Her Place by the River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This blog to be continued


Picture - Nymph by the River - Fredrick Lord Leighton

Desiderata - List of Desires

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

Talk on Desire
by Sri Chinmoy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Sri Chinmoy
From Sri Chinmoy Library
More Poems about Desire

Picture is The Fisherman and the Siren by Fredric Lord Leighton

The Purpose Driven Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyday was recorded in your book.

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

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

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

God is no laughing matter

God, I have become like

two giant fat people living

in a tiny boat. We keep

bumping into each other

and laughing.

Hafiz - Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Daily Life is your Temple

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

Kahlil Gibran




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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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

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

The Invitation from Desiderata

“Go placidly amidst the noise and haste.”

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

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

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

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

Let us begin.

Desiderata

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


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


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


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


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


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

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


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


Written by Max Ehrmann

The Land of the Forever Young

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

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

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

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

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

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

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