Archive
A Winter Solstice Poem: My Life as a Poem (revised)
Revision: As I reviewed this post sorting through my word docs and rereading the poem (reviewing my life!) I realized I had left off the last verse (a cut and paste error)! So I have added that verse back in. How could I forget “love”? The poem (my life) is now complete.
In October I wrote “My Prayer” in the form of a poem. These words have stuck with me; they pop into my mind frequently during the day as I practice life. So I’m not surprised at this reprisal, an echo of that prayer as I wrote this poem on the Solstice and Conjunction.
My Life as a Poem
Waking to my day, a new page,
The threads of a dream drift away
On the winds of another life,
A poem gone now, glimpsed, forgotten.
Today a new dream begins, a new
Story of my own creating,
Speaking to the future, trusting in
The worthiness of these words.
Practice, it all begins and ends there.
Story is practice, a moving toward
Perfection, evolving with a rhythm;
Sometimes involving a rhyme.
With repetition the story evolves
Into a poem: my life as a poem.
For slips and slights I practice
Forgiveness – changing my perception.
Sometimes the words don’t come,
Resisting the page refusing to flow.
For the hesitance, the lurches I practice
Patience – waiting on the muse.
Regretting all that I have lost, resenting
What has been taken or misplaced;
For the destruction and death I practice
Praise – remembering life is ecstatic!
The suffering millions weigh heavily on my heart;
Stafford got it right when he said:
“The darkness around us is deep.” I practice
Compassion – wanting to save with my words.
These words may not be worthy as those of
The Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet, I read
And weep and rejoice and sing. And I practice
Wisdom – moving toward the light.
For all the grace, the wisdom, the compassion
I reach for words to reflect the deep.
I look up at the moon and practice
Gratitude – knowing they’ll appear complete.
At the end of the day, practice done
I realize I have one more line to
Write, one from my heart; and I practice
Love – the Love Poem of My Life.
©2020 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Friday’s poem, third in the trilogy this week: “Next”
I’m sitting here, all in white with my mantra and mala beads, fresh from the first day of “retreat” with Deva Premal & Miten and Manose. I’m feeling very mellow, connected, in a deep state of peace. And, yes, almost like this is “Next.” Rosemary and I are in retreat within the Gayatri Sangha for seven days, every day at 1:00 pm EDT. The energy that Miten is invoking for us each of these days is that of “Compassion, Forgiveness and Gratitude.” These are deep blessings for all of us to bring peace and joy into our lives! May it be so for you. May this be the next step for humanity!
Next
When I stop long enough to dream, to
Consider what comes next—there hovers
At the edge of my perception a
Disturbance in the air, a blur, a rush—
It’s like the invisible whir of Hummingbird
Wings; little tornadoes just beyond—
A flicker at the corner of eyesight,
A glint of movement too fine to be.
I wonder what higher consciousness looks like.
Is it a monk sitting silently on a cushion in a corner?
Is it even a human form available to five senses?
Perhaps it is that disturbance at the edge, beyond.
I cannot linger here for long in a conscious state,
Exploring this edge of what remains real.
I drift into a different dream and shift in shock
To wonder: Is this fluttering vibration a next me?
©2020 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A rare Saturday poem: “Earning; Deserving?”
I have been working hard in my dreams these nights. Each seems to be a struggle to get something done, to get out of some situation, to find my way through. I wonder if these dreams reflect something I am not doing during my waking hours. I wonder what I have left undone.
This wondering led me to the whole notion of doing, earning, deserving, etc. This concept of deserving is much in the news these days as we watch and wonder about the Kavanaugh nightmare. He seems to believe he has earned his nomination and deserves to be seated on the highest bench in the land. He seems to dismiss any debt that may be weighing him down.
The wondering led to today’s poem. What do any of us deserve in this life? Can we earn our way up and out? We are all privileged beyond all conception of earning or deserving. In Buddhist thought human beings are an exceeding rare opportunity in the cosmos. How can there be any other response to this but gratitude, compassion and love?
Earning; Deserving?
The Mayans say we come into this world
With tremendous debt.
We stand on the bones, the struggles, the sweat
Of all our ancestors through ten-thousand generations.
What have we done to deserve our first breath?
What can we do to earn the next?
To become a conscious being is an enormously rare gift;
There is no wage to earn our way out of this debt.
But there is a currency we can generate to return.
It is not enough, as small as a Widow’s Mite.
It is not quite nothing, yet more than we deserve;
Our coin is our conscious love.
We breathe in gratitude, awed at the magnitude of this debt.
We breathe out love, our two-bit return.
In these moments there is no earning, no deserving.
Love is the only gift we can freely accept and give.
©2018 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A poem to celebrate this day: Anniversary
Rosemary and I have been married for 34 years now. It was a lovely evening in Maryland that July 22, 1983. It was not a “triple H” day. We chose well.
There are many things over the years that we have chosen well. Certainly sustaining an active partnership through many adventures has been our most significant choice. And all we can really do in this life is keep these good choices flowing, one into the next.
Love sustains the flow, always. And communications sustains the love. Partnership can be a beautiful thing when it is cared for.
My poem today is a bit random; thoughts strung together to celebrate us, our “mature marriage.” Enjoy!
Anniversary
A year, a celebration,
Solar return for a marriage,
Mary M Day, triple H day,
This year, Saturn’s Day.
This year marks 34
In time that is not real,
Only there to maintain schedules,
Hold people together in this dimension.
What is a mature marriage?
What does one look like?
Boring, rote, habitual, well trod paths,
Patterns flowing into patterns of sameness?
No! Refuse this trend, this pattern!
Every day is a new day.
Every year is a new year.
35 is the best year yet!
Invention, creation, adventures,
Plans to move forward,
Visions to propel the movement,
And conversations to keep it all fresh!
©2017 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: How Big is Your Dream?
 Rosemary’s “two minute” video: How Big is Your Dream? |
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| Today’s NASA/ESA image, dated August 27, 2015, is The Hubble Space Telescope team’s updated image of the dying binary star system (the last shot was from 1997). It is the Twin Jet Nebula named for the twin jets of ejecting gas unfurling like the iridescent wings of a butterfly. The seemingly magical effect stems from the stars’ unusual interaction with each other — while only one star is ejecting its outer layers, the other (an already-shrunken white dwarf) is pulling those layers in opposite directions. There is so much magic in the Universe!
Want this information as soon as Rosemary publishes it? Visit her website to subscribe to the MoonLetter and receive a 7-minute destress meditation to help you unwind! TheScientificMystic.com
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ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: 5 Steps to the First Step
Have you ever felt ready to step out, to move toward a vision, a dream, a goal and been paralyzed or unable to move forward?
We all have, at some point. We can see where we want to go. We can feel what it will feel like to be there. We can almost taste that space. And, for some reason, we are stuck. We can’t seem to put one foot in front of the other and move.
What does it take to get to that destination?
It takes the First Step.
Once you have taken that First Step, the second, third and fourth are much easier to take. And they seem to be evident, with a lot less confusion or trepidation, than the first one.
But what will keep you from taking that First Step? A lot of things. Fear. Doubt. A sense of unworthiness. Confusion about what the First Step is. A Concern that you don’t have the entire route mapped out and you don’t want to take the First Step until you know for certain what every subsequent step looks like. A lack of confidence in yourself. A lack of commitment to actually moving toward that dream.
So what can you do when you are stuck in the Paralysis of Step Zero?
Here are the 5 Steps to the First Step:
- Breathe. Now this might seem a simplistic approach but this really is the first action to take in any process. Take a deep breath. Repeat. This sets the stage for the rest of the process.
- Connect to Your Vision. Get the dream/vision/goal into clear focus in your mind’s eye. Feel it. Sense it. See it. Taste it. Make it real to your unconscious mind
- Clear the Blocks. Identify what is or has been holding you back. What beliefs are in the way? What negative self-talk are you putting in your mind that convinces you to stay stuck? This is a very important step! Get help with this because you can be blind to your blocks.
- Commit to Forward Motion. All the dreams in your head will remain there unless you make an honest and whole-hearted commitment to moving forward. Do you really want that dream or vision? HOW MUCH do you want it? Enough to commit yourself and your energy and your time to it? If you can’t commit, then go back to Step 1 and Breathe before revisiting Step 2 to decide if you need to tweak that Vision.
- Connect with Your Intuition, Your Inner Guidance and Ask for the First Step to be Unveiled to You. Ask only for the First Step! If you try to control the whole journey your Controller takes over. You really want the curious Explorer within you to take the First Step!
Then, step out in innocence and trust.
The First Step will reveal the Second which will reveal the Third. If you can’t see where to step next, then pause and Breathe. Repeat Steps 1 through 5 for the Next Step.
You can do this!
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Take a Step!
Rosemary’s “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Take a Step!
A FRIDAY POEM FROM RHYTHMS AND CYCLES – “The Future is Now”
Rosemary’s Exploration, posted today on her blog (look for it here next Wednesday), is about choice, about choosing our family, our life, our Truth. It’s about rewriting our stories the way we want them to be lived and told.
I came across this poem before I read her article; they seem to go together. All time is NOW. When we live in the present every moment is a moment of our choosing. Dream into your own reality!
The Future is Now
If the future is now
Dreams are now.
This is Dream Time.
And is the past now?
Forgiveness is now.
This is the lesson.
Now is only now,
Past time, Dream Time,
All one now.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Dream-Makers or Dream-Takers? – Richard’s Commentary
This past Saturday Rosemary offered a Possibilities Playshop to celebrate the Summer Solstice. And once again we all had a wonderful time exploring Possibilities. In a way this Playshop is like exploring our dreams, or exploring what our unconscious mind would like us to be doing! It is a “dream-maker” for us.
And during the Playshop we do use our unconscious minds, our intuitive minds to create a Playbook that we can use to guide us along our dream-paths. Rosemary’s process is very effective in getting our egos and our conscious thinking minds out of the way for a short while in order to get in touch with our dreams. She invites participants, after several exercises to quiet the ego, to make “bodacious wishes” for ourselves. Wishes are then planted on our timelines, set as goals or destinations out ahead so we can move along toward wish fulfillment, that place where we can live our dreams!
In short Rosemary, through her guidance during the Playshop, facilitates our dream-makers and we then capture those dreams and build roadmaps toward fulfilling them.
It is a lot of fun to participate in this Playshop in a group. We all support each other in the process, commenting on how the Playbooks come together, the meanings or interpretations of various components as they are added to the books. We come together as a support group and can then help one another through the months as our dreams unfold. Our intention is to come together again around the Winter Solstice to extend our Playbooks, add to our dream timelines and continue the support. It is good to have others supporting our dreams. As Rosemary wrote in her post:
There will be people who want to be your champions, your cheerleaders and who want to help you make your dreams come true. There are others who, for whatever reason, don’t want that. Choose consciously those you allow to surround you. Dream-Makers or Dream-Takers?
All the participants in our Playshop group are my champions. That feels good!
I don’t share my dreams with just anyone. Often they are “bodacious.” And I don’t need anyone to tell me how improbable they might be! No dream-takers for me! The fact is I am enough of a dream-taker for myself.
I think this might be true for a lot of us. We can often be very effective in sabotaging ourselves and derailing on the path toward dream fulfillment. After the Playshop it is back to “reality.” Our egos kick back in. We start questioning. We begin procrastinating. We get wrapped up in the routine of living. We start making excuses, choosing an interruption or a side-track to re-route us around the dream. Yes, I am my own biggest dream-taker.
The solution? Rosemary’s sums it up nicely:
Own your vision. It comes from connecting to your Purpose, to your Soul Mission on Earth. Continue to Dream Big and the support you desire will show up. Stay committed no matter what or who around you tries to take that dream away.
Choose and commit! Then surround yourself with support for your dreams, your dream-makers!
Stay courageous. Move in the direction of your dreams, no matter what. If you look around you now and can’t find friends to support you, seek out new friends. Find those who uplift others and hang out with them. Speak to loved ones and share that you want their support as you go ahead to pursue your dreams.
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Dream-Makers or Dream-Takers?
We all have dreams, visions, plans, goals. Some of them we voice to others and some we keep close to our hearts without sharing, but we all have them.
Have you ever shared a dream with someone and then felt as if all the air was sucked out of you when they reacted with a comment like, ‘You can’t do that!’ or ‘That’s impossible!’? We shut down and believe that they know something true about our dream and we move away from it.
Or sometimes we get rebellious and think, ‘I’ll show you! I’ll make it happen.’ And we get caught up in showing them and lose the ‘juice’ of doing it for ourselves.
Think of a dream that you have, maybe even something that might seem impossible but that feels like a dream, a vision of you that you are seeking. Really feel it in your body, in your energy field. Feel how it will feel when it becomes a reality. Ramp up the feeling and smile. It feels so good.
Now remember that feeling and invite anyone with whom you share that dream to share in that feeling. Don’t let anyone deflate you! Don’t let anyone try to steal your dream or say that you can’t do that. Don’t let anyone try to take your dream away from you.
There will be people who want to be your champions, your cheerleaders and who want to help you make your dreams come true. There are others who, for whatever reason, don’t want that. Choose consciously those you allow to surround you. Dream-Makers or Dream-Takers?
This is not about judging others and deeming them lacking or bad. This is about YOU and your choices in life. YOU choose the folks you spend your time and energy inviting into your energy field. YOU choose what you share and what you keep inside. Choose to be with the people who support you, no matter what. Choose to surround yourself with people who will challenge you to grow into the big vision that you have for yourself and your life. Choose to let the others live their lives without trying to influence yours.
The Dream-Takers are probably not being malicious or mean. They are just stuck in their own ‘stuff’ and can’t accept that you choose to dream big, to reach for something beyond what they can see. Their choices aren’t yours. And they are probably operating out of a fear that they then try to project onto you.
Stay courageous. Move in the direction of your dreams, no matter what. If you look around you now and can’t find friends to support you, seek out new friends. Find those who uplift others and hang out with them. Speak to loved ones and share that you want their support as you go ahead to pursue your dreams.
Own your vision. It comes from connecting to your Purpose, to your Soul Mission on Earth. Continue to Dream Big and the support you desire will show up. Stay committed no matter what or who around you tries to take that dream away.
Surround yourself with Dream-Makers! And be one yourself!
Please enjoy!
Men and The Goddess 