life – Penny Reilly Artist Beyond the Gate

When I ask the question, are you dreaming… is this nonsensical to you, or does it ring true as you wander through your day? Are you dreaming as you shop for dinner, get ready for work, herd the kids to school or onto school buses, perhaps battle the traffic into your work space?

Are you constantly elsewhere in your mind rather than where you actually, physically are?

This my friends is the illusion we constantly get caught up in. It’s the place of elsewhere and perhaps it’s where those missing odd socks disappear into because they’ve not been given attention. Well, they’re often thrown into corners or chucked separately into wash cycles without a glance or without checking that they’re both present, aren’t they?

So with this little reference as a key… how much are you dreaming of other places rather than being present where you are right now? How much of your precious time is disassociated with your actual life or your reason for being?

It’s not a trick question… as humans, the everyday becomes tedious when we’re stuck on the treadmill but often the escape from this isn’t necessarily a healthy alternative. Food and drink… elsewhere. Entertainment… elsewhere or watching/chasing internet imagery, to take us… elsewhere. Holidays or day trips… elsewhere. A change of scene and routine can be naturally therapeutic when we know why we’re trying to escape our everyday life but what exactly are we chasing and can we find it… elsewhere?

Wherever you are, stop. Look around and feel the space you’re in, particularly in your home. What does it feel like, look like? What inspires you? What is lovely, ugly, monotonous, complex, simple, uncomfortable or comfortable about this space. What would you change and why? What would you keep the same, and why? Basically, does it meet your physical, emotional, practical and even spiritual needs? But is it still liveable and can you s space, warts and all?

Is it a solid roof over your head… does it have clean water… do you have a little food in your pantry or can you wander out to get a takeaway of choice?

… do you have heating or cooling… do you have family and friends close by?

Now, do the same with your work space. Does it pay you a minimum wage… are there perks to actually having a job in the first place… if you’re a full time employee, is there long service leave, paid annual holidays, superannuation for later? If you’re, your own boss, what dream led you here? I’m sure you get my drift. We create our lives by making choices and we do, always have choices about which direction we may go… sometimes we choose wisely and sometimes things don’t turn out as we’d planned, but at least we made the choice through free will.

So now… imagine yourself to be in Gaza, Africa, Ukraine or anywhere in the world where there are wars, human rights breaches, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, volcanic activity, earthquakes… and simply be thankful for your perfectly imperfect life.

That’s all…

Walk softly… you take all that’s uncomfortable with you, when you want to be elsewhere… Awen /|\

Penny

Beyond the Gate Studio

Winter arrived with a boom… days of autumn sunshine and colour, turned white by instant frost… brrrr, -3°.

Still… winter brings introspection as solstice approaches. We burrow deep into the cold… dark days, somehow bring hope. We know, subtle underground movement is already afoot… green shoots silently unfurl to break through the icy crust. When I close my eyes, I imagine them slumbering, waiting and with animism, perhaps anticipating, how the light will feel on their green flesh… sunlight, pulling on them, tugging them to reach up to the light from the darkness beneath.

Sow the seeds
Weave the web in time
Weave
sow
Grow
in wisdom
in knowledge
of the
life stream
and the
soul spark
of
intelligence
…breathe
All one
Awen

I love to connect in this way to the earth and all things, by knowing I am a part of it all, as it is all a part of me… all of me, contributing to the wheel of life.

Life is a moment and in that moment, all moments exist. Life can appear fleeting or be forever in full consciousness. There is no separation between who we once were in the scheme of things, are now or will be “one day”, for all is a continuum.

Complex thoughts, and yet not, unless one thinks in straight lines, past, present, future rather than in circles, and cycles of ascension and descension… expansion and contraction, filling up and emptying out.

There again, perhaps our very challenge is overthinking. Does nature think, “I’m a daisy; I wanted to be a rose.” Does an amber-coloured leaf in autumn, wish to be green?

As children, we fight to maintain our identity until parental expectation, educational institutions and peer pressure, forces competition, whittling away at our personality, character and psyche until we’re swamped, drowning, in other’s expectations of how they perceive we should be. We’re moulded by circumstance.

This is the pivotal moment, when we can realise, we are in fact, our inner parent or teacher, continuing to hear and be instructed by the echo of their physical counterparts instead of learning to simply be ourselves.

The thing is… nature doesn’t judge how we behave, how we express ourselves or criticise who we intrinsically are, with or without societies trappings… just as a daisy doesn’t wish to be a rose.

Letting go of guilt-induced reactions to how others respond to our internal change, can be like running a marathon… but when does the adult self, stop apologising for who they are, despite the constant inner and outer critique.

Nature doesn’t judge the leaves falling, to strip branches bare, or new leaves budding on near-naked limbs.

Life in all its ages and stages is a precious gift so why waste it, desiring to be something we were not designed to be? Isn’t this a unique wonder in itself?

Observing nature, we see there are few straight lines, except those we create. Nothing is linear. Droplets of water constantly change shape to adapt and are a part of a greater body be it a droplet, an ocean or small pond. If we understand everything is energy in constant motion, where there is a void space, something always rushes to fill it and there is no judgment in the process. Unless we ourselves, judge that filling as good or bad and this, dependent on where our thoughts are leading us.

If we can reconnect to nature’s cycles, movements, brief pauses, breath held and let go… a beating heart, a pulse within myriad pulses, we simply become. Every cell becomes luminous with cell-wisdom-memory of everything experienced, and in the remembering, remembers its source.

When we become aware, strength lies in the allowance of emptiness and in not filling empty spaces. In this knowing, we can choose substance to fill the void, and in fact always do, even by not choosing. Waiting, empty, gives us clarity to know what we truly desire. I speak not of “having” for the sake of it …because it’s the most recent fad or gadget, but more the awareness, “being in emptiness” can bring. It has its own taste, smell, sound, sensation and there is nothing to fear there, except the proverbial fear itself.

My waking and sleeping moments, fill with the rhythm and scent of nature’s cycles rather than the tick-tock of the business world. Although that said, I run my own studio… one has to live, but the key is to find the ultimate balance between the perceived mundane and the “spiritual life” …and there we have it – everything is spirit/energy, and therefore, spiritual… sacred.

Hollowing out
emptying
Seeking the purpose of life,
in simply being
Giving up
the fight for more,
allows unhindered flow

Living… simply being
with no place
left to go
Past
present
future
merges
the well of life
upsurges

The wheel spins
on and round
All places,
all seasons
begin and end
…on sacred ground.

The ocean tides, whittle away at the shoreline as we wear away our lives, often in needless struggles for understanding.

All energy is in motion constantly, in waves and pulses, just as our body is in flow and flux, cyclical birth to death, with each waxing and waning moon. We are ultimately 78% fluid. Our body is at the mercy of those internal and exterior tides unless we can be observant, present in awareness as those tides turn. Thus, we can see ourselves not as helpless puppets, but empowered by those very tides, toward the shores of creative consciousness by our own choices.

Our natural state
of being
is magick
Moving between
full, exhilarant joy
and oft, comedy tragic
Spaces between
filled with
liquid notes sublime
in cycles spinning
adhering to the rhyme
Diaphonous, silken threads
on the loom of time
fading in and out
annual, biannual, diurnal
We are but a blip
in life eternal

Walk softly… make wise choices… Awen /|\

Penny

You can now find me at my website http://pennyreillyauthor.com for direct book purchases.

Tag Archives: life

Are you dreaming…

On the move towards Solstice…