Spiritual Direction from a Beatle

"I look at you all see the love there
that's sleeping while my guitar gently weeps.
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps."
George Harrison

In Corrogue I am on song.

This morning the mist hangs low in the far of fields. The landscape seems schroded in mystery. It is always new. It is always fresh to the eye that is accepting of it as it is. I want to go capture this mystery. It is how I imagine the threshold of Tir Na Nog would appear. I want to go and cross this threshold into the land of the ever young. This is the land of the ever-present moment.

All this week I have been singing.

This week I have been dancing as well. This dancing is a great technique for allowing one to get out of one`'s head and into the body. This is recreation. At this "place of the briars" (Corrogue) there is no one to be disturbed. Even the sheep dance and the cows look up from their feeding. I turn up the volume on the tape deck and play Annie Lennox singing "Why." This is a great song with a great question. It is a question about the failure of love.

This week I have had to walk into Dowra village one and one quarter miles from this cottage. When I am walking I have been accompanied by George Harrison's beautiful song "While my guitar gently weeps." I love this song. It is, for me, a song of deep compassion. It is the song of a seer. It is a song written and sung by one of great sensitivity. This is a real soul song. It is not a sentimental love song. It cuts to the heart of love and goes to what W B Yeats referred to as "The Deep Hearts Core."

In this song George Harrison tells us "I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping." This is beautiful. To be able to see and know that in each and everyone of us "love sleeps." This is a great knowing. For some this love is sleeping deeply. It sleeps because to often it has been wounded. It has not been welcomed.

To often love and the expression of love has become associated with pain. Better then to sleep without the need for this experience we call "love." Better not to venture into this place where the heart is vulnerable. So we choose not to risk all for love. We live outside our essence. Maybe we can settle for a little satisfaction. Let us not, however, venture into the vulnerability of grace and joy.

George Harrison sees "the love there that's sleeping." A soul friend sees the "love there that`'s sleeping." A soul friend laments this sleep. While love lies sleeping "a guitar gently weeps." This is the gentleness of compassion. The word "lament" comes from the words meaning, "to care."

This wonderful and wonder filled man plays a lament for the distance we are separate from love. What else to do? One has to lament. One has to enter a heart of vulnerability that says, "I care." More than this one has to enter the "will to care." One has to have courage to be this vulnerable.

When you are this vulnerable you discover you are the love that is always awake. It was only waiting for you to look through the eyes of the heart. You awake from the sleep of the ego. Until this time you are living in the dead of the past. You are never graced the entry into the only time you are alive. This is the here and now. This is the place of presence.

George Harrison gives you a great help to come awake to the love that sleeps within.

He sings, "I look at the floor and see it needs sweeping, still my guitar gently weeps." This is a great line. This is a Zen poem. It comes from a heart still weeping through his guitar. George Harrison and his guitar are not separate. They are one body. They have come to be at-one-ment. This guitar is a part of who he is. The voice of the Divine moves through him and his body. Then as he says "My guitar gently weeps." This is a holy instrument. This is a holy weeping. It is a lamenting for the unity of oneness with "all that is."

We are so often missing from life. We are too busy doing "our life."

We do not see what is needed in any moment. We do now know how to look. We look at the floor and we might judge. We would judge that the floor is dirty. We might think how little time we have to sweep the floor. We might think how our partner and our children are slobs. We might think how the colour of the floor has faded and maybe it is time to think about new kitchen tiles.

As for myself, when sweeping the floor, I might lament, "All those bloody dog hairs."

Then those, whose love never lies sleeping, go quiet. Our two dogs go and slink into a safe place. This is a place where the mad sweeping man might not find them. Sometimes the little dog will simply stand there and look. She becomes my little Zen master. I am her student. She reminds me that I am shouting. She reminds me that I should practice what I sometimes preach. She tells me, "Tony, the floor. That is all. Love in action. Just chill."

Sweeping the floor with judgement is our norm. This is our mind. This is my mind. This is who we think we are. We get so little experience of the real love that lies beyond sleeping. We go to various religious authorities. More than anywhere else the sleep there is often so deep they begin to have dreams that seem real. There you are encouraged to enter the sleep of belief. There you are told you are not even worthy to be standing on the floor.

Learn to look. Learn to just see.

The floor needs sweeping. That is all. This is love in action. Out of an awakened heart action moves. It is transformative. It is accepting. Energy flows feely. There is no attachment to results. Just sweep the floor. Just allow compassion to arise. We have lost faith in our passion and our experience of the flow of compassion. Let your heart lament the absence of presence.

Share your love and while you are at it drop the idea that it is "your love." Wake up for a moment and feel the love sleeping in your soul. You are this. You are the love that is sleeping. It is the flow of life moving through you. Love is not separate from you and will never be separate from you.

What needs sweeping is the dust of the mind.

It needs sweeping of all its attachments to all that it clings to. It clings to the past and is forever thinking about the future. All this "thinking about" crushes the heart. The heart is not felt. It is not trusted simply to be. You lose heart. You lose the ability to sweep the floor. You lose the ability to lament the loss of your birthright. You do not weep for the loss of soul. You do not weep for the loss of joy and the non-entry of grace. You forget how to lament.

When you hear a song running through your head stop and listen.

It is often speaking to what is termed "your condition." Allow this song space. Allow it some unconditional love. Then you might wake up to the love "there that's sleeping." You might wake up to see the floor just as it is.

This will be enough.

The Magic Swirling Ship of Irish Mythology

Take me for a trip upon
Your magic swirling ship

Bob Dylan ? Mr. Tambourine Man

Most of us are on a trip. The question is, ?Is this trip taking me anywhere?? There is a paradox to the answer. If you think it is then you are not on a trip that is magical and will make your head swirl.

We need to have our heads swirl. Heads can be so full of knowledge that there is no room for the new. In our heads that have bee taken over from the ?swirling ship? of the heart resides the inner critic, the doubter and various related members of the ?playing small? family devoid of magic or mystery.

Irish mythology, which is a language of magic and mystery, can become a magic swirling ship. This is not just a trip into some historical time and place but the invitation to real magic. This is the invitation to the Timeless ? the NOW.

The Mr. Tambourine Man can play a song for you but you will be in a whirl. This is because all Tambourine Men (which also includes women) will play you YOUR song. You will tell them that this song is just too beautiful for words. They will then ask you, ?Why aren?t you playing this song.?

The Tambourine Man will then disappear and this song will haunt you until you meet again. Only this time you will be attuned to your unique time. The one that you came here to sing. The one that will take you as a magic swirling ship going in the true direction.

A Town Called Paradise

?Let me take you
down to a town
called Paradise.?

Van Morrison
?No Guru, No Teacher, No Method.?


Many mornings during the week I take the highroad. This is the high road between the village of Glenfarne and the village of Rossinver in Co. Leitrim. This is a high road that winds and bends over the mountain. Early in the year I drive slowly. On this road I am going on what Van Morrison calls a long long drive.

I am going on a drive to a town called ?paradise.? This town is the central town in a place of eternity. In Ireland this place is called ?Tir Na Nog.? ?Tir Na Nog? is not a physical place but a state of being. It is a state of awareness. This is the mythological place where people are always beautiful and never age. This is a soul place. This is the place an Anam Cara will invite you to come to and belong.

Many of my readers know that Van Morrison the Irish singer/songwriter is an inspiration to me.

On the high road to Rossinver, while avoiding migrating frogs, I play his album, ?No Teacher, No Guru, No Method.? It is on this album that the song ?A town called Paradise? is heard. I love playing this song loud. There is no other traffic on this high road except for the odd tractor that travels slow and sure.

This song for me is about my relationship to the Beloved.

This is the central relationship that an Anam Cara commits to. It is the moment to moment awareness of ?what is.? It is the seeking to know the joy of paradise at deeper and deeper levels of awareness. This is the work of surrender to the ?timeless now."

Most of us driving our car are totally unaware.

We enter the vehicle, switch on the engine, and engage gears without very much awareness of what we are doing. We arrive at our destination without any awareness of the journey in between. This car journey is a mirror of the longer journey we call ?our life.?

When we are alone in our car we have a great opportunity.

We have the opportunity to be alone and aware. We can choose to be totally present to our minds, body and emotions. We can choose not to be distracted by music or talk radio. We can equally choose to play music that lifts the heart and that we consciously listen too. We can buy tapes and CD`s that life and inspire the soul.

Each time we enter the car we can make a commitment to be aware.

Feel yourself sitting on the seat. Feel your hands on the steering wheel. Listen to the sound of the engine. Say, Thank you,? to this vehicle that allows you to arrive at the place of your choosing. Remember to be aware of your breathing. Breathe deep into your belly and keep it soft. When you arrive you will feel focused and relaxed.

Stop ?thinking about? anywhere else other than this moment.

This moment is the town called ?paradise.? This moment is forever. In this moment, entered without judgment or compassion, there is beauty. You become as the people of ?Tir Na Nog.? You become eternal and filled with beauty.

To begin with you will look for this experience of beauty.

You will wish to grab at the experience of the eternal. In the beginning your ego wants this beauty and this experience for itself. It can only imagine the credos it will receive once it has such a prize. The problem (if it is a problem) is to know that you are this beauty and this eternity. Your ego wants it but cannot really accept the possibility of such wonder. It has to disappear in order that the wonder can be.

As Marianne Williamson has reminded us in her beautiful book ?Return to Love,? we are afraid of our magnificence. We are afraid of our light and not our darkness. We have lost our paradise. We have lost the paradise of being here now.

On the high road between Glenfarne and Rossinver I am practicing entry into paradise. This is a knack. It arrives. It does not arrive. When it is there I know. When it is not there I know. I focus and wait, knowing that infinite patience brings instant results.

Why not take a trip to this town called ?Paradise," where you can be free. You can learn to be free of care, of worry, of going anywhere or having to be anyone other than the delight you are.

When travelling on any journey make it a journey of focused awareness.

Become present to the moment. This is the real and only time of your life. Become the presence of the Beloved. Become the perfume of love in action. This perfume is timeless and beautiful beyond any measure your mind can ?think about.?

One glimpse of ?Tir Na Nog? and you will know that a real holiday is. It is beyond re-creation. It is you being aware of creation itself in the timeless beauty of forever loving now.

This is what an Anam Cara reminds you off.

They remind you that you are forever enough. They remind you that the Blessing is already here. They remind you that you are this blessing. Going nowhere, the river flows and the grass grows by itself. Come on down to ?paradise" where you are free to be all you ever imagined and more.

Stranger to Love

We’re sailing in a strange boat.
We’re heading for a strange shore.
We’re sailing in a strange boat.
We’re heading for a strange shore.
We’re carrying the strangest cargo
Ever hauled on board.

From Strange Boat by Mike Scott
The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues

This is the opening to a wonderful song written by Mike Scott of the Waterboy`s. It is called Strange Boat. I love this song. I have spent many hours reflecting on and trying to write a story based around this songs invitation to my heart. This story is still being written.

For this Irish mystic storyteller this song has level upon level of meaning. It is ultimately, I think, a song about estrangement. It reflects the fact that many of us have become strangers to who we are and thus why we are. On one level the song is about who we think we are and as a consequence how strange this journey of life appears to many of us at some stage on the journey.

At this time of writing this opening verse reminds me that the strange boat we are sailing is the body. They strange shore we are headed to is death and the strangest cargo ever hauled aboard is the sense of separateness from Love that we call ‘Ì’ or ‘me’ and ‘mine.’

Those who have had any kind of mystic revelation will tell you that this is truly a strange way to live in the world. It is the way of estrangement from real life. This estrangement accounts for most of the suffering in the world that has ever been and ever will be.

When the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich says, “All will be well, all manner of things shall be well,” we tend to think, “What kind of planet is she living on.” The answer is the shore of non-estrangement from Love.

For this writer this song is a song of remembrance of that other shore which we will all arrive at because we can never truly leave it. We will all one day arrive home and become Lovers of who we are and why we are. When this happens you will laugh at the very idea that you can ever be a stranger to Love.

The strange cargo we are all carrying is the burden of the individual ‘I.’ We think we have to do it all. We think we are this thinker in a body living a limited time frame within a time space dimension. That is part of who we are but it is not the whole or the holy revelation of what it is to live ones full potential. Those with insight, those who are seers, see beyond this limitation and this estrangement. They invite you into that which is not at all strange but appears to be so only to the ego.

Buddhists use the metaphor of the other shore for the state of enlightenment. Enlightenment is experienced when you expand into awareness beyond this strange cargo called ‘I’ that keeps you apart from the light. It cargo isn’t needed because you are Life living Life and not something apart from Life. This can be known directly but one has to give up the strange cargo called “little me.” Most of us will not give up our sense of separate self for what we consider the strangeness of Love.

Close to it All or Any Song will Do

Birdsong brings relief
To my longing.
I am just as ecstatic as they are
But with nothing to say!
Please, universal soul, practice
Some song or something, through me.

Rumi – Birdsong
Translated by Coleman Barks

The singer songwriter Melanie (who is probably best known for the Bicycle song – I rode my bicycle to your window last night, I skated to your door at daylight) sings a song called Close to it All. It includes the words,

If I had my dream I would fill a hall
And tell all the people tear down the wall
That keeps them from being apart of it all
Cause you gotta get close to it all.

If I had my dream I would build halls and have people sing heart songs each morning in circles ranging from twenty and more. I would then prescribe this as an antidote to depression, loneliness, hopelessness and many other experiences of emotional distance that keep us from being apart of it all.

Many of us feel powerless. We feel what we have to say is of little value. We have no energy to say what we value. We have little or no time to find out what it is we value. Thus the universal soul of Love cannot practice some song, or something through us. The result is that we are left to do our life and lose our ability to be Life living as Love.

Even if you cannot go to a hall to sing you can choose to begin each morning with some practice, some something that invites the heart to sing. This does not mean that you choose to sing a song although you might choose to do this. Begin your day with the intention that you will value your unique heart song. Make this a silent invocation. You might not know what that is. Simply begin to invite and trust that you will receive intimations of what is to be sung through you.

Do not immediately rush into the day. Do not turn on the news that invites you into fear, powerlessness and armours you sensitivity to life and to the pain and sorrow in the world. Heartsong will open up your heart. Without your ability to feel heart centred life is lived without the experience of joy. Joy is your birthright. It is felt when anything of the universal soul is sung through you.

Find out what inspires you and aspire to express that feeling. Risk what it takes so that this feeling of inspiration expands and invites others to expand. Expansion is the nature of the Universal song. Do not be afraid to become so expansive that time disappears and all that is left is the singing. This is the direct experience of Love.

You might spend ten minutes in silence; you might put on a CD of music that moves you to dance or to tears. You might read poetry that changes you life. You might pray a prayer for yourself and others. You might practice mystic seeing. You might play a musical instrument. You might sit in your garden and say, “Thank You.”

There are, as Rumi says, hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. What Rumi is saying and asking, “When was the last time you felt like throwing yourself to the ground because you couldn’t believe the wonder of who you are.” This is the invitation to the song of your heart. Make it real for you.

Whatever is written in Your Heart?

Whatever’s written in your heart

That’s all that matters
You’ll find a way to say
It all some day

Gerry Rafferty

Here are lines from a song written by a soul friend. They are point you toward a place you will find what matters. Every song can be an invitation to the Great Song, the song that you alone have come here to sing. This is a metaphor.

You are not required to be a singer, although you might be that. You are, however, required to be a singer although in the sense that you are to sing the Infinite as it plays through your heart.

The heart is not just a physical pump; wonderful as this instrument is that pumps our life’s blood around the body. The heart is a dimension that spans time and the timeless. Without a direct experience of this connection you can have all the things you want but it does not matter that much. The heart is the bridge between the human and the Divine.

Heart work focuses on what matters. What really matters to the heart is beyond person, the mask. What really matters to the heart is the Universal, the timeless qualities of beauty and grace. These are qualities that you cannot buy but that you realise. You don’t make them. They come through what Eckhart Tolle refers to as ‘portals.’ These are place of threshold where the heart engages with its Lover and Creator.

You and I are writers. We write our life’s expression in each thought we think. What we think about we become but what we think about is not necessarily what we are intended to become. This writer was intended to become a teacher of yoga long before this word was the household word it is today. Instead, this writer trained and became engaged in the work of an accountant.

All through this writer’s life people would say, “ Tony, you’re not, you cannot be an accountant!” But I was and that I remained despite their vocal scepticism. However, I found a way to do the work of an accountant with the values that wanted to create a yoga teacher. This did not make me wealthy but it kept me sane.
The heart loves one thing more than any other. It loves to expand. Expansion means breaking boundaries. It means being willing to let go and move into the new. The ego tends to dislike this. It dislikes this because with the heart the ego gets dissolved and becomes at one with the boundless.

We each write a script for the heart. We do this everyday. The script we write has two broad directions. One leads us down a narrow road and the other onto the highway. Each signpost that takes us there looks the same. They have the same words written large on them.

The signpost reads, “This way to heart matters.” Most people follow the road to the highway. When asked why they choose that route they often deny that it was because that was the way most people seemed to be headed. This Irish storyteller headed for the highway of accountancy because, to be honest, he had not the heart strength to go another way.

Actually, what happens is that you will find a way to say it all some day. This ezine, this website, is the way this storyteller’s heart learns to say it all, not someday, but everyday. The heart does not just say what it wants to say on one day. It is saying what it wants to say in every moment. Fear and doubt get in the way.

What really gets in the way is you – your sense of separateness from Love. What gets in the way is that sense of unworthiness.

What matters to the heart is not what matters to you but what matters to Love. You think you are separate from Love but Love is not separate from you. Your heart knows this. Your heart longs to remember this. This is the meaning of yoga – to join together, to re-member.

Whatever is written in your heart will make you sing. You might sing a song of sorrow but still – it is your song of sorrow. It is not to be grudged. It is to be expanded. Your sorrow can be the invitation to deep compassion or bitterness. Usually bitterness is the calcification, the hardening over past hurts that are being said but not being owned.

The writer and creation spirituality teacher Matthew Fox says in Radical Prayer (available from Sounds True that ultimately there is no protection for the heart. There are boundaries but no protection. The greatest protection is a paradox. It is to trust the process and allow Love to write and play the universal song through you.

Picture - Writing on the Sand - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Her Place by the River

One of my favorite heartsongs is Suzanne by the wonderful Leonard Cohen. The opening verse has the beautiful invitation

Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river.
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
and you know that she`s half crazy but then that`s why you want to be there
and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
and just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength and she lets the river answer
that you`ve always been her lover.

I don`t know the personal Suzanne who invites and takes you down by the river. I do know the woman who takes me down by the river and who feeds me on the exotic. People say that it is I who am crazy to go anywhere near her place.

Have you ever gone down to the place by the river? This is the place called Life. It flows. It flows inside me and you. Or do you claim that in your life there is no water - no well spring of joy that makes you seem half crazy. Do you claim, like so many of us, that you have no Love to give her. Or do you know. Do you know within that deep inner solitude that begins to open you up and you get tuned into a different wavelength.

This river is your Source. It isn`t separate from you. It cannot ever be separate from you. It is the river of Being and to the ego it looks absolutely crazy. Most of us are more like a pond that has little flow through it. We are tuned out of the wavelength of the flow of the ever new. That is until we meet with the half crazy woman.

This Suzanne, for this writer is a kind of Priestess. She seems half crazy because she doesn`t need or depend on you and the love you think you don`t have to give her. She can attune you to the wavelength of Love. It makes you afraid because you are not used to being down by the river of Life flowing as Love in form. This is the fruit she will feed you from the far of land.

You want to get away from this crazy woman. She is too much. She feeds you what is exotic from a far away land. No, you and I want to make our excuses because being with her might mean we have to recognise that it is not she who is crazy but it is us. We are crazy for a "crazy little thing called Love. "

You might spend the night beside her, you might only spend only a moment beside her, and your attunement would be certain. This down by the river is a dangerous place to go. Her place down by the river has the sound of silence and in it you can hear and see and feel in ways that allow you to hear your unique heartsong. Are you willing to go further?

This blog to be continued


Picture - Nymph by the River - Fredrick Lord Leighton