Tag Archives: mind

Weather

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The weather in mind
is the only weather,
so I am finding, as the rain
pauses after a steady night,
as I consider what atmosphere
will greet the old man
as he emerges
after a night of interrupting
our sleep (and his) many times
with bed changings and redirection

Surface cheer won’t hide
a grumbling interior, nor can
the lack of words, heard or spoken,
prevent the sunshine
of a deep welcome

This is my lesson for today,
which I will take out
into the overcast,
which I will shine into
any dreary places,
which shining
will make my day.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 15, 2017

Harmony

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Harmony lives in my house —
This I insist on,
even and especially in
the multicolored movements of thought.

I witness them converging in
towards a small collapse, a place
where disappointment could form
and sadness, where the colors
would dissolve into mud, and
other structures would raise
their mud-encrusted forms
to impose some ugly order —
resentment and its minions

But I will not have it.
Harmony lives in my house,
and the net of generosity
and sweet caring
keeps the channels open.
We all will get what we need.
We don’t need to demand it
from each other. We all
are harmonized in the One Mind,
who gives us our full fulfillment
and our radiant peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2017

Business

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My little mind, with all its love
held in potential,
awaiting its permission,
awaiting right conditions,
is in the business of deferring good

It has its explanations and excuses,
it has its blame, it has its resignation,
it tells me that my joy depends
on things that happen and what others do

I choose, today, the grand act of surrender
of my mental machinations
to the one Mind —
my partial, hesitating love
to Love, the universal and divine.
If I can stay with Mind, with Love,
that’s all I have to hold,
for Love is in the business
of turning straw to gold.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 27, 2016

Splendor

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sunny meadow

A day this splendid
deserves a big idea,
one you can pick up
by grasping anything
and following along the chain of life
until you have the whole of it

The dance, for example,
of leaves in the breeze —
its connection to sun-impelled currents
(heat rising, cool air swooping in)
and to the limbs, supple with water,
bending to wind and light,
and the thought shimmer
that comes from watching

Or the certain conviction
that everything, everything,
is the thought of one Mind,
moved by the same desire,
born to love every tendril,
every flicker, of life, of light,
born to bring its gifts
in gratitude and brilliance
to the day.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 15, 2016

No Worries

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sailboat through trees

Here is how I let go
of the string of worry,
here is how I keep it
from pulling me sideways,
from making me say things
(in my resultant wobbliness)
that make the air tense between us:

I let go by remembering
no one has ever soared
with worry on her wings,
and if we lived by worry
we couldn’t move at all

We are in Mind
and nowhere else,
and Mind knows us balanced,
and Mind designs all the spaces —
the flow of us,
the cushioning air,
the trail and all the riders on it,
and their balance and their thoughts.

It’s the nature of Mind
to be harmony — we are all expressions
of one grand idea.
We can’t fall out of it,
so we can’t crash. So there’s no place
for worry here.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2016

Traveling

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look up at trees

We roll by each other
in our steel boxes,
bound by the road
to a similar course,
each in a separate world
(a metaphor for how we move through life)

In each car, a mind,
each mind a mirror for the infinite,
each one a pool, unsearchable in depth,
and in each depth,
an ever-burning love

In each love, an endless store of strength,
a balance weight, a source of clear direction,
the thrilling, searing certainty
of being worthy, sovereign

So this is how we save the world,
not by riding up along the road,
but in the vertical connection
that holds us, perfect, to our source.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2015

Settling Accounts

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sky clearing2

Well, in fact,
it’s not possible to waste a day
but if it were,
it might be like this:
too caught up in chores to notice
how blue the sky was, how crisp the air,
how clear the sun . . .

Since it’s not possible to waste a day,
I’ll cash in the recollection of my moments,
I’ll pull something up from within
that wasn’t even there
(at least, not that I’d noticed)

I’ll remember
the attentiveness and power
invoked by driving
a borrowed stick shift car,
and the sweet search for humbleness
that followed a rejection,
and the glimpse — twice —
that acknowledging the hold on each identity
of the one sovereign, infinite Mind
makes a difference in the thoughts and actions
of individuals and the collective,
and it’s something I can do
today, right now.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 25, 2015

The Smell of Smoke

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Sequoia, Edward1

They are not touched
by the smell of smoke
or any aftermath
of any evil thing

There is no chain of hurt
no mindless consequence
blowing down the canyons
into people’s lives,
nothing that can sit upon them
bearing down upon their lungs

Every one of them
regardless of what happened
anytime, anywhere,
can find themselves
clear and holy,
pure and whole,
just as they are imaged
in the Mind that makes them
who they are.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 9, 2015

Sentience

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moss tree

I see my sentience
is entirely thought —
pervasive loops which constitute
my sense of being here,
of who I am

I see how easily the perturbations
(suggestions of alarm, of need to see
what I have wanted as an outcome
come to pass,
the wavering braids of hope and fear
and then the closing sentence)
can form and sway what I have called my life

But this is not my all:
These things which claim
to be the outer world,
and chance, and fate,
and what might come of me today,
are currents in the same domain of thought

In which I would be rudderless
if not for this release:
to give it up,
to still my oar,
to calm my care
and ride the stream in gratitude
everywhere.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 18, 2015

Mind Like a Steel Trap

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Wendy in tree

OK.
The fierce attention
called forth by this challenge
has crested,
and I feel the bead-like pulse
in my armpits,
and the sensation that
my body lags a few steps
behind my mind
so I might stumble or fumble
or mumble

And yet the pure power surge
has forged such an incisive
trail through thought
that there is no question
how I must proceed
and there is no doubt
about the force
that sears through all obstacles
and wins its goal.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 5, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern