Wednesday, August 21, 2013

We must live into our own time


Lines written on a napkin in an Irish pub in New York City in 1994:

We must live into our own time.
The memories of the broken cord,
the nest emptied of its young,
the lost love, the knocking at the ribs
at the midnight door, the starling silences
cannot help us here.

Yet their tremulous rising,
dropletted as from the dawn sea,
is almost more than we can bear
and enough to turn houses upside down,
break families and the destiny of a present life.

There is danger in knowing our other selves,
danger in remembering too much, too soon,
of what lay beyond the stiff portal of birth.
Yet life itself in its endless wheelings
through the blur of feathers, through wind and sun
brings us face to face with the Other -
face of desire, face of the heart’s highest longing,
face of red hatred, face of cold fear -
and we are called, backward or forward
(whose time prevails now?)
into another life, and the forking paths of soul.

For commentary, I will simply add these lines from my Dreamer's Book of the Dead, written a decade later: 

During our lives on Earth we can become overwhelmed by memories of another life, perhaps a life involving dramas with previous versions of people we know in our present time - to the point where we can forget to live the life we have been given now. We can also become prisoners of simplistic determinism, telling each other that we and others are fated to live out certain experiences and endure various sufferings because of mistakes we made or obligations that were laid on us in a past life experience. We can only respond to these things well if we rise to the understanding that the moment of power is always now.

photo (c) Robert Moss

7 comments:

Patricia said...

This pearl: " ...rise to the understanding that the moment of power is always now.", is what keeps me true and sane to this life. And for me it is that I have finally come to enjoy the senses I experience in this body and in this life time.

I love this poem, thank you for sharing it Robert. I especially love
" Yet life itself in its endless wheelings
through the blur of feathers, through wind and sun
brings us face to face with the Other-"

I wonder in my dream exploring if the raised design theme is about synchronistic ribbons created from a life lived? I think as I hold the power of now, and as I honor and be with the ahas of coincidence, fate is not at all a simplistic determinism and cords are not thickened but are as ribbons that become designs when shared or when recognized in the power of now. This makes me think of how we make bows for gifts, it’s not for us to hold on to how the gift was wrapped. We let the bow go and receive the gift. Fate doesn’t tell us what to do with the gift, as we live now has us doing.

Robert Moss said...

Thanks for this very beautiful, striking and provocative image of ribbons and bows, Patricia. I am playing with the idea of ribbons of connection that can meet and join as bows - and be untied when the gift is opened.

Patricia said...

Thank you Robert.

D said...

Thank you for sharing this poem Robert. I have only recently discovered your work and have been reading "Dreaming The Soul Back Home," and I simply can't say how much it has enlightened me. Your writing is inspiring and hopefully I will eventually get the chance to come to one of your workshops.

Unknown said...

I remember an author pointing out that past life personalities can often appear in our lives because we are repeating mistakes that they made, or make, in 'their' time zone. I'm sure this is not the whole story but worth bearing in mind! Perhaps the oversoul weaves our consciousnesses together when it will be beneficial so that we can learn from one another personally in our time zone and thus help the 'whole' grow.

Patricia said...

This is all so interesting to me. Reading Tom's post with this has me asking a few questions. First I would like to know if the Oversoul is like saying one soul and many life times lived. Could there be one soul and several people living in the same life time? I believe soul has a much different navigation and sensing system within time and space that poets seem to touch the understanding of deeper then physicists. What if a soul wanted to experience a person or two and an animal or two during one life time? Maybe in a combination of plant and animal or anything of the earth that is alive with the ability to breath soul? Is there some system of thought or large group of experienced ones unified that strongly support that this can't be true? What if things like dragons were more real to the soul and imaginal to humans because of oversouls doing just this? I imagine diving into the on going study of time and space would help find answers to the selves attempting to live so simply now. I imagine getting smarter with the senses (not just physical senses) would help answer these questions. I imagine going in dreams and with imaginal bridges to the oversoul that one is and daring to language the understanding back into the world, would help paint a richer picture. Very curious stuff for me Robert. I believe my souls voice works best in questions of what ifs and possibilities. I believe it smiles from the Beloved when I speak like;"I'm going to make that so and see what comes into this playground of life".

Unknown said...

A good read. Thank you for sharing.