Tag: philosophy

The Light & The Shadow

.Reading time 3 minutes.

~a short meditation on healing~

Each person sheds her own light on the same landscape, allowing us to experience shifting perspectives as the cycles of day and night circle one another. Who among us would stop day at high noon, saying truth is only revealed through full exposure to sunlight, at the expense of never again feeling the gold of sunrise or peering into purple shadows at dusk? Indeed, the nature of a rock is not just in its exact proportions, mineral content, etc., but also in its relationship to sun and moon light, hot and cold, wind and rain. In its fullest capacity, truth is known in the continuous spectrum of light and dark, changing continually through the seasons and expanses of vast time. 
~excerpt from my master's thesis chapter discussing research methodology

There is a tendency in western culture and/or in the English language, to equate light with truth and revelation, and shadow with obscurity and dishonesty. To “shed light on” means to reveal something previously hidden or unknown; to “descend into darkness” communicates an anguished journey into mental/emotional confusion or ignorance. In this dualistic and dichotomous worldview, truth is reduced into a series of either/ors incompatible with a holistic realization of experience. In the fanaticism of either/ors, of light versus shadow, we may experience blinding whiteouts and loss of vision in violent flashes of light, or, we may fall into states of alienation and estrangement and depression in the pitch dark of blackouts. 

When we suffer, we are counseled to seek the light, to lift ourselves out of gloom and doom, to step into the light, to come out of the shadows… What if, on the other hand, we were encouraged to embrace both the light and the shadow, to befriend our monsters, to live with our angels and our demons—both? Perhaps we would then see that there is a special glow in the between spaces that connect rather than separate… In these spaces shared and cohabited by the light and the shadow. We would see that it is a dance—a beautiful and an intimate partner dance. A warm embrace. A love, unconditional and eternal. 

京のコーヒー

.Reading time 2 minutes.
Kyoto Coffee                                                                            

flowers startle white
in the black night
caffeine-steeped 
 and camouflaged in
e   l e  g a n c  e    
 i awaken 
all  enchanted
the wild blossoms are singing 
light          
into         new   day .

I wrote the original version of this poem about three years ago, after enjoying coffee in an elegant cup at a café in Kyoto. After a long talk with a good friend, the night was late and I cycled back to my small, secluded-away in a quiet and dimly-lit neighborhood near ancient temple grounds in Higashiyama, house. Along the way, I was startled to encounter these white flowers glowing out of the darkness—similar to the white flower on my black coffee cup just a short while earlier. What magic potion had I just consumed, I pondered, in the guise of an elegant Kyoto cup of coffee? Little did I know then, just how truly magical and extraordinary our worlds can be. And I was entirely guileless as to the adventure I’d unknowingly embarked upon. But here I am now, three years later, still traversing these caffeine-steeped nights of enchantment. And what has emerged? Worlds of poetry, beauty, magic, and a precious love—like no other.

So what it the moral of the story?
Surrender to the irrational demands of your heart and of beauty, to this wild world far too vast to be contained within the narrow confines of our minds. And something more magical than you could have ever dreamed of will welcome you, on the other side of night.

airspace

.Reading time 2 minutes.
i dream skies clear blue
an airspace of love and peace
encircling one world

“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but in fact, what comes first: the dream or the day? Imagination or reality? Perhaps the difference between the two (dream and day, imagination and reality) is not so distinct after all—one bleeding into the other as our dreaming and waking worlds are nothing more than a continuum of one consciousness, of one stream in time and space navigating terrains all at once sublime, spellbinding, and atrocious.

“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but is it not the dream that gives rise to words articulated and actions initiated? And ultimately to that concept which we call “reality”—which is indeed precisely that, a concept, a conceptualization of the mind. It is the mind which dreams and thinks and creates. It is the mind, consciousness itself, which is the ultimate “reality”. We all dream; we are all dreamers—inevitably. So direct your dreams and your desires beyond what you have been taught is possible, beyond the visible horizon and into skies of clear blue.

“I see no conflict between reality and imagination. They are not in fact separate. Our real lives hold within them our royal lives; the inspiration to be more than we are, to find new solutions, to live beyond the moment. Art helps us to do this because it fuses together temporal and perpetual realities.”

~Jeanette Winterson

Flowers For Humanity

.Reading time 3 minutes.

In this one weave of life we are all connected. Ultimately, there is no real separation and there is no real other. And in actuality, there is no real enemy to fight. It is the conceptualization of enemies, which allows for hostilities and fighting. This is the very simple reason wartime propaganda aggressively demonizes the “other”, the so-called “enemy”. For without an enemy, whom are we to fight? But in the very creation of “enemies” we ourselves become an enemy—our enemy’s enemy—and the realization of peace vanishes instantly. In the very moment we conceive an other as an enemy, we ourselves are already defeated; our own peace shattered instantly. 

Indeed, everything is energy. The life-sustaining light of the sun is energy; the life-annihilating force of nuclear weaponry is energy. We cannot shield life from the destruction of warfare with more violence; only love can do that. The energy of rage and indignation—whether expressed as anti-Putin or anti-NATO sentiment, whether experienced by perpetrator or by victim of violence—is essentially the same energy. Liberation from violence does not come through violence itself; only love can liberate. 

Ultimately, peace is an alignment with love; whereas war is a state of misalignment—imbalance and disharmony. In the pursuit of peace, the important question to ask is not: How do we defeat the enemy? But rather: How do we align with love? 

Can we not see that the light of the sun shines everywhere, on everyone, equally and indiscriminately? And that the flowers blossom simply because it is their very nature to do so? Love is our very nature, and by design, love does not discriminate. 

So whoever you are, wherever it is that you come from, whatever your walk of life…

in these times of fear 
trauma and hate 
of senseless violence 
hold on 
to your light 
your love 
and your beauty 
offer to the altar of life 
the sacred flower 
of your heart

This post will be in place of my usual weekly post on Fridays, 12:00 a.m. UTC. I expect to return to my usual schedule next week on March 11. Thank you so much for reading, and may love and light be with you always.
~michiru adrienne

skin

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

~a short meditation on water, one~

When you go to the water—be it river, lake, pond, pool or puddle, or the ocean—do you not wonder what world is there, underneath that surface? Surely it has its own ongoings, and a deep story on the other side of seen. Behind these eyes, beyond these body-bound perceptions, what emerges? Can I just be, the water? All fluid, swirling, and free? 

skin

the surface skin of water
is its own song
of an unseen underwater world
where
together with my love
we dream
we dream and we dance
this heartbroken
this wounded and oh so weary, world
anew

beginnings

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Some poems seem to take on a life of their own. Apropos perhaps, I do not remember when I wrote the first version of the poem below—only that it was a very long time ago—and it seems also to have no end. I’ve come back to it multiple times, tweaked it here and there, but its completion is forever illusive. Like snake tracks in the desert sand, it evades capture. This poem of beginnings and endings, has neither. Maybe we are all like that, without beginning nor ending, in reality… and our essential self too, like snake tracks in the desert sand, evades capture.

beginnings

In every beginning 
there is death 
and in all death, there is rebirth.
Do you remember your beginning? 
 
We are a continuum, of 
eternity & nothingness 
polarity & unity
a quivering consciousness sometimes shackled
by words.
 
Freezing bits of existence 
into b/l_o.c+k-s tumbling 
from our mouths
we trip 
in the rubble of our own expression.
 
Until weary, perhaps
with splintered and twisted feet
we lay down, seeking 
nothing 
other than earth
and sky.
 
Here we find, an infinite desert.
Here our hollowed self, shimmers 
alive
reawakened 
in an instant of eternity.
 
A single drop of rain    falls 
into the soul 
and the membrane of each cell shivers 
shedding itself 
into currents of grace 
flowing and
flowing like blood into 
crevices 
and over rocks and into ancient 
ravines
 
returning devoutly 
inevitably
to firelit waves of a primordial sea.

Do you remember
                                      your beginning?

philocalist

.Reading time 2 minutes.

philocalist: a person who loves beauty; one who sees and appreciates beauty in all things.

What is beauty? Like love, beauty is some kind of nameable uncontainable, some kind of innate and immediate and intrinsic nature of our humanness. And like love, beauty eludes definition the way sunlight escapes boxes and the shadows. We cannot live without the light. We cannot live without love and we cannot live without beauty.

Beauty might be a rose, or a stranger who comes to our rescue. It could be that smooth shiny surface of wooden floor boards worn step after step after step after step—a million times over. Or sparkles dancing on water. Dew in the morning light. A friendly smile. Honey. And sweetness.

In one way or the other, beauty is everything that is good. Like a natural point of rest, beauty is the default setting for our most essential selves. The Navajo word for it is Hózhó. Harmony balance reciprocity peace.

So in your moments of darkness, of hurt or of despair, look into the mirror and remember that not only are you beautiful—but that you are beauty itself… beauty reflecting beauty. Say not “I am beautiful”, but declare “I Am Beauty”. And everything else in this tumultuous life shall fall into place—step after step after step after step—you shall Walk in Beauty. Hózhó.

philocalist: a person who knows themself as beauty; one who walks in beauty.

field of dreams

.Reading time less than 1 minute.
Life is a field
of dreams
growing with the wind
and weather patterns 
of thoughts
feelings 
and voices
Voices from the soil
of memory
past loves and sorrows
past joys and triumphs
and remorse 
They take root
and grow
into our field of dreams
And whether asleep or awake
we all walk our field of dreams
on pathways of hope 
or of despair
to horizons unknown
But surely
on a pathway of love
love itself is the horizon 
and the infinitely wild beautiful blue sky above

The Holy Grail

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Certain things are a matter of belief. 
Do you believe, for example, that the holy grail is real and that its location has or has not yet been discovered, or do you believe it is a striking creation of medieval European literature? If it is not actually real, why do so many claim to have found it? Why does something of such ambiguity hold such sway, spanning centuries and continents? 

Belief in certain things is a matter of contention. Is there life after death? God? Reincarnation? Telekinesis? Whereas belief in other things is rarely of dispute. Rain falls to the ground from clouds. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Kyoto city was the capital of Japan for over 1,000 years. 

So why is the existence of a god or gods or goddesses or holy people or deities or kami for that matter, at times hotly contested whereas the sun’s emergence in the east generally is not?

We might start by pointing to the tangible-to-the five-senses and thusly physically experiential nature of the sunrise in what we know to be “east”. However it is also true is it not, that many people, when asked where east is, will not be able to answer correctly on the spot without external reference to a map or mechanical compass of some sort. Physical experience alone is insufficient. To understand where east is, we must have somehow learned something about the relationship between the sun and earth, about planetary orbits, the solar system and space. But from the point of view of Pluto, or of a star in Andromeda, how fixed or relevant ultimately is Earth’s east, anyway? Is east to the left or to the right? Your left or my right? 

As for intangible-to-the-five-senses things such as kami, we might point to the ubiquity and continuity of shrines in Japan as evidence of their actual existence. “Believers” may claim to have experienced physically tangible results after praying to kami, such as healed illnesses or passed university entrance examinations. Visions of non-physical beings or other experiences beyond the tangible-to-the-five-senses might also be cited by some as proof that kami are real. Such “intangibles” however, are often disputed as imagination and thusly unacceptable and unverifiable evidence. But what are “visions” after all, if not something seen somehow?    

I am not here to profess what is true or not true. But I am here to question our assumptions about what we believe to be true or not true. And I am here to suggest that the holy grail itself is not necessarily its purported historical and physical reality, and that it is not necessarily a thing of literary legend—but that perhaps the real holy grail is realizing that what we believe to be true is “true”. Truth is a consequence of belief; not necessarily the other way around. What you believe creates what you experience; not necessarily the other way around.
Perhaps, in other words, the real holy grail is that we are all—each and every one of us—kami. 

landing

.Reading time 1 minute.

~a short meditation on flight, four~

Flight, for all its exhilaration and glory, always comes home. Every bird lands, eventually. And it is this very moment of landing—a touchdown full of sweetness, which gives flight its freedom. For without landing, the sky would be abyss. Without landing, flight would be exile. It is the inevitability of landing which gives wings to dreams… to our wildest, our sweetest, and our most beautiful dreams.

flight 
is an embrace of sky
wings spread wide
caressing wind as it streams by

flight
is a love of the sky song
whispered in tendrils 
of crimson clouds and golden light

and flight
is the heart’s journey home
weaving dawn and dusk 
into luster love and soft landing