I’d been hard at my computer all morning, doing focused, detailed work. My brain was tired and my being felt cramped. I went to my favourite reclining chair and rested back into it with my feet up. I picked up a book I’m reading, “Fingerpainting on the Moon” by Peter Levitt. I find when books are written with soulful energy I only need to read a page or two and I’m transported into the more expanded, relaxed consciousness of the imaginal world – the landscape of Soul.
Do you remember your first Soul awakening? I’m sure I’ve told you before, I was 29 (Saturn Return) and I’d gone to live alone in the countryside for the first time after the break-up of an eight year relationship. One afternoon I came home from work and sat down with a pen and notebook and poetry began to flow through me. It continued to flow over the next weeks and months and I was always ready with pen and paper to catch a line. I fell in love with poetry, the arrival of a poem is such a thrill. I’m sure those of you who write or draw, or paint, or create something out of nothing, will also know this thrill. There was nothing – and now this!
I’d experienced moments of beauty, inspiration and revelation before, glimmerings of another reality beyond the physical. But I was still imprisoned by unconsciousness and had no tools to understand or consciously choose how to respond to my experience – that was a long journey to come. That first poem opened a door and I stepped into a whole new world. I had no map of the territory and I didn’t know the language but my poems became my guide and I visited this world as often as I could.
Connecting with Soul, writing a poem, exploring into the unknown, requires a state of openness and relaxation, a suspension of judgment, curiosity, receptivity and the willingness to accept and co-operate with what is given. It’s an act of amazing grace, deeply restful and nourishing. In an ordinary day it is possible to clear a space, to sit and listen and welcome what comes with wonder and gratitude.
Here is the poem that came to me last week. I’m sharing it with you as a way to celebrate the creative process and the renewal we can experience through each little act of surrender.
It begins with a dream, a vision,
a hunger for the something more
we know, in our hearts, exists somewhere
if only we could find it, remember it
and call it into being,
here, now, always
until we touch that longing
there is no need to stretch towards the moon
and feel the ache of limitation, the pull of liberation
we stretch because we must
because the hunger and the stretching and the missing
is who we are, just as much
as the warm glow of the dream
fleetingly fulfilled, is ours too.
The soul meanders
and lives in a different time zone
in an age of timelessness
where many stories converge
mingle and weave
re-creating again and again
always reaching for completion
and yet, like dreams, never complete
but always fragments, surreal hallucinations,
passing through, touching us awake
and sometimes, if we’re ready,
like the fisherwoman by the river
we touch the iridescent skin of Soul’s desire
before the bubble breaks
and melts
back into the ether
just as we too will melt
just as everything will disappear
back into the mystery
of timelessness and time.
Emptied, the lungs expand
to fill again, filled
the breath has no choice
but to release
while the rhythmic breathing of the tide
strokes the hard edge of time
and the sand, tumbled and tossed
in the moon’s magnetic pulse
rubs against the rope that binds
until the sail unfurls
and a small bird
flies into the billowing fullness
of a pregnant sky.
Rose Diamond, July 21st 2024
