Spiritual Direction from a Beatle

"I look at you all see the love there
that's sleeping while my guitar gently weeps.
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps."


George Harrison

In Corrogue I am on song.

This morning the mist hangs low in the far of fields. The landscape seems schroded in mystery. It is always new. It is always fresh to the eye that is accepting of it as it is. I want to go capture this mystery. It is how I imagine the threshold of Tir Na Nog would appear. I want to go and cross this threshold into the land of the ever young. This is the land of the ever-present moment.

All this week I have been singing.

This week I have been dancing as well. This dancing is a great technique for allowing one to get out of one’s head and into the body. This is recreation. At this “place of the briars” there is no one to be disturbed. Even the sheep dance and the cows look up from their feeding. I turn up the volume on the tape deck and play Annie Lennox singing “Why.” This is a great song with a great question. It is a question about the failure of love.

This week I have had to walk into Dowra village one and one quarter miles from this cottage. When I am walking I have been accompanied by George Harrison’s beautiful song “While my guitar gently weeps.” I love this song. It is, for me, a song of deep compassion. It is the song of a seer. It is a song written and sung by one of great sensitivity. This is a real soul song. It is not a sentimental love song. It cuts to the heart of love.

In this song George Harrison tells us “I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping.” This is beautiful. To be able to see and know that in each and everyone of us “love sleeps.” This is a great knowing. For some this love is sleeping deeply. It sleeps because to often it has been wounded. It has not been welcomed.

To often love and the expression of love has become associated with pain. Better then to sleep without the need for this experience we call "love." Better not to venture into this place where the heart is vulnerable. So we choose not to risk all for love. We live outside our essence. Maybe we can settle for a little satisfaction. Let us not, however, venture into the vulnerability of grace and joy.

George Harrison sees “the love there that’s sleeping.” A soul friend sees the “love there that’s sleeping.” A soul friend laments this sleep. While love lies sleeping “a guitar gently weeps.” This is the gentleness of compassion. The word "lament” comes from the words meaning, “to care.”

This wonderful and wonder filled man plays a lament for the distance we are separate from love. What else to do? One has to lament. One has to enter a heart of vulnerability that says, “I care.” More than this one has to enter the “will to care.” One has to have courage to be this vulnerable.

When you are this vulnerable you discover you are the love that is always awake. It was only waiting for you to look through the eyes of the heart. You awake from the sleep of the ego. Until this time you are living in the dead of the past. You are never graced the entry into the only time you are alive. This is the here and now. This is the place of presence.

George Harrison gives you a great help to come awake to the love that sleeps within.

He sings, “I look at the floor and see it needs sweeping, still my guitar gently weeps.” This is a great line. This is a Zen poem. It comes from a heart still weeping through his guitar. George Harrison and his guitar are not separate. They are one body. They have come to be at-one-ment. This guitar is a part of who he is. The voice of the Divine moves through him and his body. Then as he says “My guitar gently weeps.” This is a holy instrument. This is a holy weeping. It is a lamenting for the unity of oneness with “all that is.”

We are so often missing from life. We are too busy doing “our life.”

We do not see what is needed in any moment. We do now know how to look. We look at the floor and we might judge. We would judge that the floor is dirty. We might think how little time we have to sweep the floor. We might think how our partner and our children are slobs. We might think how the colour of the floor has faded and maybe it is time to think about new kitchen tiles.

As for myself, when sweeping the floor, I might lament, “All those bloody dog hairs.”

Then those, whose love never lies sleeping, go quiet. Our two dogs go and slink into a safe place. This is a place where the mad sweeping man might not find them. Sometimes the little dog will simply stand there and look. She becomes my little Zen master. I am her student. She reminds me that I am shouting. She reminds me that I should practice what I sometimes preach. She tells me, “Tony, the floor. That is all. Love in action. Just chill.”

Sweeping the floor with judgement is our norm. This is our mind. This is my mind. This is who we think we are. We get so little experience of the real love that lies beyond sleeping. We go to various religious authorities. More than anywhere else the sleep there is often so deep they begin to have dreams that seem real. There you are encouraged to enter the sleep of belief. There you are told you are not even worthy to be standing on the floor.

Learn to look. Learn to just see.

The floor needs sweeping. That is all. This is love in action. Out of an awakened heart action moves. It is transformative. It is accepting. Energy flows feely. There is no attachment to results. Just sweep the floor. Just allow compassion to arise. We have lost faith in our passion and our experience of the flow of compassion. Let your heart lament the absence of presence.

Share your love and while you are at it drop the idea that it is “your love.” Wake up for a moment and feel the love sleeping in your soul. You are this. You are the love that is sleeping. It is the flow of life moving through you. Love is not separate from you and will never be separate from you.

What needs sweeping is the dust of the mind.

It needs sweeping of all its attachments to all that it clings to. It clings to the past and is forever thinking about the future. All this “thinking about” crushes the heart. The heart is not felt. It is not trusted simply to be. You lose heart. You lose the ability to sweep the floor. You lose the ability to lament the loss of your birthright. You do not weep for the loss of soul. You do not weep for the loss of joy and the non-entry of grace. You forget how to lament.

When you hear a song running through your head stop and listen.

It is often speaking to what is termed “your condition. Allow this song space. Allow it some unconditional love. Then you might wake up to the love “there that’s sleeping.” You might wake up to see the floor just as it is.

This will be enough

The Radiance of Fitness - Are You Fit for Love

This article invites you to the place where you are the reflection of beauty and grace in form. It takes as part of its invitation the story of the ugly duckling whose nature is that of a swan. The swan metaphor in fairy stories represents the awakened soul full of beauty and grace. This article reminds you the Anam Cara who is a friend of the soul invites you to remember that you are naturally grace filled and beautiful. (The meaning of Anam Cara is Soul Friend ? Anam means Soul ? Cara means Friend. The writer defines soul in this way

Source
Of
Unlimited
Love


Many people subscribe to a fitness regime. They work out. They go to the gym. They do aerobics, yoga or some other body exercise in order to keep fit. For many people the primary focus of a fitness regime is the development of the body beautiful. Often this masks the unconscious judgement of themselves as somehow ugly.

This writer and storyteller works out in the garden. It is a natural way of working out. Doing physical work is healthy and its primary function is to ground you in the body. This allows you to feel the body beautiful not as something to simply be admired but as an instrument through which creation can freely flow and express as beauty in form.

You might be someone who follows a fitness program of some kind but have you ever asked the question, ?What am I fit for?? This is a powerful question for the Quest I On. It is the sort of question an Anam Cara will invite you into. They will ask, ?Are you fit for the purpose you are intended?? These are great spiritual direction questions.

There is no judgement of you intended here. Only the invitation to the grace and beauty of who you are. These questions are invitations to see the reflection that many of us avoid. Secretly there is often part of us still attached to the ugly duckling and refuse to even imagine that we are metaphorically swans full of grace and beauty.

An Anam Cara will tell you that while it is important to care for the body there are other bodies that if not cared for and tended with grace and tenderness adversely impact the physical dimension. These bodies are the mental and emotional bodies.
These bodies are more subtle than the physical body. They are more refined and careful attention to them allows you to feel fine.

Your body mind and soul are meant for a purpose. The Anam Cara will tell you that the primary purpose of your being in form is to be in service to the power of Love. They will ask you a rather intimate question. This is the question, ?Are you fit to be a Lover.? No one is ever asked this question and very few ever ask it of themselves.

Of course any question asked by an Anamcara has two answers. Like the storytellers of old they are spinners of magical tales and riddles. These riddles are for one purpose. They are like Zen Koans in that they are designed to take you out of the ivory tower of the intellect where you keep beauty asleep for one hundred years and more. The Anamcara is a paradox. They are of two worlds. The world of time and the world of the Timeless.

The answer to the question, ?Are you fit to be a Lover?? is ?Yes you are and no you are not.? Why is this answer as it is? You are always fit to be a Lover of the Beloved because you are created in the image of Love. Nothing you do or do not do changes this primacy. No you are not fit to be a Love because you have forgotten who you are. You have become not who you truly are but a begger.

What keeps you unfit for Love.

It is a mind that you allow to control you and use you for its purpose which is the purpose of your ego, you separate sense of self. It uses you for its purpose of limitation which is to say that it uses you for every purpose other than Love. You are unfit to be a Lover because you allow your emotional life to run away with the peace at the heart of who you are.

Again it is very important to be reminded that this is not a judgement of you. If it were a judgement then there would be no invitation to grace. The darkness of separateness is not made light through judging but through awareness. An Anam Cara is a Lover in the service of Love. They know there is no grater reward although one does not get to be a Lover of the Beloved as a reward. You do not get what you already are. You simply get to give up the illusion that you are something other than Love. You get to give up the ugly ducking illusion for the knowing of the beauty and grace that you are.

Fitness of mind for the purpose requires the practice of quieting the mind through meditation and/or comtemplative prayer. This is not the prayer that askes that you win the lottery. This is not prayer in the service of Love. Prayer arises out of the beauty of knowing how graced you are to be a swan. Prayer serves the highest good of all and offers itself up in service to the Beloved. It is not a public act but an action that takes place in the silence of the heart.

In becoming fit to be a Lover there are lots of things you have to lose. You have to lose the weight of doubt. You have to lose the weight of thinking about. You have to slim down living in the past or the future. When you become light weight you become empty. This is the paradox of spiritual development. You gain everything by becoming as nothing. In becoming nothing you become as no thing. In becoming no thing the everything that is Love pours into you in celebration.

As a lightweight Lover you get to fly to those placeless places beyond your imagination. There is no more begging in the world of form for something that you think is outside of who you are. You free the mind of its unfitness for the purpose of Love. You become as no mind which is the One Mind. This is the bridal chamber that the Master Jesus invites you into. There you become fir for the purpos of Love and are raptured by the Beloved. The two become One.

An Anam Cara invites you to become fit for the purpose you are intended. Keep the body fit, keep the mind fit, keep the emotions in free flow and you will become a willing offering to the radiance of Love. An Anam Cara will tell you that you have nothing to lose except the illusions of grandeur that are not real. You are invited to give up the ugly duckling image that is only part of the process toward reflecting the swan of grace and beauty within.

An Anam Cara will tell you that you as the duckling are yet unfit to know who you are but that this knowing is inherent in you. You will not, however, realise it living in the famyard where everyone elese tells you that grace and beauty are not who you are. You have to leave the farmyard and take the journey into Love. This is the invitation to beyond what you think you know and who you think you are.

The inviation for this week is the invitation to commit to fitness for purpose. You are here to reflect the image of Love that crated you. You need no thing more than to live from the heart of this knowing. People will never again see you as other than the natural invitation to grace that is inherent in your being. This is your real inheriatance. This is the inheritance that your soul friend knows and invites you to claim. Let this be your invitation.

Let the real purpose of your life be the invitation to be willing to serve the purpose of Love. Let Love use you for its own purps and your swan nature will be revealed to you.

THE ANAM CARA EXPERIENCE INVITATION

Why not learn more about the way of transformation into the beauty at the heart of who you are. Why not journey into the Anam Cara Experience. This is by what of learning designed to ensrue ath you do not improve yourself in any way. This is a way of learning that invites the ugly ducking into the swan grace of self acceptance.

This invitation comes by way of the following:-


How to leave behind the farm yard with its critic?s voices with all its judgements and tyranny and come to the place of the swan lake.
?
Discover the real power inherent in prayer and meditation that will take you nowhere but get you everywhere.

Relax into a real do it yourself course for those who are tired of doing all the time and missing the time of their lives.

Learn the only second language that you need to take you into the hearts journey where you will discover the way homeward.

Find out how unwanted circumstances in your life situation can become the path to the lake of true reflection.

A Town Called Paradise

?Let me take you
down to a town
called Paradise.?

Van Morrison
?No Guru, No Teacher, No Method.?


Many mornings during the week I take the highroad. This is the high road between the village of Glenfarne and the village of Rossinver in Co. Leitrim. This is a high road that winds and bends over the mountain. Early in the year I drive slowly. On this road I am going on what Van Morrison calls a long long drive.

I am going on a drive to a town called ?paradise.? This town is the central town in a place of eternity. In Ireland this place is called ?Tir Na Nog.? ?Tir Na Nog? is not a physical place but a state of being. It is a state of awareness. This is the mythological place where people are always beautiful and never age. This is a soul place. This is the place an Anam Cara will invite you to come to and belong.

Many of my readers know that Van Morrison the Irish singer/songwriter is an inspiration to me.

On the high road to Rossinver, while avoiding migrating frogs, I play his album, ?No Teacher, No Guru, No Method.? It is on this album that the song ?A town called Paradise? is heard. I love playing this song loud. There is no other traffic on this high road except for the odd tractor that travels slow and sure.

This song for me is about my relationship to the Beloved.

This is the central relationship that an Anam Cara commits to. It is the moment to moment awareness of ?what is.? It is the seeking to know the joy of paradise at deeper and deeper levels of awareness. This is the work of surrender to the ?timeless now."

Most of us driving our car are totally unaware.

We enter the vehicle, switch on the engine, and engage gears without very much awareness of what we are doing. We arrive at our destination without any awareness of the journey in between. This car journey is a mirror of the longer journey we call ?our life.?

When we are alone in our car we have a great opportunity.

We have the opportunity to be alone and aware. We can choose to be totally present to our minds, body and emotions. We can choose not to be distracted by music or talk radio. We can equally choose to play music that lifts the heart and that we consciously listen too. We can buy tapes and CD`s that life and inspire the soul.

Each time we enter the car we can make a commitment to be aware.

Feel yourself sitting on the seat. Feel your hands on the steering wheel. Listen to the sound of the engine. Say, Thank you,? to this vehicle that allows you to arrive at the place of your choosing. Remember to be aware of your breathing. Breathe deep into your belly and keep it soft. When you arrive you will feel focused and relaxed.

Stop ?thinking about? anywhere else other than this moment.

This moment is the town called ?paradise.? This moment is forever. In this moment, entered without judgment or compassion, there is beauty. You become as the people of ?Tir Na Nog.? You become eternal and filled with beauty.

To begin with you will look for this experience of beauty.

You will wish to grab at the experience of the eternal. In the beginning your ego wants this beauty and this experience for itself. It can only imagine the credos it will receive once it has such a prize. The problem (if it is a problem) is to know that you are this beauty and this eternity. Your ego wants it but cannot really accept the possibility of such wonder. It has to disappear in order that the wonder can be.

As Marianne Williamson has reminded us in her beautiful book ?Return to Love,? we are afraid of our magnificence. We are afraid of our light and not our darkness. We have lost our paradise. We have lost the paradise of being here now.

On the high road between Glenfarne and Rossinver I am practicing entry into paradise. This is a knack. It arrives. It does not arrive. When it is there I know. When it is not there I know. I focus and wait, knowing that infinite patience brings instant results.

Why not take a trip to this town called ?Paradise," where you can be free. You can learn to be free of care, of worry, of going anywhere or having to be anyone other than the delight you are.

When travelling on any journey make it a journey of focused awareness.

Become present to the moment. This is the real and only time of your life. Become the presence of the Beloved. Become the perfume of love in action. This perfume is timeless and beautiful beyond any measure your mind can ?think about.?

One glimpse of ?Tir Na Nog? and you will know that a real holiday is. It is beyond re-creation. It is you being aware of creation itself in the timeless beauty of forever loving now.

This is what an Anam Cara reminds you off.

They remind you that you are forever enough. They remind you that the Blessing is already here. They remind you that you are this blessing. Going nowhere, the river flows and the grass grows by itself. Come on down to ?paradise" where you are free to be all you ever imagined and more.

The Moonchild and the Sacred Contract

It?s a marvellous
Night for a moon dance.

Van Morrison ? Moondance


Before a fire that burns no wood sits an old hawkeyed seanachie. Around his feet lie hungry ghosts. They have come to hear a story. A story of shadow and light that might break their chains of memory and free them to be the dance they have come here to be. So when the deep silence of sanctuary fills this place at the edge of nowhere the storyteller begins to tell a tale of wonder.


In a soft voice of invitation to the powers beyond time he begins.


Once upon a time not so very long ago there lived a King and Queen of the Vale of Flowers. They each had a secret that was never said. This was the secret of the Sacred Contract. This contract was written in blood and renewed every seven days.

Every seven days the Sacred Contract was placed on the age-old table with its scars and scratches of longing and wounding. Each week the Queen was made to sign with her life?s blood. When the contract was signed the King left the room. It was then, and only then, in the secret place of her heart that the Queen of the Vale of Flowers sat down and wept.

Unknown to the King and Queen of the Vale of Flowers there was a witness to this seven-day renewal of the Sacred Contract. It was their daughter. It was the daughter to whom they gave the beautiful name Unity. This child was, as all children are, curious.

One day - it always happens on that one day - curiosity got the better of Unity. They say that curiosity killed the cat. Unity wasn?t killed though. However, reading the Sacred Contract made her blind. What was in the Sacred Contract was read only once and was never read again. Not only was she made blind all reference to the Sacred Contract was erased from her memory. All that was left within the heart of Unity was a hungry ghost without a name.

One day the Prince of Trumpeting, who was called Bottom, came and swept the blind girl off her feet. He and Unity were married only they did not quite live happily ever after. This might have been sad except for one thing. Unity gave birth to a golden child and they called her Moondancer.

She was the fairest of children and for a time Unity and the Prince of Trumpeting loved this beautiful Moondancer. This love might have been all the light that the moonchild needed except for one thing. The ghost without a name came to haunt the memory of Unity and her blindness deepened and darkened.

On nights when the moon was full the moonchild would dance. How she would dance. The dance and the moonchild were one. In this dance there were no steps in time. The moon and the child of the moon were taken on a magic swirling trip of delight. The delight was from the light of the moon that loved this child forever beyond ghosts and secrets unsaid.

The ritual of the Sacred Contract was enacted every seven days until the dying day of the King and Queen of the Vale of Flowers. Then it was fed into the heart of Unity who signed it with her own life?s blood and vowed to keep the secret that was never to be said. So the Sacred Contract bled into the life of Moondancer. It is said it still bleeds into her life. Such is the power of the Sacred Contract to live beyond time.

Is there any hope for this beautiful dance of the moon? Those who have met with the secret unsaid tell that there is a journey to be taken. This is a journey to a nowhere place. There, at this nowhere place, is the nowhere man. He is the one that tells of secrets unsaid. It is told that he is burned beyond recognition. He, they say, is a holy fool and laughs at nothing.

It is said that once he too was made blind by the Sacred Contract but has now become a Seer of Secrets. This seer of beyond will tell you that the dance is never lost. It is only forgotten.

This nowhere man tells all hungry ghosts they are moon dancers who have forgotten who they are. There are those who dance other ocean love songs. They live at threshold places of wonder guarded by the Eye of the Hawk. Theirs is a different way of seeing. Theirs is lifeblood no longer poisoned by secrets unsaid.

?Remember this,? this nowhere man will tell you. ?It?s always a marvellous night for a moondance. Do you remember? Will you remember? Will you come dancing the dance you have come here to be? This is the promise beyond those secrets unsaid. Will you come to the dance??


In that place where the fire burns no wood you can hear the chains of memory being loosened. You can watch within that sanctuary of silence as hungry ghosts feed from the light of the moon and go dancing. One sings an old Irish rock anthem.

It?s a marvellous night for a moon dance.

The old seanachie sits back on his stool while watching hungry ghosts feed from the light. He thinks about the moonchild born of Unity and the Prince of Trumpeting. His memory goes back to the Vale of Flowers. Strange to say, but he never found it to be a Vale of Flowers at all.

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.

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.

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