Song of Glass
Heavenly bird song
Coming from under my AC
In the torrid heat of the city
Who are you singing to
Such sweet sounds
Like balm to the soul
Are you sent by God
As a messenger
Of the Divine
Your song
A stained glass
Portrait of divine color
Before my eyes
Oh, gentle creature
How do you survive
In the harsh life
Of the city?
Thank you for
A few minutes
Of divinity
Coming to rest
On my fire escape
Summer Inertia?
Am I caught in a web
like a fly in a drainpipe?
Or is it summer inertia,
The lazy, hazy daze?
Could it be
I have lost it totally
to a pharmaceutical lobotomy?
Or am I processing still
retreat with Mooji?
Anger is more controlled
and that is good
but creativity has taken a vacation and
kidnapped my muse leaving
no urge to make new words or pictures?
Anxiety rules
and love flows
making me bow my head in prayer
and that is good
but what has happened to me?
I do not understand what I read
and have trouble processing
and cannot even comment.
Perhaps I am empty…
The Grace of Presence
Oh, God,
your gentle breezes
caress my physical form.
I have been sick,
Pill sick
Mentally sick
Soul sick
for so long,
Overwhelmed by fear,
selfish concerns,
physical ills.
What has changed today?
How come today
I can see beyond the self
To the Self?
Is it so mundane
as to be due to a coolness waft of air?
Or is it a taste of infinity?
A wormhole to your realm?
An undeserved dollop of grace?
You are inside always
and yet so often I cannot feel you
at all!
And I lapse into despondency,
anxiety,
preoccupation with the self,
the person,
the ego.
Why today can I see Thee
In the galaxy of stars within?
Why today?
How can I keep this view
Of you?
Despite problems, illness,
please take me over,
please let me see
Thee daily within.
Please let me love you
and all who live
with wild abandon
and the diamond dazzle of compassion,
without restraint.
Tears cleanse
make amends
for my many sins,
Oh, Zephyr of air,
wafting with the perfume
of the Divine
that permeates
all.
Please stay
forever in my heart,
and blow away
fears and tears
and usurp
the self forever!
Reactions to a Retreat with Sri Mooji
I went to the Zmar retreat online from New York City a week and a half ago in very bad shape. Was going through withdrawal from a psychiatric drug for Bipolar, having been on it for 20 years, and having a really tough time. But came the Zmar retreat with Mooji, and I entered in desperation, which is actually a good way to start a retreat. Had done an intensive with Mooji before and all sorts of resistances came up and a cleansing, Satsang flu, Mooji calls it. This time was different. Resistance came and went. My body cleansed itself. But there came an inkling, a little doorway into the Self. A peak into the peace felt long ago with Holy Communion in the Catholic Church and in meditation with Yogananda. For whatever reason, those doors closed to me. I wanted a guru who was still in bodily form to listen to and follow.
The retreat started auspiciously. Eager to begin, when the opening ceremony started and Mooji appeared, three separate instances of energy running up my spine told me it would be a good retreat. Mooji places no special value on the Kundalini energy. “Child’s play” he calls it. Still for me it was a sign this was the right place to be.
Up at 3 and 4 AM in the silence of pre-dawn in New York City to hear a 2-4 hour Satsang. And then came back at 2:30 for another 2-4 hour one. Mooji spoke healing words. They were like salve to a gaping wound. He spoke tough words, too, but all was done with great love.
The Zmar retreat was such a blessing. Some parts were rough. And some parts scary when the energy led to intense releases in some people.
The “person” still dominates but so many people in the Sangha expressed feelings and questions like mine. That gave me hope. And some people did awaken. As an added bonus, an answer came with a solution to a medication problem that has had positive results.
The Sangha was wonderful and staff inspirational. I desperately want my heart to open as I see it has in Mooji and his staff. Don’t know that it will. But Mooji’s self-inquiry works to help step back from the self, the ego, the person, the mind. He teaches us to be aware of the tricks the mind plays. His Being meditations bring Presence. If you are interested, he has many videos of Satsangs and guided meditations on YouTube open to all. I offer the one below as an introduction.
I love you so much, dear Mooji. You show such compassion and love. Thank you for your endless patience and outpouring of your magnificent heart. You live to help people find the Self, people tortured by “mind” and the “person/ego”.
Officially Gone for Awhile
Have started an online silent retreat with Mooji. My reading of your posts of late has been sporadic, my writing, non-existent. Apologies. Trying to find my way back as I said in the last post. This seems like a good time to go on a silent retreat. So for a week I will not be reading or writing posts or using the Internet and will be trying to keep talking to a minimum while still running a household. Hopefully this will break through whatever is wrong. For those curious about the retreat, click on the link below:
http://mooji.org/zmar_aboutretreat.html
Sending love,
Ellen
Spring Seraphic Singing
It is late afternoon and spring by the calendar, although still quite cool. I have just spent some time at our neighbor’s pond, listening to a form of music that some have likened to the sound to bells. Others liken it to bird song. And still others with unimaginable disdain, to “some kind of nature noise.” For me it is one of the happiest of sounds– the act of creation transformed into sound decibels for all to hear. A sound that comes from the earth and resounds to the heavens, unwittingly praising the Almighty. It is a form of ecstasy when the sound surrounds me totally, filling my ears every evening with perhaps the single-most highlight of spring for me– the siren song of the Spring Peepers counterbalanced by the deeper sound of wood frogs.
How have they cast their spell over so many? I cannot say except that their song is uplifting and filled with hope despite the natural perils they face daily. For, as true of all of us, they may die at any moment– say as a meal for a nearby perching crow or underneath murky waters eaten by a snapping turtle. They call for a mate without ceasing, without fear, single-mindedly, without a thought for their own safety. This is nature at her most elemental, in her most singular scope. The peepers all sing out vying to be heard– an a cappella choir of voices. In some spots, I am told, their song is deafening. How nice to be there; I cannot get enough of their sweet music. It moves me to tears– these tiny creatures singing out their heart’s desire.
As I return home to family “situations” and domestic duties, I yearn for the simplicity and total fervor of their song. For if they sing then all is “right” in at least that small part of the world. Progress has not paved over their pond. Disdainful humans have not drained a “vernal pool.” David M. Carroll writes about vernal pools in his books on turtles called The Swampwalker’s Journal. As the title suggests, Carroll walks such places in search of turtles and other amphibians. He defines a vernal pool as a pool of water that fills up in Fall and Winter, swells in the Spring and often dries up by end of Summer. But a vernal pool is utmost a place of magic, not only where turtles lurk, but where mating frogs deposit gelatinous eggs which turn into tadpoles first, and there, later become frogs. And after a requisite series of warm days, followed by spring rains, on the first dark night, vernal pools become the site of the “salamander night.” Salamanders leave their hibernacula to go for a night of endless mating and then return to leaf litter in the woods to disappear for the rest of the year. Some people who know nothing of vernal pools and their function deem them a nuisance, a big puddle to be filled in or drained. Some people know little of spring peepers and wood frogs except that they are “noisy,” “like some sort of insect.” Poor insects are made out to be the pesky lowest of the low. The natural symphony of hormonal, harmonic sounds sometimes falls on deaf ears.
After finishing my evening chores, I try reading, but find the haunting sound of the spring peepers and wood frogs digging deep within my psyche, making me restless, wishing to be part of that pond, surrounded on all sides by the sex song, inebriated with the unbridled joy in the air, submerged in the utter power of nature manifesting in one of her gentler forms. For the song of the Spring Peepers nature celebrates life-to-be rather than the taking-away of life. Most of all, the song of the Spring Peepers is a song of tremendous faith, faith in love, faith that love will propagate, and faith that new life will emerge.
Tyranny of Mind
4AM
and you a warm lump
under the covers
of Morpheus
Me wide awake
eyes moist with tears
I write
lest I forget
the vulnerability of you
yesterday
lest one day
you ARE no longer
a day of dread
so locked into desire
for your presence am I
fearful of the future
lest it tears me from you
or you from me
Not yet awake
to the wisdom
of the sages and the ages
to live forever in the present
“Until death do us part”
The import of those words
have begun to resound
with a fierce vengeance
now decades later
The treasure of you
multiplies like the loaves and fishes
I fear a famine
not of food
but of your presence
I try to hold each wrinkled emotion
on your face
in a forever place
lest you be torn from me
The specter of loss
hangs over me
haunting our life together
And yesterday
when you cried
when you disguised your tears
with embarrassed laughter
your eyes dripped diamonds,
sparkling as they fell
in response to mine
I crying because
there will never be
a “happily ever after”
at our age
sure as shooting
death will come
and rip us asunder
Perhaps our love
will be born again
in Samsara
but it is a “perhaps”
without a guarantee
My faith is feint
My heart shudders
and flutters
under the threat
of separation
as you lay
a lump of warmth
in the land of Nod
Our love a fairy tale
in a fierce steely reality
of endings.
“Unless we can discover that basic ground of goodness in our own lives, we cannot hope to improve the lives of others.”
Chogyam Trungpa
Alternatives and Non-Pharmaceutical Aids for Bipolars, Depressives and Other Mentally Ill
I am Manic-Depressive, more specifically, Bipolar 1. Unable to take the mood stabilizers usually prescribed for Bipolar Disorder—Valproic acid, Lithium Carbonate, Tegretol, Neurontin and Depakote, my therapist had me on a cocktail of anti-psychotics. Been on an old anti-psychotic, Thiothixene, for about 20 years and a new, atypical anti-psychotic, Zyprexa, for 15 years (more on that drug later).
The anti-psychotics, however, or the neuroleptics as they are called, while keeping me out of the mental hospital and enabling to live a somewhat “normal” life, had a depressant effect on me, robbing my life of all the joy and creativity I used to enjoy, as well as, my mystical experiences in nature.
In an effort to get my spark back, I was put on practically every anti-depressant there is. From the old ones like Tofranil, Elavil, Norpramin and Pamelor, to the newer ones like Effexor, Wellbutrin, Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. All of them were rejected for reasons as numerous as the drugs themselves. From blunted affect, severe nausea, and weight gain, to a total inability to function or outright mania, even minute doses were problematic. As were my trials of the newer anti-psychotics. And I have heard from many that they have had similar or even more severe reactions to the same medications. A friend of mine attempted suicide on Wellbutrin.
Finally a psychologist recommended St. John’s wort. I was very worried about taking that after all my bad experiences with anti-depressants. But I found a research grade St. John’s wort and gave it a try. I felt a difference the very next day despite being told the effects would kick in gradually. The change was dramatic as demonstrated in what I wrote after one day on St. John’s wort:
Ko-ko, our four-legged, faithful companion, runs into the bedroom, eager to join me on the bed, awash with pure joy. She takes a flying leap up and we lounge together like lizards basking in the sun, reclining requisitely together. It is day 2 of St. John’s wort. Am filled with a loving glow as Ko-ko nestles down to sleep beside me. The beauty of yesterday lingers in my memory—a vacation day spent with my husband in the Palisades on an early October day. The sweet, crackling autumn air filled our lungs as we climbed the Palisades for a spectacular view of the Hudson River. Our path strewn with crunchy, dry leaves. A trail leads us further upwards, the spongy ground, soft underfoot is strewn with paint box colored leaves. Yellow, crimsons, golden russets lay on the damp path, wet from yesterday’s rain. I give thanks to God in this cathedral of color. Try to experience the mysticism of my youth. Yearn to return to the photography and poetry writing of my pre-breakdown days. A revival of creativity. Thank you , God, for giving me my sight back.
As the days went by, more and more of the depression lifted. My husband was happier with me on the St. John’s wort because I was more loving. I also stopped drinking. Completely. And I had been a borderline alcoholic. The door to the prison had been opened and I was now freer. This improvement gradually leveled off and at times I found myself fighting depressions at times but nothing like the deep, black depressions before the SJW.
Still without a mood stabilizers I would cycle, but not psychotically. Next change to be made was to learn the hands on healing technique called Reiki in an attempt to recover my spirituality. Reiki continues to be a blessing as I do it daily to myself and in a prayer form for others. But I was still craving the spirituality of my youth.
Brought up Presbyterian and made to convert to Catholicism in grade school, organized religion was not working for me. I had done Transcendental Meditation in my twenties and dropped it for a reason I no longer remember. Continuing to pray rote prayers I followed Pema Chodron and Paramahansa Yogananda and others. I took about twenty of Yogananda’s lessons offered by Self-Realization Fellowship and meditated according to his teachings. I regard Yogananda as a saint, a true saint, but his path was not “doing it” for me. Tremendous anxiety would take over. And then, through Hariod Brawn on Contentedness.net, I met Mooji and I began listening to his guided meditations and watching his satsangs. Additionally, while convalescing from pneumonia recently, my husband read books written by an old friend he had while pursuing religious studies at the University of Edinburgh. A Celtic Christian minister and reformer, J. Philip Newell. Curious, I read him, too, and he helped me on the path with Mooji. Through Mooji I found that the Self is not Bipolar or OCD or Asperger’s or depressed. Those are troubles of the body/mind/ego self. The “person” in other words. If I can go into the “Presence of God” as Newell says, or into the “Self” as Mooji says, I can be well. Mooji has helped me regain my spirituality and is making me whole.
The last change I made was to get off the newer anti-psychotic, Zyprexa, for health reasons. The drug has horrid side effects including dizziness, heavy weight gain, problems with heat and more. The withdrawal from Zyprexa is very,very hard. I still have .5 mg to go to get off it completely. Meantime, the same company where I buy the research grade St. John’s wort, offers a homeopathic Lithium Orotate (not Lithium Carbonate) spray called Symmetry. Have been using that with great results. Am very even. Gone are the manic nights of insomnia and the deep, dark depressions that sometimes broke through the St. John’s wort. Gone is the rapid cycling.
The company that offers the research grade St. John’s wort (the only brand of St. John’s wort that has worked for me) is Hypericum.com. The homeopathic Lithium Ortotate is offered by the same company. I have no interest in this company and am not paid by them to offer this information. I am not saying that all these things will work for those you touched by the fire of Bipolar Disorder or the black hole of depression or any other disorder. And certainly you must consult your therapist before trying any medication. For example, you cannot mix St. John’s wort while taking certain drugs. Specially mixing St. John’s wort with other antidepressants can be very dangerous. I am just offering alternative to those of you who may have had the same experiences and presenting what has helped me in my own battles. Talk to your therapist if interested.
And last but not by any means least, is Mooji. All information about him is to be found at Mooji.org. There are many, many free Satsang and guided meditation videos available there and on YouTube.
He answered my question about being able to being “realized” despite having Bipolar Disorder and I see now what he said made all the difference in the world. The person is Bipolar but the Self is not! Through watching his satsangs and doing meditation with him daily I am returning to the spirituality of my youth, before my breakdown. I have miles to go but with his help I am more able to cope with this dream we call life.
The Benefits of a Nervous Breakdown
Below is an excerpt from my book, “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” In this section of my book I am describing to my therapist a theory I had researched in grad school before my psychotic break with reality at age 28, long before I was to start my life over from scratch as a conceptually-challenged yet more feeling person. Breakdowns can destroy cognitive functioning. It did for me. While I was never ever good at conceptual thinking, the breakdown has made it virtually impossible to understand even the most basic concepts. Despite being on medications for Bipolar Disorder, my mind simply does not work as it once did. This is often humiliating and frustrating though I am mostly okay with it.
Yet, in the past few months, I found Mooji and am following his path– something I thought I would never do because Buddhism was so “beyond” me. And I find myself following many Buddhist blogs. Many times reading such posts and poetry sail way above my comprehension. But this, too, is good. It is humbling and it deprives the ego of its food supply, which according to Mooji, is good. A “chop” at the ego-self is needed over and over again in order to be in the Presence. But the mind still yearns to understand.
For what it is worth here is the excerpt from a therapy session in which I describe my “theory” to my therapist. What is synchronicitous is that the theory sounds somewhat Buddhist in nature. It opens with me talking to my therapist, or rather, reading from my notebook, because I found it difficult to talk at times.
“Alpha = life in utero. Birth = the end of life in utero— death of a sort, a seeming death. Birth is entering the world of light— Reality.
“Reality is too much. People need to escape— to regress. Therefore, the mind goes into altered states of consciousness.” I look up and stop reading and explain. “I studied this when I was in graduate school. I hit upon the literature of altered states of consciousness while I was in a Psych class doing a research paper on creativity and I became obsessed with the topic. I nearly had a breakdown then because I wasn’t eating or sleeping or going to classes. All I was doing was this research and writing. A friend in the dorm used to make sure I ate something. But all that time I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. The material was difficult and I was afraid I was really going off the deep end and writing far out stuff. But in the end the professor gave me an A+ on the paper…”
“Anyhow,” I say as I start to read from my notebook again, “many altered states of consciousness have been found to coincide with the production of alpha brain wave patterns.” I stop reading again and say, “I know this first hand because I did biofeedback once and the feeling you get when you’re producing alpha waves is the same as the one you get in mystical experiences and meditation. Altered states of consciousness typically occur under conditions of sensory deprivation or sensory overload because overloading the system shuts it down, so in effect it becomes a condition of sensory deprivation. The first experience of sensory deprivation occurs in the womb. The ultimate form of sensory deprivation is death. Death is a return to the womb. The womb of the earth. Therefore, Alpha = Omega.”
So there it is in a nutshell. The book is mainly an emotional chronicle of relationships, and finding love, despite being very handicapped by Bipolar Disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome and OCD. If you would like to purchase it for $2.95 please click on the link below:
http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html
The Magic of Moonlight
I miss the soft siren call
of the slinky moonlight,
the velvety voice of the moon
as she beckons to me
in the middle of the night
with her hypnotic magic
wielded in the wee hours.
I miss her enticing ways
calling forth
the howling of coyotes
echoing over the hills.
I miss the shadows
of the moonlight
as she luminates
the dark and empty road
and leaves behind a trail of shadows.
Cooped up in the city
nothing calls to me at 3AM
save little lights on
in the cubby holes
of the apartment house
across the street.
No slinky siren song sings
nor misty magic.
No coyotes howling here,
just the loud voices of drunks
stumbling home
in the harsh glare of streetlights.
“In the Hebrides of Scotland, it was common practice well into the nineteenth century for men to take off their caps to greet the morning sun and for women to bend their knee in reverence to the moon at night. These were the lights of God. They moved in an ancient harmony that spoke of the relationship of all things. And they witnessed also to the eternal rhythm between the masculine energies and the feminine energies that commingle deep in the body of the universe. The Celts were familiar also with the practice of being guided by the creatures. The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the animals of the earth had not lost their senses. They were viewed as still being alive to the deepest rhythms of creation and to the interrelationship between all things.” (“Christ of the Celts” by J. Philip Newell)
Eternal Love
My blogging friend, Lauren Mokasdar, at http://englishwifeindianlife.com/ has a BBC news story on her blog about how she found the love of her life and her subsequent life in India as an English wife. She and I both believe in reincarnation and feel that our marriages to husbands whom we love so deeply, arose out of a relationship in a former life. Her love crosses cultures and in so doing provides a fascinating story that is an inspiring celebration of eternal love. Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!
Love always, Ellen
Being in Winter
How higher they be
than me
for they know how
to just Be
always
in the present
in the Silence
so profound in winter
but in the forever now
I look fearfully ahead
towards a future of endings
and losses
of attachments
acquired over the years
none more strong
than our love
I used to know
how to just be
like a tree
spontaneously
when very young
now I seek to Be
as I was in youth
in rapture
not just in nature
but always
as the sheep
in the deep
of winter.
The Secrets of Winter
Sweet winter melancholy
assuages my soul
with its
bare branches
reaching Godwards
and
its subdued light
speaks of the Almighty
in silent whispers
that are drowned out by sunlight
and the mania of summer.
Life Eternal
On this sad day
13 years ago
unspeakable things happened
to uncountable thousands
we have gone on
aching for those lost
Let us affirm life today
and always
By going to the One within
Transcending Maya
Some of you may know Mooji. I have only just found him through Hariod who blogs at Contentedness.net. I am so grateful to her for introducing him to me because it feels like a relationship started long ago in this life, possibly before. I am following him as my Guru now and am always amazed at how simply he goes to the right to the truth. Please just give a listen for less than three minutes. You may fall in love with him, too.
My Cathedral
is my cathedral
A very diverse congregation…
From cows
to snails and turtles
to gazillions
of insects
Deer sometimes come round
Butterflies abound
Moths, too
Birds of every hue
All that’s missing is you
but you worship your own way
doing charity every day
more than I can say
Nothing Changes/All is Flux
yet
wriggling strings
an optical delusion
in the dream
of Maya
3000 years ago
the Rishis said that
the world of forms
was all mind stuff
Maya
In the 20 the century
Sir James Jeans
said the universe
consists of pure thought
each thing a moving,
ever changing manifestation
of the life force
One unity
there are no boundaries
The Magic of Rhythm
Alpha brain waves cycle at 8-12 cycles per second
Alpha brain waves are present in most altered states of consciousness,
as in meditation, flow, creative states, religious experiences,
for example.
In altered states of consciousness we feel one with the earth.
The magnetic rhythms of the earth cycle at 10 cycles per second.
With alpha we plug into the rhythms of the earth,
hence a feeling of unity with our Mother.
Think
pleasure at moving to rhythms of music
as in the Indian dance video below.
Some humor is thrown in for lightness of being,
as Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir dress as women
and try to follow the gorgeous dancing diva, Madhuri Dixit, in Indian dance.
Enjoy
and ponder the importance of cycles and rhythm!
A Universe of Patterns
when applied to sand
creates patterns
like those of snowflakes
crystals
water droplets
What patterns
does the sound of the mantra
create on
Light Works
Fears
In tears fighting fears, I prayed to God to speak to me and he did, moments later, through the beautiful words of Dennis Ference, at Merging Traffic…
battered and bullied
by fears that rage and roar
let us trust that we are
bigger than our fears
let us know that we are
so much more
MOONSIDE 
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