Kundalini Splendor

All Hallow's Eve, 2001

Larry Robinson

Above the deep-piled carpet of maple leaves
the madrones are slipping free
of summer's brown paper wrapping,
eager to show off their new winter coats.

The afternoon rain still drips
from the canopy of oak, fir and pine.
Across the creek a turkey chuckles
as a woodpecker beats a drum.

The light is passing swiftly now,
passing from the face of this land.
Shadows are lengthening everywhere,
reaching out across our lives.

Should we not, then, dare to love boldly,
more boldly than ever before -
as if the fate of the Earth itself
depended upon our loving?

And still the stars will surely rise,
revealing the Soul's deep secret:
that the eye can see farther in the dark of night
than ever it could by day.

A Poem by Mirabai

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.
If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.
If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts
then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came
from the womb!
If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves
then the goats would surely get to the Holy One before us!
If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.
Mirabai says, "The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God."

(tr. Robert Bly)

Mirabai was a famed poet/saint who lived in India from 1498 to 1550. She was known for her defiance of convention. Born a princess, she rejected marriage to devote herself fully to "the Dark One," her beloved Krishna. Of her naked state, she said, "Mira wears only the color of God.

In Ancient Times

They let Rumi and Mirabai
get away with it.
But of course they lived

in Ancient Times,
when the God and Goddess
were still alive
and you weren’t thought
to be crazy
if you consorted with them
or took off your clothes
and went dancing
along the roads
in heady celebration.

Even if you put
your feelings into poem,
that was o.k. too.
People hungry for god
made the verses into songs,
sang them around
the campfire
at night.

Now, of course,
everything must be
draped in disguise.
You can hint about such
things,
but it is not allowed
to strip in public
or say them outright.
Today's insistent audience
wants a more complex,
more sophisticated
approach,
where you never get too close to
your subject
but write from a safe angle,
a more distanced,
more oblique perspective,
never making a full commitment
to anything for sure,
much less indulge in private revelation
about topic so intimate,
so closely woven into who you are,
unless it is an
occasional lament
for the loss of connection
with something vague
but seemingly larger
than yourself.
Everyone understands the protocol
though of course
it isn't written down anywhere.

Yet Rumi and Mirabai
still speak to some of us
and we still listen,
those of us who aren’t afraid
to keep the inner channels open,
despite what the critics say.
And if we too write such poems
we can always say them
to one other, or
whisper down a well.

Dorothy Walters
October 20, 2008

(Image from Source, but not of Mirabai)

Final Moment

I don’t think anyone
knew this would happen.
The sudden burst of light
not there, but here,
inside the head,
where only thoughts lay
sleeping before.
Without noise,
indeed no sound at all,
just this one great flash,
meteor exploding phosphorescent,
consuming all,
taking what had been,
whether of memory
or desire,
and all to come,
leaving only the
fires,
fires everywhere.

Dorothy Walters
October 25, 2008

(Image from Hubble Site with credits to: William B. Latter (SIRTF Science Center/Caltech) and NASA)

As the times grow more and more critical, and as the sense of impending Apocalypse gains ground over the world, many of us will have dreams of coming disaster. These need not be interrupted as nightmares, nor do they need to drive us into fear or hysteria. I think the trick is to stay calm even in the face of possibilities we do not welcome.

I strongly believe that death itself is simply a transition to another state of consciousness, one not bound to the body or material form. Should our own earth existence end abruptly, our awareness would continue, now unbounded, indeed freer than it has been on earth. We are who we are, no matter what the change in circumstances. (And I think kundalini itself does much to suggest such possibilities--it lights the way to new states of being and helps us prepare for other modes of consciousness.)

Of course, these are simply my own personal beliefs, and I do not mean to imply that therefore we should be unconcerned about the fate of the earth or ourselves as inhabitants of the planet. But signs of all kinds tell us that we best wake up and face the reality of our situation, changing what we can, acknowledging the truth of what remains to be changed.

The greatest threat of all is, I think, the current ecological crisis. If we destroy the very home we inhabit (and its systems are telling us that it is failing fast), then the other issues--the economic collapse, the futile military struggles in which we are embroiled--and certainly the "non issues" like whether we will "allow" people of the same sex who love each other (or don't) to marry in civil court--all these will be seen as irrelevant as we struggle for basic survival.

Last night I watched a documentary on the growing threat of global warming. What the scientists who have monitored this process for years now say is that it is happening much faster than anyone had predicted, and we now have a window of possibly ten years to stave off total disaster (when the process becomes irreversible.) How many know this? How many are able to confront the truth of our situation? How many are willing to give up personal comfort, to change our ways of building and living in order to bring back balance to our ecological systems and save--not just the animals--but ourselves?

There are ways of doing all of the above, if we but apply the knowledge already available to us from those who have pioneered new ways of living on this planet. Houses can be constructed which require very little in the way of energy. Even the houses we now live in can be made much more energy efficient. We can build autos which require much less fuel, and, even better, use mass transit for many of our needs. And of course, we can expand alternative energy sources, which we are already coming into use. There are ways and ways, but we need to wake up and focus on solving this problem of all problems, before we and our problems simply disappear and earth begins to heal itself of all that we have inflicted upon it.

And--in the midst of all--we can still embrace our joy--in our connection with the higher reality, with our friends, our creativity, our love of nature. None of these requires money or expenditure of fossil fuels. It is all there for the taking. Help yourself!

Try God

Now we know how it was
at Pompeii,
when the volcano
began to rumble
and people looked at each
other in confusion and fear.

When the monster wave approached
the shore
on the remote Eastern Island,
and people stopped to gaze
and ask one another
what was happening,
no one had ever seen
a wave so big before.

In Europe, there were
travelers’ tales
of black swans,
but everyone knew this
was a myth,
that swans were never black
for white was their given color.
Then one day in Australia, they found
the truth behind the claim.

Now a black swan is swimming
into our living rooms,
we are turning our heads,
we stare in disbelief
at this creature formed from
impossibility.

Which way shall we run?

Dorothy Walters
October 28, 2008

Note: Black swan theory refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations
The theory was described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan. Taleb regards many scientific discoveries as black swans—"undirected" and unpredicted. He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, the first world war, as well as the September 11, 2001 attacks as examples of Black Swan events.[1]
The term black swan comes from the ancient Western conception that 'All swans are white'. In that context, a black swan was a metaphor for something that could not exist. The 17th Century discovery of black swans in Australia metamorphosed the term to connote that the perceived impossibility actually came to pass.

Taleb's Black Swan has a central and unique attribute: the high impact. His claim is that almost all consequential events in history come from the unexpected. . . .

(Above excerpted from Wikipedia. Image also found there.)

Today, the Black Swan theory is being cited to explain the current financial crisis, which was deemed impossible by many experts. We might add as well the convergence of so many challenges on so many fronts which seem to be coalescing into the "perfect storm" for humanity.

And, as a further note, one thinks (of course) of the unexpected rise of kundalini and other forms of spiritual awakenings in the world today. As I said earlier, if this can happen, anything can happen--a positive force to counterbalance the negative and take us to the next level.

There is no question about it. We are all holding our breath, keeping our fingers crossed, praying and doing ceremonies--whatever we can in the hopes that this coming election will turn out right for us and for the world. Many do not seem to realize how extremely serious this moment is. We are now clearly at a turning point in history. We are threatened from all angles--by violence of various kinds (much of which we have created with our own disastrous policies). Our leaders have lied, our public "servants" and economic leaders have betrayed our trust, our environment is threatened (what will we do for water and air when all the oil is drilled and we can no longer breathe or find clean water to drink?), our economy seems to be in ruins. And even now candidates for public office speak manifest lies with a straight face, as if integrity, honesty, and intelligence no longer mattered, as long as you win.

But of course we know all of this already. Perhaps this is a massive wake up call for us and all humanity--telling us that if we don't get back to basic values, if we don't reclaim our innate decency and honesty and forswear greed and winner take all philosophies--we will indeed self-destruct and the world and the globe will simply carry on without us.

As for the economic situation, it could in fact be worse. I was a child during the "Great Depression" and most of us had very little by today's standards. True, our family was better off than many. We had a brand new car (my daddy sold them and we got to keep a "demonstrator" for our family use); we lived in a small but new brick home (which he struggled to pay for); and we had very little cash. But--we ate very well (the farmers from the surrounding area brought in fresh goods of all kinds, which were quite cheap--it was very pure, what is today called "organic" but then was simply "food.") Some folks planted a vegetable garden or raised chickens in the back yard. Clothing was of high quality, much better than much of what is sold now for high prices in our "throwaway" society. I had one "Sunday dress" which I wore for a year until it was time to let the deep hem out one more time for the next year, a few school clothes, that was it. At Christmas each child got one present, which she cherished beyond all measure. But expensive toys were not necessary. Baseball, marbles, playing with dolls and toy trucks, climbing trees--these cost very little. At night families often sat on the porch and watched for falling stars, or listened to Charlie McCarthy or Mortimer Snerd on the radio. When the summer of 1936 arrived with its record breaking temperatures, the uninsulated brick houses became veritable ovens, so many families simply moved the beds into the back yard, or brought out army cots for the kids.

Every family kept a ball of string. When a package arrived, the string was carefully untied and the string was added to the ball, so that when you needed more string, you simply snipped off what you needed.

Now--the odd thing about such a sparce existence was that we didn't think of ourselves as poor. We simply took for granted that this was the way things were--we did not have a surplus of anything, but we had sufficient (some of course were not so lucky--some children got no Christmas presents at all, and some families listened to the radio at night in the dark, in order to avoid running up the electric bill. And some young families starting out had to move back into their parents' homes in order to survive the truly tough times.)

After the depression, I remember reading an article which said that such major economic collapses occur when prices lose touch with real value. Obviously, this has been the case in our society in past decades--prices--particularly of homes-- became hopelessly inflated, almost everyone was riding the roller coaster, and now we have--finally--hit bottom (or near it.) Ouch!

Still, all is not lost. Most of us today can retrench a great deal and still have enough to survive. We can live in smaller quarters, buy fewer electronics, wear our clothes longer. Remember Virginia Woolf who said all you needed to be a writer was a room of one's own? Sometimes a room is all you really need.

(I realize I am over simplifying here and some may suffer inordinately in a dismal economy. Hopefully our society will find a way to help those in deepest need and restore some equity for all.)

But--as I have reflected many times--new spiritual order is building in the midst of chaos, the current crisis is leading to massive inner transformation, and we are--in fact--on our way to a major evolutionary leap. I think this is our hope and the vision to sustain us through the outer crisis. When I was a child reading my way through these difficult years, I never dreamed my life would unfold as it has. Who knows what may happen to any of us at any time? Evolution occurs person by person, psyche by psyche, awakening by awakening. And it is happening now, all over our globe. Kundalini is at its center.

In the meantime, best prepare your ball of string!

Blessings,

Dorothy

Saving Democracy

Their leaders told them
their country was in danger,
and so the brave young men and women
hurried to sign up,
to protect their native shores
from untold assault.
At first it seemed easy,
they rode triumphant through
the streets of a far away land,
the people shouted,
they even held a victory celebration
on a great ship of war.

Then things got tougher.
Somehow, there had been a mistake,
somehow the information
was confused,
there had been no huge threat
after all,
no great and imminent danger,
but now they were there
and the natives had grown
unhappy with all the foreigners
on their soil,
and had begun to attack
the very forces who had
come to save them

In a battle, you do not question
right or wrong,
truth or lies,
what you do is shoot
whatever is in front of you,
and curse the ones who
are against you, whoever
they may be.

The dead piled high,
tens of thousands of
people who lived there,
whole families young and old,
(no one knew for sure
how many,
they were not known as persons
but rather classed as
“collateral damage”)
and more than a million fled
their homeland
to live in tents or under the sky
in other lands.
And the blood of thousands
of the martyred invaders
fertilized the soil
of this far off country
now turned to rubble
where houses and streets
and schools and hospitals
had once been.

The struggle continued
for many years,
though now no one
could quite remember
how it all started,
why they had come,
what it was they were trying
to achieve.
The leaders continued to talk
about honor and victory,
but nobody was sure
what that meant,
how they would know
when it came.
The ranks of the enemy grew
as more and more came from across
the land to join their brothers
in combat,
and the profits of the companies
serving the troops of the invader
ballooned on the balance sheets
and in the banks at home
and democracy was saved again.


October 22, 2008
Dorothy Walters

(Ordinarily, I do not post political poems on this site. But the times are so critical that I felt it was important to speak out. Many writers and other artists are doing the same--we all recognize the acute danger confronting us as a nation and as a planet. Pray.)

Shhssssssh

Waves,
a jagged frenzy
shattering into light
over the rocks.

Shhssssh

On land, taffeta skirts
of belles.
At sea, sails of
a tall ship
caught in a storm.

Shhssssh

Sleds flying
down a steep white hill,
mother quieting her child.

Shhssssh

Moth
succumbing to the
candle flame,
a soul leaving.

Dorothy Walters
October 23, 2008

Together Weaving

If the world is a wedding,
as certain Sufi martyrs said,
then let there be a marriage
of the fine fibers
of the external,
that perishes,
with the delicate threads
of that which is within,
which endures,
together weaving
the intricate scarf
of who you are.

Dorothy Walters
October 21, 2008

(Image from source)

Where Shadows Speak

To live like a mole,
you must go underground,
feel your way
along the velvet passages,
only come up to wash your face
in sun.

When raven flies,
he sees everything below—
all the tumbling mountain leaves
falling to the cold ground,
the intricate snow
sculpting the earth
into strange shapes,
dragons and stars.

In the cities,
there is frenzy.
In the pastures,
things dying quietly
or being reborn
in green.

Some are caught
between chaos
and stillness,
pulled like loose sails,
don't know which way to turn.

Others hone in,
fix their sights on one thing,
become its
texture and form,
the feel of its chiseled surfaces.

Still others are carried to sea
by the riptide in the blood,
out to the deep waters
where the shadows speak to them
of love and fury,
dying for passion,
of never being stranded,
of always going deeper.

Dorothy Walters
October 21, 2008

(Inspired by Arthur Sze’s poem “Fauve”)

(image from Wikipedia)

In the Killing Field of Night

When death swept everything
into the billows
of its dark sleeves.

While we waited,
half asleep,
like kittens curled
against the mother's breast.

And then it came,
it came,
a silent dragon,
and you were gone.

Dorothy Walters
October 16, 2008

The Transformation

At first she could not
tell anyone.

Can the wind speak
its secrets,
the candle after the light
has gone.

Then she grew less
reticent and found
a great mushroom
in the forest,
its wings lifted toward
where she had been.
She bent down
and listened.
Slowly she opened
her throat.

Then she heard the choir
of the mountain daffodils,
the soothing hush of the pines.
A distant planet
turning as if a
spiral in space
left a path of sound.
.
She joined in.

Now she is at peace.

The seeds of the sun shine
in her eyes.

Dorothy Walters
October 16, 2008

The Trees Shimmering

The angels sang to us
that morning.

The trees shimmering
in delight.

No one knew where
the music came from.

Our own hearts
kept time.

The inner drumbeat
of the world.

That slow dawning,
a purple hyacinth
unfolding.

The ebbing of our blood
carries us
farther and farther
from shore.

Dorothy Walters
October 16, 2006

(Picture by N. M. Rai)

Fauve

Caw Caw, Caw Caw Caw.

To comprehend a crow

you must have a crow's mind.

To be the night rain,

silver, on black leaves,

you must live in the

shine and wet.

Some people

drift in their lives:

green-gold plankton,

phosphorescent, in the sea.

Others slash: a knife

at a yellow window shade

tears open the light.

But to live digging deep

is to feel the blood

in you rage as rivers,

is to feel love and hatred

as fibers of rope,

is to catch the scent

of a wolf, and turn wild.

~ Arthur Sze ~

(The Redshifting Web)

(Picture found on Panhala)

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

Yeats' famous poem aroused much shock and confusion when it was first published, and even now baffles many readers. He is, of course, using the familiar theme of the Second Coming of Christ, with references to the nativity itself, to reveal an approaching world Apocalypse. He turns the symbology on its head, so to speak, and so depicts the coming age as one of horror, not love, an era of terror, not peace. Today, his premonition seems to be coming true.

Here is a poem I wrote in response:

Towards Bethlehem

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats

Yes, I know.
This is the time
of the second coming.
The great beast lurking,
the savage heart
beating once again.

Somewhere in the desert, yes,
that blank and pitiless stare.
The haunches moving.
The stealthy advamce.

Shall we watch in horror and dismay?
Do we turn away
or witness in silence and despair?.

The vision falters,
the image fades again.
That distant struggle
in the clouds of dust--
is this the specter
we ourselves have made,
created from our inner dreamscape
of grasping and desire?
Are we ourselves
the approaching shape
of darkness drawing near?

Dorothy Walters
October 12, 2008

In this poem I am pointing out that the "beast" (the frightening image drawing close) may in fact be in part our own creation. The world challenge is real, but what is its origin? When we contemplate such issues as global warming and its disastrous effects on climate, the near collapse of the financial systems of the world, and even the terrible wars now being waged in various parts of the globe, we must--if we are honest and brave enough to face the facts--admit that these great threats have not come from some outside source, but are the result of human actions, and that these to a great extent have a common source--rampant greed and lust for power.

I think this is not an oversimplification. The earth is exploited for its resources, the banks run on uncontrolled desire for profit, and wars of invasion are motivated by desire to seize the riches (in this case, oil) of the victim state. The newspapers carry the latest baseball scores, but seldom mention the price paid by ourselves and our victims for our wanton actions--how many know how much American blood has now been "traded for oil," how many tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, or how many forced into exile from their homeland? (Well over a million Iraqi refugees are now living abroad, at a conservative estimate.) Worldwide, there are now over four million such refugees from various countries displaced by conflicts in their region.

On a more positive note, we are--as a nation and as a global community--finally beginning to wake up to our misguided actions and taking some steps to revise our policies. We are at last admitting the reality of global warming and attempting to correct our mistakes. The current financial crisis is making clear how disastrous a "free market" economy which operates with virtually no restraints can become. And the people are finally beginning to understand that we are involved in a war which was begun under false pretenses and continued with the help of cheap slogans and flag waving.

What does all of this have to do with kundalini? Just this. No matter what happens in the "external world," no matter how the outer structures crumble and fall, kundalini will remain. It will be there, to remind us that divine connection is eternally present, to be realized by all who are prepared to attend. Kundalini, meditation, prayer--these carry no price tag. The worth of the human spirit cannot be measured in terms of cost benefit or bottom line. Even if we suffer massive chaos and disarray as social structures erode or implode, the shamans will appear among us, the energy healers will practice their arts, and the mystics and the poets and artists and musicians will continue to inspire. In fact, they are already present, doing their essential work all around.

Perhaps this is indeed a period of universal cleansing, a time of stepping back, taking stock, confronting our mistakes, and rebuilding our world on a firmer basis of universal care and concern rather than profit for the few at the expense of the many. There is in fact a growing spiritual awakening across the globe, for the world appears to be collapsing (externally) and reconstructing itself (internally) all at the same time. Kundalini and other spiritual approaches are bringing more and more into a higher level of consciousness in a process which some term "global initiation." Yeats held a view of history which affirmed that as each era ended, the next was already coming to birth. Who knows what a wondrous future awaits?

Nature in Our Lives

I recently returned from a wondrously refreshing visit to the Colorado Rockies (Boulder, my "second home") where I spent time strolling along Boulder Creek, a beautiful clear mountain stream which runs the length of the city, and went more than once into the higher altitudes to revel in the massive gold of the aspen spilling down the mountain sides. The weather was good, the company delightful, and the timing perfect (the aspen were at their very peak of color.) I felt quite blessed.

For me, Boulder is a special place, where nature and culture combine to produce a unique setting. I was again reminded how important it is to maintain our connection with nature, whether landscape or the animals which inhabit it.

These amazing pictures of a young deer were forwarded to me by a friend, with the following text: