Mana Youngbear as "White Tara" in Restoring the Balance (2004) |
SOUND POEM BY LAUREN RAINE (2019)
to listen:
https://soundcloud.com/user-972033003/white-tara-by-lauren-raine
White Tara is the manifestation of complete Compassion, She is the Bodlhissatva who will assist the suffering of the world, assist us to move through the suffering to love, and the reealization that we are not alone, that we all belong to the great Circle. Quon Yin, Tara, Mother Mary.............. all manifestations or archetypes of the Divine Mother, and the expansion of unconditional compassion and love. I wrote this spoken word poem in 1997, when I was going through loss of a home/dream/community that eventually led me to create a new life on the other side of the continent.
I reflect, as I try to recall the experience from which this poem arose, that the opening of the heart that grief and loss can bring can also be a path into profound evolutionary change, but in my experience, to grow one must first go through it, one must experience the pain and the loss.
Which is something very fearful to do, and can take a long time to do. Because the heart does not know or reason in sequential time like the intellect does! Having just lost a beloved cat, I am experiencing this right now. The emotional body, it seems to me, suffers all the losses at once as each loss arises. And the heart also partakes in a greater Mystery that somehow knows all beings are One, remembering all experiences of love and belonging within the Circle dance of life. Grief can be a great teacher.
"I went to meet that savage creature I have run from, lifetime after lifetime,
the shape within the shadows, huge, a creature of smoke and bared fangs. "
This line arose from a dream I had many times, in which I was being pursued by a vampire. Always it almost got me, or was a shadowy presence just behind me, and I would wake up. I suppose Jungians would call this the "denial of the shadow" or some such. I was always too afraid to confront the creature that pursued me in those dreams, because I was sure it would kill me. Finally I had a dream in which I became tired of running, and a I stopped to face the pursuing monster. And when, at last, the horror embraced me it turned into a young boy, vulnerable, with tears in his eyes.