Summer Solstice 2019

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

 

“Make of yourself a light,” 

said the Buddha,
before he died.

I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.

An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves. 
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something  of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~ Mary Oliver ~

I woke early, on this longest day:

the light rose among
 the green conversation 
of  trees, a fading star, exultant starlings,
  two grey squirrels 
performing their morning ritual

greeting the only God 
they know,

the Sun


Lauren Raine
6/2013 

Carolyn Myss and the Subject of Honor

"We seem to be having a crisis of honor............Lying and deceit dominate public politics and public life, business, academics, and even the arts.  As a result our children have virtually no valid role models on which to model their own sense of honor."

Carolyn Myss, Why People Don't Heal And How They Can (1997)

Medical intuitive Carolyn Myss is one of the new paradigm's most articulate healers.  She has commented in several of her books  that we are becoming a culture without honor, which she likens to lacking a spiritual "back bone".   Without a "back bone" to support us,   there is very little to keep us standing as a unified body.  Without a personal and social sense of honor, we are like people without a foundation, without the strength to be sustainable.  This applies to individuals, it applies to families, it applies to nations. 

Under Trump endless  lying, corruption, nepotism, blatant adulatory as well as reducing the humanity of women to "pussies", disregarding the urgent warnings of world scientists about climate change, disregarding the Constitution, removing any environmental protections, and last, caging and punishing the most vulnerable of people, refugees seeking asylum.............has become normalized.  I don't know how much farther the formerly united states of America can fall into DISHONOR.  Which is why, in my opinion, this country is not going to be able to continue as a nation much longer.  It no longer has the honor needed to sustain itself.

Remembering some of Carolyn Myss articles about the importance of a system of honor,  I'm taking the liberty of copying below from an article she wrote shortly after the deadly  Tsunami that struck Japan in March of 2011.  I think what she has to say is important. 

Reflections on the Power of Honor

by Caroline Myss on Thursday, March 17, 2011

An inspirational story from Japan is being shared,  from a sister in Sendai:

"If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come fill up their jugs. I come back to my shack and I find food and water left in my entrance. There has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open. People say, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."

This small story is touching the hearts of thousands of people. Today on a conference call, someone read this story to an entire group of people, then added, "What an example of love and compassion."  She was mistaken. Such actions are not just motivated by love and compassion. The absence of looting is not the result of love and compassion. Nor is the choice to stand in line patiently, waiting your turn. This is the result of having a deeply rooted sense of honor. The choice to not steal from a person who has already lost nearly everything in a catastrophe comes from realizing that such an act is the ultimate dishonorable choice.  The Japanese come from a society rooted in a long running code of honor, of not losing face.  Nothing would be more dishonorable to a Japanese person than to steal from another person who has lost home, business, or family, much less much of the nation they share.
An honor code is power - period. And we are witnessing that power holding the social fabric of Japan together.

In schools in the United States, words such as "morality" and "ethics", much less "honor" are practically banned. Fundamentalists and other such lunatic extremists consider those subjects "religious".  The result of listening to what in fact are the politics of these people has been, ironically, morally devastating to the generations that have since followed the ruling that banned the use of these words or courses involving discussions of that subject matter. Who now can speak about the importance of refining a personal honor code or the importance of studying ethics or learning how to navigate one's way through a moral crisis?

The lack of instruction of such essential soul knowledge is now evident in that we rely upon law suits to fill in the absence of honor. We just assume the lack of honor in another person, considering it foolish to do business without a contract or a lawyer. Even if we know them, when it comes to business - well, you just can't be sure honor stretches into that area of a person's character. Right? I mean, come on. Why? Because the other person might just lack a sense of honor - you just can't be sure these days. Why take a chance?Never mind refining our personal sense of honor. We would rather have our sights locked onto to the other person's lack of honor and that's that.

 The truth is we have become an obsessively litigious society precisely because we are no longer an honorable one. Or, as Benjamin Franklin would say, we are people without virtue. Trusting another, doing business with a handshake, honoring one's word - why, that's just considered old world. Who keeps their word these days?

We don't respect this entire spiritual wisdom to either demand it be taught in our schools - and NOT as a religious topic but as a HUMAN ESSENTIAL - or to insure that such sacred knowledge is passed within the home.  The handing down of a personal honor code is not a weekend course. It is taught through the example of an elder, a parent. Children inherently look for that instruction. They have a yearning to be schooled in honor because it requires something of them. It demands that they rise up to a certain standard of self-respect and from this standard, self-esteem awakens.

As I write this, memories of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina are flowing through my mind. Vividly I recall that the National Guard was called out immediately due to looting while streets were still soaked with water.  Rescue teams poured into the sea of confusion (no pun intended) while the chaos grew exponentially by the hour. Unlike Japan, panic, anger, and outrage soon followed.  FEMA was more than disorganized and unprepared, as people were ushered into a stadium. But my purpose is not to recall those familiar details. Rather, details of how we responded under crisis versus how the Japanese are now responding strike me as worthy of note............The people of New Orleans were told that the levees would hold back the water. As a result the much needed funds to repair them were denied. Structural engineers warned authorities that the walls were in desperate need of repair. but politicians and authorities did nothing about it.

Consider:   would we consider our politicians honorable individuals? Is this an assumption that most Americans make about their "elected leaders"?  Do we really believe many of them are even capable of telling the truth?  We now assume we are lied to in this country far more than we assume we are spoken to with respect, which is to say, told the truth.  And that is worth truly thinking about.

 We are treated with dishonor and we accept it as normal. How incredible is that?  Is it any wonder then that the Earth is so dishonored or nature or that endless policy decisions are made that lack any sense of honor or evidence of human dignity?
 
Living an honorable life comes at a cost. You have to be willing to stand for something, for values that mean something to people other than yourself. Your values have to make a difference in the world. They have to count, especially in a crisis or when the outcome of your choices - your word - matters to the lives of others.

Dishonorable people could care less about whether safety standards are actually met in nuclear plants or coal mines or in air traffic control towers.  Their interest is the corporate bottom line - profits. Never mind if the "losses" are human beings.  But the power of honorable people committed to making a difference in the world actually have the power to make a difference.

Consider that one paragraph from the woman from Sendai, writing about how the people of Japan are sharing everything in this time of crisis. Her words are piercing the hearts of thousands because they are true. They make each of us want to share, to keep our doors open, to be gracious, generous - to be honorable down to our souls.  That's the power of one person. I look at the people of Japan with prayers in my heart and gratitude for the example of an extraordinary people who have entered into the beginning of their dark night. I know ours is coming. I pray we learn from their example.

Caroline Myss, 2011

Fire Art..............

Going through my old files, I seem to have done quite a few paintings over the years about............Fire!  These are all paintings I really have never shown, most them lost by now as well.  Most of them were done in the month I was at the Cummington Community, in western Massachusetts, for a month, my very first artist's colony residency.  That was 1989, and it was such a magical month, the images just poured out of me, each morning I woke up with another one of them.  I believe they were about..........transformation, transformation of consciousness, of communion, of form, the element of fire representing all of those things.   Some of them seem strange to me now, clumsey, some of them I still like.  I don't really know what to say about them now, except that I wanted to just share them, finally, after all these years.    

Carlsbad Botanical Gardens.........

"Dragon Tree Deva" (2014)

The Botanical Garden at Carlsbad

Where I found, some 5 years ago, some  very sexy flowers, Agaves with Attitude, and quite a few exotic Devas of the Garden........... 

No matter how I wish, I find I just can't write lately.  No new revelations come, other than it is so very important to notice the Beauty.  With a capital "B".   So my  mind, keeps going backwards.  I visited the Botanical Garden with my friend Joanna Brouk, and made these photos for her.  Joanna and I went to Berkeley together, and she was a poet, a novelist, and best known as an early, and influencial, composer of synthesizer music. So much of her music came from the magical beings she sensed in nature, the Undines and the Dryads.   She died  suddenly in 2016, and I so often find myself missing her.  As I approach my 7th decade, so much memory, and a lot of loneliness and loss  too.  Here is for Joanna, once again.

The Night Blooming Cereus and Other Miraculous Events

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

Denise Levertov

Here is one of the loveliest milagros  of the desert, the  Night Blooming Cereus (which you can get a picture of if you get up really early in the morning, before the flowers close as the heat of the day advances).  This cactus only blooms for one night, opening after the sun goes down.   It is pollinated by moths, another resident of the night world of the Sonoran Desert summer.

I seem to write about this every June that I find myself here, in Tucson, where I live.  Because the event never seems to become something one gets used to or takes for granted.

I like to think of this extravagant generosity on the part of the Cactus Deva as being made to be seen with "night vision", because truly, they are "flowers of the moon", belonging to a different and less visible world.   There are miracles going on in your own backyard, all the time, astonishing events of beauty, cooperation, generosity, procreation, and hope.  That's what gardens teach me...........

Kali Ma and the Dark Goddess

"Mask for Kali" (2014)

Here is the Kali mask currently in my show at Arise Gallery in San Francisco...... the mask was also used at the Parliament of World Religions in 2015 by Macha NightMare and colleagues.  I think often of Kali, of being in the time of "Kali Yuga", according to the Hindu great calendar.   Kali Ma is greatly revered by millions of Hindus, but as a religious figure she is very hard for westerners, with our dualistic religious systems, to understand.  So I thought I'd share this article, along with an interview I did with Drissana Devananda, a friend in the Bay Area who has danced with the Kali mask, and with fire.  I find her wise words always important.

Kali is the Dark Goddess of  India, in Tibet manifesting as Black Tara, as far away as Bali manifesting as Rangda.  She may also be related through the migrations of the Indo-Europeans to the Caillech of Scotland.  Her origins are ancient indeed, going far back into pre-history. 

She is beloved Mother, the last resort Savior, and She is also  terrifying,  a personification of the  transformative powers of the Three-fold Mother Goddess  as destroyer and changer.   The Goddess as three-fold (as Maiden (birth), Mother (sustainer), and Crone (destroyer)) is an ancient symbol of the ever changing processes of life.....the Trinity is probably Indo-European in origin, and is found in the  Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva trinity, and I believe was also co-opted in early Christianity as the Father/Son/Holy Ghost Trinity as well, as this "power of Three" would have been very prevalent in pagan Europe.   

Kali's tale begins when the Hindu Gods could not defeat a plague of demons that were destroying the Earth.  They called at last upon Durga, who manifested the fierce Kali.  It was Kali who destroyed the demons - but in her ecstasy, she could not be stopped, and so the Gods were forced to call upon her Consort, Lord Shiva, to enter the battlefield to stop her.  He lay down before her,  and when she stepped upon his body, Kali at last stopped and ceased her blood lust.

Kālī  means "black, dark coloured", and is also drawn from the Sanskrit word for  time.  Kāla primarily means "time" but also means "black" in honor of being the first creation before light - the "black matter/Mater" from which all is born. 

Severed heads adorn Her necklace, Her skin is black as night, and Her tongue protrudes from Her  face with the lust of battle, as well as the immense laughter of Kali, destroyer of illusion, who sees beyond all appearances. Kali's dance is the destruction that must occur for each new beginning, the ending cycle that begins a new cycle as well. Kali's love is tough love; yet the dancing feet and the flaming sword of Kali are among the most powerful expressions of Divine Love.

Here, in the dance of Kali, is found the necessary destruction of that which has become corrupt, rotten, that whose time has come to end, just as the forest must burn for the new trees to arise.  But interestingly, within this imagery there is also often a Tantric meaning,  the arising of the power of Kundalini, symbolized by the erect penis of Shiva, the Eros that is the vitality of creation, the new seed.

"Kālī means "the black one" and refers to her being the entity of "time" or "beyond time." Kāli is strongly associated with Shiva, and Shaivas derive the masculine Kāla (an epithet of Shiva) to come from her feminine name. A nineteenth-century Sanskrit dictionary, the Shabdakalpadrum, states: कालः शिवः । तस्य पत्नीति - काली । kālaḥ śivaḥ । tasya patnīti kālī - "Shiva is Kāla, thus, his consort is Kāli" referring to Devi Parvathi being a manifestation of Devi MahaKali.  Other names include Kālarātri ("black night"), as described above, and Kālikā ("relating to time"). Kāli's association with darkness stands in contrast to her consort, Shiva, who manifested after her in creation, and who symbolises the rest of creation after Time is created. "

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali

KALI
by Lauren Raine

Once upon a time,

The world became overpopulated by demons

They filled the world with their insatiable greed

and reproduced themselves endlessly

They ate the light of day,
They soiled the air

They consumed the trees, 
They swallowed the waters

They devoured the lands with insatiable greed.

Eating, eating eating!  Fill me!

Until there were no more things of beauty made

or new dreams dreamed
or children born.

The Gods called to Me,
The unborn ones called to Me.

The time had come 
to say Enough.  And.....NO MORE!

I am the Goddess of  No More!

I, I am the one who devours....fool!
I, I am the shadow,
the flame,  the dancing feet
of all those whose lives are wasted
by the demons of greed and arrogance

I....I  am the Mother
of those who are yet to come!

Jai Ma, Kali Ma! 

Kali Yantra

KALI
by Drissana Devananda

I wanted to create a performance for Kali. As I drove to the event, I brought a costume, and a live snake with me, thinking the snake represented the serpentine energy of the kundalini. I had a sense of what to do, but I didn't have a script, a plan. 

When I went on stage, and I took a newspaper, and acted as if I was reading a paper.   I just let the mundane despair come out. "I can't stand it!" I said, and then I turned my back to the audience, just breathing, and whispered, "When I meditate, sometimes I become a Goddess......." 

Then I put on the mask. And a hot, hot energy seemed to rip through me. I turned around, faced the audience, and words just fell out of my mouth.

As I picked up the snake, I remember saying, "This is the Kundalini, this is the serpent." I spoke about how we channel that enormous energy into sexuality, but we don't understand that it can rise further into our hearts, our vision centers, infusing our entire being. All of this was spontaneous! I genuinely can't say it was I, Drissana, who did it. When I went into the dressing room later, I was shaking. It was as if Kali had left, and I was just this small, exhausted person, who for a moment had been inhabited by that ferocious intelligence.

Kali is the surgeon. She cuts away what has to go. I ask for that quality when I have to cut something out of my life; an addiction, or a relationship that no longer is about growth. And I ask it be done precisely, this cutting away of dis-ease, malignancy, the aspects that no longer serve. Kali was the last resort savior. When the Gods couldn't kill the demonic forces that ravaged the Earth, they called on a woman's wrath.

We all have the ability to call the Goddesses into ourselves. I can do this in my dance, but in everyday life it's more difficult. That's why I thrive on performance, because I can freely let those forces work through me. What I forget is that we can call on them at other times. We've forgotten that the Goddess dwells within us, all the time, and not just when we wear a mask, or are in workshop, or a ritual. We are, in Tantric terms, extensions or emanations of the Gods and Goddesses - we are their material aspects. We're not bodies that are seeking the spirit, we're spirits that are seeking bodily experiences.

Remembering is a devotional practice. In the Hindu tradition, everyone has a deity they focus on as their personal deity. In the West, as we begin to reclaim the Goddess for spiritual practice, we each need to create a relationship with the Goddess form we have chosen, in order to manifest what we need for spiritual and emotional growth, to invoke the help we need. That practice is not just cerebral. We function out of our whole self, our bodies and spirits. The body-mind. That is where we re-member, we communicate with the Goddess within ourselves.

Women need to become angry. Now. About the women of Afghanistan, the meaningless wars, the destruction of our environment. The demons of insatiable lust are devouring our planet. Those souls who await the future are being denied their birthright. Kali is the catalyst for saying "No more". She's the voice of women whose voices aren't being heard, women who need to open their mouths and speak for the first time. 

It's time to embrace the sword of Kali and start cutting away the delusions that are destroying our world. This is the ferocious mother who says "get away from my children, or I'll kill you."

Mothers today aren't saying that. They're giving their children away. Giving them away to war, giving them away by allowing our environment to be depleted, giving permission to the powers that be to destroy their future. 

This is the dance of Kali. (2001)

Below are two of  the "spirit photos" from a 2004 ritual theatre performance called "Restoring the Balance". I always felt very blessed, or affirmed, in these surprising photos, which I shared with the cast, although not with others after a while, realizing that many people did not believe they were "real".   Quynn Elizabeth, a Shamanic practitioner in Tucson, invoked and performed with the Kali mask - and amazingly, these goat-like images appeared in three  photographs from that segment of the event.  Later we learned that in India goats have been sacrificed to Kali - something we did not know. Below is seen the back of Quynn's head, and appearing behind her is a kind of figure eight or infinity symbol, and the "goat".   Perhaps, the meaning of this phenomenon, is that Spirit was providing a symbolic "sacrifice" for our dance........ 

From "Restoring the Balance" (2004).  Photo courtesy Ann Beam.

Closing Exhibit of Masks of the Goddess, and New Revised "Masks of the Goddess" Book

In May I will be concluding the 20 year MASKS OF THE GODDESS PROJECT, which began as an Invocation to the Goddess at Reclaiming's 20th Annual Spiral Dance in San Francisco in 1999.  I have been so privileged to collaborate with Priestesses, Playwrights, Dancers, Ritualists, Community Organizers, Photographers, Artists, Photographers, Choreographers, Writers, Singers, and Psychologists in sharing the stories and  "Faces of the Goddess".  So many from around the country participated in the Project - please know that your spirit and contribution will be there, in every mask and photograph.   

The Opening will be May 5th, and I'll give a small slide presentation, and afterwards I'm delighted that there will several performances, including Evelie Delfino Sales Posch to sing her beautiful songs, and mask wearers Drissana and Vibra to invoke the Goddesses.  Perhaps we'll see you there!

I have also just revised and added a great deal of new material to my book 
"The Masks of the Goddess", which is available at  Blurb.com.
 You can turn pages in a "Preview" at this link:
 http://www.blurb.com/b/9380795-the-masks-of-the-goddess

Thank you once again for sharing your creativity and love of the Goddess with so many, and especially, with me.  May the Masks  continue their work. 

Lauren 
www.masksofthegoddess.com
www.laurenraine.com