Standing at the Creative Center

Standing at the Creative Center

What would it be like
allowing the world to be as it is
and you as you are

To see deeply into the nature of each
as reflections of the other

What is above mirroring
what is below
as within so without

And thus stand in stillness at the center
as one who knows

All things come home to here
when seen through eyes of wonder and curiosity
as medicine for the soul

REFLECTIONS:
I have long been taken by the question of, What is it to say “Yes!” to life? And by this I intend to include the whole of life, it’s sorrows and griefs and it’s joys and delights. I intend to include the judgmental harshness I can feel for myself or others and the tender love that moves in me too.
An early model for me, in an ironic sort of way, is Christ on the Cross in his expression of, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It was this humanized Christ that interested me as a youth far more than the glossy image of a divine being who never questioned life or God.
And so by my own statement above that,
All things come home to here
when seen through eyes of wonder and curiosity
as medicine for the soul,
I do not intend an implication of some divine force out there sending medicine for my soul in the form of two rotator cuff surgeries on the right shoulder in a 5 month period; or surgery for pancreatic cancer for my friend who did not have pancreatic cancer; or Lyme disease to my friend who struggles with that; or the loss of a 3 month old  baby to another friend…. Such life challenges are endless assaults on our proclamations of loyalty to our gods .
Nor do I intend the new age spittle or true believer surrender of, “That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” as I confront my own loyalties of identity. I desire a sharper edge capable of cutting more finely and deeper into my soul.
I intend rather a proclamation of intended willingness to be moved and changed by life, to feel deeply, to allow in and be informed by the mass human migrations occurring in places like Syria and Somalia; to open my heart to the plight of countless species rushing into extinction on our planet—due to a human unwillingness of accepting responsibility for the impact of our modern life on others; to feel the struggle of third world farmers in places like Kenya who can no longer count on the once reliable monsoon rains for their crops.
I intend to take as medicine for my soul the racial discrimination expressed by my ancestors who purchased ‘one young buck’, and my own unconscious racial biases yet living. I intend the courage to feel the pain of what it is to be discriminated against, to be feared, for being gay or transgender or…Muslim or Christian or….
I intend to take as medicine my own fears of not being enough in the world, good enough or strong enough. I intend to make medicine for my soul out of all these human conditions and out of the deep hunger within for the love of life, for the unique expression of what it is to be me, for the gentle compassionate way I would hold my weaknesses and my strengths.
I intend to make beauty out of life’s miseries and poisons and conundrums by generating and embodying the very energies I would see more of in the world. From this still point of alchemical transformation, one pointed to by all the mystery traditions in their own way, I crave the capacity to say, “Yes!”, to life, to our world, and to my existence.
This is the power alluded to when Victor Frankel wrote of his awakening in the Nazi concentration camp:

This is the perceptual power alluded to by Christ, in The Gospel of Thomas, The Nag Hammadi Manuscript, when he said, “The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.”
Then there are the Hermetic texts from The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which state: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.” (Gnostic Warrior)
We live in times of great disruption and such times invite from within us the creation of great medicine. Nature is one I turn to daily; and silence and stillness and reflection; simple presence to the breath that moves me. And I turn to the medicines of awe and wonder to aid me in the daily alchemical transformations required for me to say Yes! to life. Here is Neil deGrasse Tyson inviting us in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D05ej8u-gU&feature=youtu.be