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The Way of Dragon Veins: A Prayer From Where the Heart Begins

Posted 2 years ago by Monique

The Way of Dragon Veins:

A Prayer From Where the Heart Begins

There is a breathing that is more than our own, a palpable stream of cosmic vitality that moves, enlivens, connects and transforms along numinous pathways between heaven and earth. Ancient Taoists knew these currents as dragon veins, along which the breath of life—qi—ushers emptiness and form back and forth to one another; moving between realms like an unborn, undying prayer from the heart of existence ceaselessly offering its spirit to the full potential of embodied life.

As spring winds steadily fan the flaming spirit of summer’s becoming, warmth and light is offered to the hidden or not-yet-formed things so that they may continue their full emergence and live in the world of form and time. There is no such thing as holding back to plants, creature beings, planets, stars. Life is made to bear fruit, and in so doing, dies wholly to itself over and again in a participatory dance of inter-being.

In the midst of the bursting exuberance of spring, it is easy to forget that growth is also contingent on inward acts like letting go. Growth is mostly not smooth and happens in stages, each one requiring courage, faith, trust and death. Birth requires much dying. Immense suffering is often the result of not knowing how and when to die, and that it is simply okay to let go. Continue reading “The Way of Dragon Veins: A Prayer From Where the Heart Begins” →

Traversing the Wild Lands of Spirit: Calling Down the Rains

Posted 2 years ago by Monique

Traversing the Wild Lands of Spirit:

Calling Down the Rains

Before I open my eyes, a heaviness in flesh and bone announces the dampness filling the late summer air. The icy fingers of autumn cause my pores to contract, reminding me of the downward and inward movement of the coming months. I want to stay curled up like like the beans and peas in the garden who close at night. As I peer out through the shadowy in-between time of early morning, a thick mist hangs above the ground where the sun is just becoming. I, too, feel as though I am just becoming.

Moving outside to the garden, I reflect on the time of the pandemic and the great ‘truth telling time’ we are living in. We are collectively and individually bearing witness to the revealing of truths that have been shaping our landscape internally and externally all along the course of human history. How we live and what we believe about our place in existence is reflected in our internal and external environments. My garden tells me about what it needs in very clear ways. I am continuously learning the language, how to read the signs, and about how every aspect of mineral, soil, bacteria, insect, animal, and weather patterns relates to the flourishing or demise of what I’m trying to grow. In this great dance of inter-being, there lies the potential for all life to be nourished. Or not.

Continue reading “Traversing the Wild Lands of Spirit: Calling Down the Rains” →

The Alchemy of Love

Posted 2 years ago by Monique

The Alchemy of Love

“It feels like I’m standing in the middle of a burning pyre being burned alive. When I look out through the flames, there is this intensely raw feeling of being at the complete mercy of a process that I cannot change and can only allow. The flames fly wildly around me and there is nowhere to go. It seems that the flames are coming from my own flesh and bones, so wherever I go, the flames follow.” 1

Hexagram 30. Li/The Clinging, Fire. Li means “to ‘cling to something’, ‘to be conditioned’, ‘to depend or rest on something’, and also ‘brightness’…what is dark clings to what is light and so enhances the brightness of the latter. A luminous thing giving out light must have within itself something that perseveres; otherwise it will in time burn itself out. Everything that gives light is dependent on something to which it clings, in order that it may continue to shine… Human life on earth is conditioned and unfree, and when man recognizes this limitation and makes himself dependent upon the harmonious and beneficent forces of the cosmos, he achieves success… one may put aside hope and fear, and sigh and lament: if one is intent on clarity of mind, good fortune will come from his grief. For here we are dealing not with a passing of mood… but with a real change of heart.” 2

A ‘real change of heart’ opens pathways for healing.

The heart belongs to the element fire, summer, heat, south, joy, sadness, red, bitter flavor, the tongue, blood, sweat, flowering. Taoist sages tell us that deep within the heart within the heart, lives the shen (the spirit of the heart), imbued with the pure light of divine consciousness that guides and protects us in our earth walk. The shen ask us to tenderly care for the altar of our heart—a threshold between the realm of the timeless and the time-bound where mystery lives and informs us in the most sacred ways of the Tao. The shen need our stillness and silence so that we may hear, with the inner ear, the guidance of Mystery whispered in a language only the heart understands. Continue reading “The Alchemy of Love” →