kind of Priestess. She seems half crazy because she doesn`t need or depend on you and the love you think you don`t have to give her. She can attune you to the wavelength of Love. It makes you afraid because you are not used to being down by the river of Life flowing as Love in form. This is the fruit she will feed you from the far of land.

You want to get away from this crazy woman. She is too much. She feeds you what is exotic from a far away land. No, you and I want to make our excuses because being with her might mean we have to recognise that it is not she who is crazy but it is us. We are crazy for a "crazy little thing called Love. "

You might spend the night beside her, you might only spend only a moment beside her, and your attunement would be certain. This down by the river is a dangerous place to go. Her place down by the river has the sound of silence and in it you can hear and see and feel in ways that allow you to hear your unique heartsong. Are you willing to go further?

This blog to be continued


Picture - Nymph by the River - Fredrick Lord Leighton

Desiderata - List of Desires

Desiderata translates as list of desires. Today we are invited to have any number of desires. The teaching of the Buddha states that the cause of suffering begins with desire. However, desire is different from aspiration. Desire is more often linked to ego desire rather than the aspiration to express from the true Self. The difference between the two is wonderfully explained in the article by Sri Chinmoy

Talk on Desire
by Sri Chinmoy

Desire versus aspiration. Desire binds; aspiration liberates. Desire wants to possess; aspiration wants to renounce. Desire means plus, plus, plus material wealth. Aspiration means minus, minus, minus material wealth. Aspiration means plus, plus, plus spiritual wealth love, devotion, surrender, purity, gratitude and self-offering.

He who desires sings most pitifully his life's poverty-songs. He who aspires sings most soulfully God's Prosperity-Songs.

He who desires wants to possess each and every thing, each and every individual in the entire world. He who aspires wants only those things that will help him transcend his abundant limitations and teeming imperfections. He knows he that needs help, and the things that can help him he welcomes and invites to come to his rescue.

A desiring man prays to God to get God's all-conquering Power. An aspiring man meditates on God to get God's all-fulfilling Love. A man of desire wants to show the world his capacities, his strength. A man of aspiration devotedly and soulfully places all his incapacities-his insecurity, doubt, fear, uncomely thoughts and everything else that is unaspiring in him-at the Feet of his Lord Beloved Supreme.

A man of desire wants to dominate the world. He wants the whole world to surrender to him. A man of aspiration wants to establish his universal oneness-heart with the rest of the world. How? On the strength of his self-giving, which is the only way to bring about world peace.

A desire-intoxicated man, like Julius Caesar, wants to say to the world: "I came, I saw, I conquered." An aspiring inspiration-man wants to say to the world: "I came, I loved and I am becoming inseparably one with you."

A desire-intoxicated man at every moment wants to show his superiority and lord it over the world. An aspiring inspiration-man wants only God's Compassion-Eye to guide and lead the whole world to its ultimate Destination, the Destination that is flooded with infinite Light and Delight.

- Sri Chinmoy
From Sri Chinmoy Library
More Poems about Desire

Picture is The Fisherman and the Siren by Fredric Lord Leighton

The Purpose Driven Life

In 7 Ways to a Wonderful Life available FREE at our website http://anamcaraexperience.org/ I write about one of the ways as being the way of purpose.

As one who is a Believer in Exile I am drawn to the writings of Rick Warren who wrote the 30 million world wide bestseller entiteld "The Purpose Driven Life - What on Earth am I here for?" This is a great title and a great question.

One of the key aspects of Rick Warren's invitation to a Purpose Driven Life is the idea that God has a plan for each of us. He begins the chapter "You are not an Accident" with two quotes. These are

"I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born." - Isiah 44.2a and

"God doesn`t play dice." - Albert Einstien.

Firstly, if God has a plan for you then it has to be understood that this plan has a time line and a time limit. Otherwise it would not be a plan. A plan by definition means something to be completed and must therefore have a time limit.

If you didn`t have a time limit then the plan would go on forever and thus not fall within the limits we identify as a plan. Thus because God is beyond time and yet manifests within time we can`t really say that God sat and individually planned it that way.

A plan is something that tends to be linear. it begins and it ends thus it cannot be of the mind of God which has no beginning or ending.

The idea of God having a plan for your life is very comforting for many people. It invites a purpose even if you don`t. It suggest that God cares and taht you were in the care of God even before you were born. This is an idea that 30 million people feel drawn to examine. It is an idea that will comfort believers who think that God is some mythic being who to quote from "The Purpose Driven Life"

Everyday was recorded in your book.

Thus one is given the idea that God literally has a book with your name on it with an individual plan that is predetermined by your Creator from birth to death. Is this really the why you are here. If it is then were is your free will in all this. For this writer this is simply pouring old wine into new wineskins.

A Creator God is not a planner. A Creator God is Love. Love is not separate from who you are. Love does not plan. Love dances. It dances forever. It isn`t something that ends. It expands. The dance has a structure like music but within the dance and within the music is the intention to become the dance and become the music. You don`t become the dance through planning. You become the dance through surrender. You dance out of time not deeper into the plan which is connected to the idea that you are separate from God.

The dream of the one separate from Love is that God has a plan and a purpose for their lives. This pupose is realised within what Jesus of Nazareth called Life. It isn`t some nice idea of God writing your life script and caring about you. It is a more radical realisation that Life and Love and God and you are not separate. To suggest that there is a plan is to suggest separteness.

God is no laughing matter

God, I have become like

two giant fat people living

in a tiny boat. We keep

bumping into each other

and laughing.

Hafiz - Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

If you were to read the Bible you would often conclude that the God of the bible is a God to be feared. There are accounts in the Old testament in which God tells the Isrelites to slay men, woman and children of other tribes.

What to make of this? This isn`t a God one would want to get on the wrong side of. What do you do if you believe that every word of the bible is the word of God? How do you reconcile the above instruction with the commandment Thou shalt not kill?

You reconcile it by recognising that the bible is a mystical document that charts the evolution of human consiousness. The God to be feared is the God of the early stage of human development. It is a God of projection of the human mind and not the experience of God as revelation.

In later developmens God is not a God to be feared but bceomes not a God of Love but God is Love. This statement "God is Love" is the revelation at the heart of Creation and at the heart of the teachings of Jesus Christ. It makes God a laughing matter. This is why you see a lot of statues of the Buddha laughing. When you awaken to Christ Consiousness it truly is a laughing matter.

You end up as two fat people in a boat laughting not as the picture above shows of the poor fisherman who looks hungry and has his back to the woman gathering flowers and new life as symbolised by the baby.

The instruction to fear God is dead. Long live the new instruction "God is Love."

Your Daily Life is your Temple

Your daily life is your temple
and your religion.
Keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life.

Kahlil Gibran




I live a miraculous life. I get up in the morning and I can worship all day. My temple is my blank page, my garden, this cottage and my beloved and my Beloved. All of these are reasons to be grateful.


Keeping your heart in wonder means entering the woundedness of the heart. It means having the courage (meaning to enter the heart) to live the uniqueness of the beauty in form that you are. You are inspired. Meaning you are in spirit. You are a spiritual being having an adventure in the world of time and space.


Wonder means being focused on the simple things of your life and really seeing with the eyes of the mystic within you. You might say you are not mystic but that potential resides in the heart of each and everyone of us. Your Work is to claim your birthright into this mystery called Life.


The mystic deals in wonder. They spend their daily life saying thank you and wondering how best they can serve and how to introduce others to this experience called Life. Except that in the wondrous words of Spock from the Star Trek series, "Its life Jim but not as we know it."


The life that this Irish mystic invites is the Life that is beyond the sense of ego separateness. Ego separateness is what the Master Jesus called "the dead." When he said. "Let the dead bury their dead," he was talking about you and me.

Not terribly flattering is it? Is it any wonder that he got himself cruxified. There is the Master telling the biggest egos in the land who know their law and their scripture that what they are living is dead and you wonder that he got hung out to dry. This is the risk that lovers and mystics take. As Rumi says, "Risk all for Love."


It is a truly wonderful Life but the wonderful life is beyond any sense of separateness you feel living in a body in time and space. When you awake to Life as is you still live in a body in time and space but you are alive to your eternal nature and death no longer becomes you.


This is the invitation from all mystics and lovers of wonder. Why not join them.

The above picture is "Voyage of Youth" by Cole Thomas

The Invitation from Desiderata

“Go placidly amidst the noise and haste.”

This above is the first sentence from a poem by Max Ehrmann entitled Desiderata. This was written in the last century between the 1st and 2nd world wars. Desiderata translates from Latin as “things to be desired.”

This poem is designed to help you focus on a desire to “make your life matter.” Without the feeling that your life matters you are like a wounded angel. You are the one can really make your life matter. I will be encouraging you to do so because I believe it is the best way to find meaning and contentment throughout your life. It is the way to abundance and prosperity. It is the way toward healing the absence of Love in many lives.

In this blog I will be unfolding Max Ehrmann`s poem and develop it as a lesson in learning to live in the 21st Century. This is a practical lesson with tips and techniques that you apply in order to create a life that matters.

I will be encouraging you all the way. The most difficult aspect of making your life matter is that you make it more conscious. In doing so you will be subject to change. None of us likes change but it will happen. It is better to instigate it now rather than spend all your energies avoiding the inevitable.

Let us begin.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly
and listen to others.
Even the dull and ignorant: they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.


If you compare yourself with others
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser
persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career however humble:
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.


Exercise caution in your business affairs:
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is.
Many persons strive for high ideals
and everywhere life is full of heroism.


Be yourself,
especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is perennial as the grass.


Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
but do not distress yourself with imaginings.


Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars
You have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.


And whatever your labours and aspirations
in the noisy confusion of life
keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham and drudgery and broken dreams
it is still a beautiful world.
Be careful. Strive to be happy.


Written by Max Ehrmann

The Land of the Forever Young

In one of my favorite books, "Ananam cara - Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World" John O'Donohue writes,

"The eternal is not elsewhere; it is not distant. There is nothing as near as the eternal. This is captured in the lovely Celtic phras: Ta tir na-og ar chul an ti - tir a lainn tnna che ile, i.e. the land of eternal youth is behine the house, a beautiful land fluent within itself."

The land of eternal youth is not the land or place where you live as a body that lives forever. It is a state of consiousness that gives access to direct knowing of ones eternal Self. It is the awareness that beyond the life of the body, that which animates the body - consiousness - is forever.

Forever doesn`t mean something that lasts a long time. It means that it is timeless, i.e. it is beyond the limitation of time and space but is known within the dimension of time and space.

The Land of the Forver Young, Tir na Nog is your birthright. Forever Young transforms the fear of death. One knows one lives in more than one dimension. One knows that there are many mansions to existance.

The Land of Forever young isn`t some quaint little Celtic myth. It isn`t a fairy story. It is the invitation to soul friendship which is the knowing of yourself beyond form but experiencing this direct knowing within a body living within time and space.

This is real hospitality. Why not accept the invitation to learn more and radiate your light so that others can radiate theirs and glorify Love that is the dimension of the Land of the Forever Young. This is your true homeplace and a real joyous homecoming