Category Archives: places/shelter

introducing Zero Point Collaborative

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Zero Point Collaborative is currently an inception, a vision, a knowing at this time and season of Spring 2017, yet it* is calling me to bring it on. Slowly Zero Point Collaborative is showing me where and how it will emerge on the visible or external/physical plane. I am so looking forward to collaborating with you and the zero point field of YOU!

Please do stayed tuned in with me and more will SOON be revealed ❤

[Here on Contemplative Fire, Zero Point Collaborative has it’s own pages and heading and may soon have a site all it’s own. For now, it has the companions of the other aspects of my work & offerings.]

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*  what is Zero Point collaborative? 
Zero Point Collaborative is many things, as it is not “something” per se, it is  an opener, an activator, a container (without actually being something that contains, as in limits), it is a conscious field of awareness in which, continually or simultaneously whatever might be touched within and as this field returns to its most vital emptiness as the zero point of creation and perception both. It is a place to both begin (or resume) collaborating and to experience what serves the very heart of collaboration itself.

~ 

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The Kitchen, the Friend, the Heart of the Question

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The small ritual

placing things here

attending with water

adding cleansing agents

rinsing while ordering my world

anew with each breath

of this morning

setting things just so

 

I think of my friend

and how she doesn’t reach out

at least not that I know of

perhaps ordering her world

just so, attending with

what I can only guess at

but still ordering her world

whether it’s apparent or not

 

Which brings me to

the question, the heart of it

as I ask many questions,

each being a facet of the one,

what calls me to pause

in concern (is it concern?)

in a wish for her (what is my wish?)

to find the deepening element

 

That which has its own way

of upsetting the cart, which

carries it all: hers, mine,

yours, ours, and what is

not any of these

Another question filters in,

is it peripheral or the very heart,

as what can be carried is surely external

 

Returning to the kitchen

another cup of tea is poured

My friend perhaps wakes now

almost a thousand miles away

The question is a living vein of

vitality, ardor, nuance –a distillery

extracting the purity of the disturbed,

the trace minerals of this Ancient Now

Facing East

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ah na ne ah ne 

ah na ne ah ne

ah na ne ah ne

ah na ~~~ ha ha ha

 

 

Perhaps not what comes to mind

when I say “facing east”

but I am facing east as I write

 

I’ve returned to facing east this morning,

within my small abode, mi casita,

within the place my body rests at night

 

There are three windows facing me,

facing east ~ even from the north

window I also look east

 

There is an unbroken line formed

by ridges, ancient rock, many footsteps,

& raven calls over ages & millennia

 

We can think we know of these,

of these ages, of these open wings,

of these breathing hearts

 

The call of the dove filters in

with the early morning sun fall

certain things are lit just so in the morning light

 

For me, facing east is just so,

taking in a perspective not quite my own,

but one offering nuances now welcomed wholeheartedly

 

And for as much as it is worth, I am in my own retrograde it seems

I find the inner landscape (here) filled with my own footprints

once traveled and laid by me to see (now) from this vantage

 

The gentling calls of the magpie to her mate

or her young & sometimes to me

soften these inner reaches

 

qua lia mia mo, qua ta te ah mo

qua lia mia mo, qua ta te ah mo

 

And now hummingbird joins, her wings one of the most

exquisite percussions that sounds, like a long awaited remedy,

breaking up the tightness of the heart, my heart

 

I say, “I have returned, my friends!”, facing east.

“While tending to the southern fires, I did miss you!”

And we rejoin now bringing calming & homecoming within.

 

If you have never tried or tested out

the malleability of time and timelines,

I heartily recommend it so. Move within.

 

This morning, before waking or parting the curtains to welcome the day,

I washed my earlier self, the one with certain struggles & bumps in her road, with a vibrant mix

~ the perfect spectrum of light and tonal vibration to let her know I am with her all the way.

 

Don’t take my word for it, you too can meet your own selves,

those that now seem long forgotten or destitute in that timeline of Ago.

For we each have such perfection of unique remedy and resolve,

 

Some of which we can share. And some of which is so precise

and unique to each one of us that it may be for us alone

to steep in, to take in, to sing openly.

 

[ sing to this moment now ]

 

This morning, before waking or parting curtains to welcome the day,

I washed my self, the one with certain struggles & bumps in the road,

with a vibrant mix: the perfect spectrum of light & tonal vibration

 

Letting myself know ~  I am with you all the way.

I am with you all the way ~ facing east.

 

 

At Two O’Clock

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The clouds moving, nearly
Imperceptibly closer than,
I move to the east side

The eaves shelter from
More than the rains
Good Samaritan design

Noon stands out acting
The Prima Dona except
In loneliness and reaches

Then to One and Two
For company inviting
Them early for tea

Some days no one wants
Near and turns away to
Find the most ready refuge

Awaiting their turn
Their moment in the sun
Patience is a virtue

Blessings come to those
And yet… the winds pick up
Darker under bellies seen

Two O’clock is inconsistent
It’s her way or her luck of the draw
Maybe both perhaps neither

Today she was thinking
About that tea invitation
Chameleon writ large

Seeking anonymity in
The heat of the afternoon
Hoping to get off the hook

For what others have
Come to expect of her
That “time of the day”

And yet it’s all so fleeting
Yesterday’s invitation
A glimmer, is not Today’s

El Rito – Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa campground

8-16-14 2:59pm

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3 poems from northern New Mexico

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arriving with the full moon ~ July 10, 11 2014

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while camping near the Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa, north of Questa, NM

1. What Pause

We have our things

Even if we have very little

or essentially nothing

Not threadbare are any of us

And some semblance of things

is brought together, even if

just to drink this or eat that

 

We can sit on the ground

The body will sleep when it comes time

the preoccupation of belongings

is such a high order in our lives

that it is nearly invisible

 

I pause to think, as if thinking is

the way, how to live

on the land with no amenities

 

It seems preposterous

Just sit on the ground?

Rest under a tree?

Wait until batteries run out

and then be silent?

 

As if Silence was not there

all along

Everything we eat, drink, sleep

is there in the Silence

 

Everything we are

is that Silence

 

2. Doorway: Empty As

We love an entry into.

Leave an opening

And something will move thru

Even if just pretend.

So when we really go thru

What then?

 

Is there no going back?

We’ve moved between

And are never the same.

Something has passed

From here to there

And back again is only onward.

 

We pine for what was

Looking thru What Is

Trying to see something

Other than

What simply is, Just This.

 

And pining, things just look the same

But never are

Or are so inextricably

The same it would take

The widest open eyes

To see This

And not see something else.

 

Perhaps it is the putting aside

Of what the eyes see

And letting things be

As empty as they are

Each thing a doorway

To itself

Nothing more, nothing less.

 

In that entry

We move as all direction

Within and without

Leaving nothing aside

Going nowhere but everywhere

Without departure.

 

And the openings

Await nonetheless

Waiting as the perceivable

In the perceiving

As they are

As they are.

 

3. Do and Not Do

When there is nothing to do

Something seems to be found to do

It’s a circus we didn’t even

realize we had tickets for

and have been going to

all so regularly

 

It looks like life

And yet life isn’t doing

Life just happens

All on its own

No tickets necessary!

There is no grand entry, no backstage

 

Just ask the wind

the thunder

the rain

None of these need permission

And cannot be kept

Under lock and key

 

There is no one to pay

Even if that makes us

Feel more real somehow

 

We have so many wallets

all around and everywhere

Most of them hidden away

(what are we protecting, really?)

But there they are

What good would it be

if we didn’t find ways to fill them?

 

Is it a question of good?

Or is it a question of a day

yet upon us when all

bartering ceases

 

And something yet known,

however already conceived,

bursts forth taking us

as we are

as our most direct

Unfettered, alive beyond word

 

Nothing need be done

The question of do and not do

Too will cease

Praise to Thickets Amongst Us

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Thicket along the watercourse; San Cristobal, NM

Down by the thickets of willows making their place where waters sometimes run (as a trickle or more.) This wayside is where the heart has its home, the air naturally cooling in this weave on a very hot day.

I’ve been here “on the property” for a little over two weeks but clearly haven’t arrived until now. This is my first day here in the grasses, on their way to tall, the filtered light in nuances more than I can count, the old bowing willow branches remind me of the ever present inspiration to the eye of an artist, perhaps the other way around. To draw this place or just to be and see and be touched by this wild order? The kind of beauty that can go so easily unnoticed, much less the amazing feat of interspecies communing, even those without voices, but textures, color, integrity take me over. The air is not the only element that is renewed here.

I want to say “on the other hand…” as I contemplate the contrast of the places that have been denuded (a stone’s throw from here) or stripped of their natural dignity by the use or appropriation for something we call “living our lives.” What I love about this wilder place by the draw behind the house is that life is already living here fully and I simply join in. This grand beingness of it all!

It’s not that this place is any better than someplace else, it’s just that it is THIS place and can be no other place! And how so very different it feels here than just fifty or a hundred yards away. What a gift this place speaks of my own nature, which sometimes seems much less human than just Being alive, sentience itself, able to be touched, penetrated by the exquisite weave of interpenetrating life, of consciousness. The magpies have their squawk and the mourning doves their cooing calls. The breeze, now at my back, stirs the green life alive into motion and sound. Is it the motion of things that we hear or is it something just a bit more illusive than that?

This up close visitation to the green of the thicket next to the seeping wallow brings me right to the taste of my own heart. They are not like the wider vistas of mountains in the distance with fields of sagebrush laying out before them, not like the open, open skies with all matter of clouds and blue in their ever-changing atmosphere-scape. Here things crowd in without any feeling of density or overbearingness. Here is intimacy, did I say that already, of brush and bower, of grass and twig, of every kind of insect and butterfly with the light ever shifting amongst it all. I become part of a nourishment cycle; bathing in spirit of thicket and this very place.

Mapping the Material World

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[written & drawn as an opening to a creative collaboration w/Daniel Ari in some way, shape,
or form for a book of Daniel’s querons* & drawings/art/illustrations of 58 artists – titled ‘One Way to Ask” to be published later in 2014.] 
 
*a poetic form of his design, although this poem is not a queron
 
.
We map our existence
with the oddest of things
And yet is it any surprise
really? We being the creatures
Of comforts, habits, all the controls
strung out barely discernible
Yet everywhere we go ~ handling
this, setting that just so,
Hot, hotter, quiet, quieter even still.
Beauty, fragrance, order, mess.
Taste, timing, listening ~ all experience
awaits and awaits, yet also
Passing us by, pondering us like
the creatures we are.
Experience having us, we are
possessed by that which dawns on us,
possessed in measure, great and small.

.

IMG_0236Mapping the Material World

Crowning Glory

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I step out barely
— into the sky as
the crowning glory
of all things myself
and not myself

For I find myself
within and between
and without these
wings, one of not
and one of all

Frighteningly so
at first but the lift
gathers and throws
me into the vastness
of this blue ocean

Learning to swim
in the sky of my Being
and not run or flee
but fly as I am
— crowning glory

My roots are freed
riding the currents
along with all that
once fettered me
when I looked down

Meeting these fresh
forces –alighting like
quantum treasures of
that which we Are
sharing now this Crack

Into that fabric of plane
existence shocking me
free of that pondering
wasteland –all that binds
and frets now scours forth

A Song of the unfolded
mystery of the most plain,
dry only of sorrows once
passed over and now
absorbed, dancing as Lift

Within and beneath
these transparent wings
blue as the sky clear as
diamonds polished by
the heart of hearts once
and only always free

Penthouse [and other conversations]

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Penthouse and other conversations

 

This is not a house / but what pretends.

                      I am here nonetheless living / and life and my life fill this space 

Life unfolds through different orders

                      There is tenderness amongst these words,

and I might wonder in the in-between

                      I just was not able to crowd out the thoughts 

where holding, housing seems real.

                      that gruffness in the face of subterfuge, mine or ours.

•

Building has made things lie lifeless

                      I’ve been a builder of many things

and what has come to know these?

                      split myself –polarity of material plane

Something feigns to dwell and comes

                      as if one thing is better than another                        

nonetheless as if dwelling here abides.

                      confined within the designs of things.

•

Oh, the mis-take of it all. We borrow

                      No mistakes really whenever I see

and borrow such blurring until

                      resting is what is such that

little edge or distinction remains.

                      resting and restless find their joining.

•

I rest in the in-dwelling,

                      Yet I cannot be in without out

the in-dwelling needing no arrival.

                      coming and going are the same.

It is the departing, which lays waste

                      This one who departs and does not see –this

and waste again, as unsettling ensues.

                      song is for her to remind and restore her.

•

I dream of simpler forays

                      In the dream there is this dream too

the meeting in directness

                      one cannot be without the other –yet

where the purest movement speaks stillness,

                      their divide is what is not real –breathing

unlike the manipulation of reality taken on

                      now –All is beyond question welcoming

as second nature and even first.

                      the manifest as the poetry of it All.

•

I pause, considering ~ the in-dwelling remains

                      Still point / zero point

needing no artifice, climbs without effort

                      welcoming the manifest

and also falls with no aversion.

                      as the poetry of it All.

At the Portal

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Best description I have here is that I’m at or aware of some kind of portal. I drew this portal today, which is what tells me it has some presence, some existence somewhere in my being, in the psyche that I resonate with energetically, something of that order.

At this opening, sometimes there is a force pulling me in, sometimes it is something pressing out or visceral pressure as if pushing against. It can change in a millisecond and that’s when it’s most felt, in that fluctuation. A whole other array of energies come into play in that second, as if there is an acute sensate awareness of what is both above and below simultaneously.

Yes, it’s as if the two distinct realities have gotten mixed and some alchemical reaction occurs in that instant. So much information floods through somatically. My brain triggers chemicals left and right, consciousness is in its feasting season, the Beloved has appeared and disappeared both, leaving a wave of breathlessness, insight, exhaustion, and longing all rolled into one.

What feels so appropriate in this drawing is that what is pointed to is the portal, not that which exists or is sensed or felt on either side of it, above or below or even through. It comes to me why some religions have approached the subject of depicting the image of the Beloved, of God and been unable to come up with anything but outright forbidding of such a practice. That which is felt here certainly feels sacred, pure beingness, that which remains unnamed.

And yet, the draw is so very real, the draw to see, to know, to behold, to understand, and to reemerge. For me, these actions are beautifully interwoven, such that one without the rest is essentially partial, not complete. The work of this place is work without working for or towards something. Things happen, but nothing can be done. Things come, the work is resting in What Is.

I had a dream on the evening of March 31st that throngs of people were moving toward me through a narrow passage and I was making my way in the opposite direction. If I were to continue on my way, I was literally having to walk on, climb over others or over their legs and shoulders, squeezing through with some kind of drive that seemed pure spirit. The intensity of this convergence has marked me in some way.

Where is the surrender? Surrender to the drive of spirit, to the nearly inhuman urge forward, to something that seems so single minded or certain that it can withstand such force? And may it be possible as I become one with it all, each element in its place is an aspect of this extraordinary confluence of energies as perceived by this consciousness.