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“Friends take my advice Extract from ‘Even the wealthy read my verse.’ In Corrogue I get drunk on wine. It is my birthday in just over one week – 20th March. I make it a commitment to celebrate this day. This helps to remind me of the extraordinary gift that we call this thing known as life - this flow of creation that is the forever-good vibration. This is not to say that it feels good all of the time. Usually the feeling is labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to the degree that I resist what is, or to the degree that I sit in judgement of the life situation called ‘little me.’ As many readers of this ezine know, one of my first loves is mystical poetry. So, of course, I have had books of poetry by Rumi and Hafiz bought for me. These books were presented early by my mo Anam cara – my soul friend - because they are so full of gold. As part of my personal spiritual practice I read one or two lines or maybe even a whole verse of a poem written by these two beautiful men. These were men who were drunk on the beauty of what they call the Beloved. I often start the day with this practice. Then I will take this line or verse and allow the writing to flow. This is an act of surrender. It is a practice by way of allowing. At the heart of this practice is the honouring of the Divine feminine. In this honouring I am allowing the movement of the feminine into the masculine. I honour the energy of what we in Ireland we call the Goddess Danu – the gift-giver, the mother of creation. The one who is the mother of ‘the beautiful people’ called the Tuatha de Danaan. Of course I do not get attached to the word Goddess anymore than I get attached to the word God or the word Beloved. The word is not the thing and never can be the thing. God, Goddess, Beloved are only words trying to point to an ineffable experience beyond words. Personally I am more drawn to words like emptiness or the void. These words are harder to project unto. The closest thing to describing the experience beyond words is paradox. For example, ‘the no-thing that is everything.’ The more paradoxical the phrase the closer I feel that phrase is to evoking the perfume of being – the bouquet of the wine. This morning I have reflected on the beautiful lines
from one of Hafiz’ poems. This is taken from Drunk on the
Wine of the Beloved translated by Thomas Rain Crowe. In the final line of this poem Hafiz is giving each of us advice. Hafiz often talks in the first person in his poems. Yes, even my poems are as Friends, listen to my advice; In reality most of us would not recognise a Hafiz, a Rumi, a Buddha or a Jesus. We would have never met anyone quite so strange. They would talk in riddles. Love would have taken them away and left them empty of self. They would be a walking winehouse for one to get drunk on the words of wisdom that would perfume their mouth. These would not always be gentle words. These would often be cutting words. They would cut through the illusion that ‘little me’ is of any real importance. This is why lovers are put away. They remind us that all our religiosity is mostly teacup talk of God. The lovers such as Rumi, Buddha, or Jesus come to shake us out of our complacency, our habits and attachments to who we think we are rather than knowing who we really are.
© Tony Cuckson 2006
Tony Cuckson is a storyteller, writer, workshop leader and Anam cara (Soul Friend) .
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