Spiritual Direction – lying on the couch being happy (2)
Posted by admin on 18 Oct 2008 at 10:20 am | Tagged as: mystical poetry
Any morning
Just lying on the couch being happy
Only humming a little
The quiet sound in the head
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment
It has so much to do in the world
People who might judge are mostly asleep
They can’t monitor you all the time
And sometimes they forget
When dawn flows over the hedge
You can get up and act busy
Little corners like this
Pieces of heaven left lying around
Can be picked up and saved
People won’t even see that you have them
They are so light and easy to hide
Later in the day you can act like others
You can sake your head
And you can frown.
William Stafford
This poem is a blessing. It contains some very wonderful lines. One of my favourites is “when dawn flows over the hedge.” It reminds me of how dawn flows over Cuilcuih Mountain here in Dowra. It reminds me how light flows out of darkness.
Remember any morning lying on the couch you can be happy. Take time to come to slowly and deliberately. Make it a practice to enter the day slowly and surely. Happy is something to be and not something to do. You are born in the image of the Divine. You are Divine. You are not to be added to or taken away from. It’s all right now.
We find this idea hard to accept.
This is because we think about our life most of the time. We avoid feeling it as a moment-to-moment experience. This feeling of deep connectedness with our lives is here any morning and any time. Do you think that the Divine takes a lunch break or gets tired of pouring love into our being? Does the dawn stop flowing over the hedge?
Those little pieces of heaven are lying around waiting to be noticed. You have to know how to look. When you can see them you can pick them up if you wish. You do not have to even do that. There is no requirement that you save or own them. The real delight is in sharing these pieces of heaven.
To be able to see the beauty of heaven you need to be present. It is not waiting in the future. It cannot be accessed via the past. It is in front of your eyes and flows through an allowing heart. You have to be present at this banquet of “love is flowing eternally.” You have to nourish your soul by allowing wonder and awe to touch you.
Do not save these pieces of heaven. Let them go. Clear yourself out forever-new delight. Give them away to others. Help them lie on the couch and be happy. Become a happy couch potato. Remind them too that the dawn always flows over the hedge. Remind them that to be happy is to be present. Let them learn to be present to this banquet of life.
Let trouble be busy elsewhere for a while.
We give our attention to gladly to the trouble of others. We close our hearts to their sorrow and seek further security in legislation and insurance. We build higher and higher walls in order to keep the world out. I doing this we lock ourselves into a tight little fearful experience that we then call life.
Hum a little.
Sing your own song. Songs are always coming into my head. Mostly they are songs from the sixties. They include “Its all to beautiful.” They include “Maybe I’m Amazed”. The poet suggests that you do only a little. He knows how difficult it is to stay awake to your wonder.
You do not want to incur the wrath of your Trickster. This is the guardian of your mind that watches what you think. It insures that your thinking is contained within the boundaries of the norm. It insures that you do not step to far out of line. Otherwise you might go off your head.
Learn to know “the quiet sound in the head.” This is your head. This is my head. It runs off at tangents every which way. We then wonder why we never get to experience peace of mind. We rarely, if ever, take time to listen to this internal chatter we call thinking. It runs away with us.
We are off thinking about last nights pub quiz. We are thinking about next years holiday or tonight’s dinner. This is needed but to often we are not present to tonights dinner when the time comes to prepare and eat it. We are running three steps in front and we never catch up with the fact that we are alive now.
You can always return to frowning later in the day.
This is our usual way of relating to the world. Why not step out of it in the early morning light of a new day. Know that the perfection of the day is an internal experience that you can choose to have. This is to choose to allow it to be without resistance.
Stop judging it better or worse or not acceptable. Allow it to be before crushing it with negativity. It is newly born for our appreciation. We have been gifted this day without any requirement other than we enjoy it. Even this is not required of us.
As Kabir said in another wonderful poem:
“If it rains
Let it rain.”
Here in Corrogue this is the best approach to adopt otherwise on many days I might “return to frowning”.
Know that you are always enough. This will give you a perfect day.
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