SUNDAY POEM: KALI

Kali, queen of the night-sky, your skull
necklace rattles on dancing breasts.
Blood stains the cavern and corners
of your mouth. Your obsidian face gleams;
your ruby tongue defies all who claim dominion.
Your many hands grip many lethal weapons—
swift swords and whirling discus; lightning
cracks open this labyrinthine brain, its convoluted
folds sizzle into mist. Silence returns
to the sky, to the heart.

Around a demon’s hair, your hennaed hands
are curled; his severed head swings above
the earth; ragged droplets drip scarlet from his
neck’s stump. Broad, black feet—your feet—stamp
on his headless body; your eyes are fierce
coal-stars, every eyelash a cluster of
constellations. Such power, milady, I
am breathless at this naked red display—
my own long shrouded in seemly white.

I’ll strip off these penitent robes, unpin
my hair, let it float above my roaring
chest. And shout, a bawdy barker bellowing:
come, take–enter if you dare!

……………………………………………………

In Hindu Tantra, Kali is the consort of Shiva–the power that makes consciousness manifest.

Her wisdom is that there is no life without death, no light without dark–all things and their opposites co-exist on this plane of duality. And underneath them lies the unmanifest world of unity and wholeness.

Responsibility.

Ta-duh.

The word lands with a heavy thump of burden and obligation. It stands hunched-over and stiff-necked with shoulds and expectations. A painfully bristling virtue that leaves us feeling bad about ourselves because its standards are so high, we’re afraid we’ll never be able to live up to them.

A grim Troll of a word with a Calvinist edge to it, its arrival strikes a sting of reproach–our failure to meet its exacting standards seems inevitable, built into its structure.

So what is responsibility, really? Who or what are we responsible for? Do we get to choose? Or do our responsibilities arrive pre-ordained—the mighty Troll who casts a long shadow over family, work, relationships, business, life…

Part of the confusion we feel arises because responsibility is both a body energy, and a spiritual quality—and the two are very different from each other.

As human animals—particularly if we’re female human animals–our bodies are genetically programmed to be responsible. This is Nature’s way of ensuring the propagation of the species, of making sure we’ll take care of our children through the long years it takes for them to grow to maturity and be able to survive in the wilds of the world.

It’s this Responsibility Troll that brings my whole being into a state of instant alert when I hear a child’s panicked voice calling: “Mommy!” at my local grocery store. Even though my sons are grown men, happily living their own lives, that cry of “Mommy!” raises the atavistic hackles of my body. My heart beats a quickstep and adrenalin surges through my arteries. Mommy is ready to leap into action—to protect, shelter, comfort, respond to a child’s distress.

Because the Responsibility Troll is a body energy, you can’t will it away—it has its own purpose, its reason for being. To function effectively, we must understand its nature, honor it, and negotiate a working relationship with it.

When there’s no obvious place for the Responsibility Troll to direct its considerable power, it fixates on work, or on the people around us. It’s convinced it knows what’s best for everyone, and also convinced the world will fall apart without it.

When it’s doing what it’s meant to do, it’s an evolutionary and useful being. Not so helpful when it lumbers in where it doesn’t belong.

You can experience the Responsibility Troll by thinking of something or someone you feel responsible for. That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach? That heaviness, that sense of overwhelm? Or that punishing self-righteousness—all point to the presence of the Responsibility Troll.

On the upside, it is hard-working and reliable, determined to make things work no matter what.

If the body energy of responsibility is a troll toiling in a coal mine, the spiritual quality of responsibility is a creature of sunlight and wings. Because it emerges from wholeness, as all spiritual qualities do, it understands that you–and the situation and everyone involved in it–are a radiant soul, filled with infinite power and potential. It knows that each of us has everything we need to be whole, healthy and fulfilled. No-one is broken; no-one needs to be fixed.

The Angel of Responsibility knows this. So when you fill yourself with its presence, you naturally respond to people and situations in ways that honor your own sovereignty and that of everyone else as well. You experience yourself and everyone else as already whole.

This doesn’t mean you turn a blind eye to pain and suffering. Suffering exists. You meet it with kindness, honoring your own and other people’s vulnerability and need as aspects of wholeness.

When you become the Angel of Responsibility, you respond with empathy, support, respect, and love–offering what your heart calls you to offer. Knowing that the person you are offering help to is also helping you–that you are in a dance that weaves together call and response, love, support and kindness, giving and receiving.

Both you and the person being helped are Angels of Responsibility, learning the steps to the dance so you can dance it more effortlessly, with greater joy.

Ultimately, our responsibility is to cultivate those qualities within ourselves and in our lives that bring us to our natural state of wholeness. This requires discernment and choices.

We choose what we say yes to, what we say no to. And our yes-es and our no-es shape who we become. They also shape what we offer to the world.

If you work on your business hunched over as the Responsibility Troll, gritting your teeth to make it through that next project, pushing yourself harder, you add to the suffering of the world. Each time you treat yourself unkindly, telling yourself the end justifies the means, you increase the sum of unkindness in the world. You contribute to a lack of empathy and generosity.

How you do what you do determines the quality of your life. So when that Responsibility Troll shows up, give it something to do that lets it fulfill its natural function. Then invite the Angel of Responsibility into your presence. Become its shining, winged self, and see what happens next.

Oh, and listen for the tune that brings the Angel and the Troll onto the dance floor together.

…………………………………………………..

I’d love to hear your stories. How do you feel when the Responsibility Troll shows up in your life? Do you have rituals for welcoming the Angel of Responsibility?

BUDDHIST CHRONICLES 9

Yasodhara

Yesterday
the magnolia’s perfect bowl
brimmed with rain-water

Now, a single petal,
mottled cream and brown,
droops outward

The bowl is broken

Rahula runs towards me
his laughing face upturned

Two raindrops tremble
on the blossom’s ivory lip

…………………………………….

In my twenties and early thirties–my life Before Kids–I spent a lot of time in retreat. Three or four months of intensive, formal meditation retreats each year, where I sat in a little mud hut at a retreat center in India, or a meditation hall at a monastery in Nepal, and meditated in silence for fourteen hours or more each day.

I’d emerge from these retreats feeling deeply connected to my inner world. Peaceful, quiet, as still as a mountain. Unshakeable. Until I disembarked into the neon wild of JFK airport and my breath became ragged, my heartbeat uneven and jangled by the sight of security guards with guns, by the clamor of lights bouncing off shiny stainless steel surfaces.

I realized then that I needed to find a way to be present, open, loving and peaceful in my daily life.

Back home in Canada, I experimented with ways to keep the gifts of retreat alive in my everyday world of work, friends and play. Sundays were retreat days for me.

I’d follow the rhythm of a silent retreat. Up before dawn. Meditation. Yoga. A light breakfast. More meditation. One-hour sessions of sitting with my mind, with my breath. Followed by mindful walking in my back yard.

Sitting. Walking. Being. No phones, no reading or music, no distractions of any kind. Just me, my body, my mind, my breath. And the vast universe behind my closed eyes.

By the end of the day I’d feel restored to my self. Slip into bed feeling deeply rested. Sink into dreamless sleep. Wake the next morning, ready for my week. Which unfolded with a greater sense of calm well-being because I’d taken the time to return home to myself.

Once I had children, Sundays became family days. I still sat in meditation each morning for an hour or two, but anything more than that was an unimaginable luxury.

Now, my life has come full-circle. My children are grown and off living their lives. My time is my own. And technology has changed the face of retreats, as it has changed so much else.

Next month, Jen Louden–author of The Woman’s Comfort Book, The Life Organizer and several others–is holding a virtual retreat. One you can participate in from home, in your pajamas.

It starts on Friday, February 12th, and continues throughout the weekend, with sessions led by several wonderful teachers. Jen has created and taught retreats for women for over twenty years. She brings her lovely, down-to-earth presence and an array of processes to help each of us settle more deeply into our bodies, into our hearts. Into connection, peace and openness to the truth of our inner being.

I will be teaching a session on Opening to the Sacred, along with my sound-healer friend, Fabeku. Patti Digh, Christina Baldwin and Julie Ann Turner are some of the other wise women who’ll help you get in touch with your creative essence, restore your heart and spirit, and find your true voice.

Won’t you join us? You can take part in as many or as few sessions as you have time for. The cost is $108. You can register here.

The gifts of retreat have never been more necessary. Or more accessible than they are now, thanks to the magic of technology and the world-wide web. I look forward to meeting you there!

In this poem, we stand with Siddhartha at the boundary between the world we know and the one that awaits our unfolding. What threshold invites you to step into your future today? How do you feel about it? Will you say yes to the call of the river?

BUDDHIST CHRONICLES

At The Boundary: The River Anoma

You stand on my northern bank,
a lacerated young man, with tender-soled feet.
Your tears prick my skin;
droplets of salt swirl in secret eddies.

Do you know what you invoke, O prince?
I am as wide as the chasm between lives.
My waters erase the known world.
My ways are ancient
and hard. I dwindle mountains into pebbles
round and smooth as pearls.
There is no immunity here.
Men have drowned in these currents.

You hack off your hair with a sword, leave it blowing
like straw on my flanks. But that which you sever
once you step into my belly
will bleed dark as rubies:
fearful, benevolent as death itself.

Loneliness will wear you down with the slow grinding
of millstones. Your mind will be drenched in fear
and hunger. You will twist in currents of longing
while fish nibble at your entrails.

Think well, before you enter my embrace.

………………………………………………………

Today’s poem is dedicated to the memory of P. K. Page, poet, artist, visionary, and my friend, whose death this week at age 93 has left poetry lovers bereft. I’m so grateful for the light of her passage through this earth.

As always, I’d love your company on this journey of poetic discovery. Please share your poems, insights, heart and humor in Comments. Our conversation draws us closer to the hearth-fire of community and connection.

A couple of days ago, I taught a teleclass about the energy patterns of communication at Havi’s Kitchen Table forum, where we’re discussing communication in all its forms this semester.

As I began making notes for the class, I realized this is a sprawling beast of a topic–one that deeply affects every aspect of our lives, and of our businesses.

Communication is at the heart of so much of what we do. And since many of us work online or over the phone with clients and customers, clarity in communication becomes essential.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines communication as the transmission and exchange of information.

To this I’ll add: Communication is an energy, a quality of soul. Like all energy, it has effects that can be healing and transformative, or not. Communication can expand your world and your sense of possibility, or it can fragment, divide and isolate.

This is why communication can sometimes seem so loaded.

We communicate information about who we are and what our lives are about, in a multitude of ways, many of them non-verbal. Your presence—which includes the entire sum of your thoughts, feelings and actions—transmits information constantly. So you are always communicating, whether you realize it or not.

You can feel this. When you’re with someone who knows you well, and who loves, respects and cherishes you, you feel seen and heard. You feel lovable, brilliant, and safe. This is the transformative power of communication.

This is communication that flows directly from the qualities of your being. And it results in an exchange of qualities—your friend’s presence, her love and goodwill towards you, awakens resonant qualities within you. Your own presence does the same for her.

Communication-as-transmission doesn’t just arc across the lives of human beings. The same exchange of energy and information can happen in any relationship—your relationships with Nature, music, art, poetry, food…each of these has the capacity to transmit qualities and feeling-states. Each of these can create changes in your energy field.

At the root of all communication is the quality of your communication with yourself.

When your communication with yourself is clear, fluid and healthy, your communication with others will be clear and healthy too.

Your body communicates with you through sensations and feelings, which are also forms of energy. When you listen to your body—when you tune into your feelings and invite them to move and flow without clinging to them, pushing them away or numbing them out of your consciousness—then your love and attention create a bridge of communication.

All energy wants to move, and once it moves, it changes. So your feelings change as you give them permission to be, and to flow. This is healthy communication, and it’s the key to staying in healthy relationship with your body.

Communication with your soul is communication with that essence that is you, beyond the outer circumstances of your life. It’s the voice of your innermost self, which holds the evolving energetic blueprint for the unfolding of your life.

Communication with your soul gives you access to information in the form of clear guidance, and to the transmission of your soul’s infinite capacities and qualities.

Direct knowing, love, compassion, inspiration, safety, creativity—these are all qualities of your soul.

The ability to move freely across dimensions of time and space, to travel through multi-dimensional energy fields—these are all capacities of your soul. Clear communication allows you to access them, and in doing so, vastly expands your experience of yourself and the worlds around you.

And then there’s communication with the Sacred, and with aspects of the Sacred that remain in non-physical realms. These include communication with the Soul of the Earth, which is a powerful, complex, infinitely creative and loving being who is the partner and ally of all forms of life on this earth, including yours.

Communication with these beings can greatly enhance your life, your ability to make things happen in the physical world, your ability to help create the world in which you want to live.

We’ll explore each of these aspects of communication in later posts. For today, I’d like to talk about just one for-instance.

Perhaps you find yourself not taking the time to communicate clearly and lovingly with the people who are closest to you—your spouse or partner, your family, your children.

With them, you are less patient, more demanding than you are with your customers or clients.

You love them, and yet your relationship with them suffers because of a lack of communication, or communication that’s prickly, hurried and fraught with misunderstanding.

So what’s going on here?

Your relationship with yourself is the basis for your relationship with everyone else in your life. Whatever the quality of your communication with yourself, it will be reflected in your communication with the people you are closest to.

Do you numb out or disconnect from your body and your feelings? Maybe you do this by zoning out in front of the tv, or by eating to avoid your feelings. Or you get disconnected and isolated from your soul, and start to feel small, alone, and powerless. When this happens, your energy contracts, or else becomes very diffuse. It’s hard for you to be present in your body.

When you’re disconnected from yourself in this way, your communication with the people you’re closest to will become disconnected and fragmented too.

So how do you change this pattern?

Ultimately, you can only create healthy communication through a regular, daily practice of staying in touch with yourself. There are many ways to do this—develop a vocabulary, a repertoire of ways to stay connected with your self, and then create a rhythm that works for you.

Mindful forms of movement like yoga, tai chi, qi gong or dance work well. So does more vigorous physical activity like running, hiking, or climbing. Meditation and self-reflection put you in touch with your sensations, your heart, and your mind. Creative activities like art, music, journaling or writing connect you with your own creative spirit.

You can also spend time each day talking with your body, feeling your feelings, and clearing your energy field. You can commune with your soul, and with the essence of the natural world.

These daily practices will give you a solid foundation from which to communicate with the people you love. When your buttons get pushed, and you find yourself reacting to your partner or your kids with impatience or disrespect, check within to see which unconscious patterns are being stirred up.

Relationships are crucibles of learning and growth. They will evoke childhood patterns of communication—the ones you saw your parents use with each other, the ones you yourself developed, at a time when you felt young and powerless.

Once you develop a practice of conscious communication with yourself, you’ll become aware of these patterns and begin untangling them. You can do the inner work of taking back those aspects of your self that you’ve unconsciously projected onto your partner, and own them as yours. You can meet your own needs and feelings in a kind, conscious, loving way.

You will also realize, from this daily practice, that you are constantly changing. You are not the same person today as you were yesterday. And neither is your partner, your dear friend, or your child. So you’ll be less likely to hang onto a fixed view of them. You’ll meet them each day as they are, not as they were. You’ll respond to the person in front of you, from your own growing, changing, evolving self.

This brings both freedom and love into the conversation between you.

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

How about you? What challenges do you experience in your communication with others? With yourself?

Let’s talk about why it can sometimes be so hard to communicate clearly. And what we can do to embody the healing, transformative powers of communication.

BUDDHIST CHRONICLES

Siddhartha At The Boundary Of The Sakya Kingdom

Moonless night; cloud
silk across lowering sky.

In my father’s palace Yasodhara sleeps,
my son’s newborn body curled against her breast:
a snail in its shell.

I have turned my trembling back
on all I love,

tethered still by ropes of desire,
longing. O heart

that hammers against the doors of the sky–
I creep forward to meet this cryptic night.

The river hisses, a cobra at my feet.
I can bear no more goodbyes.

I must make a fist of this heart.

Channa, take my clothes;
these silks and jewels chafe like a yoke.

Give them to my father. Tell him, I will return

when I have found the jewel I seek. Kanthaka,
you must gallop back to the palace too.

I cannot take you with me.

…………………………………………………………………….

Continuing the saga of Siddhartha and his family, this week we hear from the man himself.

As always, I’d love to have you join me on this journey of poetic play and discovery. Please share your poems, insights, songs and musings in Comments. Our conversation brings brave new worlds into being.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the dentist’s office for an annual checkup and cleaning. As the dentist examined my mouth, probing my gum line with the delicate precision of an ant in a sugar bowl, he said: “Your teeth are moving.”

I mumbled: “Mrrtgwoof?”

“Teeth do that, you know,” he said. “You must have had braces when you were younger.”

I nodded as best I could and he continued cheerfully: “Teeth travel back to where they came from. That’s why, as you get older, the gaps between your teeth get wider.”

The rest of the conversation—in which he described the various “procedures” he could perform to close the gaps between my teeth—remains hazy in my memory. (Which must also be traveling homeward, since the gaps in it are growing!)

As I drove home, I ran my tongue in wonder over my miraculous teeth. My teeth know where they came from! And through forty years of forcible displacement, they’ve remained doggedly determined to get back to where they belong.

Everything answers the call to home.

Teeth. And spawning salmon. Birds that fly thousands of miles each spring to return home from their southern migration. Monarch butterflies. Stars. Sea lions, bats, ants trudging in military formation, and pods of whales.

We humans do too, although our lives are so noisy these days that the call of home can dwindle to the faintest whisper, inaudible to all but the most attentive ear.

That call can emerge as restlessness, emptiness, a longing for something as-yet unnamed.

We work harder, or party more. We hang onto relationships that leave our hearts blighted, or we buy stuff . . . However blindly, each of us is trying to echolocate our way home.

Home is our soul’s vibration resonating in our bodies—that unique, complex, perfect hum of heart and presence that’s so familiar, we ignore it because we think it has to be something more exotic. Something esoteric—an angelic choir; an epiphany on the road to Damascus. Something hard-to-get, as sexily out of reach as Johnny Depp.

So we go searching. In teachers and classes and books. In spiritual practices. In our spouses, our children—everywhere but ourselves. Like my traveling teeth, we follow every whisper and rumor of home.

Until, one day, exhausted from the search, buttering a piece of toast or listening idly to a song on the radio–or sitting in a dentist’s chair–we click into that home frequency that vibrates in our cells, in our breath, in our beating hearts. And we remember … we are home. WE are home.

BUDDHIST CHRONICLES

Suddhodana’s Dilemma

The king sits in council
with his ministers. His heir
has vanished,
choosing the ascetic’s empty bowl
over the imperial crown.

Seven sages had predicted this
the day Siddhartha was born.
His would be a destiny of choice:
Emperor
or Enlightened One.

The king tried
to keep his heir at home. He buried
the writhing of the flesh
under garments of gold.
Ascetics were plentiful as leaves.
He had only one first-born son.

Now he wrinkles the imperial forehead.
Turns brusquely to his chief minister,
orders Prince Nanda to be brought
to the council chamber.

……………………………………………………….

As always, I’d love to hear your poems, as well as your thoughts, feelings and insights on Poetry Sunday.

Let’s raise our voices in this communion of poetry together.

This year has been a raft-glide on a river of events that has sometimes flowed broad and placid, with time to savor the passing view and to stop for playful picnics along the way.

Other times, it’s been a wild, white-water ride down rushing rapids, a swirl through sudden eddies, the occasional jarring collision with treacherous rocks.

The journey has been enriched by friends who are the raft that’s kept me afloat, the currents that carry me forward, the green banks that lend shape and momentum to the river of my life.

My friends are the sky overhead, and the stars that light my way.

They remind me always that I’m not alone, that each molecule of water in the river dances with every other molecule of earth and water and sky, of fish and galaxy, tree and croaking bullfrog.

It’s easy, when you’re an entrepreneur, to get snagged on the rocks of isolation. To feel that everything in your business rests on a raft of your own making, and relies on the power of your muscles and sweat and brain to get you where you need to go.

It’s easy to forget that there are so many invisible currents that carry you, buoy you up, help you become who you are. Take you to the places where your gifts can make a difference; to the people you are meant to serve.

Here is a very incomplete naming of the friends and colleagues who are among the stars that have lighted my way this year:

Havi Brooks. Brilliant business maven, blogging Pirate Queen, mensch, you can find her at FluentSelf.com, or on Twitter: @Havi. She’s the creator of the Kitchen Table, a virtual intentional community that is a remarkable crucible for growing people and their businesses. She’s my sister in the fine art of play, silliness and creating safety in the rapids of adventure. Havi’s been chief whitewater guide, raft-builder and river banks for me and my business this year. She’s been, in many ways, Polaris, the North Star.

Jen Louden. Writer whose work has inspired me for many years, midwife to the creative spirit in women, queen of the Comfort Café, a community for creative women to find support for becoming more fully who they are. She’s at ComfortQueen.com and @JenLouden on Twitter. She’s my truth-teller friend, a way-shower, with the far-seeing eyes of a river pilot. She’s wise, generous, kind. She’s Venus, shining on the winter horizon.

Pam Slim. EscapeFromCubicleNation.com and on Twitter: @PamSlim. Her book, Escape From Cubicle Nation, has called so many people out of the grey confines of corporate life and into the exhilarating river-ride of entrepreneurship. Through her blog, her book, her speaking appearances, and her presence, she inspires us to reach for our dreams. Each of my conversations with her this year has left the air around me clear as a bell. To me, Pam is Sirius, the star that shines at midnight on new year’s day–the spirit of possibility.

Mark Silver. HeartOfBusiness.com. On Twitter: @MarkHeartOfBiz. Mark is the sun that warms the river and my raft, and makes love visible. Sufi master healer, player of Ultimate Frisbee, shepherd of the heart-centered community forum The Business Oasis, and father of one-year-old twin boys, Mark’s work is about the seamless weaving of love into business.

Richard Miller of CalyxDesign.com. @RichardMiller on Twitter. Peerless web-artist, designer, man of heart, integrity and intuitive genius. He made me a home on the web that’s truly mine. He is Arcturus, the brightest star of springtime.

There are so many people who have inspired me this year. Chief among them are my clients, whom I admire so much for their courage and commitment to transformative work, to their creative process, to shaping their own lives and to contributing their gifts to the world. I cannot name you, because I honor your privacy, but you know who you are.

This post would never end, if I were to name all the stars in my firmament. Take a look at the people I follow on Twitter, to get some idea of whose light shines in my sky. @MicheleWoodward (LifeFrameWorks.com) @DesireeAdaway @Fabeku (SankofaSong.com) @WildHeartQueen @PattiDigh @victoriashmoria @copylicious @germinational @LuminousHeart @lauriefoley @gwenbell @MarissaBracke @sparkyfirepants @soniasimone and @gloreebe88, who inspired this post with hers.

. . . thank you, every one.

How about you? Whose light has illuminated your life this year?