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To support the development of this site and the work of soul friendship you are invited to express your appreciation through the spiritual practice of Dana
Radiant Poem Inside each human being there is a poet. This poet can bring dawn the loftiest heights of truth and, at the same time, can powerfully eclipse the darkest falsehood if and when necessity demands. - Sir Chinmoy ---------------- Radiant Storytelling
A storyteller creates an experience, whilst his/her audience perceives the message and goes on to create their own personal mental images. The storyteller seeks to capture the minds and attention of his audience through not only spoken words but gestures also and are also great observers, adjusting their words to respond to their audience at any given moment.
The storytellers/bards are creators, creating a way to transport the mysteries, keeping them safe. The act of storytelling is a celebration of intangible heritage, and the stories told are pieces of ephemeral art. The Ancient Muse Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained, learned poets. The bards were steeped in the history and traditions of clan and country, as well as in the technical requirements of a verse technique that was syllabic and used assonance, half rhyme and alliteration, among other conventions.
As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they performed a number of official roles. They were chroniclers and satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire, glam dicenn, could raise boils on the face of its target.
However, it should also be noted that in medieval Ireland Bards were one of two distinct groups of poets, the other being the fili. According to the Early Irish law text on poets, Uraicecht Becc, bards were a lesser class of poets.
Allegedly they did not have either sufficient training or lineage qualifications. As should they were said to not be eligible for higher poetic roles as described above.
However, it has also been argued that the distinction between filid (pl. of fili) and bards was a creation of Christian Ireland, and that the filid are were more associated with the church.[2] However, in Gaelic portions of Ireland after the Norman Conquest the Bards became the main carriers of poetic tradition.
The bardic schools were extinct by the mid 17th century in Ireland and by the early 18th century in Scotland
The original bards were from Iron Age poets-mystics who kept the lore and history of their tribes, held high status and fulfilled an important cultural role.
They were closely akin to the Druids and many believe that when occupying Romans destroyed, or drove the Druids underground, their knowledge and rites were passed on to the Bardic Order http://www.bardic.org/ |
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Martin - The Bard Séanachie: The Endeavors of a Bard
The three principle endeavors
of a bard: - The Triads of Britain
The language of a bard is poetic. It is the language of geancannach (love talk.) In Celtic society bards were revered as much as kings and queens, and sometimes because of the power of a bard's words were feared.
Many of us will recognize the first of the principle endeavors of a Bard. More than ever these days we are collectors of learning. This is principally the imbibing of logical and science based information. Thus we become more and more informed. We learn to know more about but we miss what it means to be insightful. We miss what it means "to be in the know."
The second principal endeavor is that we teach. We are all teachers only all too often what we teach is from unconscious habit. We often teach as reactionaries rather than from full consciousness in the present moment. We tend to teach from knowledge rather than from wisdom. We think that to know about something means we know its essential nature.
The third endeavor of a Bard is to make peace and "put an end to injury." This is similar to lines in the Prayer of the mystic St. Francis where he asks
Where there is
hatred let me sow peace.
The The Anam cara Experience is the experience of being willing to learn, to teach as one living with awareness and to sow peace and put an end to injury. In order to do this one must learn not to play small. One must be prepared to risk and journey into the expansiveness of Eros - the energy of Love. Otherwise one will tend to be grabbed by entropy and the embrace of Thanatos. This is the energy of fear and leads to the unlived life.
Your soul is always inviting you to learn. This learning tends to be holistic rather than rational (meaning ratio -in part). This bardic way of learning is insightful. It is the learning that is undertaken by one who would be a seer. This is the ability to see through the eyes of the heart with wisdom and compassion. In the Native American Lakota tradition this is referred to as cante-ista.
Such seeing ability is a great grace and a greater responsibility. Such seeing demands great discipline and awareness. If you are given this ability it is for the greater good of all. It isn't simply given to you to enhance your ego. The modern bard and medical intuitive Caroline Myss, Ph.D. writes about the responsibility of the seer in Anatomy of the Spirit in this way.
"There is nothing easy about becoming conscious. My own life was much easier before I knew about the deeper meaning of choice, the power of choice that accompanies taking responsibility. Abdicating responsibility to an outside source can seem, at least for the moment, so much easier. Once you know better, however, you can't get away with kidding yourself for long."
Responsibility means precisely what the word invites - the ability to respond. Most of what we do is a reaction based on the old learned habits and behavior. Reaction tends to be blind to the totality of the moment. There is the idea that we know how to deal with a particular situation given past experience. Yet all mystics, seers, and avatars invite you to do one thing. This is to die to the past and live in the present that is the presence of who you are.
When they say this, they are not asking you to learn to forget. They aren't asking you to lose your memory. They are asking you to give up your psychological attachment to how you think this particular situation should be and to let go into the universal intelligence of the moment. It responds in holistic and newly creative ways. It is solution-centered rather than focused on problem solving.
These bards of old and modern times know the language that allows you to teach peace and put an end to injury. They invite through the language of storytelling, fairy tale, poetry and song the mending of the primary wound that each and everyone carries.
This is the wound of separateness from the Source, the knowing of which is the real healer of injury and the true source of real peace. Why is this? It is because to know that connection to Source heals most every wounding experience that you may ever enter, including the fear of death.
Learning, teaching and inviting peace and pardon is the invitation contained in The Anamcara Experience. This is an experience with its own primary endeavors. This is the learning of geancannach - love talk, the learning to allow your personal story its unfolding, the trusting in the ability to feel the universal song of Love and how it sings through you.
Essential to The Anamcara Experience are practices that you are invited to put into your daily life. This is in order that the boundless might be contained within the boundary of human form for the joy of expressing as Love in form. This is real joy and as the modern mystic Eckhart Tolle says is " joy in my self."
The Anam cara Experience; Ready to Radiate eCourse begins with the Marianne Williamson quote:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our dark that frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?"
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We are meant to shine, as children do.
We are borne to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shines, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others." Extract from Return
to Love A bard is one who is willing to return to Love and speak the truth of their personal embodiment as Love in form. It is the willingness to serve Creation for the highest good of all. In this is found a radiant purpose, which does not simply mean you become a do gooder. More important than this you become an alchemist. This is one who turns the lead of judgment into the gold of compassion and abundance.
A Bard is one who is willing to teach only love because they have been allowed the grace to see that this is who they are. Out of such grace arises peace and the willingness for peace. This is the invitation to soul friendship. It isn't easy but neither is resisting the call to live as Love easy. One gives you the ultimate reward of knowing who you are. The other is simply a holding pattern that will eventually break under the pressure of your soul's longing for the expression of Love.
Why not join this writer on a journey into the Land of the Forever Young. This is the realization of your timeless nature that creates forms in time for the joy of the play of Love. This overcomes all sense of what it feels like to live contrary to your nature.
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