Mysticism and Spirituality Circle

from Azima Lila Forest. Copied with permission.

Today is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Most will recognize the figure within the figure as her image. But what is the outer figure? It is a representation of Tonantzin, the great Mother Goddess of the Aztec people, venerated for eons before the coming of Europeans to what is now Mexico. It turns out that the site where Juan Diego saw the vision of Guadalupe was the site of a temple to Tonantzin which the Spaniards tore down. There is much wisdom that indicates that Guadalupe is much more than a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary; she is a merging of the power and beauty of Aztec spirituality with Christianity.

In her image imprinted on the cloak of Juan Diego, still extant in Mexico City, one can clearly see that she is brown-skinned; she is a mestiza, a blend of Indian and Christian European religion and culture. She is the Lady of the new family of people conceived by the violent rape of Indian culture by European culture. One of her titles is Empress of the Americas, as can be attested to by the number of us North Americans who venerate and call upon her as a powerful and beautiful manifestation of the Divine Feminine.

You can go to my website at www.azimalilaforest.com to see the poem I wrote in her honor.

Here is a poem I wrote in her honor 15 years ago:

O Guadalupe
Tonantzin
Queen of the Americas
Today we remember you
Celebrate you
Give thanks for your love

Looking
Upon us all
With such compassion

Pequeños y pequeñas
The little ones
The forgotten ones
The ones in need
The ones with secret desires
The ones with broken hearts

The thousands and millions
Who have knelt
Before your image
Fingering their beads
Pouring out their fervent prayers

“O Mother,
Heal him, heal her, heal me
Help me to forgive
Bring me my heart’s desire
Take this pain from me
Bless and protect us all”

While you silently bless
Silently affirm
“The power to heal
To bless
To forgive
To manifest
Is yours—
Come into the fullness
Of who you truly are!”

O Queen of Roses
O Empress of the Americas
Full of Grace
Thank you
For your love

I saw this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh the other day and wanted to share this wonderful reminder that everything we need to understand is always demonstrated and available to our senses and heart from the “One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature” (Hazrat Inayat Khan)

***********************

I asked the leaf whether it was afraid to fall since it was autumn and the other leaves were falling. 

The leaf told me, “No. During the whole spring and summer, I was very alive. I worked hard and helped nourish the tree, and much of me is in the tree. Please do not think that I am just this form, because this leaf form is only a tiny part of me. I am the whole tree. I know that I am already inside the tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue to nourish the tree.

That is why I do not worry. As I drop from the branch and float down to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her, ‘I will see you again very soon.’” 

Suddenly I had a kind of insight very much like the insight contained in the Heart Sutra. You have to see life. You shouldn’t say, life of the leaf, but life in the leaf, and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you can see it in me and in the tree. 

I saw the leaf leave the branch and float down to the soil, dancing joyfully, because as it floated it saw itself already there in the tree. It was so happy. I bowed my head, and I knew that we have a lot to learn from the leaf because it was not afraid; it knew that nothing can be born and nothing can die.”   

~ Thich Nhat Hanh                                                   “The Other Shore” (Parallax 2017)

From Fr. Richard Rohr’s blog

The Power of Surrender
Friday, November 19, 2021

Author and activist Holly Whitaker does not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to sobriety, but she fully embraces “surrender” as vital for any healing and recovery to occur.

I’d always considered the word surrender to be blasphemous. Surrender was never a possibility to consider; it wasn’t something self-respecting, self-reliant folk like me do—we scheme around and bulldoze through whatever stands in our way. That all changed, abruptly, on that day in 2012 when I finally ran out of options and did the thing I thought I could never do—concede.

In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson says, “Until your knees finally hit the floor, you’re just playing at life, and on some level you’re scared because you know you’re just playing. The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins.” [1] It is entirely cliché, but this was exactly my experience. The moment I finally let my knees hit the floor was when I finally stopped playing at life, and every bit of good that’s come to me since then stems from this reversal of opinion on surrender.

Surrender is the strongest, most subversive thing you can do in this world. It takes strength to admit you are weak, bravery to show you are vulnerable, courage to ask for help. It’s also not a one-time gig; you don’t just do it once and move on. It’s a way of existing, a balancing act. For me, it looks like this: I pick up the baton and I run as far as I can, and I hand it over when I’m out of breath. Or actually maybe it’s like: I’m running with the baton, but the Universe is holding on to the other half of it, and we have an agreement that I’ll figure out the parts I can and hand over the parts I can’t.

In his online course on spirituality and addiction, Father Richard puts it this way:

Until you move to the sense of being able to trust there is a God who is guiding you, who loves you more than you love yourself—that’s when you’ve made the transfer. That’s when you know you’re a part of a bigger flow, a bigger system—if you want to use that word—and you are not doing it, it is being done unto you. [2]

Whitaker continues her thoughts on the power of surrender:

Life no longer feels precarious, or about to crumble—even when it is, in fact, crumbling. By surrendering to whatever is unfolding and by accepting what is, by giving up on the outcome and allowing life to flow the way it’s meant to, by stepping out of your own way and letting the natural order take the lead, you not only get a break from the exhaustion of having to control everything, but you also get to experience life, instead of what you think life owes you. (Hint: What life wants to give us is infinitely better than what we think it owes us.)

References:
[1] Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (HarperPerennial: 1996), 12–13.

[2] Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: A Spiritual Study of the Twelve Steps (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2020), online course.

Holly Whitaker, Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol (Dial Press: 2021), 158–160.

Passion burns down every branch of exhaustion. 

Passion is the supreme alchemical elixir, and renews all things

No-one can grow exhausted when passion is born,
 so don’t sigh heavily, your brows bleak with boredom and cynicism and despair—
look for passion! passion! passion! passion!



Futile solutions deceive the force of passion.
 

They are banded to extort money through lies.


Marshy and stagnant water is no cure for thirst.
 No matter how limpid and delicious it might look,
it will only stop and prevent you from looking for fresh rivers that could feed and make flourish a hundred gardens, just as each piece of false gold prevents you from recognizing real gold and where to find it.



False gold will only cut your feet and bind your wings, saying “I will remove your difficulties”
 when in fact it is only dregs and defeat in the robes of victory.
 

So run, my friends, run fast and furious from all false solutions.
 Let divine passion triumph, and rebirth you in yourself.  

I will soon be posting a summary of all the wonderful and inspiring talks, panels, videos, etc. from the Bioneers conference last weekend on our Kinship Ray website blog (sri-kinship-ray.org). I have shared a couple of them here and this talk by Kenny Ausubel, co-founder of Bioneers just blew me away.

“… we are amazing mimics, and surely we can learn a riff or two from the symphony of life. But looking around at the dreadful state of the world, you have to wonder: Is there some deeper form of social biomimicry already in play that we’re not seeing?”

“Indeed, it’s slyly hiding in plain sight. You might call it the role of fraud in nature.”

Here’s a link to the transcript – well worth your time to read and enjoy:

I have heard this a couple of times and it is always deeply moving and poignant. It is by Norma Johnson and is titled “A Poem for My White Friends”

She also has an excellent website and will soon be posting a new poem called, “In My Bones” – https://allinspirit.com/

Here is the YouTube of the “Poem for My White Friends” –
https://youtu.be/3UVIgjuovt8

This profound video was given to us at the beginning of today’s session of the Bioneers conference and it brought me to tears.

“Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.”

~Mary Oliver, “Mysteries, Yes”