Oh Beloved,

take me.

Liberate my soul.

Fill me with your love and

release me from the two worlds.

If I set my heart on anything but you

let fire burn me from inside.

--rumi

 

Beloved

There comes a moment when the world sits upturned and balanced on a
point, ready to tip. Which way will we let it fall? There comes a
moment in the chaos when the smallest action, perfectly timed, can have
an effect as great as all the efforts of all the heroes who have come
before.

Our old selves have died and composted to create a fertile soil. We
cleared the stones and placed them on our garden wall by hand. We rode
the great wheel through the darkness with the ember of our seed-selves,
coming to rest to plant our roots deep into Terra Firma. We are ready.

This is the moment we have prepared for. This is why we are alive in
this time and this place. Together we can open the passage to High
Summer at the end of a long, dark winter -- not just for ourselves,
individually, collectively -- but also for our nation and our world.
This is the moment when we turn our collective face to heaven and drink
in the golden, liquid grace of the Beloved. This is the moment when we
open our hearts to spill that bountiful grace into the world. Heaven
and earth are in alignment. The time is now.

----

Drink in the Beloved. Drink deeply from the Source, deep into your
Source, full circle. Embrace the Beloved fully into your self.
Be the sacred being that you truly are.

When you look into the eye of the Other,
you see your Self looking back,
eye looking at I, looking at eye.

There is no you. There is no me.
There is only the Beloved.

Come be
in love
with
Us.


posted by HeartFire at 6:12 PM

 

Hot

Hot like the warmth of the summer sun
on an uncut field,
lying there,
insects buzzing,
the smell of warm grass --
like hay but less dry,
remembering the infinite summer of childhood.

Heat that seeps in,
warming and releasing,
loosening muscle and bone,
joint and sinew,
seeking inner warmth
and merging,
full-circle,
fire to fire,
in the heart.

Yes, that kind of hot.

All of you.


posted by HeartFire at 4:04 PM

 

My name is Shams.

I have come again to this world
of flesh and bones,
of pain and joy
and bliss and sorrow.

I have come again
to love
and be loved,
to love the world awake,
to make love with
all beings and all things...

I have come again
to pierce this infinite Moment
with the Sun's eternal radiance.

Wake up, my love.
It is morning.
Wake from your dream.
The Sun is here.

Open yourself.
I have come
to pierce you through with light.

Together, we surrender.

--Shams



posted by HeartFire at 2:37 PM

 

Two kinds of love stories

There are two kinds of love stories...

boy loses girl,
and girl loses boy.

Someone always dies first.

This will all pass.
And in the end,
you must give up
everything you love.

Only love is eternal,
God circling back upon itself;
your eye mirrored
in the eye of your Lover,

eye looking at eye looking at eye...
Immersed in the ocean of Self.

--

Love now, without reservation.
Live with an open heart
This is your chance!
Do it now!
Don't waste this life.
It won't come again.

Yes, your heart will break.
I promise you, it will.
Yes, yes, yes.
That is the price of living.
The entry fee to this world
where love can be had
for those willing to pay
the heart-price.

Don't be stingy with
the only coin you have.
There is only one thing
you can buy with it.
Spend it now.

The baby's wail is the cry
of the broken heart
giving up the presence of God.
When lovers cry,
it is the same.

Why does your heart burn?
Life is a broken heart seeking itself.

Do you want to see God?
Look into the eye of your lover.

You will
one day
return.

--

Cling only to God,
But love like love is
your reason for being.
It is.

Love is the God
we see in
each other.
Cling to that love,
not to the other.

posted by HeartFire at 4:55 PM

 

Soul Mates

The mechanics of deep soul connection transcend our expectations for a "normal" relationship. True love, deep love, real love, is a lightning bolt that strikes without reason and WILL NOT fit to your preconceptions or the story you've told yourself about how it is going to be. Don't miss out on the real thing because it doesn't conform to your fantasy. Your heart knows all -- listen to it. Your heart never makes the wrong choice. So what if you have to move to London or leave your drearily comfortable relationship or live without money. JUMP!! It's the only reason we are alive -- to be in love. If you won't let yourself burn in the fire of love, then you will never be truly alive. I've jumped off that cliff and I've hit the rocks at the bottom -- and I'll do it again, because the fall is BLISS.

As I like to say, "Love is inconvenient."

Do soul mates exist? Yes, yes, yes. If you've been there, you know. Sometimes a soul connection requires separation. There is no roadmap for the real thing. We are here to unfold ourselves in love with ourselves, each other, the universe. What it takes to get us there is different for each of us.

I never fall in love
I never fall out of love
All I do is remember
That I have always been in love
And always will be

posted by HeartFire at 11:12 AM

 

The Crack Between the Worlds

The crack between worlds? It's the threshold between what we consider to be the material "real" world and the realm of spirit. It's living in a world of both mechanistic and of poetic causes. It's understanding that every situation can be explained as both the result of a billiard-ball chain of mechanistic effects careening into each other, and as the result of poetic causes mechanistically unlinked but supernally interconnected. If you live in the crack you can see both worlds -- one of electrons and levers and buttons and cars -- and another of energy and spirits and magic. Both worlds can be felt and seen and experienced in real ways. If you are able to cross your eyes when you look through the crack, you realize that neither world is more or less real, and that neither negates the other, and that in fact each world is a different view of the same THING, the truth of which lies in the middle.

posted by HeartFire at 2:51 PM

 
for my lovers

Divine Lover

Divine Lover
We melt our hearts together
And lose ourselves in ecstacy
As we look through each other
To the source of the river of love,
Touch the face of God
And return, exhausted,
To rest in each other's arms.


posted by HeartFire at 2:40 PM

 
Listen

Listen
when I tell you
how wonderful you are

Listen
when I say you are
as beautiful
as the sunset
shining on the ocean,
a river of shimmering gold

As beautiful as the stars
shining from within
the thick black velvet
of infinity

As beautiful as the moon,
glowing with the memory of the sun
that is never missing
only hidden

Listen
when i tell you
you are as beautiful
as a single drop of rain
falling from heaven
to join the ocean
once more

Listen
when I tell you
how wonderful you are

posted by HeartFire at 2:31 PM

 
I wrote this on 9/11/01

AWAKENING

Inshallah
As Thou wills it

We awake from the dream
and rest at the edge of the candle's flame,
on the border between light and dark.

Our world grows dark and fetid,
composting around us --
what garden will we plant
in this rich soil?

How will this heart-wound heal --
Into the jagged shards of hatred,
or open and hot with love,
like the burning sun?

Lovers and haters
murderers and saints,
all suffer the same broken heart.
This heart-wound is a window on the divine.
Will you look through it?
What do you choose to see?

Divine ones,
heal the dead, purify their hearts
and show them the way to return
to the sacred source.
Divine ones,
heal the living, purify our hearts
and help us to live a life
of love and light.

Thank you for the
awesome magnitude of this lesson
and for the brilliance of the teaching
that will come from it.

Inshallah
As Thou wills it


posted by HeartFire at 2:19 PM

 
This one I wrote for a ceremony at a weekend-long outdoor sacred rave celebration in the summer of 2001

A Blessing

I call in the spirits of below,
Grandmother earth,
foundation of the world,
the base of the pyramid.
granite, stone, magma, oil, blood of the Grandmother,
I call you up from the heart of the earth,
up into us, up into our own hearts,
to the altar at the center of creation

Grandfather sky, I call you down
from the black void between the stars
from the constellations,
pinpricks in the veil across infinity
come down to us,
send down your divine presence
down through our bodies
to make love with Grandmother earth
in our hearts,
the center of our being
and there awaken the presence of the source

I call forth the center into this sacred space
I call you out from within, and in from without
come and be present with us
fill this space with your presence
be call you to be with us
Allah hu

I call in the spirits of the east,
spirits of sunrise and beginnings,
new life
infancy
the first crack of light
dawning illumination
spirits of fire and motion
Hear my voice!
come into this space
come and be with us.
stand in the eastern gateway
keep out all that is bad.
and let in all that is good

I call in the spirits of the south,
spirits of heart, love,
family, connection, childhood
the rich red blood
and the watery realm of spirit
I call you in to help us
Hear my voice!
come and be with us and help us
stand in the southern gateway
and keep out all that is bad
and let in all that is good

I call in the spirits of the west,
spirits of change and transformation,
spirits of death and disease
of duty and adulthood
and all those things that make us change
when we should but won't
Hear my voice!
come and be with us now
come and stand in the western gateway
and keep out all that is bad
and let in all that is good.

I call in the spirits of the North
spirits of wisdom, old age,
of knowledge gained,
bleached bones in the desert,
ancient ancestors, come and be with us.
Spirits of the North,
Hear my voice!
come and be with us now.
come and stand in the northern gateway
and keep out all that is bad
and let in all that is good

I call in the sacred ancestors to come and help us
grandmother and grandfather, come and be with us here
I call in the illuminated ones,
teachers and healers from all space and time,
come and be with us
I call in the sacred dreamers,
bring us the vision we so desperately desire
Masters of power and energy,
hear my voice and answer me
Dragons of the five realms,
Lords of fire, water, earth, air and sprit,
Come now to help us in a good and beautiful way
All beings of light who wish to be here with us,
come in and help
Angels and archangels, grace us with your presence
Michael bring your sword of fire to stand guard over us
Rafael bring your healer's touch
Urael bring the wealth of the spirit
Gabrael bring the horn of the WORD
Azrael, guardian of the gate between worlds,
bring your black scythe
and set your dogs to prowl
the peremeter of this sacred space
and keep out all darkness
from our light


I ask you all to come and be with us,
and to aid in purifying this space
All you of evil intent
all you of the darkness
all you who can hear my voice and beyond
by the will of Allah,
by the power of the Christ mind
with the power of Azrael's black scythe,
You are banished from this place
BE GONE!!


Sacred ones,
divine friends
guard and nurture these sacred people
keep them safe and provided for
watch over them and guide them
help them through this transition
and make it as easy as it can be
and let us awaken,
Children in the garden of Eden




posted by HeartFire at 11:36 PM

 
Sacred and Profane

To quote Rumi again --
"God is closer to you than your own juggular vein."

Something interesting I recently read goes something like this
--
"If a westerner says "I am God" they lock him up. Say that to a Hindu and he'll reply, 'Oh, so you finally understand."

In the West we tend to think that God and man (heaven and earth) are seperate, that the sacred and the profane are in opposition and cannot coexist, and therefore to reach for the divine means that we must let go of what is here. Here, infinity is on a straight line, with the infinite source and the infinite resolution outside the envelope of our manifest existance. The divine essence comes from outside, lingers here in the profane realm to cause our reality, and then passes back out again. Our symbol for this is the cross, with the upper arm reaching for heaven, the lower one entering the earth, and the horizontal branch arching across the middle realm where we live. In the center is the resolution of duality, where the heart opens to divine realization.

If you look at it with an Eastern mind, infinity is in a circle. The infinite origin and the infinite resolution are both within the envelope of our world. The divine essence constantly cycles through our reality, transforming itself as form is made and unmade. The symbol for this is the yin/yang circle, where light and dark cycle within the circle of our universe, with the dot of light in dark and the dot of dark in light showing yin and yang transforming into each other. In this system, instead of the sacred and the profane, we have Chi that cycles as it should, and Chi that becomes stagnant and refuses to move or transform when it should.

If you look at it with a henotheist/shamanic/primitive model, there is no concept of heaven or hell, nor of sacred and profane. Everything is alive and everything is filled/composed of spirit. In that view, we are not bodies with spirits, but spirits with bodies -- for a short while -- and fully invested parts of a living, sacred reality. Within that conceptual framework you can't even have a conversation about dualism, and it's difficult to describe with our language and its inherent dualism. In such a system, one is either in ballance or out of ballance with the natural laws of the cosmos, but one can never be profane.

I don't know... am I making any sense? Of course, I've hopelessly simplified this all, and I'm reaching the limits of my understanding.

For me, to recognize the divine in another is to realize that we are all sacred beings of the same essence. It is that essence revealing, discovering and joining itself that is love.

Love.
Destroyer of difference.
Revealer of Oneness.
-rumi

posted by HeartFire at 11:33 PM

 

ONE FIRE -- MANY FLAMES.

I participate in a shamanic ritual community for which I have recently (summer 2002) served as fire-keeper during one of our three-day long outdoor ceremonies. The ceremony itself is similar to a sundance in structure, except that the dancing is only for a single day, and no one pierces. It was originally conceived of as a bridge dance to prepare people (many of whom were westerners with limited experience doing big ceremony) to go on to the more difficult higher-amplitude sundances.

The fire keeper's responsibility is to caretake sacred space and guard the gateway through which people and energy enters the sacred space. I and the other fire keeper worked with our medicine pipes beforehand in preparation. During that period I was introduced to the spirit of fire, and received information about the essence of fire. At one point I was inspired to write some of it down. From my notes:


--

All fire is derived from the original spark of the Big Bang. Each subsequent flame has been lit from that first flame in an unbroken lineage from the first moment in time. That original spark is eternal, never beginning and never ending; the universe began with a spark and will end with a spark in the Big Crunch, to explode and expand again in a new universe.

That first spark was transformed into star-matter, which ignited our sun as it coalesced. The energy and fire of our sun shines on the earth, and is absorbed and stored in plants as potentiated energy. We can consume those plants and release that stored energy, or we can release the energy as fire. That fire fuels our fire -- we are, in fact, on fire.

"Is fire alive?" -- no, the question is backwards. Fire *is* life. In the mitochondria of every cell burns a chemical flame that releases the original fire in the food we eat. We are on fire. We give off heat. Cut off our oxygen supply and we die in minutes. When the fire goes out, we die. The body grows cold. Fire is life.

When we reproduce, we pass that tiny flame to the next generation through a single egg and sperm. It multiplies and grows and expands into a new being, new flame, same fire.

It is that fire that anchors our spirit to our bodies and acts as the gateway that allows our spirit to manifest in the physical realm. Fire burns in the material *and* physical world. It is a beacon to spirit, just as our own flame is a beacon.

Fire is the doorway. It is the gateway through which spirit enters our lives and we communicate with spirit.

Fire passes through the spirit realm to open upon the infinite source. It releases undifferentiated energy in the spirit realm, and manifests in the material realm as heat and light. The spirit energy of fire is shaped by the intent we place in the altar, and then passes to the tree to connect with each dancer and their personal intent.

As we dance we move the energy in and out of the tree like a bellows, building up the energy in a spiral around the tree, the axis mundi connecting heaven and earth, around which the dance arbor describes the circumference of the universe. Our prayers shape our intent for the energy. The ancestors spirits dance on the other side to help us and take care of our prayers from their unique perspective. The tree is the still-point around which our dance universe spirals; it connects the energy of our microcosm to the macrocosm (with the help of the sacred beings), to send healing prayer to the universe, both for our benefit, and to the benefit of the greater world.

The children's fire burns at the heart of the universe and in our own hearts. It is the same fire that burns in the sun, the same fire that glows in the sweat stones and on the altar candle or in an incense offering. Our hearts know the divine secret because our fire is the same fire. It connect us to that same primal sense of innocence -- not ignorance -- that is the essence of childhood and still exists within each of us.

Just as we wish to protect each other's hearts and not tread on that child-like innocence and sense of Truth, we act in a respectful manner toward the fire, and we don't step between the fire and the tree.


posted by HeartFire at 11:13 PM

 
What is Healing

There are two ways a broken heart can heal -- hard and sharp like glass, or open and wide like the sky. i hope mine will eventually be so open and wide that there will be no pieces left to break.

Q: I wonder if you can rebreak your heart so it heals open, like a surgeon will rebreak a bone that's healed in not the best way?

A: Yes, that's what healing is. All imballances (physical, energetic, emotional) originate in that broken heart-glass. We store those wounds in our bodies, our minds and our souls. A healing presence that can sit with the wound and listen to its story with compassionate love is all that is required to release it. You can sometimes do it yourself by learning to listening to your self from a compassionate place, or you can do it with someone else.

And all heart-wounds originate from the evidence (erroniously, always) that we are not one being, with one heart, fully and completely in love all the time with everything. The wound is healed by being the universe, fully and completely in love with the wounded self.

It is a revisiting and releasing, more than a rebreaking.


posted by HeartFire at 1:05 PM