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!

Spiritual Direction - Let the Force be With You

The writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell is famous for many things. One thing is that he coined the phrase "Follow your Bliss."

In order to follow your bliss there are a number of prerequisites you need to follow in order to allow you to do this. You have to make it your intention, you have to be attentive, you have to be committed and you have to take action.

The first step is to be clear about your intention - your inner tending to and your inner tenderness. To follow your bliss takes courage. Look around you. Do you see a world were people are following their bliss. They are mostly following the herd. To follow your bliss means you become an outsider and individual.

To follow your bliss is often anything but blissful. It is often very challenging. It means you will be called upon to make choices that in some ways make you feel very divided. This is why following your bliss is often called The Hero`s journey.

To follow your bliss requires that you trust your own unique guidance system and you build on trusting this guidance system. You have, like many people had this guidance system misused and you have been told that it is not to be trusted. This guidance system is your feelings. To put it simply. If you get a feeling of inspiration follow it. Take action.

When inspiration arises do not over analysis it. Do not spend your time working it out to the last detail. Trust it even if it doesn?t make any sense. Have faith in it even if it doesn?t work out the way you think it should. This is probably because you think it should work out in a particular way and not the way Love intended that it manifest in your life.

Do not judge the result. Be discriminating. The result is the result. The more important aspect of the process is that you practice faith in feeling inspired and feeling the inspiration. It will return and it will be more directed the next time. Faith builds on faith not simply results.

This is what it means when Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movie is told by his wisdom teacher, "Let the force be with you." This isn't any mysterious force outside you. It is your connection to your felt sense of spirit - your spiritual direction - your inspired direction. Your intention, attention, commitment and practice is simply to trust this feeling force of inspiration and follow it.

You are living in a culture that demands instant results. It is a culture in many ways that offers you little of true worth other than some material trinkets. To follow your bliss you have to become an artist. You practice the art of following your bliss. This means that you commit to learning to feel from your Deep Hearts Core. For more on learning to follow your bliss download some inspirational direction from The Deep Hearts Core Podcast by clicking on any of the links in these last two sentences.

Celtic Spiritual Direction - The Radiance of Finding

The Ready to Radiate Course is finished. The most difficult and challenging aspect for this writer is the structuring of the course so that it flows. So that you know I haven?t forgotten you I am touching base with you in this article entitled "The Radiance of Finding."

This article is written to remind you of what you will find once you move through the various stages of soul growth. These stages are not necessarily linear. They are described in many different ways in many different times and in many different cultural contexts. These stages are Universal but they differ because we as individuals are unique. We are like the snowflake. Each snowflake has seven aspects that apply to all snowflakes but each snowflake is different.

In accepting the invitation to be an Anam Cara that is the invitation to soul friendship you undertake to become a bridge.

You bridge the connection between that which you are in time and form with that which you are beyond time and beyond form. In order to develop this bridge we have in the Ready to Radiate course been invited to delve into poetry at a mystical level. At the beginning of this Ready to Radiate experience we looked at the poem written by W. B Yeats entitled The Song of Wandering Aengus.

In this poem you may recall there is the experience of the call of the soul. This is represented in the following lines.

a glimmering girl with
apple blossom in her hair
who called me by my name
and ran and faded through the
brightening air.

When the call first comes it tends to be unsettling or glorious and is often a combination of both. One thing that happens is that you find you cannot hold unto the beauty that fades through the brightening air. This is why the Anam Cara Experience is written. It is in order that you learn how to engage with beauty so that beauty becomes you and that you become more and more available to that which is the beauty within you.

Beauty as all wisdom teachers affirm becomes YOU.

It is a perfume of who you are. It is part and not apart from the image of you as the image of the Beloved. You are simply ignorant of this grace. This is not intellectual ignorance but ignorance in the way that one sees the world as separate. Ignorance is at the heart of most suffering. You ignore the radiance of the creation that you are and you suffer. This beauty that is calling to flow through you fades through the brightening air of spiritual understanding because your agenda is other than Love.

Did W.B.Yeats, writing as Aengus, ever find the glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair?

This writer thinks he did. You to can learn to be with the representation of beauty that flows through your being. It doesn't have to be a symbol of a glimmering girl. It is more important that you connect to a symbol that resonates with you and that you learn to express as a radiance of who you are. This symbol will change and it will change you, as you are willing to allow it to enter deep into your heart.

Let W. B. Yeats speak about how one feels when you allow the beauty that soul friendship expresses through you.

Vacillation (IV)


My fiftieth year has come and gone.
I sat, a solitary man
In a crowded London shop
An open book and an empty cup
On marble table top.


While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed so great my happiness
That I was blessed and could bless.

Each and every line of this reflection is pregnant with meaning.

Here there is no wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands. Here there is no searching to find where beauty has gone as Aengus does. The body is a sudden blazed. This is the radiance of connection to the soul. It doesn't come about through thinking about. It doesn't come about through emotional attachment to the mask of personality. It comes when the body is allowed to be in flow.

Mary Oliver expresses this beautifully when she says

You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves.


From Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver


W.B. Yeats writes

At certain moments, always unforeseen, I become happy.. I look at the strangers near as if I had known them all my life.. everything fills me with affection..... It may be an hour before the mood passes, but lately I seem to understand that I enter upon it the moment I cease to hate.

These moments of unforeseen connection are the radiance of soul friendship. They are the stuff of the Anam Cara experience. They come unannounced. They are grace moments of expanded awareness of who you are. They not only heal you in the sense that you feel blessed but you heal others simply by being available to such grace moments.

W.B Yeats writes

My fiftieth year has come and gone.

You don?t have to wait until you are fifty although this is an age when matters of spiritual direction tend to call more and more. The work of soul friendship is to learn to be available to these moments as they flow. This openness to being available is represented by the line

An open book and an empty cup.

This is an open mind and an open body available for those grace moment to flow. This is presence. This is the flow of Love through form. You are blessed. No more chasing rainbows. You and the one who calls you by your name are no longer separate. You have come full circle and returned home.

In those moment emptiness is power. The open book is the state of no mind available to the One Mind. The empty cup is the state described by the Master Jesus in the first beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are they who are poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Certainly these grace moments are not available if your heart is filled with hatred or any other emotional state linked to feelings of separateness. These emotional states are the lead that the Anam Cara learns to turn into gold. This is the real work of soul friendship. This is inner work. This is responsible work and is healing work. In the Islamic tradition it is called Jihad. It is the work of consciousness rising which paradoxically you do by simply getting grounded in trust and letting go.

You do not find these grace moments away from the body. This is why the poet says

My body of a sudden blazed out.

This is why Mary Oliver says

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves

This is trust in the body as a vehicle for the flow of the Divine. It is trust in the flow of feelings; trust in the flow of thought without attachment to thoughts as being who you are. This is trust and letting go and letting real happiness beyond conditionality arrive unforeseen.

Let me leave you with a poem that will remind you to allow the grace note that you are to play through you.

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
Translated by Coleman Barks.

Blessings until we resonate with each other again.

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" (Corrogue) 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 and goes to what W B Yeats referred to as "The Deep Hearts Core."

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.

Finding Real Confidence - Locating the Pool of Wisdom

Tom Cowan writing in ?Yearning for the Wind? writes

?When the beautiful people known as the Tuatha de Danaan learned that another race of humans was about to invade Ireland their seers decided to hide the pool of wisdom. They removed it from ordinary reality so that morals could not find the water and misuse its power.?

This story is not just part of an old Irish story. It is your story and my story. This pool of wisdom is available to each and everyone of us. It is, however, extremely powerful. Most everyone who comes to drink of this pool of grace is transformed by it. It is hidden but there is the promise that those who seek shall find.

Only as one off the world?s greatest drinkers of this pool of wisdom says, ?First you will be troubled, then you will be amazed.? You will be troubled because you will call this wisdom your own and you will, as most everyone does, use it to serve your self-interest. This is what this Irish mystic storyteller has done and in some little way is learning to undo.

When you drink of this wellspring of infinite knowing you will be given what you ask for. You will misuse it. It is a wishing well that you are intended to use for wishing well and not simply for getting everything that you wish for. In such focus of self-interest you will be setting yourself up for trouble. This isn?t a punishment but the universe does not give such power to those who would rush in where angels fear to tread.

You will through the self-serving of the ego lose contact with this wisdom pool that is at your deep harts core. This is the troubling stage. It can last a long time. The wisdom is really cultivated by the work of integrating the understanding that arose from within the depth of your deep hearts core. This is a humbling experience. You come back down to earth with a bump.

The wisdom pool is not a pool that is a bank of knowledge that you acquire. The wisdom poll isn?t like a skills bank. It is a pool of paradox, of riddle or parable and of story. It is a pool that dispels ignorance. It takes you out of the spell you are under when you identify experience with the separate sense of self you call me, myself, I.

The wisdom pool is not a pool of know how. It doesn?t tell you what you should do in this or that circumstance. It is a way of knowing that is free of concepts of time and end results. It isn?t within the realm of thinking about. Thought is not wisdom. Wisdom arises downstream of thought from the silence and majesty of no mind. No mind does not mean absence of a sense of being but the awareness of the vastness of being. Thought is conceptual. Wisdom is boundless.

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 Magic Swirling Ship of Irish Mythology

Take me for a trip upon
Your magic swirling ship

Bob Dylan ? Mr. Tambourine Man

Most of us are on a trip. The question is, ?Is this trip taking me anywhere?? There is a paradox to the answer. If you think it is then you are not on a trip that is magical and will make your head swirl.

We need to have our heads swirl. Heads can be so full of knowledge that there is no room for the new. In our heads that have bee taken over from the ?swirling ship? of the heart resides the inner critic, the doubter and various related members of the ?playing small? family devoid of magic or mystery.

Irish mythology, which is a language of magic and mystery, can become a magic swirling ship. This is not just a trip into some historical time and place but the invitation to real magic. This is the invitation to the Timeless ? the NOW.

The Mr. Tambourine Man can play a song for you but you will be in a whirl. This is because all Tambourine Men (which also includes women) will play you YOUR song. You will tell them that this song is just too beautiful for words. They will then ask you, ?Why aren?t you playing this song.?

The Tambourine Man will then disappear and this song will haunt you until you meet again. Only this time you will be attuned to your unique time. The one that you came here to sing. The one that will take you as a magic swirling ship going in the true direction.

The Fire that Takes no Wood

I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head

W.B. Yeats ? The Song of Wandering Aengus

These lines open Yeats? great poem of the hero?s journey. This going to the hazel wood is undertaken by the outsider. This is the outsider who longs for the source of magic and miracle within.

The hazel wood is a place of sanctuary. It is a place of initiation. You are invited to be an initiate of the threshold places of the heart. This often takes you into a dark wood.

The fire in the head is a creative longing. It is the longing to be. To be is to be creative. You cannot not be creative, but you are given the choice in how you will express this creative fire that burns within you.

Many of us have lost the ability to feel the fire that burns within us to express love in action. We may lose it through grief or disappointment or listening to our internal critic rather than the voice of purpose and wisdom within.

Our fire has become the fire of ?doing? our life, where we get burnt out. It is a limited fire that consumes itself. We do not tend at the fire that needs no wood. We have forgotten what it is to sit and feel or creative, to be enveloped in its invisible embrace that warms the heart.

Through spiritual direction and soul friendship you can learn to tend the fire that needs no wood. The fire in your head is the natural call to creative expression as love in action. It never goes out. Except that most of us forget that this every creative potential is available to us if we enter the Deep Hearts Core.

This Irish Mystic Storyteller has a longing. It is the longing to share the invitation to the beauty at the deep hearts core. This is why I have recorded a weekly podcast that is given that name. The Deep Hearts core is the last line from W. B. Yeats? poem entitled The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

In the Deep Hearts Core Podcast this Irish Mystic Storyteller unfolds the invitation, not only from the poetry of W. B. Yeats, but from Irish mythology, Irish folk song and modern day song lyrics. This is an invitation for you to learn to allow your personal song of beauty to be sounded within the world and delight not only you but also others who see you living it.

So if you want a weekly input of inspired invitation to the beauty of who you are simply go to the following link and download the podcasts that interest you or sign up for a regular free subscription.

http://www.anamcaraexperience.org/podcast.html

And Peace Comes Dropping Slow - Remembering 9/11

Today is 11th Sept. It is a day of remembrance for people all over the world. For most people it is a day of sorrow and for others a day of celebration.

On this day I like to share a vision of what could be. Sometimes I write this and sometimes I take the writings of others. One writer I love is an American woman called Ganngaji - born Toni Roberson who grew up in Mississippi. Here is an extract from "Choosing Peace" from "A Diamond in Your Pocket - Discovering your True Radiance."

"Unless all of us take the responsibility for our own inner peace, the wars will continue. We cannot wait any longer for someone else to change. We cannot wait for someone else to forgive us so that we can forgive them. We cannot wait for someone else to say they are sorry. Peace cannot be postponed.

Recognize that to whatever degree the war is going on in your own mind, it is based on one thing: the firm belief that you are a separate entity, separate from your parents, your children, your lover, your enemy.

All wars are based upon the ignorance of our true nature and the illusion of separation. When you firmly believe that you are separate from totality, separate from peace, separate from love, you protect yourself. That protection takes many forms involving personal and territorial identification. The horror is that if what you are protecting is the thought of who you are, it does not, in reality, even exist. It is only a thought, and whenever a thought is honestly investigated, it is found to have no inherent reality. Yet this thought of who you are has immeasurable power, because it becomes the filter of all experiences of reality.

As a consious human being, you have the opportunity to discover that never, not even for an instant, is it possible to be separate from Love, from the source of everything, from God. Once you discover this directly, you then brodcast it with every breath you take. Whether you speak of this discovery or you never speak again, you will broadcast it through the natural radiance of your being. In your willingness to take the chance, to accept that invitation, you will naturally share that peace everywhere."

Tell me that is not a most beautiful of invitations. Note that Ganaji says " Once you discover this directly------" This direct discovery is so essential. It is not a question of belief but an experience of radiance. You know it because you are it. Belief requires a believer separate from the experience. A believer is not one who is the experience of direct knowing.

Gangaji also invites each one of us to take responsibility for our own mind. Listen to your mind. On this day of remembrance sit still for 10 minutes and listen to the way your mind is forever on. This is not peace of mind. This is not attunement to the source. This is not stillness knowing that it is Love.  If this is your mind then you have no peace to offer.  You have no still point centre from which radiance happens.

This monkey mind is not your natural radiance of being. You on this day of remembrance can commit to this radiance of being. Then the tragedy of 9/11 can become the invitation to Heaven on Earth. It only happens when you are willing to become the invitation to the radiance at your deep hearts core.

Today share this invitation. Share this invitation tomorrow. Share it everyday in whatever way you are called to be the radiant pressence of Love in form. Then when you know directly that you are the living presence of eternal Love you need have no fear. Though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death you will fear no evil.  Then you become a beacon of hope in a fear filled world.  Then you become the invitation in New York Harbour of a woman welcoming all that mass of separateness from Love.  You liberate others from their sense of separateness from Love.

Peace of the Infinite Peace to You.

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.