Om tara tu tara turaya SVAHA
How many times have we truly experienced the fierce and wrathful expression of a grizzly bear mother? One who would stand in the face of her own death for the sake of her cubs? A Red Tara with wrathful knowingness, pointing her left hand to the Earth’s heart, index finger sharply indicating that enough is enough! A mother who rushes across a neighbourhood street in northern Ontario, old fashioned broom in her raised hand, shouting to an addled young man, “Do not bully my daughter! Stop now!”
There are those times, my beloveds, to resurrect that fierce all-knowing ONENESS consciousness, put away childish beliefs, look at the shadows in the mirror, and realize that what most of us are experiencing and expressing these days are echoes of dysfunctional family dynamics from the past. And thus, what an opportunity we have right now on planet Earth to complete these karmic cycles with strong intentions, clear inner-sights, and courage to grieve and re-emerge as a New Earth inhabitant who lives with the embrace for all our relations.
These are, in my heart’s deep acceptance, times to put away desires to belong to those dysfunctional family dynamics and to declare oneself born a swan amongst ducks. These are times to rest at the roots of great Gaian trees, be fed and nurtured by the whoooo of the owl song and the screech of the hawks as messengers from higher realms. These are the times to capture the essences of flowers and offer the waters, Ma Wa Chi, blessings from Grandfather Beautiful Painted Arrow. Targeting our arrows of intentions with respect and permission, we say: Guru Deva of waters and flowers, bless these waters with pure love! Flower devas, offer our signatures to these blessed waters that our gifts may flower in service to the whole Earth garden.
In this summer of the northern Hemisphere and winter of the southern hemisphere, we have the opportunity to clarify and declare: This is my heart’s no and this is my heart’s yes! And to stand deeply rooted in Earth wisdoms, trusting with crystal clarity that the yes and the no require no justification; rather, a firmly centred and embodied presence for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
This is a profoundly wonderous time to share that poem of Rumi:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.
Let the waters settle and you will see the moon and the stars mirrored in your own being.
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
– Rumi
Thus, those negative and limiting images—embodied and buried in our bodies so long ago—finally resurrect into this lightning of a daytime and thundering of a nighttime of soul—for us to stop acting so small! To return to the SOURCE of the clear light of our two-legged nature is to finally see that the door has been wide open for generations.
When we render (with great self mercy) the effects of our ignoring that we are at cause of our experience, that we are a part of the continuum of Rivers of Lifetimes, we realize with an aaah that we are the change we so desperately want in this world.
Resting within this fiercely held embrace of Om Tara, red and brandishing her wrathful sword of truth, we can relax within our inner innocent child selves. No worries. We can build those inner bridges of trust from neuron to neuron and synchronize with those already in love, already released from human-created prisons funded by a paradigm of right-wrong, good-bad, lesser-greater, for better or for worse. These paradigms of duality continue to generate splits in the psyche, what others would call schizophrenia. Truth tellers, however, would describe this split as a choice-point where the fear of truth telling is so great that one hides the core of the message one is born to share.
Erika Merz, of Rise Up with H’ART, offers an image of the truth speaker for this full moon July time on Earth. Truth speakers are the innocent ones who see only what is and speak it. My daughter, Kirsti Conway, was three when we were at the checkout line at Steinberg’s grocery store in Ottawa, Ontario. An overweight woman caught in her somatic prison was moving sideways through the checkout line. The foods she piled up on the moving belt were indicative of what she resourced to disguise her pain. Kirsti asked, “Mom, why is that lady so fat?” Hmmming, my heart responded, “Because she chooses to hide the messages she was born to share.” “Oh,” spoke the innocence of children.
How do parents move beyond the reward and punishment of duality and become adventurously truthful within intimate and familial relationships?
Like my mother before me, I chose to break the limitations of negative images and beliefs. Hellin Marjatta Huuki Sorkki, Hautala Saarinen, said no, this ends with me! This sexual abuse of woman and mother, this bullying by a young boy-man or husband or father—this ends with me! Though it did not begin with me. I said no and expanded the truth-telling web into my two marriages and through my seven love affairs. I said yes to the lover that lives within and released my soul from seeking externally for approval, love, a sense of belonging, that financial security through a man. And my life stream has never been the same.
The status quo was questioned by my mother, paternal grandmother, daughter, and son. And even my two husbands broke through from familially defined prisons of beliefs and explored other dimensions as well. When I finally met with the most Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche of the Dharma Centre of Canada, I was met with the mirror of one who awakens others. Self mastery meant that to one’s own self, be true. “Be truthful” was the legacy of one of my precious elders, Carol Hiltner, of Seattle, Washington, and of Altai Mir, Siberia. “Kaariina, be truthful.”
Hmmmmming, now. Just imagine what would our intimate relationships sound like, feel like, taste like, smell of, when the choice-point is met fully? To be truthful and speak from this fearless inner ground? What would awaken within each of us within that embrace? And how would that ripple through wombs and seeds of groins into the fetuses of our children, through our labouring and delivery of New Earth star seeded children?
Would that delivery and the following healthy nourishment of those children guide our visions, clarify our values, core essences, and beliefs; our very thoughts, speech, and actions; to another time-space line for millions? Would the sunrise be met by our Buddhaic mindfulness and return us to equality? For does this sun not shine equally for all sentient beings, including four-leggeds, winged and singing ones, insects and amphibian ones, turtles of great patience in all four directions, and those great and small finned ones of seas and oceans?
Would that not be a shift of inner and outer frequency to an Earth-based Herzog resonance allowing us to leave the wars behind at long last?
When did we forget that parenting is the primary universal education of all souls? How did parents become so paralyzed that our children and grandchildren’s great spirits and genius have become less important than externalized wealth and accumulation of assets? The spiritual legacy from our ancestors has become burdened by limited images of what it is to be human and a child of the universe.
How did we fail ourselves when we embraced sexual and love partners without answering the greater calling—responsibility for the future cradleboard of family, tribe, village, planet, and this universe? And now, children of this universe have been masked, their souls’ purposes to awaken us to our truth-telling suffocated, sorely punished when they do not follow the boss of external authority.
Hmmmming. Why did we forget the Sacred Laws of conscious co-creation, and seek revenge rather than reconciliation for our differences? And feed the white male patriarchal legal and medical systems rather than our elders and Earth wisdom rites of passages?
These are what one might say are big inquiries that require big lives in which to live into the answers. Pathfinders and way-showers are amongst every single one of us. We can choose another lens and view those around us (even our own parents and grandparents) and be inspired to witness single moments of courageous fierceness. We can stop our own littleness from viewing ourselves as “poor me,” frightened of external authorized prisons, and rehabilitate our souls to purposes that do no harm. One single step and moment at a time.
A Practice
List those moments of transformation from fear to love. Create a checklist of 15 folks alive, dead, known, unknown, personally or not, who inspire another view or value for your heart. Now list beside each name what you admire about that being. Even step into fierce boldness and say yes! Send them a bouquet of flowers, a hand-created card, an email or message, and say yes! This is how your life rippled into my own. And I want you to know how grateful I truly am.
From the centre of our own mandalas of our lives, sit and ripple from our open hearts to the hearts of thousands of others, being within the sphere of unconditionality and say: Thank you for the yes of your way-showing. Gratitude for the no of your stand which is a stand for humanity’s spirits rising together. I am humbled by your fierceness to say “enough is enough” and “no to doing harm to selves, partners, children, grandchildren, the wilderness of this great Pachamama.” Thank you with humour and humility for sharing your gifts and embracing so many beings. Thank you.
For a few more moments, imagine what the world needs and receives through your willingness to live truthfully from your core of being and wild hearted essence, what that ripple is now? And how ripples meet other ripples to become a wave. And imagine what these waves become as the waters of this full moon of July 2021 holds us in the Aquarian water bearer’s embrace.
Khalil Gibran offers these words on children:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
– Khalil Gibran, from The Prophet