Tag Archives: personal growth

Goodbye, Hello

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crag tree

Goodbye overflowing, easy joys,
Goodbye the high of bright connection,
Goodbye astonishment of comfort,
and the glow of freely shared affection

Hello craggy upward trail,
expanding vistas promised in the thinning air
Hello strong rush of solar plexus,
heart ascending into deeper care

Goodbye oblivion of needs,
Hello to standing up for what is fair,
Goodbye to pleasure on its own account,
Hello hard work and all its rich rewards

And if I persevere along this climb,
Perhaps at higher turns I’ll come around
to find those older joys have multiplied,
their blessings clear, their purpose
now more sound.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 2, 2014

Lenses

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lenses

Through some lenses
it’s easier
to see people’s blindness
than their lights —

Those are the lenses
affixed to us like blinders
to make us go a way
we haven’t chosen,
and wouldn’t want —
the way in which
before the joy (we’re told)
must come the suffering —
Suffering to pay the price,
suffering for us or them,
suffering to earn the prize
or wrest it from another.

Try these lenses:
They’re designed
to magnify the lights —
The light behind each effort,
each ungraceful try,
each stumble,
The light of love that longs
for one straight chance
to be seen true,
the light of love that,
when you see it,
will come through.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 1, 2014

To the Core

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to the core

There is no easy path
There is no glib path
and when you go under
into the dark and twisted course
that brings you to the depths,
you go alone

No one can go through the fire for you
And no one, like you,
will be lit up by that singular glow
found only at the concentrated core
— heart of everything —

Your light is like none other,
like no one else’s.
It’s your integrity
that compels you
to take the dive,
It’s your integrity
that brings you out alive.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 30, 2014

Threshold

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Don’t fear the fire —
You yourself will shimmer
like a flame,
like a force being forced
through a charged field,
magnetic energy pulling strongly
in two directions at once

You will be changed
but you won’t be consumed.
It is ineffable,
inevitable —
You pass through and are ignited
and the silent heat
will ripple as it rises,
combustion of invisible gases
sending flames hotter, higher

This is just the way it is
at this emerging threshold —
Your being flows, transformed,
into the other side.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2014

More Changes

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capture 11-26

We slip through
changes like beaded curtains,
changes like painted landscapes —
dry ice steam rises
catching the colors of the lights —
We walk through,
find ourselves outside . . .

What has changed?
Values are inverted —
golds for purples,
shade for light,
soft light blue for tones of sunrise —
(Just the normal transmutations
of any day)

What has changed?
Unpredicted sunlight sifts through
the hair of boys in the cafe,
unexpected ease expands
moment by moment,
the old constraints replaced
each day a little more
by the positive assertion
of I Am.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 3, 2014

Glimmer

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water surface

I can’t talk about this
because it’s too big —
bigger than a library of books
on how to find yourself, redeem yourself,
improve . . .

I must talk about this
because it’s so big —
big as the ocean’s crinkled surface,
responsive to each eddy,
every breath of wind . . .

I touch my feet to earth.
Beyond all words, I feel
the intersection of the circles,
every pulse connected,
tracing back to where I am enfolded,
and enfold the whole —
A glimmer of the key to everything,
big enough to satisfy my soul.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2014

Power

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cuddle2_0010-002 copy

Listen,
You have the power:
You can always do
what you want

You are the power —
You can bring your light
into the world

You feel the power,
vibrant and decisive voice within
that lets you know
what you are here to do,
how to begin
and how to follow through
and how to win
the realization of your grandest vision.

Though you have heard real life consists
of mostly doing things your heart resists,
it is not true,
For here and now
the life that ever brings you forth
aligns you with your joy
and seals your worth.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 30, 2014

Today’s Work

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Well, it will probably be
like other times. I pull the bell
and wait for the arrival
of the magic zip line ride.

Like other times, I’ll probably
wait a while. Sit down,
kick at little rocks, notice
ferns and moss,
look up at every sound, hoping to see
a little carriage trundling down the line.

And probably after a while
(like other times)
I’ll get up and start
to pick my way down
through the brush
and the steep slides of the ravine
to the other side,
and climb the hill myself.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 27, 2014

Conundra

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There may be
a hundred little pieces
that don’t fit,
that jar and grate against each other
and squeak

And they may also seem
supremely unimportant —
the solution as irrelevant
as it is hard
I can’t even ask you
to take heart,
Can’t advise that you stay
or leave

And yet I see you
in sweet ease,
in light laughter
that will bubble up
like expanding earth
and change everything,
shining your dreams till they’re true.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 23, 2014

Flash Flood

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In retrospect
it all seems so familiar —
the heady feeling of approaching mastery,
the sense of having found a solid answer
and the immediate response
of some overwhelming inundation —
a storm in my internal weather,
an interpersonal nor’easter,
or some flash flood to carry off
all my pat conclusions,
forcing me to let myself be washed through,
re-oriented, stripped of all pretensions,
surrendering, as ever,
to the larger wisdom
to clarify my sense
and make me new.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 19, 2014