The Invitation

 A close friend of mine sent this to me and it just blessed me when I read it.  I thought it was so beautiful and I wanted to share.

To me, 'The Invitation' subtlety expresses the core values that I think reflect a healthy and authentic relationship.  So many relationships are ignorantly built upon false premises, such as the need for emotional, financial, or even psychological security.  The need to control, or to be controlled.  The need to be appreciated, loved, successful, recognized, the list goes on and on, but they all begin with... the need... for something...  

While reading this piece, notice the questioner's perspective, the intent behind these words, to challenge the common weak and shallow premises, to brush quickly past them and then in the same breath, demand the attention and full presence of the authentic self.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing. 

It doesn’t interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk

looking like a fool

for LOVE

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive. 

It doesn’t interest me

what planets are

squaring your Moon…

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with Wildness!

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.

It doesn’t interest me

if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own Soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence. 

I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied. 

I want to know

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know

if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments. 

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming

from the book The Invitation

The Myth of Normal

 

Love, Solitude, and balanced Relationships

There are so many varied thoughts and ideas that arise while in solitude.  Those most persistent are related to past relationships.  I should have done this better, or maybe I should have done that instead.  Was I right or was I wrong.  Ironically, if I am in the dumps about a failed relationship, the mind paints me as a hero that did all he could do but just wasn’t enough.  If I feel good after the relationship ends, my mind makes me feel heartless and uncaring.  Neither perspective is true.

I didn’t always do things the right way, and I loved every single woman that I have been in a relationship with, but even though my actions were clumsy at best sometimes, the action still needed to be taken.  How can you do anything but what your heart prompts you to do, even when you are immature and emotionally charged, the end result will be what it is intended to be whether gracefully accomplished or roughly executed.

Often when I think back about certain relationships there is this aura of goodness and perfection that hovers over the memories of my partners.  My mind creates an image of them that is saintly and kind when that perspective is only half of the reality I experienced.  Many times I remained in the relationship, even when in my heart I knew it would eventually end in disaster.  Walking away as friends was a better trajectory for me than to stay and end up becoming enemies.  But I felt obligated to keep trying, even when there was no real movement from my partner to build a lasting bridge of communication between us, sometimes I just kept on trying.

Now as I sit here in solitude once again, it feels very much like there can be no alternative.  I am so different, my perspectives outside of most cultural or social understandings, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.  Once you know something, it changes your every perspective and determines even your motivations in life.  As many relationships as I have had, there was love at the beginning, a struggle for balance and peace in the middle, and heartache and pain in the end.  

Love in relationships is mostly unbalanced, and in that state, it is easily upset.  If you have a great love for someone, that love also requires you to be prepared for the opposite swing of the emotional pendulum.  As great as the love is, individually or mutually, it is only one side of the coin.  Allow for the pendulum swing, be prepared to be hurt or to hurt another, but understand that is where love is grounded.  Not in the heavenly moments, but the moments of utter chaos and hell.  If love was never there, the roller coaster ride can become unbearable.  If love is there, the swings and drops of the coaster ride become the leaven for the bread that sustains the life of the relationship.

Being Old

This is my first experience of being old.  All throughout life I have had to figure out how to be the friend, the romantic partner, the son, the brother, the father, the spouse, and all without an owner’s manual or a safety net.

Now as I have entered this new phase of life, this new social role, I somehow was expecting to have more answers, but once again I realize that there are no guidelines, just this new experience that can only be lived out on life’s stage, as this entity, as it happens, every day.

Many feel that they have found the answers to the rights and wrongs, the do’s and don’ts, of their social roles, and then intently press them down upon others, expecting them to conform.  How foolish to believe that the utter diversity of this human experience has specific criteria that can be applied universally to all beings.

There is no path, there is no teacher.  The one who follows any existing path or clings to one teacher or ideology for ultimate guidance, has stepped off their own divine and unique pathway of life, and promptly loses their way.  The so-called struggles and entanglements of life only exist due to our inflexible guidelines that we ourselves have created and blindly adhere to.  

Life is our path, life is our teacher.

Life flows, things happen, and we can either flow with life or expect it to meet our idealized list of specific criteria.  To flow with life means to enjoy the journey.  To adhere only to your own expectations of what life should be, only brings suffering.

To be old is just another phase of my existence, a stage of life to experience with freshness and openness, discarding the superficial ideas that attempt to define my unique experience.   

Happy Thanksgiving 2022

 A short message about how I’m doing and to wish all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Updates on Ky adventure

 Just sharing how things are going now that I’ve been back in Kentucky for a while.  

Settling back in Kentucky