Tag Archives: philosophy

Whether

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One world separates from another
along the subtle lines
of cause and effect.
They have coincided in thought
for a long time, and now the severance
brings astonishment

It comes down to
whether what you want
can be held hostage
to what somebody else
wants you to do,
and if it is believed
you have to pay your dues in suffering
to earn your worth for all the good you crave

Or whether you are free
to be the good you sense you are,
with no kowtow to any preconditions,
whether you must wait before you love
or whether you love first, and win the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 20, 2017

Morning Chat

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with the (virtual) biking philosophers

Maybe nothing changes but your story,
maybe your story changes everything.
Perhaps your being is as vast as mind
and what you see as change
is just a different way of viewing it

Life, after all, is not random —
it persists at being life
in every venue where it finds itself —
everything it’s dealt
becomes its opportunity
to grow, to live, to rise, to be transformed

So through its changes
it remains the same,
although its sense of being is forever new,
and that explains both progress
and immutability
throughout the days of folks like me and you.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2017

Otherworlding

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Well, I suppose we all
live in different worlds
and intersect each other
tenuously, along the meanings
of words and gestures
and a set of frames
we each call every day

And only in haphazard ways
sustain the prevalent illusion
of having a shared world
and similar perceptions

And so it’s not so strange, perhaps
to see the old man otherworlding,
slouching and nodding, sleeping in his chair,
and waking, seeming that he doesn’t see us,
or making statements
from some other when and where

I guess we choose our levels
of intersection, how much we work
on depth in our connections,
how much we try to reconcile
what others see with that which we perceive

Perhaps he’s tired of working at it
(and also never really tried)
and now he simply drifts,
or else he chose to leave.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2017

Today’s Metaphysics

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lower pasture, spring morning

That which is everywhere
can’t be pushed around,
can’t be forced, can’t be withheld,
can’t be transferred, transmitted or dispensed

That which is everything
can’t be squeezed, or thinned out,
or distorted, can’t be deficient,
can’t be subjugated

That which we are
must exist in the context
of what is everywhere and everything,
forever whole, forever shining bright,
immutable and sovereign as light.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 22, 2016

Time and Being

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bike trail sun and shadows

Everything you are, you’ve always been —
We see you through the course of time
to help us understand

The fullness of your being
is more than we’re equipped
to take in at a single view

We see the infant, and the youth,
and what we call the arc of your progression
as if each were the only you extant

Whereas, in fact, your being is
the whole of them, and more —
a thing we’d know if we saw more dimensions

We see us through the course of time
and still don’t understand — our view of life is just a scan
across the field of what we’ve always been

And nothing’s lost —
no radiance can fail to show or cease to shine,
and all we are is here for us to be.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2016

Choice

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misty trees

Whether or not you get to choose what happens,
you always have the choice
how you feel about it. Not to recommend
some sort of tortured mind game,
a mental strong-arming,
a set of taut constructs

But you have the choice
to stop and look,
you have the choice to not
go down the cataract
with all your wild emotions,
you have the choice to stand there
in the tumble of them
and wait

And you have the choice
to stand still
and let the pool of you
fill with your essence,
and you can use that —
all that overflowing light —
to find your way out.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 13, 2016

A Page, A Light

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magnolia blossoms

Though I have thought myself a figure
(as scribbled on a page)
in fact, I am the page,
and all that’s there
belongs to me —
the scribbles and the story,
and especially
the luminescence rising up behind them
whereby it can be seen that they are there

And though my body
and what I’ve called my mind
have craved to own
just a little more
of that resplendent light,
in fact, the light is me
so I can have it
with no further regimen
of self improvement

Indeed, there is no need
to look to those dark marks
for understanding and acceptance —
I can form them
as part of my expression,
but they don’t form me or contain me

I am so much bigger —
a page to tell the truth,
a light in clear reflection of its source.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2016

Testing

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greenlake fig

The testing is entirely internal,
though I may see it
as challenges inflicted from outside,
and that which tests me
is no external judge
but just the propositions of my mind

They hold themselves up to the light
to test for truth, for purity, transparency,
and if they have a splotch or fracture,
I’ll see that flaw projected
on what my consciousness
calls my experience

Then I can choose what I believe —
the trueness of the universe
or the refraction
imposed upon my vision of my life

And what I call reality
will then determine
if I spin out and flail
against the sadnesses and failures,
or take a stand for Life’s integrity.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 1, 2016

Wishes

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frosty grasses

If I revisit
the childhood conversation
about wishes granted,
here’s what I’ve decided I’d request:

Not things I could predict,
but freshness in my days —
yes, I’d ask to be amazed,
to have my sense of everything
frequently upended,
but with the caveat
that everything be good.

It’s not too much to ask,
since good is, after all,
the one enduring fact,
the essence from which
each entity unfolds,
to which it ever yearns

Good is the kernel
of every sorry effort
and every noble gesture.
Good, on further thought,
doesn’t even need wishes.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 26, 2016

Sovereignty

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Carkeek reflections(or how to heal the world)

There is no grid of time or space
through which we move,
tracked along the x axis
through the highs and lows
of daily random y’s

These lines bend at our will,
we hold them, gathered,
in our hands,
we roll them out
through all the planes of consciousness —
they move at our command

We are not in the world, rather,
the world is in us,
so in the steadying of ourselves,
we steady it —
we calm it, reassure it, and set it
gently on its course.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2016