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Money, Money, Money

4/19/2023

 
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One of my earliest memories is of me 4 or 5 years old sitting on my father’s knee while I sang along to an ABBA song “Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man's world.” This memory came to mind recently after a mentor encouraged me to reflect on my beliefs and conditioning around money in this life. The ABBA lyrics begin “I work all night I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay.”

Like many of you, I imagine, I have lived month to month for most of my adult life. Although earning just enough to cover the month’s bills hasn’t felt like being rich, there’s no doubt that globally speaking I’m living in the rich man’s world. Over 70% of human beings on this planet still live on less than $10 a day. And even here in California, in the richest nation on earth, anyone can see the tragic increase in numbers of extreme poor and homeless.

At the age of 20, I went to study with meditation masters in India and stayed for a year and a half on $1000 by living at street level rather than being on the tourist track. Surrounded by families living in abject poverty, I often found myself wondering if I should just take the remaining dollars out of my pocket and set one of them up with a street food cart that could provide a livelihood for them and their children. I knew I’d be fine if I ran out of money and had to leave India, while a family in poverty could have the trajectory of their lives forever changed by a simple act of kindness. And yet…it never felt true to do it. Somehow I determined it was OK for me to keep most of the money for myself to stay because I believed my spiritual training was sincere and could ultimately give back to others. I was never sure if that was clear listening on my part or just a story that helped me feel ok to do what I wanted to do.

Ghandi famously once said that “the world has enough for everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed.” Evidence of this is all around: roughly 40% of all food in the US is wasted and ends up in landfills, and yet almost a billion people in the world go hungry. All around we bear witness to the impact on our planet and her creatures of a feeding frenzy of over-consumption.

Viewed through the lens of social equity and the state of the earth it’s possible that many of my seemingly reasonable lifestyle choices are greedy. While I like to think I use my energy to support many benevolent pathways forward for humanity and the earth, I notice how deeply woven into the problem I am. Maybe we’re so far off course in terms of right relationship with the earth that this is true for all or most of us living a modern life, embedded as we all are in ways of being that have colossal downsides for planetary health.

During my 20s I didn’t own a car, was vegetarian and then vegan, and refused to buy clothes unless they were used or organic cotton or hemp. By my mid 20s I was feeling distrustful of a flavor of disassociation and spiritual bypass I witnessed in myself and many others on the serious meditation path. Given what seemed to me to be the immediate 3D need to turn things around on this planet, I pivoted from my training and instead dedicated my energies as an activist for social justice and the earth. I was inspired by leaders like Joanna Macey who taught that “the relationship between self and world is reciprocal, it is not a matter of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the Earth, the Earth heals us. No need to wait. As we care enough to take risks, we loosen the grip of ego and begin to come home to our true nature.”

Almost all of my work for over a decade was unpaid and I lived on donations from individuals and non-profits that believed in what I was doing. I barely thought about money but stayed focused on my task and somehow always seemed to have just enough. That was how it was for me until my early 30s. As long as I was showing up for life, I found that life seemed to support me, one step at a time.

The thing is, when I believed I was more righteous I was often also more of an asshole. Thinking that everyone around me should do x, y or z (urgently) sometimes made me a bit of a nightmare in terms of how I showed up in human relationships. And there was a deep shadow that lived in me amidst the distress of perceiving modern humanity as having largely become a parasitic force on the earth. It amplified a wound of never being enough, never being good enough, being fundamentally wrong. That belief ended up inevitably manifesting a lot of relational distress. As I look back on those times, I see how deep my agony was, and how out of balance I was. I scoffed at the idea of having a life outside of my activism and I did the exact same thing I accused capitalism of doing, I mined and depleted my deep resources and burned myself out.

At the heart of it all, I was still dealing with the impact of my early years of Christian conditioning. I remember asking someone about hell when I was about five years old and being told that the soul was like a white plate and every time you sinned it placed a black mark on it. If the plate got covered in black marks from bad deeds then you went to hell. That was a really scary thought.

I was sent to an all-boys Christian boarding school in England at the age of 7, and there I attempted to make sense of the trauma of being separated from home. In the absence of anyone there to relate with about my inner world, and no-one to bring my emotional need to, I leant heavily on an internal relationship with my childish imagination of God. Some of this really seemed to help, and felt true and nourishing. Much of it was profoundly confused, conditioned as it was by patriarchal colonizer heaven-over-earth religious thinking, in which the tender animal feeling nature of our sensitivity was to be conquered and dominated, all in the name of goodness. Even at that age the martyr archetype seemed like a thing to aspire to, a vision of ultimate selflessness.

I learned as best I could how to disregard my need, and I remember coaching my younger brother Tom how to do the same when he was sent to the school two years later. The headmaster called me into his office because my brother had spent most of his first week crying. “Luke could you speak to your brother please? He needs to pull himself together.” I found Tom later that day after dinner and stepped outside with him. I looked in his eyes and with all the authority of a 9 year old elder brother with two years of boarding school under my belt told him “You just can’t feel those things here.”

Even now, after thirty years of therapy and indigenous medicine work, I can find myself surprised by how deep that early conditioning runs, and how much weight it still has in the psyche. How do I trust the listening place, the discernment between need and greed when there has been so much confusion around the essential worthiness of healthy need itself? This inquiry is made even more complicated by the fact that we really are living in a time where the stakes of our relationship to this question of need versus greed are indescribably high – as individuals and as a society. We live in a time when greed and the apparent freedom to do whatever we think we want is celebrated and glorified as emblematic of what it means to ‘be in our power’ or to have ‘succeeded.’ And we live in a time when more than one in four species on the earth are threatened with extinction, and animal populations worldwide have declined by 70% over the last 50 years, largely due to the excesses of human consumption.

As I continue in my contemplation around money, I’m not sure that I’m supposed to have an easy answer for the distinction between need and greed, especially in these times that we are living in. I sense it’s possible that this inquiry is better held like one of the koans I was trained with by my zen teachers back in the day, an inquiry to hold close in all its discomfort, to live into, not giving into the temptation of a premature answer from the mind… an inquiry to sit with like a seed and allow to incubate in the darkness of unknowing, to sprout in its own time an organic wisdom that responds in each moment according to its need. Perhaps this is how healthy need is revealed? Not as a preconception, but as a living moment, a listening responsiveness.

I wonder if we sometimes unconsciously limit our expression of power in the world until we have developed enough integrity to trust ourselves. I think I have done this in the past, including with money. It’s possible my distress about the shadow of money is part of why I have so often only managed to earn enough to keep my life afloat month to month, no matter how successful my work has been. Maybe a familiar pattern of running on fumes once a month and only just making it by the skin of my teeth financially, as uncomfortable as it has been, has actually been unconsciously attractive to me because it has helped me to feel OK about all my privilege, and facilitated some kind of uneasy truce with an inner voice of judgment.

Even as I acknowledge this, however, I notice I no longer feel the draw. I find myself in a different chapter of life now than the younger man who could walk the tightrope with an empty wallet trusting that the next moment will take care of itself. It’s not that I judge the faith and trust place, that is welcome to stay. While I appreciate the beauty of the “as long as I’m doing good work then life will show up to support me” operating system I inhabited for so long, it feels like a stage of development, and no longer feels like a mature relationship with creative agency.

My current life is filled with many layers of responsibilities to be in right relation to – responsibilities to land, home, family, and a community of people and visions that I’m in service to. I choose to bring through healing and beauty into this world, and I choose to do that in a way that is grounded, sustainable and impactful. This is clear to me, and it has been calling me into an evolution in my relationship with worth and resource.

The shadow of money is all around, with an almost infinite variety of potential ways to be caught up in greed and perpetuate systems of oppression. But of course that’s not all that money is. Money can also be an expression of benevolent creative power aligned with discerning intelligence. Having money sustains my life force, enables me to give, and to have meaningful and deep impact in ways that matter. Having more money coming from one direction in my work enables me to offer more scholarships in another. Money can be placed in service to health, in service to earth, and in service to balance. Money can protect ways of being that need to be protected. Money can change things that need to be changed.

In my experience, learning to trust myself has been a long journey, and has not come from any grand victory over my shadow, but rather from the willingness to know myself all the way through. This has included bringing trustworthy people into my reality with different perspectives to give me feedback and help me examine places I have been blind. Learning to trust myself has included exploring my cultural and personal conditioning and how it lives within me.

Learning to trust myself has included a willingness to drop beneath all stories of self and look out at the world as the no-thing of pure potential, realizing myself as one essence that appears as sun and moon, trees and worms, joy and pain, temples and battlefields, realizing that I am not separate from my neighbors, from the oceans and the deserts, from the creative intelligence that moves earth and sky. Learning to trust myself has required acknowledging that any of the horror and ignorance I bear witness to on the so-called outside also lives within me as a potential expression. Whether I channel my life force toward good or ill is a moment-to-moment reckoning that calls me into deeper awareness and alignment with the living choice to be love.

At a time when so much in human society and the earth is in deep peril, I choose to place all the energies of my life, including money, in service to the weaving of the good dream for our world. I believe that this choosing is an act of creation that belongs to each one of us, each moment of our lives, and the dreaming into being of a just, harmonious, loving world is our collective opportunity. I don’t believe it requires our perfection or purity for us to learn to serve and cooperate with the incoming tide of this evolutionary momentum. I believe what is required is that we open our eyes and ears, turn for direction to the wild, clear and vital, and stay close to the sincerity of our deepest heart's yearning. I believe wealth is ultimately defined by what we share.

~~Luke Anderson

Doubt your Doubt

12/31/2022

 
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Doubt your doubt.
Be kind to yourself,
for all our sake.

Doubt the evidence you use to prove
that fear rules the day
and all is lost.


Doubt the voice that says
you’ll never make it,
never have,
the voice that says
you don’t belong,
never did.


Doubt the voice that says
insanity has the power.


These lies live on borrowed time.
They need your daily consent
to keep you captive.
They need your invitation
to occupy your mind and sight.
They need your confusion
to have you believe that you are weak and afraid.


Wake up love!

OK, so you’ve been fooled,
just like the rest of us.
You are also just as worthy as any of us,
just as capable to serve the vast intelligence
and infinite potential of creation,
just as ready to discover this majesty as your true self,
even as you are simultaneously humbled to the core.


Every exhalation
a chance to surrender and release.
Every in breath
an opportunity to open wider.

Fear not, your roots will find their way
to the native trust
that fills every particle
of our one, huge, quiet heart.

Look out at the world from this place
and then tell us what you see.



~Luke Anderson



Sing the circle open wider

8/25/2021

 
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When did the violence start
Who knows who knows
But I know I’ve been a part
The line between good and evil
runs through every heart
Recognize where harm it lies
and listen for the path

Steady as the mountain
willing as the water
forged inside the fire
sing the circle open wider

Ancestor’s swinging swords
carved a river of wounds
and all the love they ever shared
lives now as me and you
How many generations
cut from the ground
Trauma tangled tight amidst the strength
and handed down

So now we meet the tending
of the grieving mending shrine
slow ourselves and feel
until what’s bloody turns to wine
Digging vessels deeper
til the golden thread is found
weave this world a tapestry
with belonging as our sound

Steady as the mountain
willing as the water
forged inside the fire
sing the circle open wider

~~Luke Anderson

Feel it all the way

3/2/2021

 
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Come closer in to the broken heart,
it is love still.
Come closer in to the burning fire,
it is love still.
Belonging means being right where we are
as we're falling.
Life lifts us up and breaks us apart,
it is love still.

Feel it all the way,
let the moment have you.
Stay with yourself don't turn away,
Let the moment have you.
Feel it all the way,
let the moment have you.
Be with yourself don't turn away,
Let the moment have you.

Come closer in to the broken heart,
it is love still.
Come closer in to the burning fire,
it is love still.
Belonging means being right where we are
as we're falling.
Life lifts us up and breaks us apart,
it is love still.

Drop deep darker down the well,
we're not just here to fly
include all the ones you shut outside
the ones in denial and the ones who hide.

Feel it all the way,
let the moment have you.
Stay with yourself don't turn away,
Let the moment have you.
Feel it all the way,
let the moment have you.
Be with yourself don't turn away,
Let the moment have you.



~~Luke Anderson

Resolve

5/3/2018

 
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If life has space for this moment,
then so do you.

If life has already accepted
this moment,
then so have you.

If life is still creating anew,
responding anew,
then so can you.

There is no gap in truth
between life’s capacity
and your own,
fed as we are
by the umbilical cord
tap root
stillness heart
mother of all the worlds.

Everything needed to
love what is in front of you,
behind you,
all around and inside of you,
is right here,
freely given,
exactly as and where
and how and who you are.

Lean in to this life
with radical trust.
Your precise shape
is your simple purpose here.

Set your sight on the invisible tip
of growth’s arrow
and choose alignment
with the visionary streaming,
real world weaving,
of the one eye
intelligence,
awakening.

Our joy in resolve,
a core surrender
in freedom and discipline,
every cell,
every faculty,
willing channels
for the burgeoning momentum
of benevolence in all directions.



~~Luke Anderson

Fertility

5/3/2018

 
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The heart is not a fragile thing
to hide away from this world.

Such a cost in bracing ourselves
against our experience,
keeping our heads
above the surface,
wondering why the desert
comes closer.

Much safer to strip naked,
break into a thousand pieces,
and discover what it is that
we are truly held by.

Grieve well to end the drought.

Water the fields
of all our relations
with these tears,
soften the hardened arteries
of empathic intelligence,
and here
where our rivers converge,
remember our pain is shared.

If you find yourself
in grief’s grey wasteland,
ignore the call to set up home
amidst the bitterness
and half measures,
keep on moving
toward the sword
that would pierce
your whole heart.

Grief unresisted
opens the chest,
til there’s no holding back
the treasure,
the clarity born
of what it is
that truly matters.

All the love we ever knew,
shared,
or even dreamed of,
was never lost.

It is right here now,
overflowing,
seeds to be planted
in the dark soil
at the center of our lives,
made fertile
by our willingness
to honor all that we grieve,
by never taking
this moment for granted.




~~Luke Anderson

Relax Into The Release

1/26/2018

 
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Unbuckle those knuckles
and open to the free fall.
In the grip
of what we think we know
we miss the whole picture.

Unburden us.
We've attended so long
to the madness,
faithful servant
to the map
that held us tight.

Always this moment
time to choose again.
The door is wide open,
but it may not seem so,
the loss of our familiar
felt as robbery.

It takes some native trust
to wander blind into
those hidden places,
alone and friendless
for a while.

Don't hesitate
to remove yourself
from every equation.
Me, me, me is
too poor a bargain
for the heirs
to a transparent universe.
​
Heart broken open
everywhere.
No need to look for ground.
Relax into the release.



~~Luke Anderson

Home

11/10/2017

 
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It's time.
So long outside ourselves,
beside ourselves,
and now we’re returning,
a rare few all at once,
most of us
like layers unraveling
day by day,
year by year.

We leave the maps behind,
trust the instinct
of our star-filled mammal hearts
to know exactly where
and with whom
we belong,
lean into the primal clarity
of yes to this,
or no to that,
or no need yet to know.

Sensing what is true,
discerning what is not,
releasing the habits,
patterns
and choices
that have kept us estranged.

We see through the temptation
to live in threat,
cultivate disciplined relaxation
amidst the storm
lest strung too tight
we miss the simple quiet
that guides the way.

We are willing
to be in the dark,
ready to meet the grief
and shame of generations,
and coming to terms
with the anger and despair.

Running away
has run its course,
a thousand lifetimes
attracted to distraction,
terrified of the core,
distant, walled, apart.

Our intimate intelligence
now inspires and ignites
a thawing of all that froze,
a remembering
of all that fragmented.

We are sanctuaries,
each and every one,
like broad trees we are planted
in the moist earth silence
at the center of the wheel

Here we welcome
each and every traveler.
Undefended again.
Unafraid again.

Imagining movement
that rises in stillness,
awakening wildness,
discovering
we never left,
home always,
our source,
our task,
and our final rest.



~~Luke Anderson

Power

11/10/2017

 
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Less arrogance.
More listening.

If we examine
the nature of the power
we assert when we think
we are right,
what do we see?

Is our power porous,
interested in what we don’t know,
our minds open and curious?

Or are we rigid,
fragile in our so-called certainty?

Is our power married with heart,
flexible, calm, kind?

Or is it a tight shell of fear,
reactive and feeling entitled
to take or hurt,
our voice shrill and forceful?

What do we do
with the social power
we have access to
because of our privilege,
our race, our class, our gender,
our talents, our circumstance?

Do we share this power,
invite in and uplift with it?

Have we believed
somewhere along the way
that any of us can truly win
while another loses?

Are we humble in our power?
not as some kind
of special spiritual ego mask,
but because we have learned
that everything we think we know
can dissolve in an instant?

Are we aware that we are fools
who have stumbled around
in the dark for aeons,
until fortunate enough
to be graced
with moments of wisdom,
now growing
tender buds of discernment,
carried on the backs
of those who walked before?


Has our vision yet revealed to us
the consequences
of our own unconsciousness,
our misunderstandings,
all we once thought we knew?


If so then we have been humbled 
in the awareness 
that our power gives birth 
to more of whatever
state of consciousness 
is driving it.


Unless we are rooted in love
when we express our power
then when we act
we’ll likely be channeling harm,
and there really is no outside
in this world,
it all comes home in the end.

Perhaps we feel
that we are now using our power
for good.
Maybe so.
There are more than enough
opportunities to stand up
in solidarity with the earth,
her creatures and her people.

Let us always remember then
that we live in a hall of mirrors,
that any ignorance we can recognize
in another
has an existence inside each one of us
that needs to be acknowledged
and integrated
if we are really interested
in the healing of the whole.

Let’s not throw our righteousness
around like bullies
because we haven’t yet learned
how to be responsible
for our own pain,
and our own complicity
in that which we seek to change.

There is a transparent power
that is shared with every being
under the sun,
a power not threatened
by appearances,
a power that animates this
and every moment,
steady as a mountain,
quiet in its confidence,
vast as space,
limitless in its potential.

This true power
belongs to none of us
and yet breathes life into us all.
Sharing is its nature.

It doesn't require
our perfection or purity
for us to learn to serve
in this alchemy
of awakened intelligence
for us to learn to cooperate with
the incoming tide
of this evolutionary momentum.
​
What is required
is that we open our eyes and ears,
turn for direction to the wild,
clear and vital,
and stay close to the sincerity
of our deepest heart's yearning.

Less arrogance.
More listening.

Less arrogance.
More listening.



~~Luke Anderson

Joy

11/10/2017

 
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Warmed beside a hearth
of radiant fire,
the center of the wheel,
the home
we share
with each creature
under moon
and sun,
we notice those who glow
with a joy not so shaken
by up and down,
a joy not set apart from grief,
not found in must be must be happy
or any other pretense
at anyone’s expense.

Sensed in their ears
a lifetime of listening.
Seen in their eyes
what it takes to honor the vision.
Heard in their voices
a life filled with willing to be true.
Felt in their touch
a steady heart inspired to move.



~~Luke Anderson

Faith

12/9/2016

 
                                                                                                                         Gratitude for the image :Theories of Light by Jeffrey Smith
Picture


It's one thing to trust
when
 we're flowing downstream,

our hearts buoyant,

choices easy,

effortless cooperation 

in a sweet stream of synchronicity.


How do we fare though

when our way is steep, 


and we meet
 obstacle after obstacle,

only to see the path ahead

lead up a sheer mountain wall?

Do we judge a path to be worthy

solely when it flows with ease?

How would a salmon
answer that question,


or a bird migrating
across entire continents?


There are always deeper tests
of our vision, 


deeper tests
of whatever it is we count on 

to guide us on our way.

At times a lack of flow
can indeed be an indicator 


to help us realize it's time
to release our agenda 


and have the patience
to allow a new pattern to unfold,


a new door to open.

Sometimes though,
relaxing our determination

and our commitment

to a particular direction

would amount to self-betrayal.

At these times warrior lessons 

come thick and fast,


and obstacles are not evidence
of a wrong turn


but an opportunity to learn
about expanded capacities

of courage and perseverance.


If we depend on external signs of ease
for guidance, 


at some time or another
we'll end up lost, 


doubting ourselves
when the sky grows dark


and adversity comes to the fore.

But all of us,
every single one,

are free to know
what truth feels like in our bones


in the silent glow
of our innermost core.


With this core as our rudder,

we can be resolute

no matter the circumstance.

This is the vision, 

the trust in ourselves, 

that can lead us
all the way through.


This is the guide that illuminates
the path worthy of our faith.



~~Luke Anderson


forgiveness

9/21/2014

 
                                                                                           Gratitude for the image Central Neuron by MorpheusZero
Picture
When the pressure builds
and you think you want to blame
someone else,
or even yourself,
breathe into the burning core,
your lungs willing bellows
for the furnace inside.

Offer into this fire
all the ways you know
yourself and other
as victim and perpetrator,
and breathe.

When you open
into the pure sensation,
the full intensity of that which feels
like it could crush you,
you become space.

In this honesty
all stories collapse
into the cauldron
to feed a deeper vision.

Before you have the chance
to see with clarity
you must first admit
you have no idea
what is really going on.

Before you find
your own innocence,
you must first release
your assumptions
about everyone else’s guilt.

So many dead bodies
and tortured souls
on judgement’s
righteous road.

What if there is no outside?

How about we replace
our indignant assertions
with humble curiosity,
claim full responsibility,
each of us,
for our experience,
forgive the world,
forgive ourselves,
return to love,
and then see what happens?



~~Luke Anderson


victory

8/31/2014

 
                                                                                       'Gratitude for the image "one with Nature' by Mukesh Singh
Picture
What do you want?

More than anything,
deep in the heart of your being,
what do you want?

If you surveyed your time
on this earth
from a deathbed,
what would really matter to you?

What are the memories
that would engender
the peace
of nothing essential
left undone,
a life well lived?

Never forget
what is most important to you.

Allow yourself for a moment
to imagine a you
who has held steadfast
to the clarity of your vision,
who has overcome all obstacles
on the path,
who has vanquished all doubts,
composted all darkness
to feed the radiant jewel
of a life giving tree,
your unique offering
to the world.

Invoke this liberated,
potent,
awake
version of yourself.

Right here.
Right now.

Any time you feel the fog
of fragmenting voices,
the hypnotic sleep
of superficial agendas,
any time you lose faith
in yourself
and your commitment
or capacity,
invoke the one
who has already made it through
to the very end.

Let your every cell resonate
with the frequency of victory,
and know
that this is no arrogance.

For if you truly listen
to the deepest aspiration
of your heart,
then what you discover
is that your core desire
is a note that serves
an evolving harmony.

Your love seeks above all
to give itself fully
to the world,
with nothing held back.

When you recognize that you,
and only you,
are responsible
for your choices,
for mastering your experience,
for the life you weave,
for delivering your gift,
then no-one
can hinder you.

We are at all times surrounded,
permeated,
by a great intelligence.

Creation moves
unstoppably
toward healing,
the ultimate revealing of
our magnificence
in the beauty way.

Countless allies
come to the aid
of all who align themselves
with this light.

So offer your willingness
to every step,
however faltering,
with all the sincerity,
strength,
and courage
you can muster.

Though you might be daunted
by all
that would tear you down,
though your willingness
might seem insufficient
for the task ahead,
give everything you are.

Your small willingness
will be met by
an infinite supply,
and you will rise up,
and we will all rise beside you.



~~Luke Anderson


Liberation

7/5/2014

 
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There's a time
in this awakening
to open the chest
and step without even a hint
of defense
toward the dark,
a time
when even the slightest
movement
to rid or to vanquish
will be the very energy
used against you.

There's another time,
however,
when you'll be called
to bare your fangs and claws
and wield a discerning saber
with ferocity,
without hesitation.

Summon your dignity
from the center of the earth
and set loose howling spirit winds
to every last corner.
Clear the table.

When the psychic parasites
try to hang on
with claims that you'll be lost
without them,
command them without pause
to the central sun
to be dissolved.
Return them to essence,
to be born anew
in kinder form.

Learn the value
of guardians
who protect the inner sanctum
from any compromise.

Stand sure
at the center of your mandala.
Claim your throne.
Declare this sacred space
for the benefit of all beings
in the confidence
that you are a lion,
whose claws are sharpened
by the clarity
that only love may enter here,
whose fangs are forged
in the annihilating fire
of infinite light.

Your worthiness
to liberate your body and being,
your place of earth and sky,
comes not from any special favor
or privilege.
This worth, this birthright,
is given freely
and without end
from the deepest source
to every particle of creation,
and all of life celebrates
with you
each moment
you recognize your luminous self
and your truest choice
to live as love.



~~Luke Anderson

Healing the love reflection

3/14/2014

 
                                                                                                                                                       Gratitude for the image ‘Metamorphosis of Narcissus’ by Salvador Dali
Picture
When confidence and calm
collapse,
I sit here
trembling
like a frightened dog,
and I’m unable
to soothe the ache,
attached as it has become
to this mirror of you outside.


But even here,
almost overwhelmed
by the sense of being
a victim and beggar
for love,
even here,
I know I must create.


So in the midst of the shame,
I open
to a hint of light
to make space
for the guidance
I’m barely willing to hear:


“Put down the begging bowl,
cast aside the push and pull
of your demand,
and give your love
to all the ones you believed
you needed it from.”


“Give love, without bargain.
When you give love,
you are love.
Be the spring,
and source,
and gift.”


“Lay down your fascination
with neglect.
Lay down your hope
and despair.
Release us, all your mirrors,
with your generosity.
There is nothing to do but love.”


“With all your heart,
even when it feels
like the most impoverished heart
that ever there was,
even when it feels
like you need another’s love
like parched earth needs rain,
love.
Just love.”



~~Luke Anderson

Allowing

3/2/2014

 
                                                                                                                                               Gratitude for the image Sundrenched moss-covered roots by Jeffrey Friedl
Picture
Rain falls,
and we learn to listen
as the ground
draws us in
to moistened roots.

When there are no words,
no answers
to all the questions,
savor the quiet
and rest
as the empty space.

Allow the out breath
to have its time.
Be still.
Trust.
New life arrives by itself.



~~Luke Anderson


Union

2/14/2014

 
Picture


Have you noticed life
is making love with you?

Are you now penetrated,
to the very deepest reach
of your being,
by her breath?

Are you discovering
that so-called ordinary pleasures,
a taste,
a view,
the contact as you lean your head
against a wall,
that all of these
can be ecstasy beyond compare?

Tire soon, beloved,
of the endlessly
disappointing story
in which you wait
for a special someone
to free you
from the imagined separation
between yourself and the all.

You may indeed experience
a temporary release
from isolation
if and when
you encounter another
who also seeks the same,
but as long as you both believe
yourselves incomplete
without the other,
you will lose again
the sacred garden
before long.

The hole inside
that you have been
so afraid of,
dearest one,
and taken as evidence
that you need to be
rescued by another,
this emptiness isn’t in fact
something to fill,
but rather
an open doorway
to intimacy
with the whole universe.

When you find out
for yourself
what is at the heart
of your loneliness,
rather than trying
to seduce another
to fill it
with the fantasy
of a perfect embrace,
you’ll discover we’ve been
in union
with the master lover
all along.



~~Luke Anderson

Trust the Passage

1/17/2014

 
                                                                                                                                     Passage out of the initiation chamber at Newgrange, Bru Na Boinne, Ireland
Picture

Utterly lost,
we knew for sure
we needed to find our way.
Unable to hide
from total failure,
we were humble enough
to receive.
Allowing ourselves
to be broken,
we discovered the whole.


Drink deep
of the medicine in our darkness.
Better to be unravelled by grief
than holding back the tears.
Better falling to your knees
and clawing at the earth
than cold with tight lips
and sarcastic commentary.


Be unafraid
of the full breadth
of your experience.
Travel to the very end,
beyond notions
of what you can tolerate.
Whatever you do,
don’t stop halfway
through the passage.
Don’t settle
for the minor improvements,
the better shade of grey.


Keep on heading toward that
which fills your body with trust.
Every cell in you will sing
as you get closer.
Your eyes clear,
your heart wide,
and you, free, a blazing sun,
filled with the joy that comes
when you find
what you are here to give.



~~Luke Anderson

In Praise of the Dark

12/20/2013

 
                                                                                                                                                                                       gratitude for the image by Maria Rikteryte
Picture
I bow to the dark womb
where all grow,
from which all receive
their nourishment,
and to which all return.

As long as we keep chasing
light out there,
afraid of the dark within,
we'll remain in exile,
bound by myriad confusions.

There is a question
with the power to liberate,
a question which if followed
all the way through,
with devotion and courage,
carves a pathway home.

“Who am I?
To whom,
or to what,
is this experience occurring?”

Here we find

that every idea of self
is an object of awareness.

Discover the subject.

To do so,
we have to be willing to admit
the entirety of our ignorance,
to become intimate
with all that we fear,
to forgive ourselves the suffering
caused by misidentification,
and dissolve entirely
into the void.

When we realize ourselves
as no-thing
we meet the greatest relief.
And when, as that no-thing,
we look out at the world,
we see ourselves
everywhere,
all being one at last.

In this love we know
that light is born in the dark,
movement in the unmoving,
sound in silence.

Here we are free to give

and include
all that we are.

~~Luke Anderson


Gratitude

11/22/2013

 
                                                                                                                                                                       prayer offering on the Ganges river
Picture
The wind and branches whisper
of a grand conspiracy:
everything and everyone
secretly aware of the plan
to wake you up,
to reshape your misery
in the form of endless gratitude.

Be glad that you suffer
when you veer off course,
it’s a true kindness
that helps us remember.

You’ll recognize the way
when you can be thankful
for the pain
that opens your heart,
thankful for your birth
and each breath
that gives you this moment
to love,
thankful for death
that reminds you
to take nothing for granted,
thankful for darkness
that reminds you
through contrast
what you really want
to choose,
and thankful
that no matter what we do
or have done to us
whatever lives
is still made of light.



~~Luke Anderson

Die Before You Die

10/31/2013

 
Picture


Who were you
before your parents were born?
Who are you now
before you believe
that thought?

There is
an imposter in the house.
He terrified your ancestors too.
With many names
he feeds on your fear,
is nourished
by your sorry stories
of better or worse,
of me against you.

There is a short cut,
a way through
this ancient suffering.
Short,
because there's no distance
between the beginning,
middle
and end of this passage
and who you already are.

But it's a deep cut,
a flaming sword
that will take your head
and feed it to the lions,
releasing your heart
to sprout new eyes
that can see
and ears that can hear.

Die before you die.
This is the miracle of life.

Die before you die.
This very moment,
every moment,
give up your fight
against mortality.

With every ounce of your being
bring yourself completely here.
Abandon your distaste
of this earth
and the guaranteed end
of your body.

You come from the stars,
but every world is a true home.

It is only when you meet death
exactly as it is
that you will know the difference
between the vampire
that sucks you dry,
and the eternal light
of the present.



~~Luke Anderson



Vision

10/3/2013

 
Picture

There is a song
that sings to me
with nectar of sweet beginnings.
It honors all
with ears to hear
by bowing
to the end of fear.


I love you
with an endless stream
of hummingbirds
with velvet wings.
The stars pour down
their simple grace.
The moon reminds us
with her face.


There’s death
for joy to heal our life.
There's light enough
for us this night.
The one who weaves
this dance is true,
this vision
offered now to you.


I love you
with an endless stream
of hummingbirds
with velvet wings.
The stars pour down
their simple grace.
The moon reminds us
with her face.


~~Luke Anderson



Possibility

9/15/2013

 
  
                                                                                                gratitude for the image egckiller
Picture

In an instant,
our stories collapse
into a field
of infinite possibility,
and all is still.

We land at last
in our own skin
and there is nothing wrong
with these tender, porous,
earthy creatures.

Stunned by the immensity
of lifelong misperception,
we are finally relieved of
all that kept us apart.

Here we find
what it means
to be truly in awe,
fully alive in the heart
of an open moment.

We see each other
as if for the first time,
no gap between us,
no thought believed.

Remind me,
brothers and sisters,
when I fall asleep again,
imagining I know
who you are,
or what is possible for us.

Remind me to throw away
every one of those tired filters
and step across the bridge again.



~~Luke Anderson



Sovereignty

8/30/2013

 
                                   
                                                                                                 gratitude for the image by Alex Grey
Picture

I place my faith
in seven billion Kings and Queens,
seven billion whole and sovereign.

Seven billion who bow to strangers
and say, “there am I.”
Seven billion who look at the moon
and say, “there I shine.”
Seven billion who look at the mountain
and say, “there I sit,”
who look at the forest
and say, “there I grow.”

Wake up kings and Queens.
Rescue yourselves
from the hungry ghosts of history.
Discover the deeper throne.

Dwell deeper home
where the notion of ruling another
is laughable,
where mastery knows itself
through humility
and absolute trust in inner authority.

Dwell deeper home,
where the need to be seen
is dissolved by willingness to
see the essential in yourself
and in another,
where wealth is defined
by what you share.

When you have found that me
never was who you are
and the center you thought you were
becomes infinite space,
what then?

It all becomes possible,
and you’ll see what you’re made of
everywhere,
in every seeming thing.

Be kind to us all,
and allow yourself this greatness.



~~Luke Anderson



July 05th, 2013

7/5/2013

 
<<Previous

    Contents

    All
    Allowing
    Belonging
    Confidence In No Control
    Die Before You Die
    Doubt Your Doubt
    Earth Day
    Faith
    Fertility
    Forgiveness
    Gratitude
    Healing The Love Reflection
    Home
    In Praise Of The Dark
    Joy
    Liberation
    Mother Of Us All
    Passion
    Possibility
    Power
    Resolve
    Sovereignty
    Strength
    The Great Choice
    Trust The Passage
    Union
    Victory
    Vision

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