Insights From a Silent Pilgrimage

A complete rainbow at the summit of the hill. 

On one side sun, on the other rain. 

The rainbow at the boundary between light and shadow.

"The deeds and sufferings of light". 

Goethe

The woods battered by the weather, 

Trees with limbs missing and some fallen and broken. 

The scars of their experience. 

Nature just accepts and transforms the scars into new beauty. 

We also have our scars as we journey and gain new experience. 

The scars are the records of our life's pilgrimage - ever transforming, ever changing,

Transient like that rainbow, but leaving a record etched on our souls.

Based on a comment at: http://www.meetup.com/Dublin-Re-Creating-Science-Meetup/events/228399196/

Autumn Leaves

What a beautiful time of year this is,

When the sky is so blue and the leaves - yellow, orange and red,

Gentle breezes blowing the leaves on to the ground,

Falling, gently......

A stillness,

A crispness in the air. 

Frost on the ground.

A slowing down,

A settling in.

On Butterflies and Optimism From Small Things!

....something for the optimists...

"He who is faithful in very little things is faithful also in much" 
Luke 16, 10

Imagine you're a caterpillar in the midst of massive death of your cells, your belly is liquefying, you feel terrible and you know you won't last much longer, then your head goes to mush, but wait....the death throes actually are not death throes at all, they are actually the first manifestations of a transformation...metamorphosis....a butterfly emerges from the case and flies away.... 

 

So, yesterday, I sat on my favourite rock looking out to sea, suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a tortoiseshell butterfly appeared from the direction of the sea, fluttered around me in several swoops and circles for a bit and then continued on up over the cliff....I felt in my heart this was a blessing...I was at the right place at the right time,

...and, indeed, last weekend, the laurel hedge outside our house was in full flower (itself unusual...climate change?), but the flowers were absolutely covered in swarms of tortoiseshell butterflies.....I had never seen that before and I have lived here 3 years and a neighbour who has lived here for 20 years, said he had never seen that in all that time...I sat quietly and meditated on that ....

Butterflies are symbols of spiritual transformation and awakening of the soul and are indicative perhaps of labour pains prior to the birth of the new Heaven and the New Earth. It became apparent to me that the many butterflies were actually symbols of collective human transformation and that it is indeed happening despite the fact that it is difficult to believe ...

 
The Universe is always giving us messages to encourage our love, our peace and our optimism to unfold.....even though I may be considered a little mad if I go too far in the possibility that the butterflies are sending messages to me!

A Soul Discovers Her Still Centre

You have travelled far from the Source my child,
You have journeyed through aeons to the edge,
Along the way, You danced as pure energy,
An eternal light within the shifting sands of space and time.

You agreed to forget Your true nature,

You agreed to forget Your true origin,
You agreed to hide Your Beauty within.

The challenge was to remember….

And now You have moved to the still point.

To Your centre where You can begin Your journey home,
Where silence reigns supreme,
You are gently embraced by a transparent cloak of clarity,
You sit within a motionless sea of serenity
Your vision is alive,
Your vision is true.

You have found Yourself again by journeying inwards,

To where Your true self dwells,
To where Your greatest treasures reside,
They accumulated within You as You travelled,
Every single experience,
- The good and the bad -
Is kept there,
Though no judgement is attached to any of them.

They were simply experiences.

And now that You have discovered these treasures,
You have moved beyond them,
Into the unfathomable expanse of Beauty,
The Beauty within You,
A new You,
And You have found peace,
You have found joy,
You have found gentleness,
You have found love.

You have peeled away all the layers of Your amnesia,

Only the real, pure, glorious, wonderful You remains.

And You are not alone,

Choirs of Angels are now singing in exultation.

They know.

Your inner Angel has been revealed to the Universe.

 Still Centre by Courtney Davis
Image used with the written permission of Courtney Davis
http://courtneydavisart.com

The Beauty Of Apple Trees

In the orchard, the apple trees were loaded with fruit...so much, falling down on the ground...all around...

When she wrote, she didn't know about the trees, but she said:

"I guess the meaning is not to "look" at an apple tree with enthusiasm and interest as a child that sees an apple tree for the first or third time, but to acknowledge that we see an apple tree and let the energy of the apple tree reach us and flow into our eyes and heart...."

This seemed to me to be a wonderful description of how to sense Beauty....

Actually, what we see is only a small fraction of all the energy emanating from the apple tree - the energy our eyes can capture...just the electromagnetic wavelengths of visible light, but of course the tree - made of matter (crystallised energy if you like), part of the visible (to us) universe) is vibrating at a virtually infinite number of energetic frequencies, so it (the tree) actually exists in realms/dimensions of reality beyond our senses in addition to those we can see with our eyes.....

So, this is why no matter how hard we try to "see" the apple tree, our vision of the tree (through our eyes and processed in the mind) will never give us a complete appreciation of its Beauty.....

We should allow ourselves to "see" the tree with the aspects of ourselves that are also vibrating at these higher frequencies. The higher frequencies correspond to higher states of consciousness, and to do this we should allow ourselves to transcend the idea that we are separate from the tree, so that the energies passing between us and the tree can interact/exchange more easily, so we then truly begin to "see" the tree with our hearts by allowing "the energy of the apple tree [to] reach us and flow into our eyes and heart...."

I believe this is what happens when our consciousness expands from the heart - it fills the surroundings and we feel much more at-one with everything, since we become more sensitive in picking up the signals/energies in the environment around us....we sense the Beauty in our surroundings....

The Gift of Beauty

"If we choose to journey on the path of truth, it then becomes a
sacred duty to walk hand in hand with beauty"

John O'Donohue

Divine Beauty - The Invisible Embrace

Each time I go to the beach recently, I am blessed with a gift. This morning, the rising sun, low in the east, made beautiful, soulful shades of swirling orange light in the clouds. And then, as I looked to the left, six geese rose out of the water, swooping elegantly up from the sea. In a perfect V formation, they curved across the sky towards the sun. Silent, serene and Beautiful. Working together, moving gracefully, in perfect harmony, for their common good. An un-stated love between them. Perfect acceptance and understanding. Perfect faith in their ability to fly, in their path through the sky.

And yesterday, I had gone to the beach to swim and started off with some exercises and some meditation, while sitting on the sand. The sunlight flickered through sparkling clouds, tinged with grey. There were hints of rainstorms and showers in the distance across the sea out in the bay. And then, the beginnings of a shower above Dalkey island to my left.

Then, slowly, imperceptibly at first, a hint of some colours in front of the blue sky. The beginnings of the left hand 'leg' of a rainbow! I continued to watch the rainbow form. Manifesting itself slowly in my reality. The left 'leg' steadily grew, reaching for the sky, to form the peak, the zenith, of its perfect arch. It reached it - Yes!

And then, it continued to fulfill its mission to become a fully-formed, bright, sparkling rainbow creating more and more of itself as its right 'leg' formed, a downward curve, at an angle out to sea. Perfection achieved, but only for a moment. As soon as it had formed itself fully, it began to become more translucent on the far left, fading out from view. Within 15 minutes or so the rainbow was gone, but I had witnessed its entire life on Earth! I was again, blessed by the gift of Beauty.

And it got me thinking....

When we accept the gift, the blessing, of Beauty in our lives we are lifted up by the light that enters our hearts. But, are such gifts always there, perhaps mostly un-noticed by us? Is there Beauty present in our surroundings now, but we, wrapped up in our illusions, don't see it? Is it simply a case of becoming more conscious, more cognisant of such events? Is such beauty "there" in our surroundings whether we notice it or not? Or, is our role in the manifestation of Beauty more important than we realise? 

When we begin to live from the heart, when our feelings of love fill our surroundings, when we transcend our egos and attain a new state of Being, when we follow the path of Truth, does the Universe respond to us in some way? Does it sense this heart-based consciousness that we carry and respond to it in kind, by returning the love, the joy and the Beauty we are feeling, directly back to us? By giving, do we receive?

Maybe God, knowing each of the infinite possibilities that extend in time and space from a given moment, also knows that each possibility has a different probability. And maybe, just maybe, it is the possibility with the most Beauty within it, rather than the one that is most probable, which actually appears as the gift for us to see and appreciate in all its glory.

Does the manifestation of Beauty in our lives follow from our state of Being? And, is this actually a circular progression? Does the manifested Beauty that we recognise, lead to a greater ability to attract Beauty to us, to enable more Beauty to become manifest in the World? Do we have the ability within us to be active participants in this manifestation of Beauty? Does our potential to continually bring ourselves back to a heart-based consciousness actually contribute towards the evolution of Beauty in the World?

But, even in the relative darkness in which humanity has existed, there has always been Beauty that individual souls have recognised. And at least the darkness has allowed us to appreciate Beauty when it appears, however transiently. Beauty has been recognised by its relationship to the darkness. But, what if Beauty is a fundamental feature of the Universe? An absolute Law beyond the relative, beyond duality?

If this is so, and Beauty is fundamental, then just think what the World will be like when the collective consciousness of humanity is a heart-based consciousness, continually enabling supreme Beauty to unfold in every moment. When Beauty will be appreciated for what it "is" and understood as something to be treasured and enjoyed - a true gift - requiring no comparison with anything else to know that it is, indeed, elemental, fundamental...Beautiful.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" they say, but maybe also "Beauty is unfolded by the heart of the beholder."

The Truth

Know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.

Believe in Love and all it holds,
Believe in Creation,
And Learn to Love,
To truly Live.

Believe in Beauty for it nourishes the Spirit,
Believe in Life for it is a gift cut from the diamond of Creation,

Know that there is a Spirit within You,
Your Spirit,
Yours alone to Evolve through countless lifetimes,
Eternal and Divine,
To learn and Love,
To Grow.

A gift from the omnipresent, eternal Master who is Creation.

Beyond Space, Beyond Time,
Beyond comprehension,
But essential for fulfillment and enlightenment,
In this material life.

Only through each of Us,
Through each individual spirit can Creation know itself.

We are each precious,
The Truth lies within us waiting to be found.

Beauty

A full moon shining in on us through our bedroom window. Frosty, cold, snowy.

Beauty,
Believe in Beauty,
And Love,
And the Truth.