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Blessings for YOU Ezine This Weeks Quotations As I grow older, part of my emotional survival plan must be to actively seek inspiration instead of passively waiting for it to find me. ~ Bebe Moore Campbell The Seven I's of the creative process... are Inspiration, Imagery, Imagination, Intuition, Insight, Incubation, and Improvisation. ~ Jane Piirto Inspiration follows aspiration. ~ Rabindranath Tagore This Weeks Blessing The Blessing of Inspiration
This is inspirational poetry. This is the language of the soul. This poetry of inspiration takes this Irish heart soaring into a blue sky of wonder. It is Good Friday morning and I sit by the open fire in this enchanted cottage and share with you this gift that I found yesterday. This gift is the book entitled, Ten Poems to Change your Life. I found this book in our local library in Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim. Normally I do not go looking in the poetry section but yesterday I felt delightful and it seemed the universe was intent on drawing me further into the light. The title of this book alone is powerful enough in itself. The title of this book is a radical idea and a radical invitation. Yet when I opened up this little book it is I find a powerhouse packed with beauty and inspiration. As a ritual practise I often pick up a book of poetry and read a line or more. This sometimes becomes the flow of a Blessing for YOU. At other times it becomes a central theme around a story that I might be graced to craft and then tell. In the introduction to this book by Roger Housden he says, “Good poetry has the power to start a fire in your life.” This is an invitation to passionately engage the heart and the soul. The words of good poetry take you into the space beyond the words and into the emptiness from which all that is, is created. This book is not about formal poetry. It is not about the stuff we were often made to recite at school and lose our heart’s connection. The poetry in this book takes you into the realm of the spiritual. It is the stuff that unifies rather than divides. It is the essence of words beyond dogma. It is a freedom from conditioning. There are no labels to get in the way of how the heart may respond. As Rodger Housden says, "This poetry calls us like wild geese to an open sky.” The first poem in this book is entitled “The Journey,” by Mary Oliver. I love the poetry of this woman. There are a number of Mary Oliver poems that can just blow your mind and allow your heart to soar. One of these is entitled Wild Geese. I love the lines in this poem, which say. You do not have to be good. While this poem is not in this book it is of the type of poem that the book eloquently illustrates. Too many of us are walking on our knees. We carry burdens that we often refuse to put down. We have engraved on the milestones around our necks our ‘should does,’ our ‘must does,’ our ‘have too`s. With all our enforced doing we literally get ourselves in the dodo. We are then not free to fly like wild geese in a blue sky. We cannot then let the soft animal of our body love what it loves. The soft animal of our body gets tied up and bound up in guilt. This then becomes our real ritual practice where we beat the emotional body into submission. This practice is emotional abuse. This is an issue that this Anam cara will be addressing in future editions of Blessings for YOU. Emotional abuse is the unspoken blight that effects too many of our lives in so many ways. It comes from lack of self worth and self-love. This is often a practice we have learned to accept unconditionally. We practice, not the beautiful art of self-love, but the violent art of self-bullying. We bully our emotional lives because this is what we learned to do.. We bully ourselves when we do not let the soft animal of our body love what it loves. We refuse to feel that animal body because we have been taught that in some way it is wrong and that we in some way are wrong. This idea that we are emotionally wrong, I believe, has blighted more lives than all the wars in history. We have to begin to change this by challenging all those inner voices that are not our true voice. Then, as Mary Oliver tells us, “Little by little as you left their voices behind the stars began to burn.” The fire that requires no wood begins to burn away all the illusion that you are not lovely enough. When I read this book entitled, 'Ten Poems to change your Life' the soft animal of this body is dancing and feels lovely enough. The introduction to this book is in itself a Blessing. It begins with the word `May.` This is how blessings often begin. This is a beautiful invitation. It is a well wishing. It is an invocation and a calling forth. Yet it is a humble invitation. It is not demanding. There are no ‘shoulds,’ no ‘must does,` no demands. It is simply an acknowledgement of our power as co-creators with the Divine. We are invited to ask and receive. So the writer of this inspirational book, Rodger Housden, invites us into the fire that needs no wood with the words, “May these poems set free your unlived dreams; may they send a trembling echo through your bones; may they put into words what you have long felt under your tongue; and may you wake up one morning in “the new life.” The “new life” is the real life. It is the promise of Easter time. This is the real life beyond the prison of ego where the body loves what it loves and you do not have to walk on your knees. This is the new life that does not bully the emotional life. This is the life that allows you to celebrate who you are beyond all the bad advice you were given as a child when your body loved what it loved. This is the new life that ceases judging your emotional body as being good or bad. This is the new life beyond persona alone. Only your can gift this to yourself through the deep allowing of being. This gift is waiting now in this eternal moment and is forever waiting. You don`t have to be good. You only have to be allowing of the new life in the body that is in love with what it loves. This is your body that is designed for joy. This ‘new life’ is an allowing life. It is the life of love in action. It is devoid of ego. It is devoid of any sense of going anywhere. It is simply the dance dancing through you. Start this journey to nowhere. Start this journey of the return to love now. Gift yourself this book entitled `Ten Poems to change your Life.` Spend some time with the best. The poets in this book are real human beings. They know what it means ‘to be.’ They write from the place of being with beauty that lifts the heart. This book is not just for poets, writers or artists. It is for anyone who wants to fly into a blue sky. Then as Mary Oliver says in the opening poem called, `The Journey, ` Little by little Is this not a most beautiful invitation – to recognise your own voice? Not the voice of musts and shoulds that keep shouting bad advice. Not the inner voice that bullys your emotional body and refuses to allow it to love what it loves. So I sit by this open fire in this enchanted cottage on a Good Friday morning feeling blessed. I have by my side ten pieces of heaven that are left around for me to enjoy. More banquet moments when I am invited to feast on my life. These poems feed the fire that requires no wood. This is the fire that burns away the illusion of separateness from love everlasting. So I am off to read these poems out loud. Especially I will read the poem “Love after Love,” out loud. I will read them at birthday parties and any excuse for a party. I will read them to bring “new life” and real life. I will read them to find my own voice. The one where the universal song sings through me. So gift yourself a gift. Buy this book 'Ten Poems to change your Life' . Give it to friends who enjoy poetry or to friends who often want to leave behind voices that are not their own. Give this as a gift to friends who might long to slowly find a new voice. This is the gentle voice that does not bully but invites the return to love. This is the voice of your heart that says you are forever enough and allows you to embrace that feeling. This is the voice recognised as your own that reminds you that the Blessing is already here and you are it.
This Weeks Story This weeks story is entitled Shadowflower and the Garden of Time This is designed as an anti bullying story and designed to combat the unspoken and silent killer that stalks the soul and is emotional abuse To read this story simply Click here In Corrogue This week in Corrogue we have a poem related to the main artile. This poem is written by Bee Smith. This is entitled Mrs Should and speaks volumes about the voices that give us bad advice. To go to In Corrogue Click Here Archive Update This weeks archive update is entitled "The Blessing of Letting it Be. To go to the Archive Click Here Product Update Coming soon to inspire and inform based on one of the worlds favorite and most inspirational poems The Way of Desiderata In twelve parts a full oultine of how to use this poem to lift and inspire the heart. Will inlcude bonuses and other gifts. To go to the Intro Click Here RECOMMENDED READING
Here is another book in the series which I will be buying as a gift to myself. This will no doubt provide more fire that needs no wood for future Blessings for YOU and for more delight for the heart. Please help support this site and the work of this Anam Cara by making any Amazon purchase here. This allows me to give more time and value to what this site has to offer by way of healing. With thanks and Blessings.
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Tony Cuckson is a storyteller, writer, workshop leader and Anam cara (Soul Friend) . © Tony Cuckson 2004-2006
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