Tag Archives: personal growth

This Is For You

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Quick as color
spreads across the surface
of a water drop
instant infusion
strongest at the edges
May this touch spread across you
excite all your surfaces
so you know
as you ring like a temple gong
This pure sound sings you
Nothing stops this wave
spreading into the landscape
ringing floral bells
spilling out fragrance
calling up celebration
This is you
as everything recognizes
tunes in accord
and rejoices.


©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2011



Shaken World

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Can’t go another night without a poem
though, running on a path of zebra stripes
I feel I’ve quantum lurched to black from white
the image of my life now bent and curled
slow dawning sense I’m in a different world
a steely world where nothing fits
and bolts attempting entrance leave a corkscrewed sheer
of metal as they grind against the threads
and fail to turn, and ruin the connection
as things begin to flail and come unhinged
and catch the wind in awkward twists
that make them creak and bend
and crash in heaps, their virgin surface
unrestorable.
But can a world so horrible
become my sphere?
Can any scene sail in, take over
force its stamp of misery upon my day?
Can I not quantum leap back where I came?
A world lost in an instant is regained as fast
This scene may shake me but it cannot last.


©Wendy Mulhern
June 12, 2011



Space and Time

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You have the right
to take up all the space you take
and you have the right
to take all the time you need
and you have the right
to be —
to be whatever you are.
There’s room for all of you here
and there’s room for the time it takes
for you to feel at home
and there’s room for you to breathe
and space for your incubation
and time for you to grow.
You are welcome
to everything your soul needs
to be fulfilled.


©Wendy Mulhern
June 6, 2011



End-of-bike-ride note to myself while ascending the hill towards home

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They stand there, your accomplishments
You’ve stacked them up from time to time
against the dark opacity of the null set
A house of cards to prop up your self-esteem
or propped up by it, a fragile lean-to
Your master’s degree, the languages you (used to) speak
your second dan in Tae Kwon Do, your job, your home
your status as a wife and mother
Don’t you know
All these things are just wisps
of what you are, seeping
into  this dreamscape
They well may fade
don’t be afraid
Their source remains infinite
Who you are has powered those
and can power many more
can make you ride royal
across the dream
and into awakening.


©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2011



Restoration

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This is the place I need prayer more than poetry
listening more than expression
here where transmission is stretched and distorted
and practice is far from profession
The picture is lost in the turbulent medium
all I can do now is wait
seek the source, let it shine the true image out once again
in its original state.
Here in the stillness you need no bravado
alibi, justification
here you’re forgiven and freed for tomorrow
to ring in your purest vibration
So we’re restored, and so we will be
united in love, reconciled, whole, free.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 2011



Paradigm shift

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So easy to set down the frames
of all whereby I have defined myself
my attributes, my limitations, names
and every boundary in which I bind myself
So easy now to leave behind my ego
and all the tortured games of win and lose
which I have come awake embroiled in,
as if from dreaming, nothing I would choose
So clear to me that shame has no more place
and there’s no me that needs to be defended
We move together flowing into grace
and grace moves us just how it has intended:
the ego’s dissipation and the soul’s increase
beyond all fear and into primal peace.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 21, 2011



Freedom to Move

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Yesterday’s poem and today’s were both inspired by watching clips of the PS22 Chorus.(check them out here)   The charismatic teacher doesn’t keep any glory for himself but brings it out in the kids, who move freely and nail the syncopated rhythms and the harmonies and the nuances of the melody.  I was amazed by their freedom and also by what the teacher’s example taught about what’s possible.  My own freedom of movement has been a relatively new development; watching them move so naturally made me think about where such freedom comes from – that perhaps it’s more natural that it be there effortlessly than that it be hard won.
Birthright
No need to retreat behind your skin
to a small box that thinks without moving
some disconnected separate life within
that dreads a coming time of proving
There is no course of regimented learning
and no certificate required
The potent path of following your yearning
delivers you to where you are inspired
We each are born with full permission
to move in elemental grace
to bring our ancient essence to fruition
to fully fill our pre-established place
Each of us, by right, lives in connection
Our turning, and the world’s, bring forth perfection.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 17, 2011



Body and mind

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My body is not
the puppet of a mind
that rides eye high
in the sedan chair of its head
and steers it with its rods and strings
in jerky, awkward movement.
My mind is not a lonely recluse
staring out its eye windows
wishing it could move with grace
and interact, and know some body.
Nexus more than locus
in dynamic intersection
Nodes of pulsing energy
Swift connecting unity
No disembodied mind
No mindless body:
one being that is won
living in the One.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 16, 2011



Resistance and Yielding

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A friend taught a workshop in kinesthetics about resistance and yielding.  She helped us experience the extremes of those opposites so we could recognize them in our bodies, and then to consider a way of moving that might integrate the two.  
Integration
There is a rhythm of the tension and release
a gathering, and then a flowing
I speak of giving birth,
and many smaller things:
telling a story — giving all the words
their needed space, their needed hush
so in their turn they can pour forth
with their needed rush
and prayer — the sweet immersion
into silence, the waiting pause that builds
until the stillness is profound enough
to welcome in the Word
There is a time to hold your breath
to be a vessel where the forming hopes distill
till they well up and tumble forth
along the channels of Life’s will.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 15, 2011



The Perils of Complaint

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Beware of this – it is no siren’s call
but just a sorry chance for me to fall:
I see that there’s no comfort in complaint
no cozy nest of fellow mopers moaning
where if I’m hurt, or troubled, or in pain
I might find solace.  For they vie in groaning
Each tries to top the others’ doleful story.
No sympathy.  At best a doubtful glory.
So just because I hear somebody grumble
in mournful bid to gain my ready ear
In trying the same tactic I will stumble
and swirl on down in egocentric tears
It’s only upward looking that I gain release
Not in pity, but in elemental peace.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 5, 2011
As might be surmised, I had a tough day today.  Homework for a course I’m taking was unclear, and I ran into a technology glitch, and the course’s instructor responded, cursorily and supremely unhelpfully, to only one of my three emails asking for help and clarification.  I found myself less patient than usual with other people’s complaints.  But in the end I realized that I was gaining nothing by taking it out on them.