Tag Archives: transformation

Walking Free

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There isn’t anything you need to do first.
You don’t have to pay a debt,
explain a misstep,
get somebody else to say they’re sorry

You don’t have to go down corridors
of what happened
or why you or someone else
made certain choices,
or what might have happened,
had you chosen different

And you don’t need to fix
a broken system, don’t need to
proclaim its flaws till someone maybe hears,
don’t need to suffer
to prove how wrong it is

The light of you doesn’t require
any of those fuels, nor can any of those things
obscure or snuff it.
You can walk free
in your divinity, your wholeness —
Look up, set your feet, and go.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 28, 2017

A New Start

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In that nightmare world
where we all are graded,
our actions weighed, our choices judged,
where all of us know painfully
we haven’t measured up
to something,
could have done better,
could do still, if only . . .

In that nightmare world, we think
we might feel better
if we’ve done better
than someone —
we think there’s comfort
in knowing that, at least,
we’re not the worst

But we are waking from that world
and look: no one has been any less
than perfect and essential,
no one has been any more than others,
and no one, even us,
has made a trail of sorry choices,
no one has earned misery or loathing

Whole cityscapes of regret
crumble away,
fall and dissolve,
leaving the shining truth
for us to live in.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 25, 2017

Waking

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Am I, even still, in deep dream?
Or am I slowly waking?
is it possible all this could be
just what it seems,
or are we long mistaken?

My fumbling hands try to determine
what is freedom here, and what is chains.
I find I’m bound by what I thought was comfort,
I find I’m freed by my internal reins

And what may seem a heaving shift of landscape
may be the rift of an illusive scene,
and what may seem a fearful theft of power
may lift us up to finer, lucid being —
to grasp and taste the source of true delight:
illumining the universe with light.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2017

New Growth

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As old containers fall away,
we each may find
we’re more cohesive
than we knew,
and now, no longer blocked off
from the places where
we always longed to grow,
we’ll send our shoots out
bold and green

We’ll be so much more wild and thick
than how we had been told
we had to be,
we’ll twine with others
who had been forbidden,
we’ll make a thicket, a collective tree

And we’ll hold ourselves together
not by rules and condemnation,
but by the gracious tendrils of our truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 5, 2017

Healing the Beast

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The beast, wounded,
snarls and snaps.

There is a correlation
between unhappiness
and being mean. The unhappy feel
their meanness is justified —
after all, if they aren’t happy,
why do they owe thoughtfulness
to others?

The beast must be captured
with cords of understanding,
wrapped in kindness
till it can’t lash out. Slowly, then,
we can start to heal those wounds
it has inflicted on itself

It may seem more natural
to try to punish it, for all the damage
of its many incarnations,
but that is what the beast would mandate

Let us then heal
the beast within ourselves,
that our hands may be free
to bind and heal the larger, outer beast.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2017

Daily Life

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Well, we want to just keep
living our lives,
but the problem is
a little more light
has made us lose the illusion,
and we can’t quite conjure it up

And what we thought were
the solid pillars upon which
our lives rested,
are not even there —
we’re still standing on something
but we don’t know what.

What we thought was true —
very little of it is still relevant
(this comes, we find,
as a relief in many ways)

And we realize we still want
to get on with learning and growing,
which will still be possible,
even if all the landmarks have changed.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 30, 2017

Deconstruction

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The whole story begins to rip
like a wet paper bag,
contents pushing through the corners

We have been so far
from where we belong,
so removed
from what we’re meant to be,
bundled away in this dark sack
wrapped up in our separate packages

But here’s the rain
and here’s a soggy mess,
and here in streaked glimpses
we see some light

We will get out of here somehow
and lift our faces to the rain
and sing and sing
and dance and dance.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 26, 2017

Simply

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sand-ripples

That which saves us
doesn’t need to overthrow anything —
it simply opens the inner
gates to infinity,
simply replaces the whole landscape
— all its former haunts of fear —
with something far more solid
than we’ve ever walked on,
each footprint now
flooding with light,
each footstep bringing new views

That which seemed to hold us
so firmly trapped,
we simply slip from
into a different frame,
a kinder set of causes
— no longer the indifferent laws
that don’t care how we fall —
Here our cause loves us
and arranges our safe landings
and our exhilarating flights.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 18, 2016

crow-tree

Coming Home

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tree-to-tree

With great relief, we set aside
the screen of judgment,
and with great awe
in that ungridded space,
we find the light emerging
from within us,
from within each other,
we find the bonding chords
to sing our unity

And we pass under,
the signal coming with us, tree to tree,
presenting presence, here and here and here
along the trail,
the bright reminder of this arc of circles,
connecting network spreading out
as far as we can think

This, now, is home,
the one we’ve always longed for,
this is what we own,
this is our sense of peace.
This is our home
we share with all that lives,
boundless embrace
which we never leave.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2016

How We Win

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seagull-at-carkeek

You never were
that lost and lonely soul
that fought back, kicking,
that raged and spat

You never were
that desperate, huddled one
that squeezed, eyes shut,
against a tiny crack,
too small to justify,
to big to hide

You’ve always been beloved,
you never needed to atone,
and all the demons
that wrought all kinds of havoc
in your name
must shrivel, powerless
before the truth that you can claim

This is how we win —
soul by soul, to patiently restore.
This is the beginning
to which we now return —
so let it stand,
so let us soar.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 6, 2016