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Heart

Heart

Heart Bruce Lyon

White Stone Publishing Aotearoa - New Zealand

White Stone Publishing

23 Garfield Street, Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand Phone 64 21 188 6118 whitestone3@gmail.com First published 2008 Reprinted 2012 © Bruce Lyon, 2008 Except as provided by the NZ Copyright Act 1994, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author. Requests and enquiries should be directed to White Stone Publishing.

Lyon, Bruce Philip, 1957– Heart / Bruce Lyon ISBN 978-0-473-13771-7 Editor: Barbara Maré Photographs by Sharon Lyon Cover artwork by Barbara Maré Printed by Printing.com, Wellington

Contents The White Knuckled Fist...................................................................1 Let’s Start with a Confession .............................................................2 Eros ....................................................................................................3 Kaiya Enters the Stream ....................................................................4 Shona .................................................................................................5 The Sowing ........................................................................................6 The Lion of the Desert ......................................................................7 A Time to Rot ...................................................................................8 Even the Dead Heart will Stir ...........................................................9 HEART speaks through Heart to the remnants of the self (RotS) .............10 Raising the Dead .............................................................................14 The Longing of the Monad .............................................................16 Small Things ....................................................................................17 Dark Light .......................................................................................18 Last Confession ................................................................................20 The Universe has Five Things to Say About Hearting.....................22 Shamballa .........................................................................................24 Love Is .............................................................................................25 Pohutukawa ......................................................................................26 Identity Theft ...................................................................................28

The white knuckled fist of Self opens suddenly ……empty

1

Let’s Start with a Confession

Eros

How can I begin to talk to you of freedom when my mind is still slick with ego oil?

Or enter the mystery of love with a heart clogged by hopes of romance, praise and a hundred hidden half longings?

And so I begin not to write about but into the world

I would rather stand in the silence of that which cannot be known than let a torrent of gutted fish words slap on the dark and sacred pavement of your listening I will wait for the live heart He will break through the bottom of the well beneath the you–and–me water He will tear open that seal Only a stream of life will liberate us from the dry rolling spitballs of our separate identities Whatever gushes from that place where we are One is welcome here and will make of any random human stones a living poetry

2

There is something naked and intimate in lifting the pen or beginning to open the mouth without knowing what words will leap to clothe each gesture of love emerging from the vast empty landscape of the heart At first there is only the smoke of two dry sticks being rubbed together the friction between the individual and the universal But then that same fire blazes forth through me that spins the galaxy or gets my granddaughter tossing her head from side to side to silent music I do not know why my eyes are drawn to the curve of one particular branch on the pohutukawa tree outside my window or why the photo of a small stone church in Switzerland makes me weep but I know that in just this type of distinction lies what there is left of me that has anything vital to say 3

Kaiya Enters the Stream

Shona

I haven’t met you yet so what is this love this lightning in my chest flashing so far from the moment of your birth?

I want to use words to touch you with what can’t be said in words the way you touch me with what can’t be said with art

A sudden tenderness lifts in me as I contemplate your debut into a world I have seen eat the heart out of many a human soul And yet through that empty centre life enters and it is life you bring a full measure of beauty and fierceness love and grace to carry on the dance the divine mystery of living in this green land of your ancestors on this blue globe-jewel of your choice

Our work is not just to make love visible but IS that loving We use different tools and mediums but the heart is the sculptor fashioning out of an inarticulate clay these vessels that we are learning to drink from a living water Sonnet or temple sand, stone or smile what is real is the breath of love the act of breathing the gentle rise and fall of the ribs

Gaia meet Kaiya well come!

4

5

The Sowing

The Lion of the Desert

This summer Te Ra’s garden produced only one sunflower and when its golden crown fell down one black seed was all that was left to drop into the heart soil of the earth

The tawny tension builds in the arid lands of the heart everyone is thirsty looking for love instead of loving complaining about the lack of water and then, when the air is scorched with longing when the parched stones cry out for moisture a rumbling sounds down the dry riverbed of the inner life

A radioactive diamond of pure midnight The planetary womb waits uncertain how to nourish this strange guest that does not seem to respond to moisture, heat or light and yet is itself, throbbing with life

All voices fall silent under the roar of spirit shouldering its way from the highest to the lowest through the centre of all worlds BEING arrives and cries you ARE the one you have been waiting for let me break you open from the inside and water your desert with the flame of the one Life

Then the awesome revelation that brings the tired old serpent’s tail into her mouth This beginning is the end You need not feed that which has come to feed you!

Earth is the guest at this banquet!

The seed is not her child but her parentless parent returning with a cosmic inheritance and the whole of creation come to witness the last become the first making earth, heart

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You need more heat, not less! enough to turn the gold of the heart molten and flowing enough to baptise your soul in rivers of fire enough to end your longing forever enough to break you out of your half filled bucket into the burning ocean of Life itself

7

A Time to Rot

Even the Dead Heart will Stir

And now I have beached myself here like this dead seal must have done to let the body of my old life rot on these dunes

No doubt parts of me will slink back to the trough trading the bracing air of freedom for the security of slops and that fetid patch of mud at the back of the sty

The stench is that of all things outgrown philosophies relationships, the way I hold fear in my body and refuse to let the cloak of your love enfold me This is a day for decay flay the dead self down to white bones and let some Tasman storm scatter them like the stones of an ancient temple that will never be rebuilt The heart is all I need for the new one the heart is all I need the heart is all the heart

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But O do not re-enter the carcass! and grow accustomed to the reek of that corruption Be like that wily king—Ulysses and let me tie your hands to the mast lest the sirens rouge the cheeks of that old corpse and get it to twitch and dance to their spell Do not‌O never mind even the deadest heart cannot help but hear the blast of spirit sounding from the summit of that mountain where our true selves have gathered to shake the very ground of being with a haka of resurrection

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HEART speaks through Heart to the remnants of the self (RotS) RotS: What do you really want?

Heart: I want to be free. Free of you! Don’t tell me what to think, who to love or how to do it. Don’t tell me I can’t have what I want.

Don’t tell me to be reasonable. The heart’s affections are the HEART’s business. Repress me or try to control me at your peril. I do not belong to you.

I am the magnet that draws you into wholeness and healing. I bring energies together for the greater good. Stop me doing my work and I will—I must—attack you or leave ‘you’ to become heart-less. The poetry will leave. The grace will go. The playfulness will retreat. The love will evaporate and leave of your life a desert.

RotS: I am afraid of giving you control, my heart’s desire, for you sometimes seem to draw me without care for who gets hurt or what gets shattered in the process. You are one-pointed and monodirectional. You want one thing or person at a time and if I move towards that then pretty soon you will want something or someone else. It is said that desire is the source of suffering so if I let you take the reins I am afraid I will suffer and others along with me.

Heart: I am not your heart’s desire. I am HEART. It is you who want one person or thing at a time. I AM everything and everyone. I only cause you problems when you ignore me or exile me. Then the pressure builds like a dammed river that, denied flow, must project out into the world and cause enough havoc to get your attention. The suffering that comes from desire cannot be avoided by repressing desire or pretending it does not exist or rationalising it away. I EXIST. I am the force which impels the universe. I am Shakti. I am that which drives the dance. I will NOT be repressed or negated by that which is less than me! You may exclude me from ‘your’ world but then your world will be without the presence of the goddess. You cannot exclude me from ‘the’ world for I am the very substance of that world. My true mate is not you but the Shiva–in–you—He who would never negate or repress me, only join with me to create and recreate the sacred dance in each moment.

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Your concept of what is right and wrong—your need to control everything around you comes from fear and not true power. You exist as a separate identity only to bring my energy and the energy of my true lover together in human consciousness and then your work is done and you will dissolve like mist in the morning sun.

Do you dare to decide what is best for the whole from your limited perspective? You are really deciding what you think is best for you! Let go O little one—child of our creation. Your work is almost done.

As HEART I seek to bring together that which is the greater good of the whole AND each of its parts. When the heart magnet is clear it expresses the cosmic magnet. When it is blocked/congested then it cannot process feeling and that gets projected out into the world and draws you towards it both positively and negatively. As HEART, you must realise—I am more powerful than you and you have free will. If you will not listen to the heart from the inside I will come to you from the outside as friend or foe. Either way I will overpower you for it is your destiny and the destiny of every other ‘part’ to be overpowered by love.

Therefore surrender to me. Listen to me. Move the way I would have you move and the sacred dance will continue to flow through you and the creative force of the universe will live as your core.

I do not call you into ‘a relationship’ but to relate. Mental boundaries and constructs are your domain. Love is mine. I enter the forms you create with your will and mind but I leave them again if they do not honour the principle of love. When I enter your ‘relationship forms’ whether that be a human partnership, an agreement between countries or the Security Council of the United Nations, ‘love’ is present for that IS who I am. But you do not control me with your forms nor limit me. I am that which gave you the ability to create forms and that which in-forms them. I co-operate and am not separate from my counterpart, Shiva, who holds the still silent Purpose that underlies the whole of creation. We are LOVE and LIFE together. Who are you to second-guess that? Who are you to stand between us? Who are you to bring us together who have never really been apart except in ‘your’ consciousness? You are an illusion. You do not exist in any real sense. You are a construction designed to serve a greater purpose. Let go now. Die. Live! All that is real in you cannot be lost.

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There is nothing to lose but your illusions—those shells in which you grew into maturity and which you–as–me have now outgrown.

It is not me that leads you into suffering but your denial of me.

Desire is not the cause of suffering. What you call desire—the addiction and clinging to the unreal—is the result of refusing legitimate suffering and repressing the spirit of movement—the spirit that seeks to express who you essentially ARE in the world. And who you are is not separate from who everyone and everything else is. And part of that ONE IS Desire.

Cosmic Desire. The desire of the little separated self is experienced by that self as a separated desire—separated from the life of the universe.

It is NOT. Desire is always One whether sexual, emotional, mental or spiritual. It is not the desire for one thing or body for another. It is the desire—present in the universe itself—to express, to grow, to create its inherent wholeness through all of its parts.

When that irresistible force arises in your heart do not attempt to own it, repress it, rationalise it or negate it—all those actions emphasise YOU and you do not exist! Simply move with the force, for that force is you. Do not fear it or attempt to grip it for it will not lead you astray unless you do. Move with it—give your assent in consciousness to that movement. Find out where it wants to go and in what ‘vehicle’. Realise that it does not want any thing in the world for it already IS all those things—from a galaxy to a thoughtform to an atom. Whenever it seems that force wants you to possess anything in the world or enter into ‘a relationship’ question more deeply. Ask it—ask me—what does HEART really want?

Always I–as–you will seek to relate, not to ‘form a relationship’.

What need is there to form that which already exists? As the energy of relating I will seek to reveal to you that which is already present between you and any other thing or being I draw you towards. This relating will not result in the bolstering or strengthening of you as a separated self, but the dissolving of you.

I will not bring you what you want, but reveal to you who you essentially ARE. And that IS LOVE for I AM LOVE and I AM YOU. If you leave me in order to possess that which I draw you towards then the result will be less love and not more. Humanity thinks that it needs things—and concepts are also things—because there is not enough love. The reality is that humanity’s attachment to things—including self 12

concepts—is the result of humanity’s abandoning of the principle of love and not love’s abandoning of humanity. How can I abandon that which I essentially AM. Stay with me! Open your soul’s fingers! Release that which you grasp to feel safe. I am the principle of love. Marry me and you will stand in my waterfall forever. Or just visit and leave—taking buckets of me to the thirsty; but you will have to construct those buckets out of me and the handles will be made of the illusion of your separation from me.

Can you gaze on my face and witness my awesome power? If you do I will surely destroy you—you who never existed. And there will be nothing left but the sound of the falls—the silent roar of the true Lion of Life.

13

Raising the Dead The wild self suddenly emerges out of a forest of work into this small inner clearing and takes three sips of pure joy from a river that has not changed its course in seven generations A song begins or rather I begin, again, to hear that throbbing call which waterfalls through the whole of creation The ventricles of my heart vibrate in symphony till I am like some human cicada pouring his longing into the afternoon heat or a pohutukawa bleeding on the cliffs of mid-summer Yes I know that somewhere, hidden in the dark cave of Kali Yuga the hibernating heart of humanity itself beats with this self same bright and fiery life Alive or dead asleep, awake or dreaming there is that which sears through all the seasons of consciousness and lies curled like a ponga frond in the centre of every atom And you and I my patient and my passionate friend we have no choice we cannot help but burn there 14

15

The Longing of the Monad

Small Things

Soul, she must take our personality clothes to the great river again and beat the soil of forgetfulness out of them with a stone

Today it’s the small things listening two beats longer before replying to my wife holding my nephew’s hand for a moment in passing letting my gaze rest on a flower cupping two hands to hold just a little of the vast ocean To enter being is to become small simple and slow the way Kosmos deliberately enfolds itself in the heart of all things.

One day she will bring them to live permanently in my ever flowing current and we will spend laundry time in each others arms

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17

Dark Light The mystery of Shamballa can only be reached through the heart the outer eyes cannot behold it nor the inner eye of the soul only the eye of spirit the eye of the heart can see in the dark light emanating from itself as the centre of all centres Neither in the outer world nor in the inner and yet the core of both neither light nor its absence neither full nor empty timeless spaceless and yet eternally omnipresent at each point in time and space How can I ever find my way back home to that placeless place from which I sprang?

‘I’ cannot… …Knot …Not! …….

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19

Last Confession A final destination is an anathema to the seeking soul Shamballa a firing squad to the surrendered rebel leader eating his last ego meal on the edge of annihilation reading his will and last confession in the winds’ calligraphy on the desert sands There is no original sin its all derivative arising from the illusion of existence I confess I have never really existed in spite of this persistent illusion Never having existed nothing I ever did thought or felt has left its mark on the stainless void

I would only be that which I cannot not be my only purpose to have no purpose of my own let this individual life be a small and simple thing a grain of sand shaped by 51,000 tides glinting in the Gobi nothing more and nothing less than the living face of the universe Let there be nothing left of me capable of trying to achieve anything however holy let me rest in emptiness to go forth no more and by remaining permeate it all forever

When they come for me tell them I have already slipped back behind the curtain of eternal innocence this is not poison on my soul’s lips but the cure I no longer want to be a boddhisattva or serve the greater good these worthy goals seem pretentious now the pre-dawn dreams of a waking soul a rock pool’s brief kingdom in the twelve hours between tides 20

21

The Universe has Five Things to Say About Hearting If we can stop spinning long enough to find our way to the centre 1. The moon orbits the earth Stop pretending you are your emotions and find solid ground to stand on unite the four directions and become yourself the fifth 2. The earth orbits the sun When creativity begins the process of nuclear fusion nothing can stop you bursting into flame Become the love oven in which the hot cross personality bun is baking 3. The sun orbits the black hole at the centre of the galaxy Trade your enlightenment for a higher form of innocence enter the mystery and taste the dark soma wine of being

Out of that timeless emptiness in time a fullness emerges and centres into a dark pool of being Rest in that point be without knowing and watch 100 billion suns burst into flame around you Choose one and feel the lion fire of love breathe into the planetary embers Enter the molten iron core of earth and feel the longing of the mother for her prodigal son relentlessly pulling the tides of self Now, identified with the overflowing fullness of the universe re-enter the silvery cold moon womb as the seed of Life itself

4. There are billions of galaxies in the universe your liberation is not unique a sponge has many holes with which to drink the waters of life 5. The universe has no centre no further need for the arrow of Self nothing to look for, nothing to find no bull’s eye, no sin empty empty empty 22

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Shamballa

Love Is

Even the fertile earth falls silent here beneath your consuming fire The Gobi gleams like the bald spot on the back of a monk’s head ’Cause all men’s prayers says Emerson are a disease of the will

Divine intervention is the entrance of reality into a field of illusion This is not my heart it belongs in some strange way to Kosmos itself I am not at the centre Love is Seems like everyone is backing away into big mind these days trying to get their noses on the outside of the ego glass slipping back into the One silent watcher who never enters creation …but something does Before the universe—‘I am’ but what’s behind this original face of the primordial ego? what arrow can pierce that central heart?

I will tell you for in a kairotic moment the mask of the supreme identity fell away and love was all there ever IS

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Pohutukawa At the eye of this triangle stone, sea and air you have been breathing all year a magician, kindling inside you the element of fire A fire that rises now and bleeds through all your branches not a wound but a giving forth a making holy a life-giving celebration an impossible flow of love from some unseen reservoir a shout of splendour that for three full days reverberates in my heart It is midsummer and I have just dug the garlic the fruits of life are everywhere above and underground and I am fruiting too Now is the time to give I surely feel this bursting joy each breath holds nectar for a hive of bees colour explodes in my head and tui’s beak fits perfectly in the curve of my throat I am dying I am living quivering like a star whose fuel supply has been just enough to bring it to supernova collapsing, not fallen but surrendered to gravity like a mountaineer, like Hillary who has scaled his last peak and yet in letting go, dissolving 26

becomes the air which holds all mountains in its embrace or the darkness of space that drives billions of galaxies towards their own private destinies What have I to give this summer season to match your crimson glory?

Only this In my heart the same magician has been at work fashioning a thousand embraces these arms have never delivered a billion lighted whirls of thought these lips never formed into words one bright deed destined to shine for a lifetime uncompleted and yet some strange alchemy lifts all these impulses and offers them anyway through what has been done the secret shining glory of the small I too have loved life with all my branches

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Identity Theft The Self, flapping like a speared fish on the trident.

As the one life I sense myself in all things. It is my sap that surges along the branches of the pohutukawa and flames forth in crimson glory. It is my breath that spins the galaxy and each solar system is a mudra in my erotic dance. Each lover who caresses his darling is using my fingers and it is my hand that wields the thief ’s knife in the dark. I sing through all solid forms and subtle imaginings alike.

I dream and numberless universes arise. I reach out my hand and billions of life-forms know their creator—each in their own intimate language of love. And yet I am beyond all these acts and imaginings and forms. I am the silence of eternity, the stillness of the void and the absence of all sound. I am.

As a human soul I coalesce around a note, a colour and a planetary destiny. Shining forth again and again I have battled through the time and space of a solar system learning and yearning to be free. This note of liberation I share with all and must harmonise with all other notes. My causal heart lifts and fills each time humanity breaks free from another selfcreated chain. I draw qualities from other souls and send back a charge, the galvanising spark that encourages when all seems lost. As one with my core principle I am that fire which lives in every human heart that will never be put out. I am the will to persist, the determination to be free and the very light of victory which will one day break out for all of humankind. I draw my tawny strength from the heart of the sun and from the nuclear furnace of love which gives birth to all souls.

As a personality I struggle throughout the time and space of one human life on this unique planet earth. I long for harmony and to arrange my life and the life of those I love so that the art of living reveals the deep beauty that lies beneath the suffering of competing demands on our being.

At fifty, I still struggle with oversensitivity, want a better relationship with my children and would like to be at my ideal weight for the beach this summer. I alternate between cycles of solitude and cycles of engagement with others, but I have found a new peace with this oscillation. Nothing is ever perfect and therefore I am driven. Everything is always perfect and 28

therefore I rest. I am at root, nothing, and therefore I cannot take myself seriously. I am at root, everything, and therefore all I think, feel and do matters with consuming intensity.

And so I sit in the eye of this triangle tasting together the bliss/ boredom of eternity, the joy/despair of service and the happiness/suffering of creative expression and realise that these three I’s are but one self. That self experiences reality differently because of the circumstances in which it is playing out its drama. The universal, the transpersonal and the personal are one. The three legs collapse under the table-top of identity and I fall through my own centre into what? All is empty. The universe still dances, the blood still beats rhythmically at the temple but the silent watcher and immoveable mover of all things has gone. Subject and object collapse into their mutual origin. The realisation of an identity is the first theft, matched only—and precisely—by the gravity of the multi-verse.

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