I have created a doorway
My heart flutters like angel wings
What was bottom is now top; out has become in
I fly into the unknown
…
(Photo by AlicePopkorn via Flickr)
(Thanks to OSI for the prompt, “top”)
Category: Personal Growth
Quagmire
She felt her thighs quiver
Pushing her finger against her stomach an “Oh hoo hoo” escaped before she could stop it.
The Pillsbury Doughboy always had the last word.
And though she’d love to spend every last cent on fashion
She paused.
The quagmire was this:
Glossy images or better health? Shoes or self-realization?
Biting her nails, feeling her heart skitter like Chie Mihara heels against a hardwood floor,
She made her decision and closed the laptop.
Was it thunder she heard in the background or perhaps, just maybe,
Her integrity?
…
(Thanks to OSI for the writing prompt, quagmire.)
(photo by SashaW)
Abundance
She looked at me with chocolate brown eyes and named me but I didn’t understand. I couldn’t take it in… Bowing, I left and hugged the little scrap of paper to my heart. Kamalam.
…
This week’s OSI prompt, abundance, takes on personal meaning. I can only describe abundance as a felt experience of love and wonder from my teacher, Amma.
…
(Thanks to Bahman Farzad for this photo.)
Friday Night
Can I bear the pain of pain?
Can I simply
stay
allow
bend
burn
heal
Numbness – yet another dancing partner
Stepping on my toes, whispering sweet nothings
Empty things
Things on black wings
Smelling of
Cold sweat
And turpentine
Devi, your alter ego is devouring me
The feast is lasting long into the night
The Dark Mother has me in her grip
I am seduced
…
(photo by Alice Popkorn)
Guidance
The Waystation sat open for business
Someone had spray painted “PEACE” above a door of peeling paint
Dusty railroad tracks crossed in front, no longer going anywhere
I had reached this place as a last resort
It wasn’t my original destination nor was it familiar
Gold and billowy white were more my speed
I thought I was bound for finer things
With gentle, sublime music filling the empty space
Somewhere around Prescott I lost my way
I found myself following the coyote calls in the valley
The sigh of the wind among the pondersoa pine
And wound up in Chloride, AZ – sans my bags, my map, and even my shoes
But the view is grand
The sun warms my face
And the tracks remind me that all paths lead
Home
…
(thanks to Sunday Scribblings for the writing prompt, Guidance. It took me in a beautiful non-direction)
(photo by BrandonStephenson)
What a Difference a Day Makes
Yesterday I won the Lotto.
No, I didn’t. But I could have…
My child died in a freak accident. He lays there unmoving and still.
No, my child is fine. He’s running around with the stick that adjusts our blinds and in his best He-Man voice, he is screaming, “I have the POWER!”
I lost my job. Then I found a job.
I felt bliss and in touch with the very fabric of Oneness. Then I felt my stomach clenching in intense loneliness and despair.
It doesn’t take a day for me to imagine the worst and best. It doesn’t even take a second to contemplate life alone on a cold street corner… or surrounded by family. A day has power. But my thoughts can sucker punch me like nobody’s business.
This next week, Thanksgiving week, will be a time for spiritual contemplation. I have the whole week off from work due to some vacation days and the holiday. Because my son is in preschool, two of those days will be mine (all mine!) to find out what I have been avoiding in myself and how to come to a deeper level of inner peace.
Can you feel the quickening? The cosmic urge toward self-reflection?
(Thanks to Sunday Scribblings for this writing prompt.)
(Photo by Christian Hernández)
Word Prompt: Harvest
Can I embrace
the love inside
without seeing the holes?
Or can I see them
fully
Embracing the bounty
of an inner and outer
reality
that has no bounds at all?
Word prompt courtesy of Sunday Scribblings
(photo by Brian Forbes)
The Hiatus is Over
I have explored the shadow, the inner realm of doubt and loss. I have traversed into the Light, that sphere of loving free fall. And in the end, I STILL need to write. 🙂
So, I’m back. With lots of ideas and the desire to express them. I’m going with simple writing prompts for now… A see bigger projects in the future, yet for now, I need to flex those typing fingers and just let it out.
More to come…
Your Erstwhile spiritual traveler and friend,
The Little Writer
Photo By Shayan (USA)
Hiatus
It’s time for reevaluation and renewal. The Little Writer will be taking a hiatus – however I will continue to visit you all and to share in your explorations.
Until we meet again…
“I Don’t Know” Mind
What happens when all concepts are stripped away? Or maybe a better question is… how do you survive the process of getting to such a place?
From the spiritual literature I’ve read, lack of concepts is highly desirable. It takes you to the “I don’t know” mind. Buddhists call it Emptiness, Tolle calls it Space Consciouness (I always liked that one…), and Byron Katie puts it like this: Who would you be without your story?
What’s left when you aren’t strategizing, manipulating, orchestrating, stressing, hoping, fearing?
For the second time in my life, I’m exploring this question. The first time I was at a retreat and we were asked to step out of our comfort zone… WAY out. It was one of those times when you are so committed, so passionate about knowing the truth that you’re willing to sacrifice your life. Kind of how I imagine those folks who jump out of airplanes feel… shared shitless but damned if they will play it safe one second more.
My experience taught me I could trust the process… that I could trust life. Out in the middle of Knoxville, Tennessee, eating a bologna sandwich and eyeing a plastic covered mattress in the middle of a stranger’s living room… I found courage. Courage to smile and accept a meal. Courage to walk to the apartment door and leave. Courage to navigate the transportation system back into the center of town, find a library, and gratefully collapse knowing I was safe again. Maybe even realizing I had been safe all along.
I can’t go much more into the details of that experiment because we were asked to keep the specifics private… I will say that at no point were we asked to put our lives in danger… however a hefty percentage of us did do some outrageous things in the name of testing reality to the limit. Oh the stories of that day!
Here I am again, what almost ten years later? This time I’m doing this trust thing, this testing reality thing, sans a group of committed others. It’s just me baby. Well, my partner is along for the ride by default, but the inner journey is intrinsically a solo one.
So what do I mean by “this trust thing”? I mean… getting to the place where concepts no longer save the day or distract or comfort anymore. I mean…getting in touch with the shadow … and seeing how far the rabbit hole goes.
What happens when you are out of luck, out of options, and out of hope? Where does life take you next?
It’s been a hard month of losing stories… They’ve been unravelling like bolts of silk, sliding through my fingers. I don’t know what’s in store, I don’t know where this will lead.
I am entering “I don’t know” mind. And it’s nothing like I thought.
The Little Writer That Could 