Yesterday I travelled from the North West of Ireland in County Donegal, through Scotland to the North East of England, in Northumberland. Ireland, Scotland and England were all shrouded in autumn mist, completely hiding the full moon. Full moon is the time of greatest creative stretch and intuitive opening yet my mind was empty all day, not a creative impulse in sight. I sat on the bus and at the airport and on the plane and on the train for ten hours doing nothing, my mind switched off, in neutral, at rest.
I have the luxury of a few days of solitude in my friend’s house while she is away and this morning I awoke to a quiet house and another day cloaked in mist. Straightaway my mind began to reach for something familiar to hold onto. Whenever mind is idle it has a tendency to find worrisome thoughts, like a dog digging up a comforting old bone to chew on. It is a challenge to mind to be quiet, empty and still, to be simple and needing little.
Out of the silence this poem arrived:
Listening to silence
letting go into stillness
Entering into the mist
sensing the timeless womb of creation where all life exists
in the Oneness of pristine potential
While mind is a restless sea, worrying at the shore
the silent stillness calls us to a deeper home
As mind searches to make and mould and mend
stillness calls us to a spaciousness beyond logic, form, meaning and movement
Relaxing our identification with mind
may feel like letting go of life itself and
entering the shroud of deathliness
We hold on tight to our plans
and think we know where we are going
We believe we know who we are
as we string our worry beads on a thread of imagined continuity
– this bag of bones, this story, this memory bank
We want to be the one who knows
the striving mind always reaching for answers
Trying to hold it all together in some consummate meaning
we dive into the divine obsession of creating
Striving to make something happen
pushing to birthing the new
As we relax the illusion of the separate will
and surrender into the gliding waters of the unknown
Falling into Grace
trusting in the mystery of life and death
Breathing with the cycles of the moon and the tides and the seasons
coming home to rest
May peace be with us.
October 28th 2015
