We can’t choose how we will sur­ren­der to What Is. We can only say “yes” to it.

NOTE: This con­tent is from my blog, Bare­back Alchemy. If links here aren’t work­ing, please try there: http://melissastuddard.blogspot.com/2012/05/mnemosyne-weekly-poem-ten.html W. B. Yeats The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free Photo by Ken­neth Allen This week, thanks to the rec­om­men­da­tion of Robert Craven, author of Get Lenin, we’ll be tak­ing a poetic jour­ney to “The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free,” cour­tesy of William But­ler Yeats. Yeats com­posed the poem in 1888, and it was first pub­lished in 1890 in the National Observer. Click here if you want to have your mind blown by an amaz­ing audio record­ing. As well, feel free to leave remarks about the poems at Bare­back Alchemy. I love hear­ing what you think! Here’s last week’s post­ing, if you want to leave com­ments on Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer “: The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Nine. Also, if you’re new to the blog, please check out the first Mnemosyne Post. And please keep sug­gest­ing titles! I always learn the most from the ones I would have never thought to select myself. Have a great week, every­one. May your hearts and minds find peace in the “bee-loud glade!” The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free I will arise and go now, and go to Read the Rest…

Recently, I met some­one new. At first glance, due to his pro­fes­sion and appear­ance, he reminded me of three peo­ple I had been close to years before. Imme­di­ately, my mind decided that he was a mash-up of these folks and started scan­ning the con­ver­sa­tion, his ges­tures and expres­sions for evi­dence that, indeed, he was such a com­pos­ite char­ac­ter. Luck­ily, I caught onto my mind’s machi­na­tions before it could fully con­jure this fic­tional per­son. “I know noth­ing,” I reminded myself, although not in Sgt. Schultz’s fake Ger­man accent. For those too young to remem­ber, he played the fool­ish camp guard in Hogan’s Heroes. In Zen, spir­i­tual aspi­rants are also known as fools, will­ing to encounter the next moment with nei­ther fear nor anger, no mat­ter what hap­pens. In short, being a fool means not need­ing to be “right”. Although it was quite pos­si­ble that some of my assump­tions and first impres­sions would turn out to be accu­rate, the real­ity of this per­son might also be quite dif­fer­ent from my ideas. Could I drop my inter­nal chat­ter and enter the moment, rather than ana­lyze, antic­i­pate and pre­dict? Before I started prac­tic­ing Zen and med­i­ta­tion, I often believed that the por­traits my high Read the Rest…

Before this morning’s yoga class a fel­low stu­dent shared that to be inspired is to be “in spirit” and that to feel enthu­si­asm is to be with god (en+theos). This got me think­ing (as a lot of things do) about poetry. For a few years, before I had chil­dren and when time to read and write was plen­ti­ful, poetry was my reli­gion. It was my sun and my moon. I mem­o­rized scores of poems, in the event that I was trapped in a cave I wanted to be the per­son who knew more poems than my cave-trapped friends. (At this time in my life I wasn’t friends with any­one who might know some­thing useful—like how to get out of a cave.) Poetry was my inspi­ra­tion and my enthu­si­asm and, although I am not quite as steeped in it as I used to be, it still is one of my great loves. The first def­i­n­i­tion of inspi­ra­tion in Merriam-Webster is this: A divine influ­ence or action on a per­son believed to qual­ify him or her to receive and com­mu­ni­cate sacred rev­e­la­tion. And what poem, I mean what really good poem, is not a sacred rev­e­la­tion? Whether the poet is play­ing in the Read the Rest…

a foun­da­tion of the spir­i­tual life is to not essen­tial­ize the spirit as an entity in itself. the spirit is not an entity, and it does not reside, in some mys­te­ri­ous way, within our bod­ies. nor can the spirit be found some­where else out­side of us. it is com­mon to think that we can ori­ent our­selves towards the spirit by look­ing inwards, but the spirit is not in me nor in you, the spirit is between you and me. buber likened the spirit to the air we breath, it is always within us and at the same time it is in the world in which it par­tic­i­pates. remove one or the other and life comes to an end. spirit is what emerges in the between of an i and thou, it is a cre­ation of the rela­tion­ship. god is not to be found in our tem­ples, we find our tem­ples in god. god is not in the litur­gies by which we offer our wor­ship to him, our worship-liturgies are in god. that is to say: the find­ing of the god we believe in, pre­cedes the litur­gies we uti­lize in order to wor­ship him. only after we have cho­sen our god –be the Read the Rest…

Please join us Mon­day, May 21st at 7 PM EST as Melissa Stud­dard inter­views renowned spir­i­tual author John E. Welshons. Welshons is a pro­lific author as well as founder and pres­i­dent of Open Heart Sem­i­nars, an orga­ni­za­tion whose aim is to increase spir­i­tual aware­ness and edu­ca­tion. He is best known for his works  (co-authored with Ram Dass) and  (co-authored with Richard Carl­son). An active and accom­plished writer, this is not an inter­view to miss! If you have any ques­tions you would like Melissa to ask John please write them in the comments below.