Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Nearing emergence

waking with taiowa in the shell,
i stir in the void.

form without form.
immeasurability.
no-thing.


spider woman
spies me with her reflector eyes
and spits creative wisdom
onto my forming form.

i use her silken threads
to leap from thought to possibility
and back to the muse.
gestation is a heady ripening.

embryonic dreams
bring me to the she-eagle
and to the two eggs
standing expectantly
amidst twig and straw.

"this is what rests for you --
the sky and the star."

vibrations shimmy into word
and crawl slowly up my calcium antenna,
tuning me into the primordial "yawp."

shell life is a funny thing.
it's soon to be shelved.
and in the cracking,
emergence.

(copyright 2011)

8 comments:

Dana Moore said...

Only the circular/spiral threads of a web are sticky. Moving towards or away from the center in a straight line is one's only hope.

Kelly said...

hi, dana.

straight lines toward and away are important to follow, methinks, but what if the path dips and twists in serpentine patterns? are all webs sticky? or do they function like a labyrinth, teaching us that the journey is really more important than arrival and the trick is to keep moving and not allow for stuckedness?

Dana Moore said...

The web of life itself appears to be sticky. We human beings are thrown into this web without our consent and must struggle to achieve freedom. There are countless ways we become stuck in the world: power, wealth, the sins of the flesh. The devil is the spider who is constantly weaving neat and devious traps for us. Our only hope is to follow the straight and narrow path that is free of the spider's glue.

Kelly said...

what if this is more of the great illusion, the sin, the old story we tell ourselves? what if we create this web of which you speak because we see only separateness? aren't we snared and food for forces when we forget we are one with everything?

what if spider is simply spider and we are the ones who supply the glue? so many prefer lies to truth.

is this not the root of our suffering?

Dana Moore said...

The fact, as you said, that we spin webs to entrap ourselves is my case in point. The most pernicious of all evils is when a being is recruited, or doomed from the start, to engineer their own demise. The devil is within us and no exorcism however powerful can extricate the demon within. Why do we see separateness when there is none? Why do we forget we are, as you say, one with everything when in fact we are? Why do we supply the glue that traps us? Why are we working against ourselves? It is obvious we prefer lies to truth, but why? Are we spiders trapped in our own web? How do we free ourselves from ourselves?

Kelly said...

i like what marianne williamson has to say on this topic:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

like you point out, such thinking frightens the ego and spurs it toward a fight to the death. why do we prefer separateness? i think it's because it's easier. less work to do! less death to face! hearing the ego in its death throes scares most of us, compelling some of us to throw our energy into its resuscitation, promising never to do that again. "sorry, little ego. what was i thinking? i must have been crazy to have caused you such pain."

still, the ego is not the enemy. it's a child looking for boundaries and balance with the soul. this is our work and those around us help us to do it.

how do we free ourselves? we choose to live with intentionality, right action, courage to name a few. the majority of us know that samsara's carousel brings no reward. we know intuitively that pascal was right -- distraction is everywhere but does nothing for us.

i believe we each came into the world with a contract to help others some way. the goal then is to fulfill it and help others do the same. it's service and it's HARD, naturally calling our ego demons to rise to the surface and work to squelch the work. But, we're stronger than this and the work can be done. it is being done now.

Dana Moore said...

Do we create our own suffering? Or are we like winegrapes crushed by a Trampler who seems to have cotton in her ears? Do we share the life of the birds and flowers who are fully provided for? Is the ego the devil inside? Or is the devil simply a figment of our imagination? What ontological status does the ego have?

The issue that bothers me the most is why we must undergo a process of personal evolution in the first place. Why cant we be born fully enlightened? Why is our soul not born in it's final stage? It must evolve and mature like the body. Our soul must grow-up (mature), wake-up (become enlightened), clean-up (heal it's shadow), and show-up (put into practice the wisdom it has acquired). And while all this is happening we have to earn our daily bread with the sweat of our brow while holding onto the promise of the Trampler that when we reach perfection we will never be done praising her name.

Kelly said...

is anything born in its final stage? i doubt it. i'm sure there are lots of little seeds and animals out there who go, "oh, crap! no sun! drought! nothing to eat and yet i must still hunt! process chlorophyll! egad! life is hard!"

i don't think life was meant to be easy and pain free, but this doesn't mean we can't evolve past pain or struggle. remember the experiment in biosphere ii -- without wind, the trees' branches fell right off. they needed to be taxed in order to grow strong. without branches, what would the birds and animals do?

besides, if you believe as the Buddhists do, we will wake up one day totally evolved. shoot! it could be today! why not?

i go back to joe campbell who talks to us about the hero's journey (oddly, never about the heroine's journey, which is different. for that, we have to go to maureen murdock). "out of perfection nothing can be made. every process involves breaking something up. the earth must be broken to bring forth life. if the seed does not die, there is no plant. bread results from the death of wheat. life lives on lives."

you ask why the soul isn't born totally evolved. do you mean the ego or are you speaking of karmic soul lessons?

my personal philosophy is that life is a school and we return often to learn new lessons. sometimes we play student. sometimes we play teacher. lots of times we're everything in between. the good news, methinks, is that we travel with soul groups and help each other along the way. we're not alone. like the beatles once said, "i get by with a little help from my friends." i would only add that those friends and guides can be anyone or anything.