Aloha!

The path of spiritual growth can be a bit rocky at the start of a journey. On average, people prefer to use existing paths and guides as much as possible.

I was asked if words can ever help us fully embrace spirit or help us attain our spiritual destination. Let’s dig into this challenge of using words and guides towards our spiritual destination.

As we grow through life, we reach a point where our words are insufficient to capture our life experiences. I literally call this point “finding our words,” as we need to expand the definition of words past the dictionary and add in our experiences. For many people, this often happens during midlife transformation.

While finding one’s words is personal. We can take shortcuts discovered by others and be inspired to connect by sharing experiences.

As we progress on our spiritual journey, we learn to engage all our senses in our exploration. Spiritual seekers will not only see the word but also taste, hear, and feel it. The book title ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ beautifully captures this sensory switch in life. This approach can make our spiritual destination feel more tangible and our journey more enlightening.

Words and Destination Video For this Newsletter

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Words tend to be physical. So, our words need to be supported to expand their impact.

People will resort to poetry, multimedia, and drugs and strive for even more extreme experiences to help them expand their words.

Words, in order to transcend from the physical to the spiritual, often require an added intensity or ‘punch ‘.

Love is a great example of something which is both physical and spiritual.

Saying I love you, (and I do love you all), sounds good. However, adding in that hug with feeling, following up with support and growth (love is being more) fulfills the word with the electricity of action. TY to Julie for the inspiration.

In the Days

We find time

Time like clouds

moving on by

 

In Ourselves

We Find Life

Life as a river

f l o w i n g  t o  t h e  s e a

 

But time and life
on their own
Has no measure

In others we find   noitcelfer|reflection

reflection like ourselves
gives us m-e-a-s-u-r-e

 

From each other
we find our poems
poems like our souls
holding secrets only a few may share

 

I have known many people
maybe your smiles can
become poems which I can share
I have seen many reflections
maybe yours will become clear to me
time will move and be measured in heartbeats
and within this rhythm
we might share the mysteries of the world

In our good moments and hard moments both, sometimes words need to be shouted, released and acknowledged to open up their meaning.

so little
very little
almost nothing
do I truly care about

But of which I do care for
love of you, love of family, love of myself
its my entire world
nothing more

finding
without your love
I feel as if I were nothing

 

is this suffering as Buddhists talk about
is this agony of hell
¿ is this sane ?
is it real
is this… what is it, to be in love
wanting to vomit out entire souls

when at times criss crossing
lover’s anger flays indiscriminately about

doesn’t make sense… At all

love
it’s a melding of souls
and at times
ripping of souls

screaming for velcro

in time tearing heals
makes stronger
the puzzles of who we are
together

Words form our voice. Sometimes we need our words to be shared to give them meaning and for us to feel spirit more fully.

This isn’t poetry of the page

This is

is this?

this is!

me reaching out to gently touch you

I have been looking for my voice
in their voice my voice stuttering, other voices merging to

shouts uttering muttering confusion
jamming my words
leaving world noise crashing into me
it shuts me down

everyone pretends
to be something else
people trying to be

loudest,    sweetest,   prettiest, smartest

est est est, always est
pretending to be est

 

I have been looking for my voice
to get attention
my voice trying to be someone else
being taught to make noise is to feel alive
pretending to be
est-smoothest-est coolest est est est
those est actions might speak louder than words

but they aren’t me

I don’t want

noise

I want         to float

words like wind,  to move, just to move

I need my voice to reach out
as me

To find my voice
I will change the rules
shift the world
with gentle words
lift the world
so you might hear what I have to say

I have been looking for my voice
because
without it
I am alone

I am not alone
Speaking now quietly
it becomes possible to hear you

its hearing you…
you hearing me…
in sharing
that alone goes away

in sharing…
I found my voice

More importantly, words remind us that we are not alone, and words allow us to connect with each other. (Spirit is 1/3rd connection!)

Sometimes, words truly have to be spoken out loud rather than read in order to understand the spirit of the lesson. Reading a thousand books silently misses more than you might realize.

Read any of these poems out loud, and put some of your feelings into it as you speak them. Then, you will discover a whole new, deeper experience, and that experience becomes part of your spiritual experience.

Sometimes, words need more than to be spoken; they have to be sung out loud.

Listen to Johnny Cash singing Hurt.

Let the music expand you to feel his last moments in life. He died 7 months after this recording, and you can hear so much more than just lyrics in this rendition. Then, mix their experience with the video and words to see the love and life of Johnny and June at a deeper spiritual level.

Then you reach the point where words fail, and all these tricks are insufficient to cover the moment.

Yes, for some experiences, such as death…

No words cover the experience.
No time undoes the feeling.
In love having fullness.
Only to be left releasing:
A shovel, a handful of dirt and the hole left behind.

In love, in sharing: becoming angels.
Living itself: is the wing beat of being an angel.
Even when forced to face death
Coming down to find the ground.

No words fulfill this hole.
Not enough dirt hide the remains,
within the mind, memory and visions
which as if alive
continue to play out.

In peace
I wish you peace
to say in oneness
Death is a reflection
Looking back from the depths
towards the light
where we all are one.

This is truth
The reason no words work
in that Death is the merging,
– Becoming alight –
with the Tao.

And I have died, more than once and in more than one way. Truth is a story. As a story we do need words to write out our truth. Then our story expands beyond words at death, but the words still allow us to share experiences both before and after death.

While it is possible to live wordlessly, living wordlessly also limits how we can hold and expand our experiences since humans are wired to use language to expand our perception. We are tool users and language is one of core tools in life.

We don’t have a single destination. Our exploration of spirit is coming to terms with changing destinations as we age.

One day sharing the spark of life with our mother.

The next crawling with exploration pushing out to playing ball and experiencing a million physical sensations.

Then feeling something more… This more is what you will learn later to be what we call “spirit”.

Then realizing

We can experience spirit everywhere, not in words but simply in being part of the experience. Like watching a leaf falling in autumn, expanding to be connected and part of that moment.

Leaves letting loose to be free
to swirl and dance upon the wind
Once upon a summer
They tried so hard to reach in growth to crack the sky
Imagine the joy upon colorful bursting to release
Spiraling finally to be free
with this last dance to the ground

As you seek your final destination in your spiritual practice, don’t forget the dance within the “in-between” moments that we know as life.

At this point you can begin to let go of the words, because you simply are part of the moment.

There is a Zen saying

The sound of rain has no translation to fully capture the moment of being within the rain.

But as another saying goes:

Iron bars do not make a jail buy they sure do help

Words cannot capture our full spiritual experience or destination but they sure can be inspirational as we move towards our spiritual destination!

This was when I started Personal Tao in 2004 twenty years ago. Yet, while this is a current memory of living once upon a time, I cannot live within this memory. Memories are in the past, and the past, well… is past gone.

While this may look like a happy memory, it isn’t. At that moment, I didn’t take the time to pause and be fully present. Now, all I have left is an external memory stored in the picture. External memories never carry the full flavor of the event. Fortunately, I have many other moments I did pause with Ishtar, so all is good. We cannot pause in every moment; otherwise, we miss the other moments of a full life.

The video for the class can be watched here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/online-retreat-112721562

So we will alternate being in the moment and later sharing the moment in so many different ways.

I have shared a dozen moments of my life in this post. Moments of love, moments of being on stage, moments of hiking, moments of death, the words helped show those moments not as a memory but as a feeling and teaching to help you do the same for yourself.

Don’t use words to capture memories; use words to deepen the moment with insight and presence. To take these approaches somewhere else now for your own use, build up your own moments and experiences.

At this point, many people stop looking for a destination since a full life is a great destination. Yet, some will continue on to the countless other choices ahead.

What are those countless choices for extra credit destinations we can achieve in our spiritual exploration? That will be the topic of our Tao Talk this month.

Questions

As you might have noticed, many of our newsletters are about answering questions sent our way.

Please ask questions as Julie and I will do our best to teach against those questions.

New Group Activities

Julie is tentatively starting a Woman’s Spiritual Book Club.

Contact Julie at oneriverllc@gmail.com if you are interested and to get the title for the first book.

Likewise, I will create a Men’s Spiritual Beer club for anyone interested. Contact me at the same email.

Then at the end of the year we will mix the two and see what happens.

Cheers
Much Love Dragons & See you soon!

Upcoming Community Live Streams

Join our Personal Tao Membership for monthly live streams via Zoom! Join and be part of the creation of the our new School!

November Live Streams via Zoom

• • Nov 1st (Friday) @ 8:00 am HST / 7:00 pm London~ Tao Talk
    Learning the New Taoism Teachings from Our Urban School: Being a Dragon
  • Nov 3rd @ 9am HST ~ Dragon Writing Group (Closed Group)
  • Nov 5th @ 4:30pm HST – Dragon Election NightLets be together, to be strong, on Election night.
  • Nov 9th (Sat) @ 8:30 am HST / 6:30 pm London~ Relationship Corner Dragon Buddies / Relationship Corner  coming together to talk about relationships and informally connect with other dragons.
  • Nov 17th @ 9am HST ~ Dragon Writing Group (Closed Group)
  • Nov 19th (Tuesday) @ 1:30 pm HST / 10:30 am Nov 20th Sydney ~ Community Choice  
    We have changed this livestream to be community choice. The Dragon Community has picked Empathy for this months topic!
    Email us or comment below for next month’s topic

Join our Personal Tao Membership to join in any of these live streams via Zoom!