In the Crumbling Tower

It's been an astounding past few months after reading the Eckhart Tolle book, "A New Earth". Contrary to Oprah Winfrey's ecstatic, carefully screened guests, I've not "awakened" and found a beautiful, new world. Instead, my taste of enlightenment has left me in a wasteland of disintegrating ego, otherwise known as The Tower to those of you familiar with the tarot.

During one's time in The Tower, all that one holds dear loses its value, since it is fueled by egoic attachment. Much of what mattered becomes meaningless, and one loses the energy needed to push forward into the external world. Suddenly, a cave and a simple robe seem to be all that's worth shooting for.

However, far from being a wretched experience, The Tower can be very liberating. If you can be patient during your time there, if you can let go and allow the experience to take you over, if you can accept the destruction of the "you" that you thought you were, something beautiful will rise out of the ashes.

No teacher can give you clear directions along the path, since the one you carve is your own, but a good teacher will give you some pointers to keep you from getting completely lost. Adyashanti's "The End of Your World" picks up where Tolle's book ends. It answers the question: what happens after enlightenment? This is useful for all seekers who have had a taste of enlightenment, just enough to start the disintegration of the ego, but have not completed the process (which often takes many years - even lifetimes). Knowing that the apathy and discombobulation are a normal part of the experience is reassuring. It's useful, as long as one doesn't use it to prop up the tottering ego, but as encouragement to go deeper.

Bonita Summers, Poet

Part 2 of my reading at Chapters, April 2008.

Reading at Chapters in Kingston, Ontario for the Cooked and Eaten Poetry Marathon.

Therapeutic Touch and Poetry

Both TT and poetry are about the unseen, the nuances below the surface of things. Many of us are not gifted enough to see the human energy field; yet, we interact with it constantly - and can learn to do so deliberately for the greater good. Poetry illustrates the unseen connections the outer world has to our inner processes - the greater meanings we derive that are not always apparent.

There is a transfer of energy in spoken word. The audience receives the resonance of the poetry, and the poet receives a wave of acknowledgement from the audience.

In Therapeutic Touch - and other forms of energy medicine - there is a transmission that occurs between practitioner and receiver.

It may be that the most honest interactions we have are the ones that we acknowledge involve a transfer of energy between individuals. We are not islands unto ourselves. Our very thoughts have an effect on the people around us.

We can be beacons of light, spreading joy and awakening to others, or we can be black holes, sucking energy from people and surroundings. Most of the time, we are somewhere in between, pulling energy or pushing it.

To truly have world peace, we must become peaceful within ourselves, neither pushing nor pulling energy, but gently radiating out the light, sharing it with our fellow beings.

The Existential Garden Path

Meditation is like walking down a garden path. At first, the path barely exists, and it's easy to get lost among the trees or distracted by flowers and birds. On occasion, you get caught on the thorns and spend a great deal of time trying to extricate yourself from entanglements of the mind.

Eventually, with practice, the path is established through use. It becomes easier to find one's way to the source. There comes a time when moments after sitting, one drops into that sought after state, not because it is sought, but because it is there - awaiting your presence.

The effortless effort has occurred. What else is there to do, but be?

Poem for the Environment

Having moved to a waterfront community, this poem arises out of my concern for the environment and the damage we are doing to it.

Warning Sign

walking the beach
the dog’s paws glancing off
awkward rocks
coated in old effluent

the lake is rank today
like a toilet in a long-abandoned house
whose offal was never flushed away

the seagull, I understand
felled with a death’s necklace
of plastic links

the goose
desiccated corpse
still crowned with lively plumage

I do not want to know
its reason for weakness
for being too ill
to join its comrades
on the journey south

a desolate death
on a dying shore
serves as a warning

I take the dog to the grass
to get clean

Bonita Summers © 2007