Tag Archives: personal growth

Desire

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In your time
you will find
the sweet imperative,
the nectar you must drink —
the one, right now
that shoots through you like light,
that holds you up
as water holds up herbs
and makes you grow,
ever more unfolding into what you are.

And when it’s done
there’ll be a new imperative —
It will taste different
(the old one will no longer do)
and you will know it from your craving
and how your thirst rises up to meet it
and to crest in satisfaction
as you’re nourished.

This is how we know our way —
we are designed
to want what we most need.
It is the way of everything that lives
and it has worked
for more years than our counting minds can fathom.

Trust your truth!
It will grow ever clearer
as you lean into
the wind of your desire.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 23, 2013


Transformation

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In the chrysalis
there’s nothing to talk about —
nothing of the former experience
with any relevance
to the transformation at hand

Unless, of course, there is —
unless the subtle flavors
of all those different leaves
you munched voraciously
with no articulation as to why —
Will now reveal themselves to be
precisely what you needed,
as their gifts are taken in and reconfigured
in the life for which the caterpillar had no words
but maybe somehow craved.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2013


El Dorado Canyon

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I fall into this place,
into a space deeper than words,
deeper than names and concepts,
deep as the dark pink of these boulders,
fresh fallen, broken open,
deep as the cool shadows
holding out against the cooking climb of sun,
hidden as the paths of roots
buried by rockfall,
thrusting and exploring underground
like those that twist along the surface
before they dive in.

No words can reach here now,
in the sudden knowledge
that flows along contours
and reveals itself
in cracks along the fractured face of rock
and in the eager shining path of streams
and their cold like gold
against my bare feet.

Later I will surface
and try to capture it with words,
Like that stone underside captures
light ripples from the stream,
like those dragonfly wings shine
bright against the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 19, 2013


Circling the Wagons (a missive to myself)

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Come here. Close the door.
Hush. Listen:
If there’s a bad guy in your paradigm,
you’ve already lost.
Comb through the siftings of your mind:
What do you see?
A terrorist? an invasive weed?
A giant evil corporation?
A family member who’s unfair,
who fails to understand?

Come closer. Come deeper in:
There actually is a way to win.
Beyond the achy fog that forms
between your eyes, above your nose,
that drifts down in a drab gray mat
and settles in that sad place 
that affirms it is your starting point —
the place from where you have to rise and rally —

Beyond that place is where we need to go —
Where it is clear —
Where you can take hold of your deep truth
and know:
You don’t need to fight in that battle.
The paradigm that stages any bad guy
is the only bad guy.

You can win.
Your source is infinite,
your being vast.
You live where you are already the master:
nothing to fight,
Just everything true to stand up for.
Nothing to lose,
Just all of your substance to gain.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 17, 2013


Homecoming

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We all come around to the same thing —
Some through worship,
some through reckless living,
some through questing,
some through steady working.

At whatever place we put our efforts
We start to break in —
The walls of our illusion start to thin,
so we can glimpse the wideness of our being;
The floor of our confusion fades away
and shows the wondrous depth
to which we reach.

So we focus,
so we understand
the nature of eternal God within,
the sweet imperative of the I AM.
And everyone we thought was so impossibly diverse
We’ll see, now, with the welcome eyes of oneness,
And everyone we thought that we could never comprehend
We’ll see as neighbor, recognize as friend.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2013


Let Go

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Every child of Life
if free to move
will home unerringly —
some in a direct line,
some with wild and bouncing flailing,
ranging off in many far directions,
needing to stretch out, to try
the whole span of the force —
needing to feel the centering pull
assert itself against their surging motion.

Let them free —
They all will come home,
though you can’t know their course,
and maybe they won’t either.
The law that constitutes them,
the force that animates their core,
the Love that owns them
will guide their way.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2013


I wish I knew this twenty years ago (but maybe now will do)

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I can’t make anyone do anything
and there’s no reason to want to.
I can’t determine someone else’s quality
or what their proper course in life might be.

My best engagement is to watch in awe
and then join in,
my rhythm and my melody in harmony
with what another’s life is singing.

My best course is
to feel how life moves in me
and how it deftly guides my action,
and to be at one
with that bright, liquid essence
that always finds its perfect place.
This is the way I’ll give the blessing
I most need to give;
this is how I’ll find my promised grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 2, 2013


Wilderness

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Walking here
I have to admit
I don’t know anything —
Nothing I could package
and deliver as a
Thing That I Have Learned.
I have no map for myself —
No one’s words hover at my shoulder,
especially not my own —
no conclusion I can make,
no lesson I can take from here on forward.
In what way can I say I know anything,
of life, of love, of death?

Yet when I close my eyes
and follow my breath
into the undergrowth of dream,
I feel like a wilderness
and it feels good.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 30, 2013


Your mind is fine

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I invite you to consider:
If you ever felt stupid
because of something
you couldn’t grasp,
however often people hashed 
through explanations,
Perhaps you couldn’t get it
just because it made no sense,
and where you stood,
you couldn’t see 
the flattening
that lent a sense 
of contiguity,
or how others could think
that it was clear . . .

And even if
no words arose within
to clarify your reason for confusion,
it still revealed perception
of something left unheeded,
a missing piece of something
maybe you could sense was needed.
Your mind is fine
and it will guide you,
if you give it rein,
into your truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 22, 2013


The Tutelage of Life

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The garden and I
start to blur our edges
as I lend it my substance
and it feeds me:
Weeds become harvest,
Crucial factors, before inscrutable,
become apparent

From humility
arises mastery,
From tending ground
arises groundedness,
From placing myself here
in the tutelage of life,
I find my native stride,
I find my place.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 19, 2013