Pieces of Presence
by Valerie Stuart
I was meditating under some trees and a squirrel chirped in alarm at me. I just continued to meditate and send it energy that I was a friend. After a while it stopped chirping and I heard little feet scurrying down a tree that was about 5 feet from me. He hung on the trunk of the tree across from my face and we gazed into each other’s eyes for about 10 minutes.
Time stood still as we communed in the realization, “oh, wow, you are me!” and "Oh wow, you are God!"
Time stood still as we communed in the realization, “oh, wow, you are me!” and "Oh wow, you are God!"
I felt we were both reaching out for each other, eager to commune in oneness. Afterward, I felt the words below coming to me from the love I felt in that meadow. It seems this love is growing stronger and easier to access. There are so many unseen friends who are eager to support us in the realization of this love.
All For You
Wherever you go you will feel this love
It is in footsteps, train whistles, and voices on the radio
It is in the skies, the trees, and the birds above
This love is with you, wherever you go
This peace is for you
You are constantly in its care
This resting you can do
any place, anywhere
Wherever your eyes look, it is there
It stands beside, around, and over you
And in your seen and unseen friends who share
this bountiful love that’s always here for you
I AM
Beneath the spin
of what, who and when
should do, ought to
could have been
Going deeper one finds enough
Slowly, a smile grins
embraced by the one love
a dance of wholeness begins
I am, I Am, I AM
in an ecstatic sea
happy as a clam
In the allness of me
YOU
You are up and down and all things
Yet you are not high or low
but both butterfly and king
and the gaze that captures both
A Great Relief
All the ways we try to change our worst tendencies in vain. Sometimes we can mute or hold them back, but in reality, we are what creation has made us. Whatever created us and the universe also put darkness in us.
Think about something in yourself that has dismayed you that you can't change. Then, realize if you could have changed it, you would have. Now, think about someone you don't and realize, maybe they too, can’t be any different than they are. Maybe they spend nights in anguish and despair about who they are.
When we let ourselves off the hook, it lets others off the hook.
When we let others off the hook, it lets us off the hook.
And this is one of the sweetest ways we can make the world a kinder place.
Gonna Make Love the Bottom Line
Hope you enjoy the uplifting video I created for this song which can be heard at: https://youtu.be/U1U_QzI1BSM
(sounds BAD on phones, good on computer speakers.)
I was feeling down about how many corporations had a bottom line of making an obscene profit no matter how much it hurt their workers or our earth. But my spirits lifted as I saw people in our community holding fund raisers for people who were sick or injured and bringing them food and cleaning their homes. It gave me hope that maybe we, the people, will invite the politicians and the CEO’s into a world where the bottom line is love.
I’ve been looking all my life for
the right thing to show up
what if it’s been here all along
inside of my own cup
Physics says the observer changes what’s observed
could that be true?
that love and happiness is an inside job and not
something I gotta get from you
I can’t change
other People
But I can change
what lives inside of me
Chorus: So, I’m gonna let love be the bottom line
in this life of mine
not let the newspapers, government or corporations
tell me otherwise
I’m gonna open up and show up for
the love that’s in my life
When I open my eyes I realize
It’s been here all the time
Oh I was waiting for the world to change
so I could be at peace
now I know nothing has to re-arrange
for me to be free
Love's funny thing we're all looking for
yet its always here
inside your heart is an open door
where love shines so clear
Now I Understand
In this moment nowI can say
I am grateful
for all the pain
that was in this life
finally impaling
this heart
so it could no longer stray
lost
in universes of illusion
Pain left no place to go
except true north
The narrow path
straight home
to you
the only place left
that finally
even this blind one
could feel
to find it's way
to fall
into
your awaiting arms
Is it Worth It?
Driving to work I noticed how life and death and tight my energy was to get around a slow car even tho I didn’t have arrive at any particular time.
This led to a deeper realization about how often my energy is tight, hurrying to get in line ahead of others or to save a few seconds, or a few cents.
This keeps me from being at peace. This robs me of my peace. And it causes me to treat others horribly. Even if it’s only in my mind, I still pollute the world with anger and condemnation.
And I ask myself: Is it worth robbing my peace for a few dollars, minutes, or yards of pavement?
The Eternal Dance
I am the one who is boundand the two who were never
I am the one that can’t be found
I am the all together
I am the heart of all
the love without end
the fool who always falls
the heart that always mends
I am you and me
eternally
throughout
all time
I am freedom living the totality
So Precious
Our earth is less than a grain of sand In the beach of the universe and it doesn’t make sense a grain would be noticed or missed.
But I have seen the whole precious universe in a flower and in my beloved’s eyes. When I see the incredible beauty and love and care in creation’s design I just know that this love must be so great that made this universe. I know that this love must care so deeply, so tenderly, for even a tiny grain of sand.
The crime won’t be that the little grain of sand dies because the universe is constantly dying and being reborn. The crime would be if our earth died because of our greed and callousness of what she is to us. She is our own self, our own heart, our own breath.
Don't let her die this way.
Every moment is so precious. Every moment is an opportunity to love a whole universe before it is gone.
THE GREAT LIE
The snake whispers in our ear, "Something is wrong! Listen to me so you don’t realize I am a lie, and that you are only a heartbeat away from bliss, so hurry! Hurry and get something to worry about or feel you must do or must acquire if you are to have the slightest possibility of not feeling like a horribly defective person!" Run! Chase your tail! You might miss it!"
This caused Adam and Eve to eat of the apple of this love and peace isn’t enough, I want more. And THAT judgment of not enough made them fall out of paradise. The moment we recognize the lie, we find ourselves BACK in paradise.
Toy Box of Life
I've been playing in the lost and foundgrabbing at other children's toys
With each new find
thinking happiness was now mine
But new toys soon lose their glow
being only cardboard imitations
When I am found
no longer clinging to false idols,
the toys and I return to their proper home
of freedom playing
The Secret of Happiness
The secret of happiness is to follow that place in you that needs nothing else in this moment to be free.
Love Poem to Gaia
I had some plants in Oregon 20 years ago and I asked them “aren’t you making a big sacrifice to be inside here in these tiny pots because I need you, when you could be outside with all the rest of nature?” And they answered, “Separation is an illusion, that indeed we are in constant connection with all of nature - indeed with everything. As long as one of us exists, there is hope that you humans too, will come to live free in love.” I think nature is a Bodhisattva, holding the template of unconditional love and wholeness for us humans. Some day I hope to understand creation, the creator, and the truth about my little plants. Until then I am so deeply grateful to them and all of nature. This is a love poem to Gaia.
I want to feel your presence
Walk with reverence in your grace
I want to be in residence
To gaze upon the beauty of your face
It tears at my heart
To see the money that they pocket
While your body’s torn apart
For the sake of greed and profit
Across my desk each day
Go piles of paper most unread
As I contribute to your destruction
While earning my daily bread
But, when I lay my head in your leaves
You tell me it will be all right
From one we came and we’ll go back again
Together from darkness we’ll return to the light
It's All Right Here
Everything we really need is present, when we are present with everything.
The piece below is about when the you that you think you are is sliding away into something awful or maybe glorious.
FALLING
I’m falling into something (maybe down the sink)
I’m falling into nothing (I think?)
Whoa its hairy, yeah it’s scary and I don’t know if I’ll be back again
I tried stalling, I tried calling for help
Did lots of bawling about the cards I was dealt
But it didn’t matter, I was still going down
You can’t hold it, you can’t drive it
You can’t control it, you won’t survive it
So you might as well go along
My head and my friends, we don’t know what to do
In the end you’re dead, but it isn’t even you
It’s heaven not knowing where the boat is or whose rowing
It’s peaceful when you let go, flying without any hands
So let’s go falling into something (bigger than ourselves)
It’s so fun to be nothing (just the whole universe)
It’s sweet bliss to be floating in this
We might as well enjoy the ride
The Secret Heart of a Cynic
Cynicism is a denial of a secret and deep desire still for that which was idealized, but through hurtful disillusionment left one feeling a fool.
It is a cry, safely cloaked as a challenge, to be shown that which one wants to believe can indeed be true. It is the deceptively weak cord that holds one closer than they might imagine to their unrelinquished dreams.
Why is There So Much Suffering in Life?
A friend asked me to connect with source and ask this question for him. This is what came through.
Most of your suffering comes from believing that a particular person, situation or thing is where your happiness lies. When you forget that love, peace and security is to be found within you, the Universe who loves you and doesn’t want you trapped in the hell of a false reality making you smaller than you are, will sometimes take these things away to redirect you to the freedom, peace and love that can be found when you are as naked as the day you were born – not believing in false idols.
The second major source of pain is that we don’t honor the truth of our being and the knowing of our hearts. We were taught to look to others for how to be in life instead of listening to the compass within that guides us true.
The third reason is sometimes spirits before birth make agreements that would seem to hurt another. But it is in our greatest pain and betrayal that we can find liberation. These people and situations force us to connect with the truth of who we are. Perhaps only a love as great as Judas had for Jesus, could allow Judas to play the role he did.
Jesus was afraid to be crucified but in being nailed to the cross, the only thing he could do was to connect with God or you could say the truth of what he was – a vast love that could say, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
The Dali Lama being exiled from China is what has caused his teachings to spread all over the world.
Sometimes children die because they are spirits who agreed to help us open their hearts or to start movements like the Amber alert. Chris Reeve who played Superman in the movies and his wife were very high souls who agreed to Chris’ accident knowing it would help break thru society’s resistance to stem cell research.
So wherever there is pain in your life, ask yourself, is there any belief, situation or person that you are making a false God or giving your power over to. If you ask to see the truth of the situation, it will be shown to you.
Remember to ask to know the truth of any relationship or situation and be willing to open up and receive the truth. Open your energy like you are standing on a mountaintop breathing in fresh air. If you open your energy that way and ask to be or see the truth, it will raise your experience. If you notice, we are a range of feelings from low to high. When people are in love the whole world looks beautiful. This can happen at any moment for anyone, being in love without having an particular object for our love.
If you invite truth and love to be in your life, they will come, but in order to honor your free will they only come upon invitation. Ask in your own way from the longing in your heart and they will come.