Revised Edition of “The Archer: Ecstatic Poetry” Available Now

The revision process is complete… One night as I was lying in bed, I knew I needed to overhaul this collection. I had grown and my art needs to grow with me. It’s a little scary, taking the chance to change something others have already seen… For those who see my changes, means they may also see my mistakes… I tried moving on and letting the book stay as it was… But I guess, if the work wants to help you move forward, you should love the process all over again.

So I’m offering the Introduction to “The Archer” to my followers at ROA… For more from the book, the link at the boarders of the page are updated and you’ll find the books you are looking for… And, of course, I am always writing more.

 

The Archer: Introduction

The process I went through creating this collection has been, most of all, a reclamation of my Self worth.

I composed this book a year before deciding to revise it, my dearest friend saying to me: “Maybe the only thing between you and healing, is this book…” Perhaps that remains true, but I still had a long way to go after my first edition.

After The Archer was published, the book never felt resolved… I had not yet closed the pages within myself. And now, after some time to pen through the emotions, the book is ready to settle into it’s own power… because I am ready too.

To Respect oneself is the primal ingredient for making the Hero’s Journey, a path of growth and potential. Every tradition teaches some form of self-sacrifice… repentance for our nature, casting off the mind, throwing ourselves out to the divine, or walking off clifftops drunk with love… but in a complicated emotional world, we too often spin clever ways to invalidate ourselves.

The poems in this collection come from a period in my life where I was experiencing an emotionally deadly approach to wake me up… during this time, every step I made towards Love was another step away from myself… Wildly confusing! But in the end, it was a no-bullshit remedy to stop my begging, pick up my self-respect, wield a position of dignity, and choose my exit from the old paradigm.

So the poems you are about to read are both capturing the terribly effective way Love shows us our blind spots, carving us deeper into existence, and, the dangers of becoming employees, exchanging our power like currency for love.

Love is the most attractive force I’ve ever known, but without learning to become empowered, secure, and complete within ourselves, and For ourselves, we will continue approaching love as a beggar in our own empire.

 

Finding Voice

Voice is the unique interest and essence that defines what is brilliant and familiar within your art—The inner-most organic expression of an individual.

So many of us are looking for our voice– There is power inside our voice. It is not only a style of language, an angle of diversity, or an edge within a topic… Voice comes loaded with the incentive to impact the world. We feel encouraged, fearless, worthy of providing our community with our unique vision.

Finding Voice is simultaneous with discovering ourselves…

There are four keys to finding our Voice.

Initiation:

When we find our medium for expressing Voice, it is not so different than finding love… the coincidental richness  and intense thriving of first-contact with Voice can slingshot the artist into a freshness of discovery. We begin to see transformation occur and we become a deep pool of expressive material… we find ourselves growing thirsty to practice our developing skills, we are eager to mingle with our emotions,  a longstanding heartache may, at last, find an outlet of healing.

There comes a point when its not as easy, distraction pulls us, responsibilities take hold of our hearts, and quickly, interest wanes. Some sensitive individuals may diverge at the first glimpse of their unresolved fears and excuses…

However, for the artist who desires to deepen their skill, we must persist beyond the initial “slump” of intense freshness that inspired us at the start, and effort ourselves to find new angles in which to love our practice, and ourselves.

Imitation:

A way to expand the potential of our new-found skills is to begin imitating the styles and techniques of artists whom we respect and revere.

It is important to allow ourselves the freedom to imitate. Just as children imitate their parents in order to develop the mechanics of movement and mannerism, so must the artist discover which techniques are attractive and which ones are a limitation.

By imitating the styles of other artists we begin to taste our own potential. We may experience resistance to this approach, because there exists a belief that, in order to be an artist, we must be producing completely new concepts, all the time. But this is not the truth. The creation of originality comes from your Voice, therefore, any attempt to awaken your Voice is a valid action of artistic integrity. So go on the hunt, find art that speaks to you, and then apply the methods, play and experience.

Watch out for attachment. We will find ourselves gravitated toward the styles in which we receive the most recognition. We become fixated with our current burrowed style and quickly slip into identifying with it… but that style was only on loan… It is important to regularly break out of the shell. We do this by sharing our work. Reveal your work to the world– perform, go to workshops, collaborate with other artists… they will act as a positive mirror,  and the reactions of our audience (including the inevitable lumps of criticism) will reveal the elements that shine from our unique Voice.

Adaptation

After some vulnerability and some empowering performances of your craft, we will gradually identify with the true aspects of Voice. There comes a point where there is no longer a separation, rather, our unique quality as an artist will continue to evolve through the many challenges, shortcomings, and visions that await the life of an artist. Our style may change, our genre may change,  we may dive into completely obscure projects, but our sense of self, our Voice, will grow from the foundation of anything we do…

It is important to be flexible to change. The path of Art is transformative. We will shed the skin of our psyches. We will leave behind obsolete belief systems. We will raise families. We will encounter financial unrest. Our dog will die.

The only way to progress through the variations of challenge is to practice…

Practice is the act of repeated engagement that aims to develop our personal performance… it gives us the opportunity to develop the right behavior to consciously say to ourselves: I am doing this… and then doing it.

Setting a standard of discipline for ourselves maintains our spirit and develops channels for accessing Who We Are when we are in the flow of our creation. By honoring our creative spirit, we will find ourselves meeting our life situations with more grounded creativity and a deeper sense of respect for ourselves.

Inspiration:

Inspiration is honored throughout the lifetime of an artist. It is our life-blood as creative vessels to find the currents which arouse us into awakening. By involving ourselves in the path of our own evolution, we begin to integrate the energizing reality of our own existence into a nourishing furnace of creative ideas.

It becomes the artist’s duty to honor our inspiration by creating, taking notes, choosing visions to develop into the next stages, and recognizing that there is a force behind the ignition of a vision– by getting out of our own way and being open to the process, an artist becomes pregnant with the Art to awaken the spirit of the world.

 

Join The Ecstatic Poetry Retreat: October 14th – 16th…

We will Explore our Art and Discover more through our Voice.

Join Us

 

 

 

Loving Relationships

 

Burning as bright as ice
the night sky shines.
A cloud splashing against space
is cut to pieces
in light’s disrobing manners.
The seeds we shared that night
are aching
from a season of good work.
I’ve quit my job
tallying the harvests
year after year of this loving—
Let the neighbors see us
standing under the howling sky
in wind and light
splitting every seed inside
our wild
messy hearts.

It gets easy to talk ethereally about Love, because in the experience of it, we are not in the realm of reason. This feeling of being swept off our feet, whisked away, ascended into the clouds, is because we occupy our rational minds for a majority of our lives, so when something induces an experience other than intellect, it sends us soaring. But we also experience the landing! There is another side to the dimension of Love which we rarely discuss… The work. One of my favorite quotes about this is from Mr. Rodgers, he says:

“”Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

This aspect of love brings us right back to the ground. This earthy element reminds us of how to love on our own two feet. Love is also an active force, dynamic and enduring within our human bodies. As we learn to experience love from the vantage of our every day lives, we begin to approach love from a new direction— from a perspective requiring both trust and diligence. This is the element of love which lands us right in the pith of who we are…

 

Love has come unto us, this hand-made coat,
hung on the curve of a soft hook, our loving.

A poignant hurt is a part of this— a needle
laid in the sleeve while sowing.
Beautiful Life drives it now,
as a mother seams boundless love
into small sizes,
winter clothes.

Stroking into my pulse, swimming
toward its source.
It goes deeper, believing
it is looking for you.

Because you have awakened me, further.

But Life only speaks the information
I need to hear.
The rest dissolves
into longing
and faith.

It believes you are looking for me,

but we both know
a weaving is at work
much greater at Knowing
than these two spinning threads
You and I.

Poem from the published title: Temple- A Collection of Ecstatic Poetry

 

Surely Love is not an experience limited only to relationships of family and marriage. Our society has no framework for hearts who simply cannot follow the Cinderella model of love. There is no mutual understanding set in place for those people who choose not to love the same way our grandparents chose to love. And for this reason, when Love breaks open our shell, it becomes a tragedy. When we grow beyond our marriage, it becomes a scandal. When we spend a night with another beautiful person, we call it an “affair”. Our choice of mate and the agreements we make within that relationship are made according to the tastes and needs of the individuals… however, Love, cannot make limiting commitments. Love is meant to grow— it is working to become Universal again… and we are all a part of that movement.

 

We are not so together
as you might be thinking.
My heart has become a pinned-down needle
aching
for a cloth—
Where do we find new love?
One face of devotion
which was my salvation
now burdens me—
imprisons my affection!
When we open up
we share the tender fruit of our change
in Heart.
Like magic
Love comes back again,
admits to detaining your emotions
so it could purchase the caged bird
for the Joy
of setting it free again.

 

Poem from: Kentucky- Ecstatic Grassroots

 

 

 

When Albert Einstein was interviewed for one of the last times, he was in bed when asked by the reporter: “What do you know to be certain about the Universe?”

It is said that Einstein slowly got out of his bed. I can almost see his slippers making contact with the floor, his gentle walk over to the window as he nudged the curtain aside; He stood in thought for a long time, and then he said, with sunlight in his hair: “Something is moving.”

I think of this story often and reflect on that final piece of wisdom. Something is moving. There is always motion. Nothing stays the same. As human beings we grasp a fistful of our own lives, hold it in place with dutiful effort, and we call this certainty. We buy a piece of land or adopt an idea and we believe the earth could never change beneath our feet— but she does, and she will… we are grasping for permanence of safety, absolutism of health, and insurance for when the game knocks us down. But are we demanding, with our fists clenched and heels rooted, something from the Universe that it cannot offer, because it is inherently not so?

We think we are different than the Universe. We believe we are fundamentally separate. Mankind is believed to be unequivocally special, unarguably free-of-will, and therefore, inherent with certain rights to make, fashion, or impose our versions of the world onto Nature. Somehow, our ideas about life are considered to be written in stone and change has become a misfortune. But what if change is a function applicable to all elements of the Universe? What if there is a natural law for pruning and combing flexibility into any system which has grown brittle in the cosmos? The Universe is embedded with a process for scouring potential out of seemingly permanent designs. Endings are a natural mechanism, as is birth and growth… Death keeps us moving.

Perhaps this is why modern humans are waging campaigns against Death— pharmaceuticals, technology, religion, unyielding egoism and outrageous identities… the trickle-down attitudes of our daily lives develop as a result of our resistance to Change. Because Change is a mechanism of Death— because movement takes us away from the comforts of the habituated: we are fighting Nature’s process.

Doesn’t this seem relentless? Are we growing tired of these reactionary procedures? Aren’t we exhausted at trying to keep nature at bay? If the Universe is changing, then surely, our conclusions about life must be transforming too. Einstein would have known this better than most. His thoughts changed the foundations of science. Even science, the institution of our modern certainty, was waylaid by the gentility of a new perspective. Something was moving: there is massive power within a subtle turn of mind.

Chancing a new paradigm for the world feels dangerous— but it’s necessary. Holding onto our former identities is not moral stability… we’re reacting in contrary to the nature of the Universe. We’re expecting Life to be something it simply is not… a stationary experience.

Consider a new attitude in front of the personality of the cosmos—Surrender. Gradually, we can begin to release the tension we use to hold on to former models of life. Gently, we can reclaim the energy we use trying to brace ourselves in fear and allow this huge experience of Life to clean up the brokenness stifling our progress.

Eventually, a Force of something much larger than personal control will provide for us, showing us what we need in order to evolve with an ever-moving world. Eventually, learning to surrender to the changes will allow us to see the true nature of everlasting stability, developed from Within. We need only to give Evolution a chance.

Art is an Invitation

Cultures have been creating Art since the savannah’s of the African continent— we have been writing since the first Heroes of Mesopotamia… Art, in its essential state, is designed to move in and out of paradigms, offering means for touching beyond the mundane. Business, on the other hand, is designed to bring productivity and service to the world markets, ideally in a meaningful, humane way. The two in a harmonious relationship is powerful. And though our world demands, from everyone, that we become somehow lucrative to the systems— the Artist cannot view their work in this way, because Art is not a production, but a ritual of invitation.
I have had some personal experiences before, when I was feeling tired and finished with my day, literally turning the lights out in the bedroom. At this moment, I relax with my Lover in my arms, and now, a certain ritual takes place. The tenderness, the cuddling, kisses on the face, the silhouette of hair and shoulders… suddenly, an unseen energy rises! Suddenly, when I was drifting to sleep, I am now filled with the energy of love-making. Quite literally, the energy of creation urges me into a ritual, the invitation of Creation.
Art is another Invitation for creative power. When the ritual is performed, repeatedly, and devotionally over time, we are literally inviting creative power to move us deeper into the act of creating. The medium we choose isn’t the important part— the most meaningful element is the intention and focus we bring to the act of our work.
For an Artist to maintain a professional mindset, while remaining like liquid with their creative work, is a spiritual path more than it is an entrepreneurial endeavor. So how do we invite this creative ability so we can invent on a regular schedule, with deadlines, contracts and social expectation? I believe the answer lies in Self-Work. Developing the tools to manage and unlock potential energies within us, so that they flow more consistently under changing conditions, and flow reliably when we are in our element.
If we continue treating our Art as a spiritual practice, despite the demands from the world, our dormant potentials will be loosed over time into our daily lives. If we couple this consistent work with meditation, contemplation, and physical well-being, the energy which fuels artistic genius will become a force which flows— not because we own the river and demand its obedience, but rather, because the river runs naturally, and a good artist knows where to lower a bucket for their drinking water.
Trust in the creative process. Meditate on life, contemplate, purify, and give— Art is an invitation.

Are We Capable of Poetry?

 
As a poet, attempting to share poetry with a loud and proud world, I wrestle with my culture, more than often… I have asked myself the question, more than once, if our culture is capable of poetry. Can we really hear with “poetic listening”? Amiss the entertainment-flash-mobs of siren-series-media-updates, which are broadcast day in, day out, relentlessly… can we take a moment to relax and hear the words of a deeper language?

 
Within the pith of my body, lies a gentle tongue which feels the poetry of life. I write, late in the night, early in the morning, I struggle and work, I fail and I elate over words, all because of this precious place within. It doesn’t take intellectual prowess to hear that voice. There is no budgeting the account of the heart. Blind believing is a run-down television opera… no, we are looking in the wrong places of the world. I go out of my front door, chasing Truth with a stick and a credit card… I have to lay down my worldly preoccupations, just for a moment, to hear that true voice of poetry.

 
“To lay down our preoccupations” is probably the hardest modern day request we can make of ourselves. The world is a jungle of unmastered desires. It is a farmyard of unnoticed chores. We have a long way to go, my friends, before we awaken. I contemplate these messy lives, stewing in one messy kitchen, and I myself, writing poetry with the unbearably messy art of words. We’re all alike. And I would dare to say, the greatest challenge to any person who is interested in cleaning up the laundry of our own lives, is finding a way for that deep, quiet voice, to be heard. Can we hear clearly through all that is within us? Can we hear ourselves, searching for a way to escape our own sound-cage? The world is a larger version of ourselves. Can we hear the noise?

 
Poetry is a technique for entering a deeper place of silence. Poetry is not an intellectual tease. Forget about psychological innuendos. Forget about classical idealism. Forget all you ought to know. Poetry is a conversation of love-notes being passed while the teacher isn’t looking. Poetry is a curious thought about the far-side of the Moon. Does all of this  feel ungraspable? Stop thinking about it. Our world is throwing nets into coy-ponds and claiming we are Mariners… If we are actually seeking the best of ourselves, go to the ocean, and set your sail against those waves.

 
Developing the capability for poetic listening becomes one tool by which we can traverse the relentless waves, by taking a moment to listen—taking a moment to find a voice deeper within and training our minds to become quieter vessels for a noisy world.

 

Poetry or the Daily Grind?

 

Why Poetry? … Why indulge ourselves in the arts? Will a painting drive your kid to their ukelele performance? Will a poem wait at home and bake bread while you’re at work? Does a story change diapers and heal a rash?

 
I am often confronted this utilitarian conflict between Art and the practical day-to-day. There is a careful balance for every artist to walk, between the “working hours” we give to earning a living, and how long we can tighten our belts for another artistic project. Choosing to earn the bills over doing the Heart-work is a painstaking process, and one I personally face every day. I believe it is a healthy process which grounds the artist in the roots of community and life. Much like growing a garden, the vegetables have gorgeous flowers, but ultimately, they are food for our continuation… So what is the produce of Poetry?

 
I have heard it said to me by very busy people, “I wish I had time to sit and write too.” Said with a tone, as if this kind of artistic work (painting, poetry, music) is a luxury, a pass-time, like a Jet-Ski— as if Art serves a purpose only after the chores are finished, once the business is bringing in a profit, or sometime when the world is at peace… Perhaps we could review the role of Art and Poetry in our lives. I would like to propose that when our lives are busiest, and when our relationships are burning, and the country is fighting, are the times Art serves its most beneficial fruits.

 
For most of us, we go to see a physician when we are ill. When we are struggling emotionally, where do we go? Poetry can be valued the same way we value nutritious food or long-lasting clothing. The words we write may endure for centuries longer than the foundations of our civilization. Words may also offer you a way to self-reflect on yourself. Good health also includes beneficial practices for mental and emotional hygiene. Combined with meditation, mindfulness practices, and good rituals, Poetry can act as a tool to further develop a connection to ourselves. This may be done by the practice of writing for a purpose of creating a conversation, between the page, and the honeycomb of your personality. There are so many facets which define “who we are”… We must find a way to manage them and define ourselves by our most truthful attributes.

 
Modern medicine can’t help us when it comes to subtle energy. Acrobatic dieting won’t make us intuitive Lovers. This is why the writer creates words, even when he/she is hungry, or the rent is due. This is why the musician sits on the sidewalk with a guitar instead of doing the safe-thing, and earning an engineering degree… because Art offers something to our deeper, internal experiences of Life. Art is a means for showing us what a Healthy Soul feels like. Seek that kind of Art. Pursue what nourishes you. Don’t settle for plastic imitations. Don’t spend too much time trying to like the same music as your co-workers. Immerse yourself in the Art that matters most to you.

 
When we begin developing tools for integrating truth into our lives, our minds will begin to handle the challenges of life by learning from them. We will begin to more accurately translate the emotions we experience—perhaps by relating them to the Art we love and create. When we come into contact with Art, we come into contact with ourselves, and having a tool for touching into Your Self is the most practical solution for day-to-day living.