By Nuala Dalton
Hello. This is my final blog entry as I end my project. It has been a period of focus on receptivity rather than activity, listening, waiting and allowing time.
In keeping with my intentions for this area, rather than writing a long essay, which I could easily do, I share a few simple poems, three poems, Words II, Listening II, Waiting II, ‘sequels’ to the poems I posted last December, and by chance, exactly a year since their predecessors.
Words II
Slowing down is really quite a radical thing to do, it takes courage and ignoring what would generally be termed as common sense advice. But that was the task I set myself. Other people regularly voiced my own fears, survival fears, beliefs about how life works. Sifting through the layers and layers, I came to key questions ‘Do I believe that I will survive, if I follow my soul needs?’ And ‘Am I willing to take the risk to find out?’
Listening II
This experiment with Time, has brought me to a different physical and mental space. While there is inner work ‘the thought’, there is also outer movement and change..’losing form’.
Waiting II
So where has this journey taken me so far? A year later, the view from my door is this – the lamppost and the woods.. as if I had just passed through the wardrobe into Narnia. Which fundamentally, I have.
Narnia, a world within a multiverse, to which travel is possible, though rare. Children are better at such travel, when they have not lost their imaginative powers, when they haven’t yet become afraid, or certain that they know how the world works.
Meditation can help adults access this. Awareness of thought forms, allowing the breath to disentangle the self, silence opening up the wonders of the universe.. it works. It creates new worlds. Even though I had been meditating for quite a long time, there is always further to go, especially when processing our relationship to modern life. I did not want to slow down, let go, but when I finally did, it brought nothing less than a new world.
I don’t think there is anything more important than figuring out our personal relationship to Time. Everything exists within it, we are time. Unfortunately our relationship with time is wounded right from the start. It’s not just personal, it’s social and cultural.
Without time, there is no feeling. Without feeling, there is no art, poetry, music. Without feeling, there is living, but there is no life.
There is a great loss of time within the education system, where every second is crammed with activity.
I once visited the monastery of Thich Nhat Hanh and he spoke passionately, even angrily, about people from Western society being like ‘hungry ghosts’. Yet as long as every spare minute in the lives of adults and children is scheduled, how can anyone find their true nature, how can life grow? How can people in this society be anything other than hungry ghosts?
On December 10th I had my first gig, at which shared some of the songs I completed during this project, Beauty’, ‘Green Fire’ and ‘Dark Love’
To finish, I will share the lyrics of one of new my songs – ‘Beauty’.
If you are interested in hearing the songs in their future live and recorded forms please come along to the following sites:
Wild Wish Music Twitter: @WildWishMusic and Facebook: Wild Wish Music
Beauty
Once all I could see was beauty,
Now I stand at the sunset and it barely reaches me.
Deprivation of the senses cuts off the pathways to the soul.
She disappears like the tide whipped away by a furious moon,
Angrily she took away her love, just like you took away yours.
I expected him to wait but he’s gone from me
I thought that I must earn his love for me
One last voyage and I’ll be ready then
Then I’ll let him love me, just wait and see.
Beauty watched me lose myself, what could she do,
I told her I’d be ready, I’d be ready soon.
She spoke back in a language that I could not understand
Her symbols and magic made no sense to me,
Beauty does not wait and now she’s gone from you
Too much hard toil just left no room.
You can see and touch her but she’s out of reach
Angrily she took away her love
Under a furious moon she took away her love.
Once all I could see was beauty,
Now I stand at the sunset and it barely reaches me.
Once all I could see was beauty,
Now I stand at the sunset and it barely reaches me.