The Ruined Church

Close to where I live there is an old abandoned Protestant Church. It is known only because of its imposing tower that hides behind a stand of trees and a boundary wall of well-ordered stones surrounding the old churchyard. It sits atop a small hill.

At one time there would have been a bell that would toll to call people to remember. That bell has fallen silent.

Each time I pass this high tower hidden among woods I remember the following poem by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Sometimes a Man

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors and keeps on walking
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East
and his children say blessings on him as if he were dead


And another man, who remains inside his own house
dies there, inside the dishes and glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward the same church which he forgot.



This poem, of course, is not about simply going to church or finding some religious group that you belong. It is about following your longing for the true Self that arises in each and every moment.



This old Protestant church is in ruins but the poem a bout what a man (or a woman) sometimes does is find what St. Paul termed a church made without hands. Outside that ruin where the bell no longer tolls and where the boundary wall is the boundless is the bell that is always ringing.



When you follow the call of that church made without hands you give the gift of blessing the world. You gift the world what it is you are here to be – not necessarily what you think you are here to do. Being precedes doing. The man who remains inside his own house is the man who has built a self-image that he tried to hold onto despite all that he feels he is called to be. Inside that image his imagination dies and this impacts on whose living in his orbit.



It is left then for the children to do what the father (or mother) refused to be – to go out into the world, often far out into the world of exile and abandonment in order to find that missing centre of the sacred within themselves.



In this poem a man stands up. He is willing to take a stand for what is calling him to become all that he is. When he takes this stand he goes eastward toward the rising of the sun, toward the place of new beginning, toward the dawn of the new day. He keeps walking. He keeps moving. Movement is a sign that there is still life flowing through him.



Each and every thing can become an invitation to your wisdom heart and mind. This invitation comes not simply in words but in symbols and paradoxes that touch your life. Creation is always in conversation with you but it does not speak in words. It speaks in metaphor. This is a language that has been forgotten by many people.



It is the most beautiful of languages that illustrates great poetry. We all know this because most all of us at ‘threshold times’ in life turn to poetry to try and give meaning to our deep human experience.



This old church reminds me of what is forgotten and that I also so often forget. I too often die among the dishes and the glasses, fretting about what I haven’t done or what is yet to be done. I have forgotten the sacred place within myself that arise in the eternal moment and gives me peace.



In writing about this old church I could tell you facts about how long ago people last worshipped here. You would have more information but the experience would not invite you to remember and reconnect to what is holy and what is sacred and complete within you. Facts about this old ruin will not bring you alive the way that the invitation to what the church represent can and is intended to invite within you.



The tower that remains is a square tower. Churches are built around what is called sacred geometry and squares are key aspects. The square is a universal shape and considered a foundational shape. It allows for solid bases.



I contemplate and am reminded how the sacred has fallen silent within me and within this land of Erin. At this time of writing, Erin is bankrupt, an outer sign of an inner poverty, and a sign of loss of real meaning. Our leaders have died amidst the dishes and glasses. They have left it for future generations to go far out into the world, the exiles that we as a nation are so good at producing.



So I hope that you might have fun with a new idea. Become a metaphor hunter. On one day let some object speak to you as a metaphor for what is important to the engagement with what is whole and what is holy in you. Let me assure you that this is a wonderful thing to do. The more you do it the more interesting your days become.



This allows your heart and mind to being to awaken to the way that creation created you to be and to become. Each day then becomes a holy day, a day when you venture to a space within yourself where you have never been before. The beauty of this practice is that you begin to come home to the beauty of who you are. You begin to see in ways that will enchant you.



Then you will be able to have a real holiday experience everyday you choose. You can make a stand and walk into the story of a holy present life in love with the creation you are so that you do not die amongst the limitation of an image you create and that is often in fear of ruin.



© Tony Cuckson 2010

Laughing all the Way to Eternity

When I travelled in India for a year in 1979 I met with many teachers. One I remember well. I met him in Rishikesh where there were many ashrams by the banks of the River Ganges that flows down from the Himalayas. He was somewhat of an enigma. I don’t know how old he was but by the look of his skin he could have been a child. The clothing he wore was simple, radiant, orange cotton fabric. It never seemed to have a crease in it. He slept in a home no bigger than a large frame tent and it was always tidy and the dust of an Indian summer seemed not to cross the threshold of his little home.



He seemed to be what I now refer to as one of the beautiful people. He knew and understood time in a very different way that manifested in a body of a man older than myself but as young as a child. One other thing about him that struck me was his laugh. He laughed as if he needed to be heard in New Delhi, which was sixty miles away. I think that laugh that skin, those clothes that ironed themselves were a kind of teaching that my heart wanted to know and he that knowing.


After all I had come to that land to find again what I had lost. I had been given to know the radiance that I AM but lost it when I began to use it to get what I wanted in the world. When I asked if I could be his disciple he said no he wouldn’t teach me. He said in no uncertain manner that I was too arrogant to learn and that I already thought I knew too much. At the time I felt hurt by what he said and his words have always been a sore point.


I think that masters, and I think he was a master by his presence and radiance – childlike, innocent, and playful but also faithful – encourage the seeker this way. The seeker sees manifest before their eyes the beauty of the divine in form. This was a beautiful man with dark skin contrasted against his orange robe with a radiant aura.


His response to me was similar to receiving what is called a Zen slap. It has been a reminder for me to stop and ask myself questions about my own propensity to arrogance. This is important because the kind of revelation that graces a seeker when the light flows through them contains the quality of certainty. Friends down the years have assured me that I am the most arrogant of people. This is, I think, because I do not compromise on what grace has been good enough to allow me to be the knowing of.


As I get older I no longer enter debates about knowing what it is people ask me that I know. As I get older there is a sense of myself becoming younger. What becomes important is not debate ‘about’ but presence that arises from contemplative silence. This then moves as love in action with the intention of alleviating suffering. This moment of love in action is beyond ‘doing good.’


I am not against doing good but doing good that does not arise from the Goodness of Being is laden with all kinds of karmic attachment. There is absolutely the need to alleviate suffering in all its forms. Yet the surest way to do this is to invite the one who suffers to feel and live from that which knows no suffering. This is part of the great Bodhisattva vow. The Bodhisattva is one who having attained enlightenment they vows to return through many lifetimes to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings knowing that at the level of non-dual consciousness all suffering is an illusion.


When I hear spiritual gurus teaching that suffering is an illusion I balk at their language. I think there are different kinds of levels to enlightenment. I suspect that some teachers, while cognitively enlightened, are emotionally in the dark. It does not help to tell people who are in deep suffering that their suffering is illusory. To me this is true spiritual arrogance.


It is different when you sit and be with someone suffering and consciously be with them while keeping an aspect of yourself detached and available to the source of infinite love manifesting in all forms and loving all forms into existence. Detachment here does not mean an absence of feeling but the absence of attachment to a feeling as being able to define who in truth you are. In this way you plug into the ‘national grid’ rather than recharging from your personal limited battery of ideas and positions on what it is to suffer or how it is to be healed.


So I remember my meeting with the Master in Rishikesh with affection. He wounded me in part. It happens. Masters are not perfect human beings, even enlightened ones. Perfection is a limited idea that is dualistic and enlightenment is a state of non-duel consciousness and unlimited. The boundlessness of love is not so limited. This is why it is important not to engage in judgement. Judgment is always dualistic. Master Jesus referred to this as the Law rather than the spirit, which is never rigid.


Many people spend their whole lives clinging to heavy moralistic Laws and consequently lock the doors to Presence. You will be graced if you meet with anyone in form who informs you through their presence. They offer you the glimpse into who you truly are. This is a great grace for both those who give and receive of this presence.


This happened around the person who became St. Benedict. It happened around the person who became known as St. Francis of Assisi. It happened around the person who became Ramakrishna. It is happening now. People go and hang out with these people because they radiate what the heart of the seeker intuits. They have the perfume of the eternal permeating their body, mind and spirit. This perfume is that which cannot be bought for any price and by any action but paradoxically right action is needed to connect to its beyond sensational experience.


Masters can get attached to the way their tradition honours the disciple/teacher relationship. Sometimes, as it did in my case, with that childlike old man in Rishikesh, there is a clash of cultures where one party is attached to a particular idea of teaching or transmission as dialogue while the other utilises the method of surrender and humility.


I am arrogant in the sense that I have fidelity to and trust the inner voice given to me through grace. I am one connected to the stories of Irish mythology. In my Irish tradition this voice would be held within the story of the Stone of Destiny. This stone screams my true name when I am seen as the rightful King of Ireland who is required to protect the sovereignty of the sacred land of Erin.


To claim oneself as the sovereign lord of Erin appears to be the height of arrogance? Yet from a mystical point of view this is exactly what takes place within the heart of the seeker who sincerely and humbly wills to be an instrument of the divine. They surrender their will to allow the arising of their unique Kingship that expresses through the body (the metaphor here being the Land of Erin).


This is not arrogance. It is the willingness to allow the light that birthed you into the light to be seen on the high hill of non-dual consciousness. It is willingness to be the voice of Love you have been created to be. Paradoxically, it is the height of arrogance to think that you are NOT this, and that you are in any way apart from or could ever be separate from this.


I do not regret meeting with this old Indian version of a Tir Na Nog child/man with his Passionate Presence. When I think of him I see his skin, his bright eyes and saffron robe and I hear him laugh his laugh all the way to eternity. Bless him!

I am a Happy Drummer

"I am a happy drummer."

These are the words that came out of a rhythm that we played within our drumming circle one Sunday summer’s evening. These words, for me, seem to fit perfectly with one of the rhythms that mingled with two others that were being played.

I have learned to march to the sound of my own drum. It is what makes me not so much happy as centered. When we do not follow the march that is more a dance then we are more easily thrown off centre. Being centered gives you a peace that is more practical than happiness.

Happiness is always moving into unhappiness just as unhappiness is moving into happiness. None of these states last. They are, as the Dalai Lama has rightly pointed out, inherent in each other. Being centered gives you a sense of contentment. Contentment is more restful.

In the American constitution there is the given right to pursue happiness. I think the founding fathers might not have fully thought out the implication of those words. The pursuit of happiness is anything but happy. It can become the very thing that takes you away from the happiness that is inherent in creation.

What if you were to stop pursuing happiness or pursuing the future or simply stop? What if, in stopping this pursuit of an imaginary future in which the idea of happiness was attained, you simply let it be? What if, in letting it be, you found something that gave you more than you could ever be happy with?

What if you stopped all the rush into a kind of conceptual or virtual future – that you stopped and were willing to become a still point center in which you become the knowing of Love.

To know that you are the center point of Love that is never born nor ever dies takes you beyond the duality of happiness/unhappiness. It is that still point centre that is an awareness that at the center there is stillness, there is peace, while all around you there may be turmoil.

A soul friend will tell you that you will become happier as a consequence of learning the practice of centering. This happiness arises not because you pursue it but because it is a kind of perfume. It is the perfume of your real Self.

Any practice will do. This is where you learn to march to the sound of your own drum so that you become a happy drummer – or more to the point, that happiness arises within you and not as a consequence of your pursuit and achievement of some goal.

The important aspect of the practice is commitment. I practice writing. I practice gardening. I practice prayer. All of these for me are part of my happy drummer rhythm. I feel much less centered when I miss these practices. I become what I call my inner drama queen. I live a life not of contentment but inner drama, which always manifests as outer drama. I am not proud of this drama queen display but I try to be kind to her when she appears.

What ensures that, for the most part, that the drama does not arise, is practicing writing, gardening and praying. Any of these practices work for me. You could practice yoga, Pilates, or meditation. What is most important is doing any practice is the intention.

A soul friend invites you to make the intention for the highest good of all. This is intelligence. This is alignment with reality. This is attunement of you small drum, which is always connected to the one sound. This makes rational sense and leads into what is beyond sensational.

Creation made you a human being. This word human means the sound of God. or ,if you prefer, the sound of Love. Here, God does not imply any gender. You are a unique sound in the mind of God, who is the endless becoming. The degree to which you experience lace of peace is the degree to which you forget how to be the play of this unique sound.

Despite my propensity for being a drama queen I am, for the most part, a happy drummer. Each morning I write out my intention. This allows me to feel centered. I have created a life style in order to allow me to do this. I have created time in order to allow this being the sound of Love in form to be the most important rhythm I am here to resound.

In that sense, while others might judge me poor, I am in relation to my soul a resounding success. I am playing my unique sound of intention that expresses in form. This is the meaning of the words in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

I am a happy drummer to the extent that I listen and feel the way that the sound of Creation wishes to move through me. To that extent, like the drum that I play in my community drumming circle, I have to be empty. I have to be still and be willing to know the will of Love.

The pursuit of happiness is only that. The movement is a pursuit. You cannot chase what is arising out of the moment. Happiness is a paradox. When you are truly happy you disappear. You allow creation to express is unique way of expressing through you. Like the emptiness that is at the center of the drum there is infinite possibility. All you have to do is allow that master drummer called Creation to play you in the way it intended that it play you.

In this allowing there is no pursuit. It is the meeting of the lover and the beloved and the sound that arises is the sound of Love in form moving as Love in action for the highest good. This isn’t simply happiness but the experience of joy – joy in your true self.

So I am off to the Benwiskin Center outside Sligo to become a happy drummer in theRuach Rhythms community drumming circle.  There by the fireside I will tell stories, sing songs and centre myself into that placeless place where I know I AM always and forever a happy drummer

I Hear the Waters Lapping

              The Bathers – George Russell (AE)

“I will arise and go now
for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore.”

From - The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By W. B. Yeats

These lines from the poem Lake Isle of Innisfree are for this Irish storyteller an inspiration. It is told that later in his life the poet W. B. Yeats had certain regrets at having written this poem. I have no such regrets.

These lines are the invitation from the mystic heart – the heart that has glimpsed and wishes to return to the Source.  This is the return to the Source that the writer Marianne Williamson writes about in her book entitled “Return to Love.”

In the opening lines of this Lake Isle of Innisfree poem the hero of this poetic journey makes the commitment when he/she says, “I will arise…”  This is not just a poem about a sentimental attachment to a part of Ireland where the poet had lived. I think that is how many people view this poem and why W.B Yeats came to dislike being associated with it. Yeats didn’t write from sentimentality. He wrote from the consciousness of one connected to the timeless and its glorious invitation.

The phrase, "I will arise" indicates the proper usage of will in the development of raising consciousness and its expansion into the higher realms of timeless Love. This is an arising that is also a deepening into the heart’s core.  Then comes the phrase, "and go now." This relates to the poet’s understanding of the nature of time as a window that frames the timelessness of the present moment – the NOW.

When you look at the nature of time you find that the only time there is, is the present moment – the eternal now. When you think about the past you think about the past in this moment. When you plan the future you plane the future NOW. When the future arrives it arrives in the now. Time is a construct that developed with the clock; the clock came into its own with the advent of railways. In this sense we got more and more tied to clock time and now many of us experience what has been termed ‘time poverty.’

When you make your will the willingness to be a servant of the real  then time becomes a living presence? Are you willing or are you wilful? Are you pushing yourself to become what you have been told you should become in order to achieve what is defined in this world of time as success?

The line, "I will arise and go now," is an affirmation to be the willing servant of Love. This means paying attention to the water lapping. Most of us do not have this luxury. The only water we get close to is the stagnant pond of deep self-interest and the pursuit of what the Master Jesus called ‘the dead burying the dead.’

A soul friend invites you to hear the waters lapping by the shore of the timeless. There you will have some peace. There, for a short time, you will have some peace fill your beautiful eyes and the radiance from those eyes will truly reflect your soul and its Source.

W.B. Yeats was aware of this timeless connection to the shore of the timeless. He heard the water calling always ‘night and day.’ However, to enter the water one needs to move beyond the duality of night and day, light and dark, good and bad. This is why the invitation ‘Judge not that ye be not judged’ is such an important spiritual practice.

The great Islamic mystic poet Jelaluddin Rumi says it this way:

There is a field out beyond
Right doing and wrong doing
I’ll meet you there.

This is the field, the quantum field beyond time and space and form where you can meet and say, “I see you” because you will be one who sees through their beautiful eyes.  You will be a seer with the eyes of a lover reflecting the absolute beauty of Oneness.

To be this willing is to arise and move in the world of time as a manifestation of love in action. "I will arise and go now," requires intention and commitment. In my article "7 Ways to a Wonderful Life," intention and commitment equate with purpose and passion. This willingness is not to be confused with wilfulness, which I liken to pushing the river. What is required is what is a more feminine approach. It is the approach where you allow the dance of Creation to do you rather than you ‘doing’ it. For all our doing we have got ourselves and the planet in the proverbial ‘do-do.

You are a human ‘being.’ The word human translates as ‘the sound of being in form.’ This sound is the sound of Love. You can learn to hear it but to begin to hear it you have to also begin to trust it and allow it to do its creative work through you.

In so allowing you will arise and go into the eternal now and out of this direct experience there is the knowing of the timeless radiance you are. You arrive on the shore beyond the night and day of your life and stand on the solid ground of the shore beyond time.

To find out more about how to arise and go now register you interest in our Deep Heart’s Core Workshop, which includes singing, ‘around the fire’ storytelling, drumming, dancing and community contact

Tony Cuckson
storyteller@tonycuckson.com

or

Debbie Beirne at
ruachrhythms@gmail

Blessed are the Peacemakers

It is Sunday morning and this cottage is filled with a deep stillness for which I feel deeply blessed. I sit with pen in hand relaxing on the sette looking out at what are called the Iron mountains where it is told that the beautiful people, the Tuatha de Danaan first arrived in what would be called the land of Erin.

This week peace activists are getting shot by others who would protect what they consider to be their homeland from those they see as terrorists in the guise of peace makers.

I would that I, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, “be an instrument of thy peace. The problem being that this I, this little me, am the very resistance to that harmony and instrumentation

I would that I become a peace activist but in so many ways the more I wish for this peace the more reactionary I become. In the greatest of mystical texts I am told that peacemakers will inherit the earth. This inheritance is not of the earth as something that I get but as the realisation of love in matter, love as mother, love as mother earth.

This prospective peacemaker knows (I have no intention of being arrogant in this respect) that most peace activists do not know and thus cannot live peace. Peace in the way I mean it here is not simply the absence of conflict but is a state of being that lives from the direct experience of Oneness.

The state of our world is the reflection of our collective inner relationship to life as we think it is to be lived. The primary conflict that contributes to this non-peace is the sense that we are individually separate. In this respect we are each and every one of us fundamentalists. The idea of separateness, living in a body in time and space is the idea of someone living in terror of non-existence. We ignore this aspect of life and thus we live in ignorance. We live in labels and concepts and false identification with nation state, with political affiliation, with race and any other label you care to name.

To be a peacemaker or rather a peace creator one needs to directly experience that peace that is beyond the dual nature of human existence. In each and every moment each and every one of us eats of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Peace begins to start dropping slow when we learn to sustain ourselves from the Tree of Life.

This is radical peace activism. It at least understands the nature of duality and the process of activity and reactivity. It understands the law of cause and effect. It understands the nature of time and the nature of miracle – an event outside of time. Thus one becomes and instrument of peace as a radiant emptiness out of which radical Love in action arises. This does not change circumstances alone but changes ones relationship to ones brother. One recognises sacred unity at the heart of creation and thus one’s brother is not a separate being but a note played within the eternal.

I am a rather poor peace activist. I wish to be an instrument of peace but the notes I play are not in harmony with the universal song. I know when they are and I know that with intention this harmony radiates out beyond the limitation of time and space and impacts those who are open to receiving this unconditional harmonic.

It is the same effect that meditators have on crime in major cities when they raise the group consciousness of the collective. It is called morphic resonance. You begin to resonate peace without judgement and simply become a sound wave that invites other sound waves to resonate with it. It is the really great way of feeling attractive.

You can do this every day as a peace activist. This way you begin to clean up your internal oil spill that you project out into the world unto the other. You begin to expand borders, you begin to sense the peace that passeth beyond the duality of good and bad. You become you own little flotilla of infinite possibility.
Some will say that I have not lifted a hand to help those in need. However, without a mind in harmony with the Source action is often simply reaction and not the movement of Love in action. Peace activism is much needed. It is to be much respected. Radical peace activism is the deeper awareness of what creates disharmony in the first place – the primary sense of individuality and separateness from existence.

So I invite the willingness to become an instrument of thy peace and leave the plan of action to that still small voice within. Then I surrender my need to make it all alright. Behind the veil of separateness that is the major cause of brother fighting brother there is the deeper primacy of life as Oneness. This Oneness was never born and never dies. It creates for the joy of creation. To live in this primacy of Oneness is to be an instrument of they peace and to live as Love in action.

This is the vision of this peace activist who would be willing to be an instrument of thy peace.

Rhythms of the Earth Celebration

Rùach Rhythms presents

"Rhythms of the Earth.

Celebration of Duir Oak wisdom"

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven" - Rabindranath Tagore

The oak speaks to us of strength. It invites us to feel grounded and celebrate our connection to the earth. We can then take this strength and sense of being connected into our day to day living. In this way we can spread our arms wide and connect earth and sky.

The oak is long lived and invites us to remember the beauty of our timeless nature and our connection to the state that we in Ireland refer to as the Land of the Forever Young.

Come and enjoy the celebratory experience of drumming within a circle of people trusting the inner wisdom that gives them strength of direction. Included with this experience you will enjoy the following:-

Storytelling around the fire that connects you of the wisdom that is within you.
A sense of fun and celebration of the rhythm of your life.
Singing in a circle and around the fire that reminds you that life wants to sing through you.
A real sense of community, hospitality and support.
This weekend workshop allows you to take time out and celebrate your innate wisdom.

TIME and PLACE

Start Time: Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 6:30pm End Time: Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 11.00 am

 Location is the Benwisken Centre near Sligo. Dormitory accommodation and vegetarian meals will be provided. Drums will be provided.

COST

Cost including vegetarian food and dorm accommodation is €160.00. Concession is €120.00 on a sliding scale of ability to pay.Booking contact

Debbie on 087 6326610 or 094 9860495

or email

ruachrhythms@gmail.com
With Blessings

Prayer for Overcoming Indifference

I watch the news, God. I observe it from a comfortable distance. I see people suffering, and I don't lift a finger to help them. I condemn injustice but I do nothing to fight against it. I am pained by the faces of starving children, but I am not moved enough to try to save them. I step over homeless people in the street, I walk past outstretched hands, I avert my eyes, I close my heart.

Forgive me, God, for remaining aloof while others are in need of my assistance.

Wake me up, God; ignite my passion, fill me with outrage. Remind me that I am responsible for Your world. Don't allow me to stand idly by. Inspire me to act. Teach me to believe that I can repair some corner of this world.

When I despair, fill me with hope. When I doubt my strength, fill me with faith. When I am weary, renew my spirit. When I lose direction, show me the way back to meaning, back to compassion, back to You. Amen.

?Rabbi Naomi Levy