Untitled. Blank. Nothing is here but the soft subtle wind that moves through.
But I am not talking of weather.
Inside in my cozy office, the land’s wind is thwarted by the walls of this room. It is still and silent, a bit cold. I wear wool socks, sweater, scarf, a faux-fur vest. My hands are just warm enough to keep typing.
The winds that I speak of move within. Through the sky of mind, through the land of body, through the waters of changing emotion. Today they are gentle, soothing. This, we know, is not always the case.
Only what’s closed can be opened.
I had been dreaming last week of huge dark and deep waves. Water so blue it seemed black, almost blending with the foreboding air of a timeless night sky. Yet none of this really black — there was contour, uniqueness. Not the color of everything, of void, of light collapsed on itself. But very close to it. Very close.
I dove through the waves in my wetsuit, looking for something important. It was a mission. It was life or death, but it was someone else’s life on the line. Mine — despite the huge waves and great fear — was somehow not in question. Something about this felt good, even amidst all the churning.
And then morning. I went about a day of work and then another, and another, hours at the laptop, hours on the phone. I watched the tensions grip at shoulders, neck, forehead, brain. The heart was too armored for feeling. Some invisible rack pulling tighter each day. I saw it and still I felt trapped. I put my faith in the long coming weekend.
True stillness is born from the wild.
In the woods, with community, for four days, we slow down. We bring attention to breath, over and over, in more ways than you might at first think. We hold sacred rituals - meditations, confessionals of the heart, conversations with flavors of god. We show each other our souls, and we help each other to find them.
We are visited by messengers. An earthquake on the land our first day. A mountain lion outside the bathrooms that night, clacking his claws on the pavement. Waiting, growling, waiting for us to bring something forth.
Tears come from the sky for two days, and they clear just in time for the full moon to speak her bright peace. In her glow I can see celtic knots. This had started in my eyes just a few months before. By now, I have stopped questioning. With the knots, I can talk with her more easily, with the knots I find new ways to listen. Whether madness or revelation, this small spark of seeing has been a beginning of some new conversation I can’t yet comprehend.
On the fourth day, the winds start moving. Golden light through the heart - not metaphor, but a true felt sense. Silver threads and sparkles all around and through the body, now expanded with breath beyond just bone and flesh. Breath takes on new meaning, new feeling. Breath as gateway to the larger bodies, first subtle — grace moving. And the grace moves through all bodies — a fine web, all connected, undulating with the breath of an infant asleep.
There is a pulse in the silence.
Thousand petaled lotus becomes a felt sense, too. Ancient metaphor takes on first-hand meaning. Rooted in some infinite internal depth is the heart of the flower, a stillness. And then, petals, and bloom; a soft reaching outward that then gently falls back toward itself. Bloom and ground somehow the same. A sense of taurus, completeness. Stillness moving. Moving stillness. Being that which is being moved.
Paradox is a powerful portal. There’s a reason the Buddha was laughing.
Now, sitting in this office, inside all this felt sense. Fingers at laptop, faux-fur tickling the neck, tensions not sure of their place in this new scene. Arising in habit as fingers type, as mind thinks, as I go about enacting a life. And yet taurus, and lotus, and breath — all here too — inviting another way forward.
This writing is a way of bridging these worlds. This is not a spreadsheet, nor an email to a client, not a meeting being scheduled. This page began as Untitled. Blank. Empty, and waiting. Waiting for the words from the winds to arrive, for the petals to spread into form.
These words are the territory of shamans, and poets. The scribed sacred sounds of the veil as it thins. The view from the bottom of the U, as we say in my work. The space underneath the grand visions and goals. The stillness amidst this great storm.
Maybe for some they bring heart into being, as the petals bloom from the empty page and move with us toward home.
And yet, Without U, something different: n-titled. Entitled. To what are we entitled?
These questions ask on this Wednesday at noon: "Shouldn’t you, dreamer woman, be working?"
"And what is work?”, I ask back. What is working?
Maybe this sort of page is enough.
But I am not talking of weather.
Inside in my cozy office, the land’s wind is thwarted by the walls of this room. It is still and silent, a bit cold. I wear wool socks, sweater, scarf, a faux-fur vest. My hands are just warm enough to keep typing.
The winds that I speak of move within. Through the sky of mind, through the land of body, through the waters of changing emotion. Today they are gentle, soothing. This, we know, is not always the case.
Only what’s closed can be opened.
I had been dreaming last week of huge dark and deep waves. Water so blue it seemed black, almost blending with the foreboding air of a timeless night sky. Yet none of this really black — there was contour, uniqueness. Not the color of everything, of void, of light collapsed on itself. But very close to it. Very close.
I dove through the waves in my wetsuit, looking for something important. It was a mission. It was life or death, but it was someone else’s life on the line. Mine — despite the huge waves and great fear — was somehow not in question. Something about this felt good, even amidst all the churning.
And then morning. I went about a day of work and then another, and another, hours at the laptop, hours on the phone. I watched the tensions grip at shoulders, neck, forehead, brain. The heart was too armored for feeling. Some invisible rack pulling tighter each day. I saw it and still I felt trapped. I put my faith in the long coming weekend.
True stillness is born from the wild.
In the woods, with community, for four days, we slow down. We bring attention to breath, over and over, in more ways than you might at first think. We hold sacred rituals - meditations, confessionals of the heart, conversations with flavors of god. We show each other our souls, and we help each other to find them.
We are visited by messengers. An earthquake on the land our first day. A mountain lion outside the bathrooms that night, clacking his claws on the pavement. Waiting, growling, waiting for us to bring something forth.
Tears come from the sky for two days, and they clear just in time for the full moon to speak her bright peace. In her glow I can see celtic knots. This had started in my eyes just a few months before. By now, I have stopped questioning. With the knots, I can talk with her more easily, with the knots I find new ways to listen. Whether madness or revelation, this small spark of seeing has been a beginning of some new conversation I can’t yet comprehend.
On the fourth day, the winds start moving. Golden light through the heart - not metaphor, but a true felt sense. Silver threads and sparkles all around and through the body, now expanded with breath beyond just bone and flesh. Breath takes on new meaning, new feeling. Breath as gateway to the larger bodies, first subtle — grace moving. And the grace moves through all bodies — a fine web, all connected, undulating with the breath of an infant asleep.
There is a pulse in the silence.
Thousand petaled lotus becomes a felt sense, too. Ancient metaphor takes on first-hand meaning. Rooted in some infinite internal depth is the heart of the flower, a stillness. And then, petals, and bloom; a soft reaching outward that then gently falls back toward itself. Bloom and ground somehow the same. A sense of taurus, completeness. Stillness moving. Moving stillness. Being that which is being moved.
Paradox is a powerful portal. There’s a reason the Buddha was laughing.
Now, sitting in this office, inside all this felt sense. Fingers at laptop, faux-fur tickling the neck, tensions not sure of their place in this new scene. Arising in habit as fingers type, as mind thinks, as I go about enacting a life. And yet taurus, and lotus, and breath — all here too — inviting another way forward.
This writing is a way of bridging these worlds. This is not a spreadsheet, nor an email to a client, not a meeting being scheduled. This page began as Untitled. Blank. Empty, and waiting. Waiting for the words from the winds to arrive, for the petals to spread into form.
These words are the territory of shamans, and poets. The scribed sacred sounds of the veil as it thins. The view from the bottom of the U, as we say in my work. The space underneath the grand visions and goals. The stillness amidst this great storm.
Maybe for some they bring heart into being, as the petals bloom from the empty page and move with us toward home.
And yet, Without U, something different: n-titled. Entitled. To what are we entitled?
These questions ask on this Wednesday at noon: "Shouldn’t you, dreamer woman, be working?"
"And what is work?”, I ask back. What is working?
Maybe this sort of page is enough.