Letting the Angels Back In

This blog is a continual story that begins with the first posting in the Blog Archive, The Journey Begins. Click down the list to read entries, and click on arrows to reveal monthly drop-down menus.

This is one of my favorite poems by Rumi. It reminds me of the weightless invisibility of the tender heart that Chogyam Trungpa writes about.

Stop the words now.

Open the window

in the center of your chest

and let the spirits fly in and out.

                                       Rumi

Poetry, music and art can express the numinous regions of soul that we all feel but that are so difficult to describe in ordinary language. My motivation to write poetry comes from a need to express my pain, my despair and my immutable faith. I feel it's very important to acknowledge the transcendent, spiritual side of being seriously ill, but it's also crucial to express its shadow sides. I tend to be very hard on myself, expecting nothing less than perfection. The polarity of perfection and imperfection is really the polarity of spirit and matter. By accepting imperfection, we accept matter, we accept the grit that comes along with the grace. I write poems to express the struggle of this paradoxical situation we're all in. I hope you are touched by this poem, which was written after a particularly difficult chemo day, when I was struggling to find the solace of spirit.

Letting the Angels Back In

Letting the angels back in

to breathe light into the

closed chambers of my heart,

this rank dungeon, this

frightened tenderness of flesh.

Letting the angels back in 

to dissolve the cage

of persecution, its bars

adorned with thorny

black roses that never forget.

Letting the angels back in

to forgive the stones of my sins,

my radiant, shattered vows,

my failure to flourish,

my betrayals of the

goddess Aphrodite.

Letting the angels back in

to raise a fallen queen,

her land in shambles,

her soldiers confused

and wildly hacking at no

particular thing.

Letting the angels back in

to lead me beyond this 

fortress of grief into

a meadow of freedom,

a place where there 

is no impossible, where

photons entangle and 

birth universes.

Letting the angels back in

to anoint my feet, to kiss my hand,

to show me my body of

crystalline light.

Letting the angels back in,

angels too kind to disown 

a woman for often casting them out.

I would love to hear from you. To leave a comment about this posting, scroll down and type inside the white box below the heading, POST A COMMENT. Underneath the white box, it says Comment as: with a white bar that says Ria Moran (Google). Click the arrows on the right and a dropdown menu will appear. Choose name/URL and type in your name. The URL is not necessary. Or, if you wish, you may choose to leave a comment anonymously. Then click Post Comment in the next white box and your comment will be published. Thank you!

The Heart of the Spiritual Warrior

This blog is a continual story that begins with the first posting in the Blog Archive, The Journey Begins. Click down the list to read entries, and click on arrows to reveal monthly drop-down menus.

A spiritual warrior isn't like the image that comes to mind when we think of someone who's trained for combat. Typically, we think of warriors as tough, hard-hearted, aggressive, and dominant. We all know about basic training, and how hard the drill sergeants have to work to try and drive these qualities into their recruits. That's because people are basically rooted in soul qualities that motivate them to help others instead of hurt them. Underneath our woundings and societal pressures, we are all basically seeking to express love and help others. Becoming a spiritual warrior is like peeling off unhealthy emotional layers until we reach the awakened heart, what the Buddhists call bodhicitta. Awakened heart is the willingness to be with ourselves in our most raw, vulnerable state.

Meditation is the best tool we have available to find our awakened heart, because by learning to ignore all of our excuses about how we can't connect inside, our awareness opens and we suddenly connect inside! And when we connect inside, what do we find? Chogyam says, If you search for awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there except for tenderness.

In the moments I have glimpsed this kind of tenderness, I've also felt pierced by the state of humanity. In the place where my heart should be, I have felt raw and exposed to my partner Ken's pain, or to my sister's, or to my neighbor's, or to the people suffering in Afghanistan, or Darfur. But I don't feel cornered by their pain, or trapped in it. I feel love for them, and love for the frailty of the human condition. We are all such fragile creatures who toughen ourselves over our wounds so we don't have to feel pain. But then the toxic pain gets stuck beneath these tough calluses, and our bodies enter a diseased state, whether emotional, mental, or physical. We need to keep flushing poisons out of our system all the time in order to stay healthy on every level. The fate of our heart is in our own hands. It is up to us to clean out our hatred, jealousy, envy, regret, revenge, rage, greed, and the list goes on.

Trungpa says that the experience of the open, tender heart gives rise to fearlessness; not the type of fearlessness of somebody with iron biceps who's ready to take on an attacker, but the type of fearlessness that gives us the courage to be open to whatever life offers. This kind of fearlessness takes us to a place beyond fear, to acceptance. Acceptance is based on inner strength that comes from the soul, and it is the homeground of the spiritual warrior. The opposite of this kind of fearlessness is to live life in a kind of sleepy trance in which we ignore our own shadowy qualities, and we try not to think of any kind of change at all; in fact, we try as hard as we can to keep things the same so we feel safe, no matter how bad that safety might really, truly feel.

My cancer has forced me to choose the path of the spiritual warrior, and I don't know if I would have done it willingly. So many people talk about the spiritual gifts that come along with the suffering of cancer, and for me, that couldn't be more true.

I would love to hear from you. To leave a comment about this posting, scroll down and type inside the white box below the heading, POST A COMMENT. Underneath the white box, it says Comment as: with a white bar that says Ria Moran (Google). Click the arrows on the right and a dropdown menu will appear. Choose name/URL and type in your name. The URL is not necessary. Or, if you wish, you may choose to leave a comment anonymously. Then click Post Comment in the next white box and your comment will be published. Thank you!

Basic Goodness

This blog is a continual story that begins with the first posting in the Blog Archive, The Journey Begins. Click down the list to read entries, and click on arrows to reveal monthly drop-down menus.

As the day of my mastectomy approaches, I have been working with my fear of going through this surgery and I've picked up the book Shambhala: The Way of the Warrior to give me insight in developing the fearlessness of the spiritual warrior. Chogyam Trungpa says that warriorship begins with the experience of the basic goodness of life. These are quiet, simple moments, like noticing a bright color, hearing a beautiful sound, or smelling the vibrant air after a rainshower. Trungpa says we should take notice of these moments to awaken us to our own dignity and beauty.

I struggle with losing awareness of my own beauty and judging myself because I developed cancer. There's a little demon running around in my mind that says, "You are a real fuck-up. Look at what you're putting everybody through - all the worry, and the expense. With all the work you've done on yourself, you can't even figure out how to stay healthy. You're nothing but a failure."

I experience these thoughts as toxic, and when they surface, I work with them. Instead of trying to force destructive thoughts from my consciousness, I focus on opening my heart to my vulnerability and acknowledge that I'm doing the best I can with my life. Trungpa says,

A great deal of chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves. Having never developed sympathy or gentleness towards themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is inharmonious and confused.

I believe that the inharmonious and confused energy that he's talking about is part of what creates the cancer pattern. When I meditate, I work to dissolve this self-rejection and locate what Trunga calls basic goodness inside. It's always there...I always find it. I find a way to love the difficult parts of myself, and this is basic to practicing spiritual warriorship. According to Chogyam Trungpa,

When you don't punish or condemn yourself, when you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contact the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to be open to yourself. Developing tenderness towards yourself allows you to see both your problems and your potential accurately. You don't feel that you have to ignore your problems or exaggerate your potential. This kind of gentleness towards yourself and appreciation of yourself is very necessary. It provides the ground for helping yourself and others.

I would love to hear from you. To leave a comment about this posting, scroll down and type inside the white box below the heading, POST A COMMENT. Underneath the white box, it says Comment as: with a white bar that says Ria Moran (Google). Click the arrows on the right and a dropdown menu will appear. Choose name/URL and type in your name. The URL is not necessary. Or, if you wish, you may choose to leave a comment anonymously. Then click Post Comment in the next white box and your comment will be published. Thank you!

Beauty

This blog is a continual story that begins with the first posting in the Blog Archive, The Journey Begins. Click down the list to read entries, and click on arrows to reveal monthly drop-down menus.

There are plenty of days when I really have to work it to get my spirits up. I have a beautiful altar with images and statues of all five of the archetypal deities I'm working with right now: Green Tara, Kali, Isis, Mahakala and the Medicine Buddha. Every morning, I light candles and incense, ring my Tibetan bell, and settle into a self-healing active imagination session followed by a meditation in which I follow my breath and notice thoughts floating by. I experience inner beauty during these times that deeply inspires me, and gets me through tough days.

Here's a picture of my altar. When I'm not sitting in meditation, my bunny meditates for me.

If I didn't connect in to Spirit every day, I'd be in pretty bad shape, considering what I've already been through and what I'm facing. There are so many ways to connect in, and I know that this is just my way. My partner, Ken, connects in through nature. He goes on walks every day and communes with Spirit through the powerful beauty of the elements. I strongly feel that when we connect in with beauty on the earth plane, we directly connect in with Spirit. John O'Donohue in his masterful work, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace, puts it this way: 

The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere - in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul. For a while the strains of struggle and endurance are relieved and our frailty is illuminated by a different light in which we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances the sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us.

Our Planet of Beauty

I believe that there is a primordial order to the universe that is larger than its expressions of chaos. Cancer might be considered an expression of universal chaos, and I find myself challenged to find the underlying order that would lend meaning to the experience of these chaotic cells that seem to have lost their way. I find that by holding the entire experience of having cancer within a framework of reverence and meaning, I am led to an experience of the ultimate beauty of life. The breast that I never liked in the first place because I thought it was too small is now beautiful to me in its dying moments. Ironically, it had to become a sacred wound before I could love it. We women are so tough on ourselves. Our breasts are too small, our hips are too big, our hair is too thin...the list is never-ending. 

It is time, right now, to accept ourselves just as we are, to stop being picky-picky and be appreciative of our divine beauty. To quote John O'Donahue, Beauty is ultimately an elegant, inner luminosity bestowed by the soul. Seeing beauty is glimpsing the soul. Learning to love ourselves and to appreciate out divine beauty is the path to loving others in their innate divinity, and to loving life with all its warts, tumors and heartache.

I would love to hear from you. To leave a comment about this posting, scroll down and type inside the white box below the heading, POST A COMMENT. Underneath the white box, it says Comment as: with a white bar that says Ria Moran (Google). Click the arrows on the right and a dropdown menu will appear. Choose name/URL and type in your name. The URL is not necessary. Or, if you wish, you may choose to leave a comment anonymously. Then click Post Comment in the next white box and your comment will be published. Thank you!