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 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.