#DevaAlchemy

[innervoiceartblog]

Laps, Sailboats, SurfBoards, and Tides

My ancestors made the perilous journey across the Arabian Sea from Persia to India nearly 1300 years ago. Something of their peregrine spirit must live in me, because I’ve moved so many times during my life.

First, from India to North America, when I was just 21 years old.

The shadow of that first leave-taking is imprinted in my body. These past few weeks, I’ve dreamed repeatedly of my childhood home. And woken confused by the chitter-chrreee of eagles instead of the caw-caw-caww of crows.

The spirit of transformation is my guiding star.

This means that I choose life at the tideline. Right there, on the shifting shore. Welcoming the incoming waves. Knowing I’ll soon wave goodbye to the outgoing ones.

A rhythm as constant as my breath.

There’s a reassuring constancy to the rhythms of change. And an art to living improvisationally, responding to the tides without being swept away.

Surfers know this in their bodies.

For me, transformation happens most effortlessly, with the least amount of resistance, when I give myself safety, stability and support.

This is not the safety of a battleship or an aircraft carrier. It’s the safety of a sail boat. Or a surfboard. Something small and light and responsive enough to ride the waves without capsizing. Something as fragile as the coracles in which my ancestors sailed east, to India and freedom.

My sail boat is made of sturdy, durable materials. Daily rituals and routines that nourish me, that are simple, quiet; attuned to the currents of divine order.

Opening my heart each morning to the spirit of my home. Welcoming the Deva of grace. Expressing my gratitude to the Devas of those qualities that add buoyancy to my life, that renew and green the life of our world.

Honouring and listening closely to my feelings, witnessing their ebb and flow.

Eating consciously, joyously, gratefully. Going to bed early.

Choosing spaciousness in my daily life. Choosing presence and nourishment. Choosing connection, soul, heart.

Choosing what I truly love.

These practices are a boat when I’m at sea. And when I return to shore, they form a lap.

A lap formed by the simple act of sitting cross-legged on the sand.

A lap that is an invitation to be held for a while, in safety and comfort. A lap doesn’t impose or insist — it’s just there, an available and loving support.

The cat or child who visits a lap curls up in it easily, with no thought of “should” or “ought”. The familiar warmth of the lap offers comfort, a place where we’re loved, accepted, restored to our selves.

It is, by its very nature, a temporary resting place, not a permanent dwelling.

When the refuge of the lap has worked its magic, the cat stalks off to chase seagulls across the beach; the child runs out to play in the shallows.

The lap reminds us that we are held; we are loved; we are safe. Visiting a lap restores us to the essential friendliness of our world.

So I’ve been contemplating laps. And turbulent tides. And how I can — simply by sitting, with conscious intent — make a lap. Right here on the shore of the restless sea.

A lap for each of you to visit for a while. To restore yourself to your Self, whenever you choose.

How about you? What are some of the ways you make a lap for others? What are the laps that shelter you?

- Hiro Boga

[from my archives]

#DevaAlchemy

[ancestorsalive]

"We cannot simply replicate traditional spiritual practices and expect them to work -- not only because they may not be ours to employ, through cultural or ancestral inheritance, but also because their forms were created in response to the world as it once was, and embedded in a context that has changed significantly since these practices were first developed. The work that our ancestors did forms the ground on which we stand. And the work we do today, will become the ground on which our descendants stand. We are the ancestors of the evolving world. We are being called to cultivate deep relationships with the subtle energy beings that hold the essence or soul qualities that gave rise to these traditional forms. And then to partner with them to create patterns and forms of practice that are directly applicable to the world as it is now, and the world we are in the process of shaping for our descendants and on behalf of all the beings with whom we share this planet. To do this effectively requires us to develop power, sovereignty and strength, because the Devas will not partner with us if we are unable to meet them from a place of inner sovereignty and equality. The age of gurus has passed. Each of us is a source of the world in which we want to live. In what ways do you diminish your power and sovereignty? If you believe that who you are -- your personhood -- is not enough, then chances are, you surrender your sovereignty to others whom you believe have greater knowledge, wisdom, power, or some other quality that you believe you lack. Self-doubt erects barriers to communion with your own soul, and with the Devas. It is not benign; it is dangerous, and insidious. Be proud of who you are. This is not hubris. Rather, it's a celebration of the truth of your being, and essential to effective, generative partnership."

Hiro Boga

#DevaAlchemy

[innervoiceartblog]

Beyond your beliefs and stories about support, is the pure essence of Support. As close as your heartbeat. The source of support – as of all things – is the Sacred. Support flows to you through aspects of the Sacred – through the Earth, the Cosmos, your soul, your body, the room around you. You can experience it through other people, through situations and places and things. But the source of support is always the Sacred. This means that support is never dependent on another person. It isn’t dependent on things being a certain way, or on particular relationships, or on the markets or your clients, or your business. Support is a gift from the Sacred, through the willing participation of your allies, including subtle energy beings like the Deva of Support. Once you truly get this – that support is not something outside of you, that it is the Sacred in you connecting with the Sacred in the world – then you know that you are always supported. And you know that you are part of the activity of the Deva of Support too. This changes your relationship with support from supplicant and consumer, to source and participant. You’re one of the hosts of the party, instead of simply a guest at the feast.

~ Hiro Boga

[innervoiceartblog]

For all of us who could use this reminder today:

You are nature. You are no more separate from nature than the air you breathe or the sunlight that lives in your bones.

You are part of the ecosystem you seek to serve. Your gift to your world is you -- it is that which is alive in you. Your incarnation is woven of filaments of energy pulsing through all life.

Nurture and bless your aliveness, and you'll serve, bless, and nurture all life.

- Hiro Boga

#DevaAlchemy

[innervoiceartblog]

Every life form, everything that you encounter and are in relationship with, has an underlying pattern that gives it shape and form. This is as true of objects and art and businesses made with love as it is of trees and stars, mountains and winds and your neighbourhood raccoon. It is also true of you.

Slow down. Pay attention to the lives you touch, the lives that touch you. Be attentive to the patterns you encounter; respond to them with the pattern of your own soul and you’ll take your place in the cosmic pattern that includes all of life.

There’s an ease, empty of anxious striving, that characterizes this state. Things happen with just the amount of effort that is both necessary and sufficient for them to unfold according to the pattern of their being, and the pattern of the relationship between you.

This effortlessness, the way things fall into place, can seem miraculous, because the patterns of Divine Order and the ways in which they function are miracles of coherency and synchronicity. To partner with them requires you to tend to your own soul, and the inner landscape of your life.

You do this, not to achieve some state of frictionless bliss, but to take your place in the ecology of being as a citizen, responsible for and privileged to play your part in the miraculous life of the whole.

#DevaAlchemy

[innervoiceartblog]

Tender new shoots require shelter from the public gaze, so they can grow in their own way and in their own timing.

Visibility is not a measure of success. There are folks doing invaluable work for the benefit of the whole without drawing attention to themselves, their labour visible primarily in its effects.

Right relationship, integrity, clarity, kindness, and skillful means are more reliable indicators of character, and precursors to accomplishment that continues to serve over the long haul.

Right timing protects the emergent creation.

- Hiro Boga

[innervoiceartblog]

Rumours of Home... Poems : Hiro Boga

Poems are living beings.

They enter through your skin and eyes and ears; they swim in through your dreams. They burn through the fog of everydayness to reveal life’s brilliance hiding in plain sight. They transform your biology, your history, the rhythms of your breath. They unfurl clenched fists, open compressed throats, soften and smooth corrugated hearts.

Poems open windows in your spine, in your bones, in your brain and belly, in the soles of your feet.

And in through those windows fly the songs of the earth, the keening of stars and galaxies, the sturdy, honest presence of the Real. The entire cosmos lives in each poem. And if you invite them in — the poem, and the cosmos — they flower in you; they re-enchant the garden of your life.

Each poem I write is an invitation into realms of becoming that I have not yet entered, or that have not yet entered me.

Each poem I write emerges from the Womb of Being, from the fluid shore where formlessness meets form. This creative matrix, which loves and cherishes all unfolding life, waits patiently for me to turn toward it, to stay in its presence long enough for its particular alchemical nectar to work its way into my bloodstream.

I enter its service willingly, glad and grateful for its invitation.

Once it’s written and shared — and poems are made to be shared — a poem’s magic burrows deep in the soil of your heart. There, it takes root and flowers in a rainbow of colours, scents, textures, as you, who read or hear it, water it with your tenderness, your joy, pain, sorrow, love, your own unfolding story.

Poems are powerful medicine. They lead us home: to ourselves, our souls, to our own particular place in the ecology of being, our place of belonging.

Poems heal, palpably, the fractures and wounds of separation. When I stumble on an inner pattern that causes me pain, I stop and feel its pathways in my body. Often, one of my own poems, or that of a poet I love, will echo in my ear and I’ll read it aloud, taking in its resonance and power. The pattern dissolves, its pathways and well-worn grooves smoothed to silk by the grace of the poem.

Poems restore us and our world to wholeness.

My clients will tell you this — I read them poems, when just the right poem speaks, directly and eloquently, to the truth of their experience, the truth of something profound beyond words that we’ve been exploring together.

O, the earthy and ineffable treasures of poetry!