...to winter's heart
Today is a soft and sunshiny day and I want to share it with you. It isn’t officially spring yet where I live, but through the window today, the sky is blue and winter’s colors are gradually moving out of phase.
Green shoots and flowers-to-be are pushing through the brown of winter, the birds are creating homes, and the sun is caressing my heart–reminding me of all things possible, bright, and beautiful.
Winter is gray where I live. And I feel winter’s grayness because it reflects the low clouds that swirl within me; the socked-in system of unreconciled emotion.
But the sun is shining now. I feel its warmth. I see its clear light. There is nothing more beautiful than the warm rays of sunshine in the winter of your heart.
Do you feel it also?
... and the price we pay for it
Detail of painting by John Rocheleau
Satisfaction is our primary objective in life. Everything we do, we do to satisfy ourselves in one form or another.
This self-gratification reflex of ours is far from self-fulfilling though. Everyday, we make choices to satisfy our desires, and what we choose while under the influence of this intoxicating human imperative, is often unwise.
Short-sighted satisfaction carries a steep price tag, and willing or not, the debt is always collected. Our drive to satisfy ourselves can then seriously damage us.
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The clouds were low; silver-grey with blushes of violet to the west, and an intense blue-grey to the east. It was 1994, and spring was about to bless us with some needed rain.
“The garden will love it,” Rosemarie said. I agreed, though not with the same hard-won conviction as my Wife’s, after all, it was Rosemarie who created our garden and it was she who mainly toiled in it.
We had a large garden (and still do) filled with plenty of delicious raspberries, gooseberries, currants of all sorts, and most of the vegetables we needed for the year ahead. For Rosemarie, the garden was her labor of love; her way of connecting to life at its purest, and to who she is at heart.
It was a quiet day, and every living thing seemed to be in their own separate world, including us. I was taking a break from a new painting I was working on, Rosemarie was finishing some planting, and the ravens were dive-bombing Jones, our black cat.
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Seduction is a big part of life for us mortals.
Seduction is in our genes. We’re programmed to seek satisfaction but when we talk about satisfying our seductive desires, most of us automatically think of sexual seduction.
And sexual seduction is powerful stuff for sure. Is there anyone out there who has not fallen under the intoxicating spell of some god or goddess who has targeted us in their sexual sights?
But sexual gratification is not seduction’s main target. Believe it or not, we mostly seduce ourselves and it has nothing to do with sex.
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Fear lives within you. It breeds in the warm liquid of your flesh feeding on your spirit. Fear is the real original sin. It perverts your true perception.
And the truth is: your world is a marvelous miracle of interconnection and unification. Observe nature and you will know that this is so. Every seemingly separate aspect of nature forms powerful interdependent relationships. That unity is the essence of nature’s success and it can be the essence of your success. If you desire to master your life then, you must accept that you are part of nature, and subject to its mechanics and laws.
But fear wants none of this. Fear’s strength lies in its ability to separate. It positions itself–and you–outside of this unified field of relationship-based all-encompassing thinking. Fear wants you to think about life in linear fashion: this then that; he then she; us then them; I then you. Even reading the words fear generates is stressful, because it just isn’t true; it isn’t natural. Continue reading →
