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| | (1 recommendation so far) | Message 1 of 1021 in Discussion |
| From:  Jðdý (Original Message) | Sent: 1/10/2005 12:20 AM |
| First I pray to Gaia, earth herself, primal prophetess, the one who seeks the hidden truths; then I call upon earth's daughter Themis, for justice sits upon her mother's throne; these names are the vestibule of prayer for me, the entry to the sacred realm. Then I call upon Athena, for I will need her wisdom; and the Muses, for I need their eloquence. Divine women, all of them, I invoke them as I rise into my strength and power. ~Greek Dramarist Aeschylus Each day has its own challenges as well as its own potential treasures. As we rise to meet those challenges, to gather those treasures, we need to call upon the varying strengths within ourselves. The power of goddesses is within us, waiting for us to call upon it. Daily invocations to the goddess have been part of many traditions. Invoking the feminine force in the universe, we call forth as well the inner feminine, the strength and power within us that corresponds to universal energy. Even when we forget to invoke the Goddess, she remains a force in both the outer and inner world. She exists in our hearts as well as in the heart of nature. We drink from the source of her power. Her energy flows through our bodies, through our lives. As we praise her, let us praise ourselves. By Patricia Monaghan | | | | | |
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 10/6/2007 3:34 PM |
My desire is not satisfied. My hopes are unfulfilled. O mother! O Kali! Now my life is ending. I am calling to you, mother, for the last time: take me in your arms, rock me like a mother rocks a child. This is a loveless world. No one here loves as you do. My one desire, mother, is to go to you and be completely loved. ~Indian Poet Ramprasad The great mystical poets of India were passionate in their expressions of love for Kali, the great mother of death who dances in the cemeteries wearing her garlands of skulls. In this season of harvest and death, Kali is an especially appropriate object foe meditation. What, Ramprasad asks us, differentiates the goddess of death from a mother? Nothing, he answers. Nothing? How can death be our mother? This is the great mystery of Kali's worship, a mystery that cannot be explained, only experienced. To truly accept the mortality of our bodies, Ramprasad tells us, is not to become depressed and demoralized. Rather, we become completely alive in the awareness of our eventual death. As the leaves and another year's cycle turns around, Kali is an appropriate goddess to invoke. . )0( . .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 10/7/2007 6:11 PM |
Mothers, beautiful ones, valleys of my homeland, greetings! greetings! Let us come home to you, mothers, beautiful ones, take care of us out there. Protect us, mothers, beautiful ones, and protect our deer as well. ~Saami (Laplander) Song Herding cultures would, at this time of year, be gathering their cattle from summer pastures and moving them down to the winter settlement. The herds would be culled, with some animals killed for meat and others kept for breeding stock. It was a time of homecoming for those who had spent the summer in pastures often distant from the main part of the family's settlement. Even today, disconnected as we are from these cycles, there is a sense of settling-in during the fall season. Children, and often adults, return to school; new projects are begun; there is a sense of freshness and new possibility that is at odds with the death that surrounds us. The withdrawal into winter need not be experienced as loss, for there is much to be gained as we gather together near the hearth in the dark, cold times. .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 10/14/2007 1:39 PM |
Holy Kuan-Yin Her very name is holy and powerful as thunder over water. There is nothing else so powerful. We bow our heads to her: may her glance be compassionate and her blessings be infinite. In reverence, we bow our heads. ~Chinese Lotus Sutra and Dharani of Great Compassion In the middle of this lunar month, the Chinese traditionally celebrated the anniversary of the girl Miao Chan's transmutation into the kindly bodhisattva Kuan-Yin. Buddhism has no official deities; theologically, it expresses the belief that what lies beyond us is to impersonal to be called a god or a goddess. Yet human beings need god-like figures, and to meet that need Buddhism offered up the bodhisattvas, who are something between saints and deities. On the road to buddahood, they are almost at the end. One step more, and they will dissolve into nirvana, unifying with the cosmos. According to her myth, Kuan-Yin reached that final step and stopped, promising to remain in this world until very living thing becomes holy. Of the great bodhissatvas, Kuan-Yin is the only woman and the most beloved. So powerful is she that merely mentioning her name gains the speaker spiritual merit. A loving presence Kuan-Yin need not be a goddess to offer sympathy to her children.
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 10/21/2007 2:16 PM |
There is much the goddess saves us from: fever, wounds and madness, coughs and colds, plagues and smallpox, measles and sore throats, all these she wipes away with a brush of her shawl. There is more: wasps and little bees that nest in your house, mushrooms which spring up in your cellar, rats and snakes and hornets that infest your walls, all these she wipes away with just a brush of her shawl. ~Sri Lankan Songs To The Goddess Every day, we face the multiple irritations of life. Machines break down, schedules are broken, people are unreliable. There are periods of greater and of lesser frustration, but the fact of human life is that nothing ever runs perfectly. Learning to live in an imperfect world is a continual spiritual challenge. Like the Sri Lankan house-holder who created the vivid prayer to the Goddess above, we must constantly struggle against the diseases and disorders that are part of life. It is useless to live in a fantasy of total order and total control. Life isn't like that. Life is hornets and little bees and sore throats. It is also splendid fall days with bright blue skies and vivid foliage. The Goddess, who is earth and its life, embraces all of these experiences and more. In accepting her, we cease to struggle against the inevitability of disorder - and we live more gracefully and happily within it. .... | | | | | |
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 10/24/2007 3:20 PM |
I am surrounded by omens. They disturb me. They oppress me. Why am I afflicted with omens? Why am I restless and full of vague fears? What is the cause of this? Who is calling out to me? ~Song Composed By Sixteenth Century Maori Woman Throughout time, people have sought omens and oracles to learn what the future holds for them. Today we have newspaper astrology columns and psychic phone lines. In the past, we might have gone to Delphi or had a haruspice read the entrails of a bird. There is little difference. Anything can be an oracle, if we declare it so. We could receive messages from songs on the radio or the twitterings of sparrows at the feeder. For omens are only intuitions, information we are not yet consciously aware of but that we have perceived and catalogued. And these omens do not, in fact, predict the future. They draw attention to patterns in the present that, if unchanged, will lead to a likely future event. Continual inebriation is likely to lead to marital difficulties, car accidents, cirrhosis. Enrollment in a degree program is likely to lead to learning and greater opportunity. Seek oracles and omens, but know that any pattern can be changed, and with it, the future as well.
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 10/28/2007 4:16 PM |
Spirits of sleep and darkness, thank you for these dark silences. For you, the Great Darkness, we wait here in the silence. Watchers, look: see how empty the sky is of all shining. The night has shut her eyes, and the moon has turned away from us. Let us wait in the darkness and make offerings to the night. ~Song from Iroquois fire ritual The activity of the mind at rest is awesome. Each night we move into an altered state so commonplace that we often fail to recognize its power and astonishing creative force. As we lie in suspended animation, our minds show us visions, create characters and stories, and reveal perceptions that had eluded our waking mind. This endlessly fertile dream mind is common to all human beings. With no effort whatsoever, we are able to write scripts of complex dramas, paint magnificent pictures, map strange lands, write compelling dialogue. We can fly, we can swim, we can wear the bodies of animals. We can even make scientific breakthroughs, as has often been documented. Whenever we imagine that the day is more important than the night, we only have to imagine living without dreams to see how truly important the night is. .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 11/18/2007 1:27 PM |
I loved Wisdom. When I was young, I looked for her. I longed to have her for my bride, I fell in love with the beauty of Wisdom. ~Wisdom 8:2 Marriage, the joining of two individuals as partners in loving and in life, is more than just a social relationship. In the great mystical tradition of the world, and in our dreams, marriage symbolizes the union of the separated parts of the inner self. We are all here about this work, searching for and joining with our inner wisdom. Sometimes - often - part of this quest takes place as well in the outer world, in marriages and business partnerships and other joinings. Each of these relationships offers a window into our inner processes. How we relate to and treat our partners tells us a great deal about the progress of our deepest spiritual quest. That is why love is such an absorbing activity for so many people. It is not just a simple need to reproduce a species: we find ourselves illustrated in our partnerships. Wisdom lies in knowing where we end and where our partner begins. Happiness lies in both accepting the mutuality of our searches. .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 11/30/2007 2:41 PM |
The young bear woman set fire across the mountains. Wherever she passed we saw burning mountains. The young bear woman sought the gods and found them, on the mountain peaks, with the help of my sacrifice. ~Navaho Song The concept of sacrifice for spiritual reasons has been virtually lost in contemporary culture. Today, the word only has negative connotations, connected with victimization and cruelty and needless pain. Yet the offering of sacrifice has been part of most religious traditions. Ancient peoples offered up something they valued - for it would not be a sacrifice if it were worthless - so that spring would come, or order would be maintained in the cosmos, or a beloved child saved from death. Sacrifice may be a difficult spiritual practice today, but the wisdom of the ages calls us to consider it. .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 12/9/2007 4:18 PM |
Under the mountains is a house. A road runs down to it. The mountain hides it. No one knows how to reach it. There evil people are bound with ropes and held in narrow spaces. No one escapes from this house, but the just need not fear it. This is the house of the setting sun. This is the house on whose foundation the sunrise mountains rise. This is the house of the monster with gaping jaws and the raging lion-guards. And here also are the gardens of the goddess. ~Babylonian Description Of The Underworld Every religion has an ethical standard, a set of rules on which people's behaviors is judged. And every religion, including the religions of the goddess, speaks of some kind of punishment for wrongdoing. Yet, when we look around, how often we see selfish and uncaring people richly rewarded for their actions! There is the victimizing boss who moves up the corporate ladder. There is the selfish lover who receives pleasure while denying it. There is the uncaring parent who enjoys life at the expense of children. Why are these people not punished? This problem of evil is one of the great philosophical and religious questions humanity faces. We face it time after time, generation after generation, culture after culture. And no definite answer is ever reached. In the religious of the goddess, we find images of punishment of evildoers, as well as rules for living in harmony with her wishes. If we cannot settle the problem of evil, we can try to activate the good within ourselves.
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 12/16/2007 3:57 PM |
Whoever loves Wisdom loves life, and those who seek her will be joyful. Whoever embraces her will be raised up. Wherever she enters will be blessed. Whoever obeys her will be a sure judge. Whoever attends to her will live securely. If you have faith in her, you will obtain Wisdom, and so will your descendants. But first you will walk with her on narrow paths, fearful and terrified. First you will be tested by Wisdom, with her disciples and orders. But then she will gladden you and tell you all her secrets. ~Sirach 4: 11-18 It is not easy to become wise. All the great traditions tell us that. Whether it be Buddhism or Christianity, yoga or tantra, these spiritual paths tell us that to gain wisdom, we must discipline ourselves. We must struggle to reach understanding. And along the way, we will find ourselves tested in ways we never imagined. Many are those who give up on the path to wisdom. They wish to be wise, but they wish even more to be comfortable. No one needs to be ashamed of giving up the search for wisdom, or of taking a break in the struggle. Inner transformation is difficult, and often painful. And there is no way to predict who will have the courage and the tenacity to keep struggling to achieve wisdom. It is no use to look at others, whether in envy or in pride, for their struggles are their own. One who seems wise at twenty may still be just that wise at sixty. One who seems wise at sixty may become rigid and brittle by seventy. We can only judge ourselves as we struggle to find our own path to wisdom. .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 2/10/2008 1:45 PM |
I send up a prayer to my goddess Hathor. I beg her to give me the one I desire. When we are lovers, we will thank her. Joyfully, we will thank her. And my beloved will cry out to me: Lover, lover, lover, in the whole vast world, I am the one destined for you by the goddess. ~Egyptian Prayer to Hathor The goddess intends you to be loved. You are splendid and unique. You are creation. In all of human history, no person exactly like you has ever lived and breathed. Every cell of your body, every pattern in your thoughtful mind, is a new part of this universe. How can you ever doubt that you deserve much, much love? And how could you ever doubt that you were meant to give love? Each person you meet is, like you, a worthy singularity. The goddess intends you to love. Meet each with love, and accept nothing less in return. Loving yourself as a irreplaceable part of the universe, you can then meet others with the same spirit. And then, from this myriad of shining possibilities, a lover will emerge to charm and delight you. Love is a gift. It is also your birthright. In the name of the goddess, reach out and claim it. ... . )0( . .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 2/17/2008 2:23 PM |
Happily May I walk. Happily, with abundance, may I walk. Happily, with abundant colors, may I walk. Happily, with abundant rain, may I walk. Happily, on a trail of abundant pollen, may I walk. Happily, with abundance, may I walk. Happily, may I walk. ~ Hopi Night Chant Where does happiness come from? Today we are told that happiness comes from holding a perfect job, having a perfect body, being in a perfect relationship. But the Hopi and other ancient people of the Americas made happiness something simpler, and more profound. To them, happiness was being attuned to the natural world around us - and fulfilling one's duties toward that world. For the world does not just exist outside ourselves. We interact with it at every turn. Our actions have consequences: just as surely as today's weather will affect our way of dressing to go outdoors, our actions affect our world. At this moment, the liquefied bodies of dinosaurs are being burned to heat our air; waters are being directed from their natural sources into our homes; fuel is being burned at a distant site and carried to our buildings for electricity. Even as we sit still, reading, we consume the products of the earth. We are never separate from her, not for an instant. Let us grow more aware of this deep connection, and find not only happiness but responsibility within it. )0( . .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 2/24/2008 1:00 PM |
Don't worry so much about tomorrow; consider this day a gift from fortune, this day that you are granted to be young and dancing while the sap rises and death stays away. Now is the time to discover new purposes for playing fields or public square: to discover them as places for lingering whispers when soft night covers secret meetings, a place for hide-and-seek and telltale giggles from a girl hiding in a corner from whose arm or finger the prize is snatched and who ~ almost ~ resists. ~Horace The sap of spring is beginning to rise in the trees. Growth is like that: invisible at first, then seeming to arrive in a sudden crescendo of green. But the secret of growth resists in invisible times such as these. The world is still gray with winter, but spring has secretly begun. Within ourselves, too, we must learn to labor through the silent nights and winters of our lives, times when nothing seems to come form fruition, when we encounter only disappointment and disdain. For the inner work we do during these times is what creates the environment for growth on which others later remark. Keep faith during the wintry times, and spring will surely follow )0( . .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 4/22/2008 2:25 PM |
Earth, Mother, and Grandmother, we are speaking to you, please listen to us! We know that we are all related. We are your children, we two-legged ones, just like the four-legged and the winged ones are your children. We are all related. We are their relations, and they are ours, all children of the same mother. If we are all related to you, mother, we must make peace. Why should your children fight like this? We are all related. Help us to make peace with each other, lasting peace among relatives. Mother, Grandmother, Earth, may we walk lovingly and with mercy upon your paths. May we make peace with all our relations. ~Prayers From Lakota Ceremony For Making Of Relatives It is not just a pleasant metaphor to say that we are related to all the creatures occupying this green planet with us. Increasingly, science shows us that all the earth's systems interact with each other, forming communities in which any damage to one being affects us all. We are not immune to the results of our actions. Immensely threatening viruses are released into our world as we destroy ancient forests. Weather systems are changed by the wastes of our civilizations. We cannot escape the damage we do to the other beings on this earth. We are part, not only of the family of humanity, but of the family of planet Earth. We must learn to live in harmony with our relatives. How does any family live in peace with each other? Only through respect: we must respect the others with whom we share our world. Let us hope it is not too late to learn this lesson, and to apply it in our daily lives. . )0( . .
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| | | From: Jðdý | Sent: 10/5/2008 6:38 PM |
It is possible to receive the truth, though it cannot be given. It is so tiny it can hold nothing, and yet is boundlessly huge. Keep your soul on the path away from confusion, and it will always find its way to truth. Bring the male and the female with you together, and hold them within yourself through the long night, and you will be ready to receive all wisdom. ~Chinese Ode, Second Century B.C.E. The union of opposites is at the base of many philosophies and religions. Whether it be called male and female, yin and yang, the inner light and the transcendent divinity - such dualisms must be overcome in order for enlightenment to be achieved. We live in a world that encourages oppositional thinking. Up and down, black and white, rich and poor. Adult and child. Fat and thin. Normal and abnormal. Day and night. But where does day actually end, and night begin? Much of our life is led in various twilights, in spaces between extremes. Acknowledging the variety and diversity of earthly life is part of the search for wisdom, in whatever tradition we find it. )0( . . .
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