Author: Jo Beall

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 252 – 8/25/2022

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“We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.”

~ Henri Nouwen ~

this sacred moment of eternity goes on infinitely on this day of stopping the world, spending this moment in soulitude and seeing inside as i saunter (walk on holy ground) along the rainbow trail, the path with heart, the pilgrimage of the soul, the pathless path for this is not only the 106th birthday of the usa’s national parks; it is also the second year anniversary of my latest close encounter with death…

still i hear the words, as i was coming back to life, of the ICU doctor standing at the threshold of the room they put me in to pass over saying to the nurse it was a miracle she was alive… at first i wondered who they were talking about and then it came back to me that i had been at a gathering with Ram Dass who had died physically 8 months earlier and he asked me if I’d like him to walk me home… i was so excited to get to spend time with this being who’s been so impactful on my life for half a century and told him that i’d gather my things and meet him right back here but when i returned a moment later he had walked on and i understood that i was to come back here to the middle world… it was not the easiest thing to find my way back meandering through vast labyrinthian canyon lands of the other world but here i was hearing this man in white coat talking of someone who’d miraculously come back to life after dying…

so, dear co-hearts of our one heart, still in the glow of the astonishing light of our being and so in awe of grandmother spider and the web of life she weaves, i now want to share this heartfelt message fra angelico sent to his co-hearts 500 years ago which expresses what i say today and everyday and hear all our relatives singing the same tune…

“I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not already, but there is much, very much, which though I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.

Take heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this precious little instant.

Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and courage in the darkness could we but see; and to see, we have only to look.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their coverings, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, and wisdom, and power. Welcome it, greet it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence.

Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims wending through unknown country our way home.”

~

Dear Angels, Take Heaven! Take Peace! Take Joy! Take Love! Take Wisdom! Take Courage!

We Are The Eternal Radiance of Loving Presence…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 251 – 8/24/2022

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each beautiful thing, each new day awakens in our soul the memory of whom we are, luminous beings, the shining ones… i am re-membering some words on beauty and wonder from Thay that help me to hear the voice of the soul:

“Dear Mother Earth,

Each morning when I wake up you offer me twenty-four brand new hours to cherish and enjoy your beauty. You gave birth to every miraculous form of life. Your children include the clear lake, the green pine, the pink cloud, the snowcapped mountain top, the fragrant forest, the white crane, the golden deer, the extraordinary caterpillar, and every brilliant mathematician, skilled artisan, and gifted architect. You are the greatest mathematician, the most accomplished artisan, and the most talented architect of all. The simple branch of cherry blossoms, the shell of a snail, and the wing of a bat all bear witness to this amazing truth. My deep wish is to live in such a way that I am awake to each of your wonders and nourished by your beauty. I cherish your precious creativity and I smile to this gift of life.

We humans have talented artists, but how can our paintings compare to your masterpiece of the four seasons? How could we ever paint such a compelling dawn or create a more radiant dusk? We have great composers, but how can our music compare to your celestial harmony with the sun and planets—or to the sound of the rising tide? We have great heroes and heroines who have endured wars, hardship, and dangerous voyages, but how can their bravery compare to your great forbearance and patience along your hazardous journey of eons? We have many great love stories, but who among us has love as immense as your own, embracing all beings without discrimination?

Dear Mother, you have given birth to countless buddhas, saints, and enlightened beings. Shakyamuni Buddha is a child of yours. Jesus Christ is the son of God, and yet he is also the son of Man, a child of the Earth, your child. Mother Mary is also a daughter of the Earth. The Prophet Mohammed is also your child. Moses is your child. So too are all the bodhisattvas. You are also mother to eminent thinkers and scientists who have made great discoveries, investigating and understanding not only our own solar system and Milky Way, but even the most distant galaxies. It’s through these talented children that you are deepening your communication with the cosmos. Knowing that you have given birth to so many great beings, I know that you aren’t mere inert matter, but living spirit. It’s because you’re endowed with the capacity of awakening that all your children are too. Each one of us carries within ourself the seed of awakening, the ability to live in harmony with our deepest wisdom—the wisdom of interbeing.

But there are times when we have not done so well. There are times when we have not loved you enough; times when we have forgotten your true nature; and times when we have discriminated and treated you as something other than ourself. There have even been times when, through ignorance and unskillfulness, we have underestimated, exploited, wounded, and polluted you. That is why I make the deep vow today, with gratitude and love in my heart, to cherish and protect your beauty, and to embody your wondrous consciousness in my own life. I vow to follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before me, to live with awakening and compassion, and so be worthy of calling myself your child.”

acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a wondrous way to walk in beauty…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 250 – 8/23/2022

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this is the 250th day of the ninth year of posting the Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage daily; on the 250th day of the first year i re-member honoring and celebrating the inspiration, the mother of this journey, someone breathing and being this walk every moment and it seems so perfect on the 9th year and in this moment of eternity of the astonishing light of being to reprise the honoring of this most remarkable being of light…

peace pilgrim, in her late forties, committed to walking the planet being peace and in so doing, she planted and spread peace across the world demonstrating that a life lived trusting in a world of lovingkindness reaps an abundant harvest… never once did she lack for a ride or a meal or a place to sleep finding abundant generosity always surrounding her every step, her every breath…

thank you for joining in the peace pilgrimage and making her story our story and history/herstory… and, thank you for the astonishing light of your beings, beacons shining so brightly helping to guide all of us home re-membering…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 249 – 8/22/2022

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“He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self.”

~ Bhagavad Gita ~

~

“Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth…”

~ John O’Donohue ~

~

Welcome Home!

relatives, we are lovingly invited

to spend this moment, this beautiful moment

at home with Beloved…

simply being presence of essence…

come as you are, your radiant Self,

for this moment of

wonder, awe, bliss, compassion, flow, grace, joy, kindness

to drink in the gamma rays flooding the cosmos with a divine transfusion of transfiguring love…

~

i am having a time trying to write these words as they bring back so many memories because the image and the welcome home words posted here today is what i posted two years ago and after that posting it would be a full moon before i would post again,.. a moon spent in the icu as i returned slowly from the jaws of death… in hindsight, it’s astonishing to see i was writing of the dream of the cosmos as i was about to enter the void and live the dream, a dream of being in a field where the Beloved Communion dwells and hearing that our mission is to sing and listen for that song of the soul that knows the geography and map of our destiny and takes us there in unimaginable ways… last night/this morning the dream returns saying it is the moment of eternity to be about this business of singing in the wake of the ever quickening transformational initiation we are all undergoing…

today, i want to riff a little more on that singing field of the beloved community where the sea of love energy flows through all the cells of our one cosmic body… as i merge more deeply with this dream, i heart that we are one interbeing reverberating, resounding, frequencing the lost chords of harmony as we more and more profoundly tune into great mystery on our walk of infinity which is undeniably intended to be the dream of the ever-expanding cosmos manifested by our co-creating a world of peace built on justice guided by love and sung in joy…

are you hearing beloved singing you? listen a little deeper for the cosmic hum as you suspend noise and distraction in this moment, this beautiful moment… are you hearing the whispers of the ancestors flowing through our oceanic body? ah yes, let’s pause here in the stillpoint and align with the rhythm of our one heart… may earth’s song reach into our deepest and wildest sacred spaces… may we hear the melodic voices of all our relations… may our inhalations inspire re-joy-sing and our exhalations re-sound and re-verberate harmony throughout the watery womb of our one heart…

we are the caravan of re-joy-sing being dreamed and weaved and breathed and walked and sung to the tune of thank you, thank you, thank you… and so it is… blessed bee…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 248 – 8/21/2022

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* written on the total soular eclipse 8/21/17…

groovin’ on the grass

poetic peace pilgrim puppy embraces

the path of totality…

“indeed i am – embracing the path of totality… jo is letting me, nia, aka ms radiance, little ms firecracker, write the post today… i’m just returning from my first overnight pilgrimage with the fam – what an adventure! we traveled to the land of the ufo festival to gather with a bunch of two leggeds to watch the total eclipse of the sun… the relatives of the human variety got all excited as the big ball of gas in the sky got more and more eclipsed by the moon… we all had to wear these special contraptions on our eyes, they tasted a lot better than they helped me see… my favorite part was licking the dew off the grass and bounding across the field like a jumping bean… the two leggeds loved it when for a split second everything went totally dark… howlelujah! they sounded like my ancestors, the woof clan, who teach that an eclipse on the new moon, as this one was, amplifies the new world’s birth… howlelujah!!”

thank you, nia, for re-membering that day and so glad we got to celebrate it again today in a very special way with a convergence of beings interested in flying objects like the one in the astonishing light image for today – woo hoo! the fifth anniversary of the total soular eclipse we experienced here and for all of us who shared this primal event, we remain transfixed and transformed forever by that magical mystical moment… that moment which initiated such a momentous turn around the sun with each moment pulling us deeper and deeper into the tunnel of light…

let’s celebrate totality now and the astonishing light of our interbeing in this sacred moment of eternity by centering together… and so we get comfortable and begin to breathe together, to conspire so we can go deeper and more expansive at the speed of light…

imagine a filament of light lifting us up from the crown chakra and another filament of light grounding us from our root chakra… feel ourselves as a bridge of light uniting heaven and earth…

now, imagine a great star radiating brilliant light over the whole cosmos and pouring this light like a waterfall onto us replenishing our chi and washing away all expended energy into earth for composting…

feel that waterfall of bright, warm, loving light raining down onto our head and suffusing into our eyes which now see beauty everywhere and into our ears which now listen deeply understanding heartfully and now the light suffuses into our tongue and throat so our speech is uplifting and the waterfall flows into our hands imbuing them with healing touch and flows into our lungs cleansing and purifying so each breath is refreshing and revivifying and into our one heart revealing the divine light of our true nature, the inner light of our immortal soul which shines eternally…

savor this light coursing through us enlivening, inspiring, washing away  any blocks and experience the light within merging with the divine light of the waterfall forming a rainbow egg of light completely surrounding us, sheltering us, loving us, freeing us…

may all nourishing thoughts, words and deeds filter through this egg of light as blessings and afflictive ones bounce off the eggshell and be transmuted as blessings as well… yes, let’s go wild – wonder imaginatively in love and devocean… howlelujah!!!

let’s close our sacred ceremony for today with the dedicating of ourselves to living in the unity of our interbeing…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 247 – 8/20/2022

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“Its good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.”

~ Rumi ~

many, many turns around the sun ago, i spent some sacred moments of eternity with tibetan monks watching as they created their mandalas of colored sands and then let them go to the winds… i was so taken with this as a sacred way of living that i adopted it as a practice to practice each day… as we are called to flow with the turning of the wheel and return to living in the present moment and as i have had so much practice, it is more of a default and still an aspiration… when i am in rhythm with the holoflux, i begin to color on first awakening and continue with every breath as the painting paints me until i float into the night sea journey and the winds blow the sands into the waters… i dream of living in a communal field where we begin our day walking the labyrinth together and then begin our daily sand painting which we will return to as the spirit moves us just as we return to the breath again and again… blessed bee…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 246 – 8/19/2022

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“A MIND THAT HAS NO WALLS, THAT IS NOT BURDENED WITH ITS OWN ACQUISITIONS, ACCUMULATIONS, WITH ITS OWN KNOWLEDGE, A MIND THAT LIVES TIMELESSLY, INSECURELY – TO SUCH A MIND, LIFE IS AN EXTRAORDINARY THING. SUCH A MIND IS LIFE ITSELF…”
– JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI –

today is a day of contemplating and more sacredly reverencing, the hatching, the breaking open of shells that now constrict to move into expanding into a more spacious home, an even more open heart… as with any birth, growth, transition, transformation, there is pain involved which underlines the importance of our nestling together and embracing each other’s journey in the chrysalis and through the birth canal into the river of awakening that flows into the ocean of love…

yes, these moments which seem so deathly to our protective selves are precisely the perfect ones to embrace what is, to befriend whatever comes our way with a loving mantra of thank yous… Rumi says it so beautifully…

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond. “

let’s close our sacred ceremony for today with dedicating ourselves to living in the unified field of our interbeing guesthouse…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 245 – 8/18/2022

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“I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may never complete this last one,

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, that primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

standing still in the center of the wheel this moment of eternity – on this day when science is catching up understanding we didn’t come from the great bang and women got the right to vote in the usa and It’s Krishna’s birthday and national bee day – communing with source and by extension with all that is brings peace and the understanding it is the moment to break free and live in ever widening circles of compassion spiraling deeper and more expansively…

wowzer! what a most interesting moment we are in as we circle around what is and who we are demonstrating that we, like the cosmos, are ever expanding and deepening and we have it in us to face into the pain, the suffering, the despair of  a world of  uncertainty supported by the boundless wellspring of love always flowing through us, around us, above us below us, beside us…

yes, this moment’s the moment to stop the world, to stand still in the center and listen to all the messages of the inspiriting whirling winds of change as the spirits come back…

re-membering, we can always return to the breath being still and fully present in this beautiful moment being a mantra of thanksgiving, being a falcon of free flight, being a song of joyous delight, taking this moment, this wild precious moment to love boundlessly and shine luminously as a beacon of wise hope and comfort in the storm… blessed bee!

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 244 – 8/17/2022

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today is the thirty-fifth anniversary of harmonic convergence, one of my favorite of days – yes every day is a favorite and every moment of eternity is one of harmonic convergence… i love celbrating this day, every day, as a day of devocean, a day of grace, a day when the sun, in the form of holy grandmother spider creatrix, shines through the clouds offering very warm embraces and whispered words of wisdom to be still in this moment of wild abandon into the great turning, to trust this moment of surrender to the true self, to re-member the sun always shines and when it shines on rain, creation is transformed into iridescent rainbow arcs encircling the cosmos within and without converging, confluing in perfect harmony, in this moment, this beautiful moment of grace… may we all awaken to the beauty breathing us alive…

yes, there is beauty in this moment as we open to mama gaia sending us more and more increasingly emphatic messages about changing our ways of dominion and power over and coming home to walking in balance… yes, caterpillar, let go of ravenous consumption dying to the false self to be re-birthed as imaginal cells of the one body of the true self – rooted, winged deep diving beings of flight…

aloha and mahalo…

~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 242 – 8/15/2022

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this image visits me frequently now and has for many turns around the sun… in dreams, in waking moments, especially in a moment of turbulence such as our planet is in and on a day such as this, a day of slowing down and seeing inside, of hearing the call to rally for peace as we celebrate the assumption of mother mary sauntering along the rainbow trail, the path with heart, the pilgrimage of the soul, the pathless path…

the peace pilgrimage, the pathless path of soul takes courage, a heart letting go completely to soften into the call of the beloved trusting that in this surrender, the cosm, the cosmos will have our back…

“A true vocation requires shedding anything that would impede or obscure the call. A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow.”
~ Michael Meade ~

rapidly, i’m approaching the quintessential anniversary of being called into the lion’s roar, into awakening into the deepest initiation adventure of this incarnation, five turns around the sun of arriving, of  coming home into the present moment, the true self wholeheartedly with all the trillions and trillions of wild cells humming, embodying the frequency of soul…

which brings me back to this image of crossing to the other shore, a crossing so much of this incarnation has been about… over the last two and a half years, everyone’s been invited to make this crossing and it’s taken on a deepened and expanded meaning… thich nhat hanh talks about when the boat people were leaving viet nam and facing turbulent seas, if one person could remain calm, they would stay aright… i take this on as a vow to be the person to stay calm in the storm trusting in the cosm always having our backs…

thank you for joining in solidarity as a rebel of love, a reveler of love, a revealer of love, a revolutionary of love taking courage in the dream of second coming, of all awakening in the promised land…

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” ~ Rumi ~

~