“People hate the human soul,
it is nothing but “psychological.”
They don’t understand that it has needs,
and they throw its treasures into the street
without understanding them.

Carl Jung

What treasures have we thrown into the streets?

Life takes on journeys we never thought we would experience; childhood play passes into youthful bliss and youthful bliss into maturity. It is when we forget to take that child with us into our adult years that we leave behind our closest connection to the soul. For as children we see a world larger than life, a world where houses are castles, trees are forests and there is no difference between fantasy and reality. This is the dwelling place of the soul.

As we grow older we are taught to clearly distinguish between fantasy and the real world. A world where science and religion are split with irreconcilable differences. We are criticized and humiliated into denial that the soul even exists. It has become an uncomfortable word in the mists of our comfortable lives; only to leave the forests of childhood petrified, the castle walls crumbled, and the world of metaphor hiding in the shadow of the unconscious. Our life and our work after time loses its meaning, loses its excitement, loses its way. What is left when the physical world has denied us inner peace, why I am I here, where has my soul gone?

Searching for ones soul in Western Society is for those who are lost, unable to survive in this world, those without backbone, those without a stiff upper lip. But behind the closed doors of millions the stiff upper lip trembles, the backbones are broken; we have left our soul out of the picture. We have thrown her into the streets. Yet, she waits patiently, she waits hoping we will see her, hoping we will embrace her once again. She is our guardian, she is the eyes and ears of our creator living in the forests of metaphor and myth, always willing to listen, always willing to speak. She is our life line to inner peace.

Photo credit: Bill Taylor Photography

The Road

 

upon the road

I came across a paper

written, typed – some parts, illegible

the paragraphs and incomplete sentences

indicating someone

had passed away

where, now –

that was all unclear

the part that was clear

was the grief -the pangs of loneliness

left behind for the bearer

this torch fate now handed to me—

why me?

clutching the words like

they were an orphan –

I ran and ran

the torch burning

I repeating, “don’t cry, don’t cry”  

to who?

a piece of paper

there was no one - just me -

and the road -  and the words -

we cried together     

   

 

bkmackenzie                

“In a dream where the contents are visible
Where the poets and champions compose “…. Van Morrison

I have fallen in love with this line from Van Morison’s , Lady of the Slipstream –maybe that is now I view this physical as a dream where the contents are visible. It is if our souls have stepped through the veil between the Dreamtime and the physical universe.

Much like the holographic universe that physics has embraced with its multiple dimensions and universes we are passing through space and time fighting dragons and demons, falling in love with heroes and maidens in the waking hours. Then like magic our true self is allowed to wonder freely through the eternal multiplicity of the infinite by re-entering the Dreamtime for rest and redirection.

Here in the physical world, we have the chance to become the poets and champions, here we are given the choices of reaching a higher plane of thought and manifesting it in world. These are choices, the choices we make everyday during our waking hours.

“…. breathe not a word of this secrecy ….” vm

What univerises will you visit today? Where poets and champions will you meet?

Let us take time in the chaos of our “busy back soon” lives, to remember now fragile “Life” really is.

Within the past week we have lost  over 100,000 lives in Myarnmar and now 10,000 in China.   Let us not forget we are all connected - with the web of one soul - brother to brother, sister to sister  under the light of one Moon.

One Planet, One People, One World Soul — United Under One Creator —

Let us be the Light in a World that too often reflects on the Darkness —

 

 

Who is my mother?
Is she the wind or the Northern Star
Is she Morgan, she the Lady in the Lake
Is she the Southern Cross
The moon that guardian of the night -

Who is my mother?
Is she the goddess at the temple door
The hag who walks near the shadowed wall
Is she the mother of the lamb
The virgin within our soul -

Who is my mother?
Is she the soil beneath my feet
The oceans that I sail
Is she the dancer, the Indian maiden
Is she sin, the forgiven and its forgiveness -

Who is my mother?
Is she mystery and denial of
The beauty where senses fail to find
Is she the fallen and the grace
Is she healer and lamp, the lamp lighter -

Who is my mother?
Is she the laughter of heaven
Is she the joy that spins this earth
Is she the balance, the wheel
The blessings of living and unliving -

Is she is all of these? – Infinity’s Birth -

bkmackenzie

the great wall stands - between you and me
on one side perfection
on the other - calculated insanity

you dream - I write
I write - you laugh
you cry - I write
I write - you write

this interaction and play of words
leaves one vulnerable to mistakes
and the constant editing of our lives
at times - appears to be more than
any one life can take

the house of cards erected - on blank pages stands exposed
as each joker places bet
on the marks needed to eliminate
paying the seekers toll -

the outcome of the meaning
once the random cull is met -
leaves a sold out copy of
the self
topping the best sellers list

the breach of contract judicated
by the wall of stone -
rising higher with each publication
stripping my soul from bone

bkmackenzie

Why do always seem to wind up in the same place in our conscious lives when we have read every self -help book  placed the book store shelve?  For some of us we have gone as far as cataloging them according to that aspect of our life.  We have neat piles labeled, health, family, work and maybe even love.  The list is endless.     Yet, with all that reading  those same character flaws or elements of our self we are seeking to change just keep showing up and sometimes larger than before.  What are we missing?

 

Enter the Unconscious —

 

Our unconscious life, in imagery, is the iceberg that sank the Titanic.   Though the Titanic was heralded as “unsinkable” she met her match on her maiden voyage.   The Titanic, its builders and crew, metaphorically, were in denial; denial that the ship they created was greater than the vastness of the Atlantic.  We too walk around for the most part in the state of denial, we may announce  to the world we are the best at this or the best that, but when the next self-help book hits the shelve we are first in line to purchase it in hopes of figuring out what is wrong with us.  There is something not quit right, there is something missing;and in turn we find that all the self -help books and gurus are not doing the trick in helping us get off the endless wheel of our personal despairs.   That is until we begin to embrace our internal iceberg; our unconscious. 

 

Denial is pushing something out of your awareness.  Anything you hide in the basement has a way of burrowing under the house and showing up on the front lawn.       Howard Sasportas.

 

If we are truly honest with ourselves we will see that the faults we continually come up against in others are the personal faults staring back at us in the mirror; the same faults that all our self-help books are not readily revealing to us.  What we have buried deeper and deeper into our unconscious starts to show up in the words we speak and the imagery of what we surround ourselves with.  Sentences emerging from our mouths that start with  “she is”, “he is” and  “they are”, imagery in the pictures we have around us, the products we buy, the music we listen to.

 

So how do we stop running in circles making no headway in our life?  The process, well that is a lifetime journey, taking each day of our life and reviewing the aspects of what we are denying to face within our own being, one aspect at a time.  You may ask how do I know what I truly am denying?  I can only suggest you stop, take inventory of what you continually find fault with in others, the surroundings in which you live, at home and work, and match them up with all your self-help books and connect the dots.  The pattern you draw will reveal a picture of who you truly are and uncover some of the pieces of yourself you thought you so cleverly buried.  Amazingly, each aspect of denial we single out about ourselves and honestly embrace magically seems to disappear and makes the sailing on our life’s journey a little smoother and safer. 

 

Happy Sailing —

 

Grace

the rainbow of the universe
bled across my soul —
and the peak of my accomplishments –
met the valley down below
and rushing to the rivers edge,
ran quickly to the sea
replacing once my ego
with the grace of thee –

bkmackenzie

I searched for the scientific meaning behind the word Grace, but could not find one, so I searched for the scientific meaning behind the word ego and that led me to this definition in the dictionary:

Ego - Part of the mind containing consciousness
Psychoanalysis in Freudian psychology, one of three main divisions of the mind, containing consciousness and memory and involved with control, planning, and conforming to reality

My ego could not rest without a scientific explanation behind grace. Then in my driving late last night, with the Moon trying to wake itself and crawl out of its new status, I was taken by the vastness of the night sky. In those moments of contemplation I came up with this scientific definition of Grace to fill my void.

Grace – An impenetrable web
The impenetrable web or force that surrounds and protects the human soul from falling to deep within the black hole of ego.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender. – Vince Lombardi, 1913-1970

 

Control freaks- we all know them.  Some of us do not have to go any further then the bathroom mirror to see one.  As a part of being a functional human being we need to have a measure of control in our lives.  A good warm feeling of what is happening with family, work and personal pleasures.  That is when we have a tendency to feel our safest and most secure, when we have control. 

 

However, we are not all born under the sign of Libra whose main purpose is to keep the scales of life balanced with the guidance of Venus.  In fact even some Libras’ loose it, control that is, and like the rest of us seek shelter in the comfort of the soul.

 

For some control becomes a curse and burden in which they bury themselves until the light of day is hardly visible; and with that the castle walls built for protection usually start cracking and tumbling down.

 

So, why surrender?  Why, give in?  Why, let go of all this control? It sounds so weak and helpless and vulnerable.

 

To truly succeed at that which you have been created to fulfill it is essential to surrender; to let go of the control that you look at as your soul’s life jacket.  Life jacket’s become straitjackets created for the sole purpose of controlling.   The spirit needs freedom to express itself, freedom with out the fears and limits we place in our lives and in our own minds.  It is up to each one of us to face our fears and cut the strings of the straitjacket we have bound ourselves in. 

 

Success in life is surrendering to your Soul Purpose.

In the middle of all this rice controversy is where I choose to live.   In the Central Valley of Northern California surrounded by rice fields just east of the coastal mountains.    In fact one of the most popular bumper stickers you see around town says EAT RICE, potatoes make your butt fat.   This is rice country and this time of year the fields have been prepped and some already flooded for planting.  

 

In the early morning any day of the week in spring you will hear the sound of the barnstormers overhead; and if you take a quick  one minute ride out of town you will see them in full view.   Pass upon pass like bi-winged dragonflies they skim along the rice pools and send down their seed to the fertile waters.   Nature’s spectators line the waters edge undisturbed by all the commotion; then with white wings spread wide these egrets and gray herons take to the sky blessing the fields with their presence.  

 

This small town loves it farms, its farmers and its purpose in the world market.  Here the pickup truck is King Cab, the Border Collie or Labrador its co-pilot and its color white; to ward off the summer heat.  This is rice country, the fields will be sprouting within the next few weeks and the cycle of life begins again.

 

The town is quiet come Sunday morning with only the sound of its many churches, their bells, their choirs and the barbeques in the park.   But God does not rest in the rice fields come Sunday, his many hands are busy prepping, planting and nurturing the fields for harvest come fall; there is a whole world to feed out there.

 

This is Colusa, CA where the price of rice is willing paid everyday of the week.  Thank You Colusa.