It is my intention to create a year’s series of daily reflections. It is likely that this will be a two-year project given the time to produce a single upload of such reflections.

I intend to produce videos with a lot of these reflections that will help promote them further afield.

I try to keep these daily spiritual reflections to less than three minutes. Below each reflection I will add various Toggles. This will add additional material that you can explore.

Let me say this. None of these invitations will make much difference if you do not establish a daily practice of learning to commune with the Divine within.

These reflections fulfil a deep heart’s core wish. This is the wish from the mystic poet Hafiz who says.

I wish that when you are lonely and in darkness that I could show you the magnificence of the light of your own being.—Hafiz.

Hafiz KNOWS, like all mystics KNOW that you cannot teach REAL spirituality. The best you can do, the best that I can do, is to teach you to unfurl your own sail. (Richard Rohr).

Here is a reading of the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. It is such a beautiful rendition.

Given copyright restrictions I include a link to a page where you have the full poem.

http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html

Recording of The Lake Isle of Innisfree by Tony Cuckson

The Poem

Here I share a deeper reflection on the poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats at my website

https://tonycuckson.com/lake-isle-of-innisfree/

Introduction to the Beauty YOU Are from Being Beautiful – Learning to Treasure the REAL You.

People of Orphalese,
beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

– The Prophet – Khalil Gibran

What does it mean to be beautiful? Does it mean having the right kind of face and body, wearing the right clothes and portraying the right image? All these may express a certain culturally determined beauty. This is not what it is to live as one who knows and feels themselves as ‘being’ beautiful and knows beauty to be an essential quality of who they are.

Authentic beauty is beyond image. It arises from Being. You are made in the image of Divine Presence. This Divine Presence is Love. You are the beautiful creation of Love’s imagination. You are also a human being. The word ‘human’ is ‘hu’ and ‘man.’ The word ‘hu’ means “The sound of Creation.” You are thus already a resounding success. You are a unique expression of Creation. When you feel this unique connection you know what authentic beauty feels like. You know yourself, not simply as a beautiful person, but as the Presence of Beauty in form.

Being beautiful is not something you do. It is a revelation of who you are. You can make yourself look more beautiful. There is nothing wrong with making yourself look more “beautiful,” however if this is your only connection to “being beautiful” it will not last. To ask, “What does it truly feel like to be beautiful?” will take you on your own unique vision quest and help you in realizing, “Who am I.” This in turn will help you realize that you are beauty in form, even if that form you experience as your body is not culturally affirmed as being beautiful.

Let me begin with a definition of Being Beautiful. This definition will be unfolded through storytelling, poetry, lyrics and practices.

Being beautiful is knowing who you are as a unique expression of Love flowing through the form of the body willingly open to the emptiness that is forever full.

This is not the usual definition of beauty you find in the latest beautiful people magazines. Magazines focus is on image, celebrity and personality. The definition given here is on feeling the connection to the Essence you are and finding fulfillment through pouring that Essence into the world to bless yourself and others.

Being Beautiful requires one reverse the way in which Western culture has programmed us to feel and act in the world. You will move from identification with the mask of personality to the felt beauty of Divine Presence we learn to know who you are beyond the intellect. You are so much more than the information about yourself you present to the world. Like Cinderella you give up rags for riches. You take authority for awakening the Sleeping Beauty within you and live happily ever after because you move beyond time into and experience of the Timeless.

Awakening to Beauty is not something you do. It is more a letting go and letting be. By doing this you will feel encouraged, excited and empowered. You let go of the story that you are other than beautiful and magnificent. You give up identification with the story of the personality or the mask you present to the world, to prove you are acceptable so that you might belong. This is the story of the separate self, which is your personal story. This story always has conditions. You think, “If they really knew who I was maybe they wouldn’t like me. Maybe no one would truly love me.”

Being Beautiful you grow into a paradoxical revelation. You find the emptiness that is forever full. This appears a scary invitation. It is to the ego that thinks emptiness is a nothingness into which it disappears. The ego is correct in its assumption. However, what disappears is your sense of limitation. You open to the Boundlessness of Love. You know true fulfillment through having the courage to be empty. There is no loss here although the ego feels there is and feels threatened by the invitation. This experience is a process you journey into and through. It is a form of dying into life. As mystics from all traditions and none say, “Die before you die so you will know that you are the birthless and deathless One.”

The Beautiful People are those who know the real story. The real story of unity rather than the everyday story of personal separation from the One Life. Theirs is the story of unity of the personal with the universal. They know how to live The Impersonal Life (1) and create a boundary for the Boundless. These are the people who leave stories pointing the way toward knowing true beauty. These stories are wonder tales that invite you into the wonder of who you are. These are the stories of myth that override the intellect. They speak to you in the language of symbol, metaphor and meaning if you are courageous enough to open your heart to receive their invitation. These stories are maps of the territory that take you out of the ordinary world of the separate sense of self into the extraordinary and boundless world of the true Self. You leave the grey world of Kansas for the colorful and magical world of Oz. You leave the grey world of everyday personal limitation for the magical world of transformation. You take the Red Pill and leave The Matrix.

These mythological stories are treasure maps. They are written in a foreign language, the language of the heart. It is the language of paradox, parable, riddle and mystery. It is the language of non-duality. It is the language of poetry and inspirational songwriting. This is also a language of energy. It moves from the energy of encouragement to Essence. It is a language that invites, not belief, not knowledge but Knowing. It takes you beyond belief. The head does not understand this language of the heart. It thinks it foolish and confusing. The head thinks in opposites. It thinks that either something is one way or another but that it cannot be both at the same time. The heart knows that there is unity to be experienced in opposites.

In this book I share an Irish story entitled The Four Treasures of the Tuatha De Danaan. This is both a traditional and non-traditional story. Mythical stories are not set in stone for all time, they change according to the consciousness of the time in which they are told. I tell stories with one essential intention. This is to invite you to fall in love with who you are beyond the mask of personality, so you might know the beauty of living what the mystic writer Joseph Bremer called The Impersonal Life. (1) Let me remind you there is no sense of loss here.

Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.

~ Georges Gurdjieff

You are invited to expand into infinity (beyond form) and into eternity (beyond time). To invite knowing the Boundless and the Timeless within you surrender the idea of who you think you are and become the knowing of who you truly are. This is beyond intellectual knowledge. You become the knower rather than the one who knows about. Knowledge is information. It can be useful but it is not the felt sense of “Knowing.” It is not revelation, it is not insight, it is not insider seeing. Knowing is all of these, as well as the experience of “Being Beautiful.” about what it is to be beautiful is not “Knowing” the experience of Being Beautiful. The question the reader is asked to explore is, “Do I really want to be beautiful or do I simply want more information?”

You find the treasure you are by revealing the treasure you are. This is a great paradox that you alone can allow yourself to know. No one can reveal it to you, they can only point the way. In the lines from the poem The Bright Field by R.S. Thomas you are told that you have to be willing to give everything to possess it. Rather you allow this beauty to possess you.

To reveal the Beauty you are requires you to become a nobody or a nowhere man or woman. You willingly become as nothing so the boundlessness of NO-THING can flow through you. This is true fulfillment. Nothing is lost. Giving up everything does not mean that you take a vow of poverty. It does not mean you cannot have things that bring you delight. You allow nothing to possess you other than the fullness of the Divine revelation which you then pour away into the world for the highest good of all.

This way of Being Beautiful is a different story. It is the story of Love’s eternal becoming. You are a part of this story but never in reality ever apart from it. The oldest story told is of the separate sense of self. In identifying with this story you eat of a poisoned apple that puts you to sleep. You are asleep to your Essence. You are asleep to seeing and living from your true origin and your original face. Mythological stories are pointers to the path of revelation. This path has stages and steps. This path is both unique and common to all those who have walked it. These are the Beautiful People who want you to be the knowing of beauty in form that is Love’s Message flowing through an open mind and heart. Will you walk with me now and invite the treasure you are to be known to you and as you? Will you listen a while to the story of The Four Treasures of the Tuatha De Danaan.

This is an Irish story. It is also a universal story. It is your story. This story ends where you are invited to begin. Begin to know the Beauty that in so many hearts has been driven underground. Fearlessly claim the treasure that Creation knows you to be. Know and radiate the beauty of Being and walk this world Being Beautiful. Be so well-informed by Love. Let yourself be willing to feel blessed and bless. Let it be so for you. Let it be so for all.

It happened to W. B. Yeats when he was simply sitting drinking a cup of tea in a London shop.

Here is the poem from which that wonderful invitation to “Companion YOUR Greatness” is taken.  It is read by myself.

These Are The Clouds

THESE are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye:
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
And discord follow upon unison,
And all things at one common level lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run
And these things came, So much the more thereby
Have you made greatness your companion,
Although it be for children that you sigh:
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

W. B. Yeats, 1916

 

When I came to post this video I noticed that the title of the songs is A Child in this Hills. I have always heard it as A Child of these Hills. Apologies to Jackson Browne.

A Child in These Hills
Jackson Browne
I am a child in these hills
I am away, I am alone
I am a child in these hills
And looking for water
And looking for life
Who will show me the river
And ask me my name
Is there nobody here who’ll do that
Well I have come to these hills
I will come to the river
As I choose to be gone
From the house of my father
I am a child in these hills
I am a child
Chased from the gates of the city
Where no one had touched me
I am away, I am alone
I am a child in these hills
And looking for water
And looking for life
Who will show me the river…

Here is a song that I make reference to in this audio recording. It relates to a blessing. It is that the Long Time Sun – the Eternal Light of Being ever shine on you.

May the Long Time Sun
Shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light
within you
Guide your way on
Guide your way on

May the Long Time Sun
Shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light
within you
Guide your way on
Guide your way on

http://www.spiritvoyage.com/mp3downlo…

3 Stages of Life and Why they Really Matter

While I recommend this book about two stages of life it is similar in its approach to the 3 stages of life only it does not speak so much about the period of transition between the 1st half and 2nd half of life

Here is the synopsis as shared on Amazon.

A fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life

In Falling Upward, Fr. Richard Rohr seeks to help readers understand the tasks of the two halves of life and to show them that those who have fallen, failed, or “gone down” are the only ones who understand “up.” Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite.  What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as “falling upward.”  In fact, it is not a loss but somehow actually a gain, as we have all seen with elders who have come to their fullness.

• Explains why the second half of life can and should be full of spiritual richness
• Offers a new view of how spiritual growth and development happens?loss is gain
• Richard. Rohr is a regular contributing writer for Sojourners and Tikkun magazines

This important book explores the counterintuitive message that we grow spiritually much more by doing wrong than by doing right.