Monique Gaboury |

gitanabarby:

Fire: The Dance of Intimacy

Something is happening, like a slow simmer tenderizing the border of things. At the boundary of the flesh and at the interface between my heart and the world, I can feel how the correct amount of heat invites what is hidden or held apart to come forth, open, show itself, soften, vibrate, delineate, copulate, expand, intertwine, define, wonder, touch, feel, love. At this sacred edge, self and other become doorway and door.

Fire moves and circulates life from the edges toward a centering principle. In humans it is our heart that holds the fire, encouraging engagement, relatedness, kinship, belonging. Over time, fire is capable of creating something completely new from a multitude of complex parts without losing the wholeness of each part. Even if each separateness dissolves in the process, it paradoxically can never lose its integrity completely when rooted in the spirit of the heart.

The firing process is about the inner work necessary for transformation. It is the inner fire we tend deep within the cauldron of the heart that steadily warms the inner journey. Continue reading “Fire: The Dance of Intimacy” →

Drumming On Bamboo To Call A Phoenix

Posted 2 years ago by Monique Gaboury

Drumming On Bamboo To Call A Phoenix

In meditation this morning it feels as though I’m riding a wild dragon. As my mind whirls in chaos, I return to breath and open my gaze through the inner eye. A moment of silence fades as thoughts reassert themselves. I return to breath and gaze with my inner eye. Back and forth it goes until my attention is called to the steady pitter patter of rain upon the rooftop. Its sound trickles gently through my being. A bird’s song sparks an inner lightness and perceptions clear and brighten. Thunder rumbles in the distance becoming louder and closer, attuning me to center.

Inner and outer continue to intermingle in deep conversation until they become one and the same. Timelessness infuses the time-bound, flowering into a pregnant pause. There is a softening, and then Emptiness.

A kaleidoscope of light, color and moving shapes envelope me. It is fluid in the way that water is, melting the remaining tightness in my body. A face emerges from this watery substrate and I recognize the small, young seal who traveled with me when I walked the beach yesterday. In moments of stopping and gazing at one another we entered a space of inter-being. A profound love arose and overflowed from my heart. Continue reading “Drumming On Bamboo To Call A Phoenix” →

Holy Longing: Becoming A Compassionate Ancestor

Posted 2 years ago by Monique Gaboury

Holy Longing:

Becoming A Compassionate Ancestor

There is a longing that echos from the infinite depths of our innermost being, from Gaia, from existence itself. Although we may not know what we long for, we are continuously moved by its presence. It inspires us to question, seek, explore, create. Although longing feels personal, it is also transpersonal. It is like an endless koan deconstructing the false to reveal the essence of the true. It is like a spirit guiding us from beyond.

Longing often brings with it a sense of aloneness or separation where there exists a seemingly endless sea between what is and what wants to be. Rilke observes in his poem below that in our humility, the presence of the sacred reveals itself to us. In the presence of the ‘wise ones’ and in our aloneness we become available to receive the blessing of something larger than ourselves. In the empty chamber of the heart within the heart, the longing within the longing guides us in the way that a clear stream flows home to the wide open sea.

Longing lives and moves in emptiness.

Emptiness flows though form and formlessness alike, pulsing with life in the space between molecules, atoms, breaths, heartbeats, planets, galaxies, self, and other revealing that nothing is solid or what it appears to be, and all forms are in a dance of relationship and inter-being. Empty space is a living tissue, an invisible potency that enlivens and connects all things. When we come to inhabit and abide in this emptiness of which we are made, we touch the wholeness that unites all things. The ten thousand things return to source. Continue reading “Holy Longing: Becoming A Compassionate Ancestor” →