Wednesday 25 November 2009

Homecoming Haikus

Venus reclining;
One leg outstretched she beckons me
And I take her side.
 
Somersaulting blind,
I radiate force from within,
And life brings me home.
 
Face down free falling,
The parachute carries me safe,
Clear of the watch-tower.
 
The secret is Love,
Unconditional, everlasting,
One world evermore.

—okei

Caravanserai (Loreena McKennitt)

14 comments:

  1. I made some corrections. "Life is in body" was terribly unpoetic, and potentially implicit of an innuendo I didn't mean. I think it's much better now.

    The painting is Waterhouse's Lady of Shallott. Now sure how well it goes...? But it is beautiful. :)

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  2. Haikus are fun .

    And this one is particularly beautiful.

    :)

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  3. Excellent!
    See? You're one s-hell of a dreamer, dude!....iiiissssszzzzzzz

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  4. Thank you! & Thank you! :^)

    Yes, the second and third were dream images.

    And just for the record, these are "hachikus" which means they have 5-8-5 syllables and not the usual 5-7-5. (yes, I made that up! ...in one of my earlier posts on Multiply when I realized that I'd been doing haikus wrong the whole time.) Unfortunately, I don't think "hachiku" is such a catchy word to use in the title, so a "hachiku" can also be called a haiku for short. Ha!

    I wonder if I should say more about those dreams, or whether self-analysis is intrusive to the deeper workings of the mind which are best let be?

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  5. This perhaps would have been a more fitting image... Botticelli's Venus.

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  6. Param was talking about flying dreams on Y!A, so I decided to go ahead and post the details of these two dream images. The first was from about the 20th November. Square brackets are comments not part of the dream.

    Earlier in the night I had had the concept in my mind of riding a bicycle standing whilst another sat on the seat and then taking turns sitting whilst the other cycled.

    Unrelated, I’d also met someone expounding some spiritual theory, and I was wishing I could write it down or else I wouldn’t remember it. All I did remember was that level 1 of consciousness was something pretty basic, level 2 was rationality and level “e” was learning to “go beyond”. [Maybe, I need to imagine I can remember my dreams perfectly, and learn to be more aware, or else somehow remember use that cool idea of a dream camera that Tracy blogged about and take lots of photos.]

    I was then cycling along and noticed that I was taller than if I were standing, so if I fell, I would fall further. And as I noticed this, I grew taller still, so I was higher than the width of the road and there wouldn’t be space to fall, and higher still I cycled until I veered off in flight over a red building on my left resembling the British Library. I don’t know the building well, and then I was flying with no sight, and on a curved arc with no control. I then had the thought, “I radiate from within to go where I need to go.” [The one aspect of the dream where I consciously took control. Lol.] And then I felt my body come alive and I woke up. [So that’s where I need to be. In reality!! :^) I must admit I was just a little disappointed. But it was a coming home. The body is the home of the soul and it’s that eternal lesson of learning to trust and love our self.]

    And I also wonder if that place of home is what O’Donohue was referring to as that part of the individual separate from everything and everyone (in my previous "safeguarding the individual" blog).

    ~*~

    The second dream image was from about a month earlier. I am parachuting, body facing down to the ground. All is well. After landing, the parachute falling over me, I have the thought that in parachuting down, so long as the parachute does not crash into the watchtower, you are safe. [My understanding of this on waking is that the self represents the body, the parachute the spirit and the watchtower the mind. So long as the mind is impartial and focused, unaffected by falling or rising spirit, all is well.]

    In particular, mind or true Self, or Source or God or whatever you choose to call it, is not to be confused with spirit. There are higher spirits, but Self is above them all, and perhaps Self is that which guides the spirit home.

    And that place of home for our spirit, is that not unique to each of us?

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  7. This is quite a profound revelation Okei!

    The poem is esoterically beautiful and comforting. I sense a certain peace.

    And yes, I know you are disappointed as you thought you wantd to travel

    When reading your dream, it occurred to me that you were on the verge of an out of the body experience but held back...Maybe your traveling desire rests in the desire to leave the body rather than your geographical location?

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  8. Thanks Cyn! I was disappointed only because I was flying blind and disoriented and the moment I "took control" I returned to reality instead of "going somewhere", but of course the most important place I need to be is reality, fun though a flying dream might have been. So I took it as a lesson. "BE HERE NOW!" And I really did feel a sensation of "coming back into the self" as I woke up.

    I've never wanted to have an out of body experience, though whatever this means in practice, might it not be possible that we experience this in dreams without knowing it? It's true though that I have a desire for the spiritual and like the desire for travel or the desire for romance, these are somewhat inhibited by a greater desire for "finding my self", my sense of direction and purpose and passion. But at heart there is no contradiction. The yearning for "wisdom" (the spiritual), for freedom (travel) and for love (finding my passions and putting wisdom into living practice) is all wrapped up in the yearning to find one's self.

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  9. Okei....your hachiku (i like that word hehee) is beautiful. And your dream analysis is brilliant. I think that so many of us in our 'spiritual quests' forget that reality is where we need to be. I feel sometimes spirituality and meditation are used as simply another escape mechanism. When the whole point is, as you said, "BE HERE NOW". Again, simply brilliant!

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  10. Thanks Erica for noticing my "hachiku" innovation. Just waiting for that idea to snowball, lol.

    And thanks even more for the reminder. I think there are some things I need to continuously remind myself of or else I keep forgetting. And being in the moment is one of them. Another maybe is loving and trusting oneself. Maybe I should make a list one day. And another is the ideal to maintain at all times a state of concentration with compassionate mindfulness.

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  11. Nice homecoming! Hope it brings content :)

    Lovely painting...its the colour of that gown that I find particulary pleasing, LOL!

    I don't know how old you are okei...but spiritually, you seem like an old soul to me...a true seeker!

    I don't know the meaning of my dreams...or whether they truly mean something! Yet, at times they have proved prophetic.

    Looking back at few, I'm stupified!

    Here's another flying dream, I had many years ago. I still remember it because it made me feel refreshed!

    I was flying over for sometime, and suddenly find myself in a beautiful valley, full of greenery and colourful flowers. In there, is a lone cottage. I come down and enter that. I find a woman and her daughter waiting, as if they were expecting me. The dream ended here, on a pleasant note.

    Now, my son has got engaged to be married soon....to a very nice girl. She lives with her widowed mother in a place away from Mumbai. When our family went to meet them the very first time, mother was standing outside the gate of her house, waiting for us. Its an arranged match. When we saw the girl, everything fell in place!

    Suddenly one day, I remembered this past dream! Believe me okei...I have had quite a few of such dreams. Of course, most are just disjointed, cluttered gibberish. And you really can't say which one would turn out true when and how...but it amazes me no end that our future could be playing somewhere...and our dreams bring us that information in advance!!!

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  12. Delighted to see you back Param, and what a lovely heart-warming story! :^)

    I've never had a prophetic dream, and with quite a few of my strange dreams, I'm not sure if I'd want to. But isn't it amazing how such a simple dream, almost meaningless to anyone else, can make one feel so good on waking. I just loved your dream. Thanks so much for sharing!!

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