You

26/08/2015

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You

You are…

who
what
how you choose

to be
to see
to feel
to believe.

What others think
or want to see
or you to be
is irrelevant.

They don’t wipe your kids tears from their eyes
they don’t look after your parents when they’re sick
they don’t cuddle your pets

they’re not the ones who…
live in your body
feel your emotions
think your thoughts.

It’s not their face looking back in the mirror
it’s not their life you are living
so why should you adopt
their hopes
their dreams
their wishes
their demands
their fears
their beliefs?

You are
wholly
totally
unique
in this world.

How wonderful that is!

Your Heart
Your Hopes
Your Dreams
Your Abilities
Your Possibilities

Your Amazing Potential.

You are your own home.

Make your home loveable
liveable
comfortable
warm
accepting.

After all
it’s where you will be
for life.

Words: © August 2015 Michelle Payne
Photo: 123rf.com

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To Let Go Takes Love

13/05/2015
Copyright: Andrea Danti/123rf.com

Copyright: Andrea Danti/123rf.com

To Let Go Takes Love

To “let go” does not mean to stop caring;
it means I can’t do it for someone else.

To “let go” is not to cut myself off;
it is the realization that I can’t control another.

To “let go” is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To “let go” is to admit powerlessness,
which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another;
it is to make the most of myself.

To “let go” is not to care for,
but to care about.

To “let go” is not to “fix”,
but to be supportive.

To “let go” is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.

To “let go” is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To “let go” is not to be protective;
it is to permit another to face reality.

To “let go” is not to deny,
but to accept.

To “let go” is not to nag, scold, or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.

To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes, and to cherish myself in it.

To “let go” is not to criticize and regulate anybody,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To “let go” is not to regret the past,
but to grow and to live for the future.

To “let go” is to fear less and to love more.

~ Robert Paul Gilles ~
(Copyright 1997)
from the book Thoughts of the Dream Poet : vol. 1


Slow Dance

08/04/2015

gratitude21

Slow Dance

Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round,
or listened to rain slapping the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight,
or gazed at the sun fading into the night?

You better slow down, don’t dance so fast,
time is short, the music won’t last.

Do you run through each day on the fly,
when you ask “How are you?”, do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed,
with the next hundred chores running through your head?

You better slow down, don’t dance so fast,
time is short, the music won’t last.

Ever told your child, we’ll do it tomorrow,
and in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a friendship die,
’cause you never had time to call and say hi?

You better slow down, don’t dance so fast,
time is short, the music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere,
you miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,
it’s like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life isn’t a race, so take it slower,
hear the music before your song is over.

~~ David L. Weatherford ~~
Posted with permission
http://www.davidlweatherford.com/
(Picture found circulating freely online)


What is Hell

25/03/2015

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What is Hell?

The word
it conjures
red flames and heat
where fears abounds
and Pain is all.

There a devil sits
upon his throne
wielding a mighty club
denouncing sinners
as they run amok
and have a ball.

But this is just imagery
unknown
no science
almost a cartoon
a visual…
held in minds
pinned by Fear
a place to visit
or be cast
for when we think
our last breath will have eventually passed.

But what if it is real?
What if it isn’t a dim and distant land?
Swathed in mist
obscure and hidden
a place, if we’re honest
most don’t think we will ever see or visit
let alone dwell in its’ darkened depths!

What would it look like
… if it were real?
What would it contain?
Would it have colour
or be black, white, even grey?
Be a cacophony of noise
movement and pain
drudgery with no play?

What if it were pure emptiness
silence
a hole in time
suspended
amid absolute nothingness
a total absence?

No feeling
no breathing
no warmth
no hope
no life giving spark.
Just…
a total and utter void?

What if those we know
our friends
our loved ones
in their minds
were in this place?
Stuck
alone
no light
no happiness
no inner glow.

Would you then think
maybe even consider…
what strength
what courage
what amazing skill
it takes to live?
To breathe
to choose to enter each day
each affray?
Pushing through
existing
trying
looking for a ladder to climb…

Out from a pit
a hole
a cavern
a place so deep
just imagining it
could make you want to weep?

Would you listen?
Would you hold?
Would you dare to be bold?
Would you open your heart
open your mind
offer your soul?
Give those who suffer
a brief respite
by acting as a buffer?

What if Hell indeed is a place on Earth?

Words © March 2015 Michelle Payne
Picture: 123rf.com


If You Want to Change the World, Love a Man

24/09/2014

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If You Want to Change the World, Love a Man

If you want to change the world, love a man, really love him.
Find the one whose eyes are like blazing suns,
that make you look away the first time,
that pierce right through you,
blinding you to everything but the moment,
melting you into a puddle of soft pastel light,
even though you cringe at the color, pink.

The one who stops your thinking,
who sends your lashes fluttering
and all the blood rushing to your cheeks.
The slow-to-speak-one,
whose smile is like a flute,
who summons honey bee songs,
blossom songs and morning bird songs
with his listening.

The fallen-sky-one with the mark on his back,
where he lost his feathers from flying too close to a star.

The broken one in search of his wings,
who tells you the story of how to make fire.

If you want to change the world, love a man
beyond your fear of being burned.

Beyond unforgiveness and the walls you’ve built
to protect your sovereignity and anonymity.

Love him beyond old wounds and lies
you believed to be truth,
the hole in your heart from an absent father,
the scar on your sacred flower left by thieves.

Beyond past lives and the memory
you keep like a shrine to betrayal
when you fell to your knees in the ashes of your village,
and love became a field of bones.

Lift your darkened face to him who stands before you.
Take his hand and let him raise you to your feet.

Trust him to hold you as you tremble and weep in his arms for all that has been lost and found in this holy instant.

If you want to change the world, love a man
Beyond your faithlessness
and your secret hatred of humanity
Beyond all your judgment and self righteous projection.

The stone on your heart is as ancient
as the thought that you had to deny His existence
to know your power.

You are no less God than you ever were.
Man is no more guilty than Woman is innocent.

Love him for bearing the burden of desire in his sex
so your temple could remain whole unto itself-
for taking on the split aspect of mind
that seemed to abandon the oneness of heaven
so that you might know the joy of Its extension.

Love the ecstatic, primal root
castrated by religion as the root of all evil-
the channel of divine creative impulse-
that sparks the seeds of life, death and birth
from the womb of space and time.

Love the humble guardian and warrior
Man has been to Woman
even as he hunts her,
even in his drive towards self gratification,
which ultimately is the portal to soul union.

Love the violator who holds the mirror
to everything you have disowned within yourself-
so that all your desire, your creative impulse
may be freed
from the chains of separation, lack and guilt
and you can finally trust your Self.

If you want to change the world, love a man
in all his instinctual animal nature,
in all his hunger and devotion to beauty.

Love him beyond your vanity and pridefulness,
your gilded possessiveness and need to special-
beyond your well thought out conditions for safety
and all your concepts of how a man
should be in relationship.

Love him beyond your anger at not getting your way,
beyond your terror of not knowing or being in control.

Love him in his relentless pursuit
to penetrate the deepest sanctuaries within you,
that hold the chaos of your strongest emotions,
your carefully guarded secrets of separation
between light and dark, virgin and whore,
man and woman, spirit and form.

Love him for opening the door to sensuality,
to your primordial self that is beyond duality,
for binding you to pleasure
even as the air closes in around you,
even as you writhe with madness,
cursing your incarnation as the enemy-
even as you contract and claw,
crying out in despair, such joy it brings.

Love him for not yielding
to your resistance to surrender-
for standing in his masculine power
even as you threaten to destroy him.

If you want to change the world, love your man
for leaving you to live his purpose,
whether it’s for a day, a week, months or years.

Love him for breaking his own heart over and over-
for holding the tension and balance
of polarity and intimacy,
of distance and closeness.

Love his need for silence and solace-
for keeping some of his mystery to himself-
not that he has anything to hide,
but so you will always have surprises!

Love his evolutionary nature
that seeks new experiences,
that can never be satisfied-
for his boundless curiosity,
that if allowed to be free
might be your own liberation
from complacency.

Love him for shining independently
from the seat of his own majesty-
for not needing, yet choosing you
from a place of knowing his magnificence.

Love him for being your patient direction and destiny-
for returning to you
your own brightness through the dark night-
for helping you to remember
the one and only relationship you’ve ever had
and tried to forget-
for bringing you to that vulnerable, powerless
abiding place of surrender
you’ve been afraid of and waiting for all your life-
where you can finally be consumed by Love-
where you can finally be claimed by God.

by Lisa Citore
Picture found circulating freely online


If You Want to Change the World, Love a Woman

17/09/2014

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If You Want to Change the World, Love a Woman

If you want to change the world… love a woman-really love her.
Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.
Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.
Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing-
every winged one, every furry and scaled one,
every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,
every not yet born and dying one…
Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.
If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.
If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet,
you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.

If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman
beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,
beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety
and all your superficial concepts of freedom.
We have given ourselves so many choices
we have forgotten that true liberation
comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire
and burning through our resistance to Love.
There is only one Goddess.
Look into Her eyes and see-really see
if she is the one to bring the axe to your head.
If not, walk away. Right now.
Don’t waste time “trying.”
Know that your decision has nothing to do with her
because ultimately it’s not with who,
but when we choose to surrender.

If you want to change the world… love a woman.
Love her for life-beyond your fear of death,
beyond your fear of being manipulated
by the Mother inside your head.
Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her.
Say you’re willing to LIVE with her,
plant trees with her and watch them grow.
Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty,
by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess
through your adoration and devotion.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
in all her faces, through all her seasons
and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-
your double-mindedness and half-heartedness
which keeps your Spirit and body separate-
which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self
for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman.
Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one
and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,
trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices.
What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,
of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,
of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots
strong enough to hold the Earth together
while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman.
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…
beyond all of your striving for greatness,
beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.
What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered
through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine
is the key to opening Her heart?

If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.

by Lisa Citore
Picture found circulating freely online


First session

10/09/2014

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First session

The door swings open
a face then appears
an arm ushers you in…
you want to turn back
as your head starts to spin.

You enter a room and notice
a sofa, a chair, a table
you choose, you sit
your stomach starts to churn…
more than a little bit.

They smile and sit down
bring out some papers
their expression holding a slight frown.

Form filling
factual questions
the word “confidential”…
it’s not what you expected!
Where’s the warmth?
The confessional time?
Why are they not giving you
advice straight down the line?

And then it begins…
an invitation
please tell me
what brings you here?
What would you like to offload?
To share?
What burden do you bear?

Their tone isn’t cold
nor their stare bold
instead, a slight leaning forward
soft words
a smile..
and then you know
you realise
you may be here a while.

You glance around the room
evaluate and wonder…
what if you make a blunder?
Who can hear?
Does everyone feel this fear?

How much should I share?
Why would they even care?
Where should I start?
My god…
calm down…
my racing heart!

A breath, a pause
another thought.
Will I be judged or mocked?
Will they be blase or just plain shocked?

The tears begin to well
the hands go all sticky
by now the stomach feels just plain icky!

Then you decide
even thought it’s unknown
and feels hit or miss
you take a deep breath
and jump into the abyss.

I’m here because…

Your face floods red
your stomach pounds with dread.
You battle the feeling of creeping shame
where you have long held a belief of blame.
You lower your gaze to the floor
and out of your mouth
the words start to pour…

Words © August 2014 Michelle Payne
Picture found circulating freely online


Standing Strong

03/09/2014

standing-strong

Standing Strong

Tell me my friend
how do you stand so strong
when the world is in chaos
when things go wrong?
Where do you find your strength
the courage to hold on?

At what point do you say
that’s enough?
At what point
does life get too rough?

You emblazon the sign of hope
but when is the end reached
on your emotional rope?

At what point do you crack?
When does it become too much?
Why do you not lash back?
Or let go of the hope that you clutch?

I watch
I wonder
I try to exemplify
just what I hear
I see
the example you give
the standards you set store by.

Then one day I see you cry
and instead of asking why
you let your emotions flow
reliving moments
where you felt an emotional blow.

It took quite a while to see
that letting such emotions flow
was a form of maturity.
That not fighting
not blaming
not shaming
can indeed set you free.

For strength and power
is not always aggressive
to be silent and not shout
doesn’t mean you’re submissive.

And eventually, one day
when years may have passed
don’t be surprised
if someone comes up to you and asks…

How do you stand so strong
when your world is in chaos
when things go wrong?
Where do you get your strength?
How do you hold on?

And when this happens
when their world is so dark
when they are losing heart
what wisdom would you then hope
or wish to impart?

Words © August 2014 Michelle Payne
Picture found circulating freely online


My Child

20/08/2014

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My Child

You jump, you spin, you hop
the delight on your face
when the music starts
as you wiggle and try to bop.

Such enthusiasm
such glee
it’s a joy to behold
to witness
to see.

Once upon a time
I too was like that
a long time ago
before I encountered
some of life’s little mishaps!

To have such innocence
to feel so free
to dance
to move
without caring who may see.

You grin
spin round and round
arms whirling
legs twirling
until a stagger
a misstep
a fall to the ground.

I gather you up
your bottom lip starts to quiver
you sniff
and give a little shiver.
I wipe away the falling tears
and try to calm your fears
a sniffle, a snuffle, a little sob
such tears and hurt
make my heart throb.

Your friends start calling your name
they want your attention
they’re playing a game!

You look up at me
as if to ask
if I get down
will you take me to task?
Or is it ok?
Will you wait
sit there
while I go and play?

These moments I will remember
as I age and become more grey
no matter your age
my child
you will always stay.

Words © July 2014 Michelle Payne
Picture found circulating freely online


To the End

06/08/2014

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To the End

What do you see
when you look into my face
what thoughts and images flash through?

What do you feel
as you hover above
looking down
acting like a clown?

What about when you cuddle up close
looking happy
looking morose?

What about when you pat my chin
when you want attention
when you touch my skin?

We greet each other
every day
a good morning
a hug
a grateful sigh
each day that arrives
brings a happy thought
a moment
a pause…
we still have
just that little bit more time.

And every day
you do the same thing
you look puzzled, bemused
as the alarm starts to ring
you tilt your head
snuggle up close
no words need to be said
just another few minutes
a little more time
before I have to get out of bed.

I should be used to this by now
I tell myself each day
yet still I watch and wonder
as you move… startled
as the alarm starts to play.

How do you hear that noise
how does it sound
how much I wish you could tell me
how I wish I could understand.

People say that you don’t care
how can I know your feelings are true
but to connect so deeply to another
with such total utter unconditionality
to deny that instinctive elemental love
I just don’t get
that mentality.

I’ve always known that time will approach
I know I’ve done everything I should
I also know that when all is said and done
My self I will still reproach.

Because
not enough time did I give
not all my words were soft
in ignorance I wanted to stay
to keep my world’s reality at bay.

I hope and pray this didn’t add
to any suffering and pain you had
I just could not believe it true
this day could come so soon.

And sure enough
that day did come
time to leave
our physical bond undone.

Together to that very end
you knew you weren’t alone
protected
safe
surrounded by love
wrapped in my embrace.

My heart
my spirit
my very soul
into the mystery of beyond you go.

Words © July 2014 Michelle Payne
Picture found circulating freely online


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